SOURCE: Roazen, Paul. “The Rise and Fall of Bruno Bettelheim.” Psychohistory Review: Studies of Motivation in History and Culture 20, no. 3 (spring 1992): 221-50.

In the following essay, Roazen investigates the reasons for the decline of Bettelheim's reputation.

Bruno Bettelheim's role in the history of psychoanalysis has long been known to be a special one, but now it appears that his place is bound to remain every bit as contentious as that of any other figure in the controversial story of the development of Freud's school. Perhaps the height of Bettelheim's stature, at which time he was probably the most famous psychoanalyst in the world, came when Woody Allen cast him for the part of an interpreting psychiatrist in Zelig (1983). Ever since his suicide in 1990, however, Bettelheim's standing has been in a slump, and subsequent accusations against him by former patients have meant that the downturn of his reputation has...