LOVE AND DEATH

Fremon writes: “And even after his death, controversy arose about his use of corporal punishment to discipline patients at the Orthogenic School.” The abuses that went on at the Orthogenic School were not corporal punishment; they were vicious, random, unpredictable attacks on children and adolescents. I was at the Orthogenic School from age 12 to 18, from 1966 to 1972. When I was about 15 years old, Bettelheim dragged me out of a shower by the hair and beat me in front of my dorm-mates. He did not give me any reason why he had done this. This incident and others have been described in the Washington Post and elsewhere. I still have nightmares all the time about Bettelheim and the school.

Fremon also writes: “His assertion that autism was primarily environmentally produced has since been disproved.” Bettelheim continued to claim that he could cure children of autism long after it became obvious that he could not help these children. He cruelly blamed parents for causing the autism and then accepted large amounts of money from them in exchange for the false hope of a cure. To make his success rate look better, he misdiagnosed many children who were not emotionally disturbed. Later he could claim that he had cured these children.

Bettelheim had spent most of his life controlling other people “for their own good.” Bullies are often cowards when the shoe is on the other foot. When it came time for him to enter a retirement home and place himself under the nurturing care of an institution, he killed himself.

He could dish it out, but he couldn’t take it.

ALIDA M. JATICH Chicago