Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990), a controversial Austrian-born American psychoanalyst and educational psychologist, pioneered in the application of psychoanalysis to the treatment of emotionally-disturbed children.

On Aug. 28, 1903, Bruno Bettelheim was born in Vienna. He received his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1938. When Austria fell to Hitler, Bettelheim was sent to a concentration camp, but was able to go to the United States in 1939, becoming a citizen five years later.

During his formative years in Vienna, Bettelheim was influenced by World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and Sigmund Freud. Like other Viennese intellectuals, he could not accept the optimism and complacency of preexisting Western European ideals. In their search for new pathways, his generation chose between the new social changes reflected in Russian communism and later National Socialism, and the excitement of the new psychoanalysis pioneered by Freud. Bettelheim opted for psychoanalysis, yet his work always reflected interest in...