Talk:Bruno Bettelheim

Difficult errors
1) why the initial notice that scientist template being merged? Is this of interest to the reader? 2) An editing error in the paragraph discussing Controversies > Abusive treatment, places a long quote in the middle of a sentence ending "and memoirs[footnotes]." Attempting to place "memoirs" in its proper place did not work for me, resulting in weird behavior, which I cancelled. Any takers, any ideas why? SalineBrain (talk) 03:45, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
 * That section needs a LOT of work, even with the large amount of work that's already been done to clean it up. I suspect it is an oversight from a host of overlapping edits. Feel free to take a swing at it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.65.116.97 (talk) 13:43, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Instead of a single large, somewhat jumbled section, how about three, four, or even five subsections as needed? Our "Abusive treatment of students​" section currently [Oct. 2021] has just one subsection.And as always, we go with the references, no more, no less. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 21:49, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Plagiarism in Bettelheim's Uses of Enchantment​ is an example of us being timid
We use bland summary for the evidence Bettelheim committed plagiarism (evidence which is considerable!) And then we use a moist, juicy quote from Jacquelyn Sanders for the defense. Actually, it's a mistake to think of it as prosecution and defense. Here at Wiki, we take solid secondary sources, we lay them on the table and that is that.

Please see Plagiarism in Bettelheim's Uses of Enchantment in our article.

Plus, I think we've lost some references over time. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 20:40, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

--

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bruno_Bettelheim&diff=1051819285&oldid=1051817575
 * I added a quote from Sarah Boxer. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 20:49, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

And not a single mention of plagiarism in The Uses of Enchantment section toward the beginning?
The Uses of Enchantment

Wow.

I think we would mention it. Our readers should be able to stop reading early and not get a seriously incomplete view. Or at the very least, if they read an entire section, they should get a reasonably complete view. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 21:03, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bruno_Bettelheim&diff=1046876306&oldid=1046871577
 * I added "well-supported charges of plagiarism" to this section, including three references we already use. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 20:54, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, let's change the intro, but with references please
Wfsjr2 Acroterion Whenelvisdied

A LITTLE HUMOR FIRST: Not the case that he had no credentials. Bettelheim did have the art history degree (or degree in philosophy aesthetics) which he was able to leverage quite successful. Plus, he had a Viennese accent just like Sigmund Freud! ;-)

Seriously, I've long been an advocate that we have plenty of references and we don't need to be so timid. I mean, our first sentence probably should be: CURRENT UNDERSTANDING, HOW VIEWED DURING HIS LIFETIME. For example:

"Now viewed as an imposter psychologist and described as 'a snake-oil salesman of the first magnitude,' Bruno Bettelheim was viewed during his heyday in the 1960s and '70s as an expert on child psychology, Freudianism, and autism. . . "

That would be an informative first sentence for our readers. And we certainly have the references to back it up.

I welcome everyone's suggestions. Please dive in and help. For a minor historical figure, the article still needs quite a bit of work. Thanks. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 19:02, 6 November 2021 (UTC)


 * That's fine, my chief objection is the horrible practice of inserting parenthetical qualifications into the very first sentence of an encyclopedia article.  Acroterion   (talk)   19:16, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

---

Biography As Revenge, Chicago Tribune, Marie Winn (who writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal's Leisure & Arts Page), Feb. 23, 1997:

"For as Pollak demonstrates, Bettelheim was a snake-oil salesman of the first magnitude. His concentration-camp stories were untrustworthy, he had never met Freud, and his degree was in aesthetics, not psychology. Of course, nobody had a clue at the time Bettelheim snagged the job; could anyone doubt the word of a [Holocaust] survivor?"

-

Turbulent dreams of a damaged saint, The Independent [UK], Nicholas Tucker (review of Bruno Bettelheim: A Life and a Legacy by Nina Sutton), 8 December 1995:

"despite claims to the contrary, possessed no psychology qualifications of any sort"


 * You should probably look at the RfC up the page for ideas.  Acroterion   (talk)   19:44, 6 November 2021 (UTC)


 * In fact, I'm the person that started the above RfC!As well as the previous one several years before. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 21:56, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

The previous RfC, which I also started and which is now archived, was begun in May 2019. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 22:04, 7 November 2021 (UTC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bruno_Bettelheim/Archive_1#RfC:_how_to_cover_someone_who_doesn't_have_credentials_for_their_field?

Okay, well, is there anything good about the man? 'Course there is.

"The Strange Case of Dr. B.", Robert Gottlieb, The New York Review, Feb 27, 2003:

Gottlieb points out that Bettelheim arrived in the United States as a Holocaust survivor and refugee, without a job or really even a profession. And then Gottlieb says, "I suspect he said what he thought it was necessary to say, and was then stuck with these claims later on, when he could neither confirm them (since they were false) nor, given his pride, acknowledge that he had lied."


 * Very human motives which I think all of us can understand. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 22:06, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Article would probably benefit from subsection on Richard Pollak's 1997 bio, which was written for highly personal reasons
Richard Pollak sought out Bettelheim as an adult to ask why his brother had been at the school and what had been wrong with him. Bettelheim launched into a tirade highly critical of Pollak's parents, esp. his mother. And he insisted the brother had committed suicide. Pollak had in fact almost fallen through the same hay chute himself, and felt highly confident that his brother's death had been an accident.

And so he wondered, was Bettelheim a fraud?

All the same, Pollak continued his journalism career for years, and more than two decades passed before he returned to the question of Bettelheim. But this also means that in no way, shape, or form was his book a neutral book.

But -- and I think this is key -- serious reviewers serious newspapers wrote that (1) although Pollak's book wasn't too much fun to read, (2) he was right on the facts. And I think we just tell our readers this, with references of course.

---

And then we probably need a small subsection on Nina Sutton's 1995 bio. But let's first add the subsection for Pollak, that's more controversial and all, more question marks. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 21:48, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bruno_Bettelheim&diff=1054375292&oldid=1054241400


 * Added this subsection. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 17:54, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Reference to Zelig
Hey Lovemankind83, not sure why you deleted the section about Bettelheim's appearance in the 1983 Woody Allen movie Zelig. He's in the movie, as it indicates on the wiki page for that film, which I linked to in the text I wrote. Can you explain? Why not just a citation needed tag? Whenelvisdied (talk) 17:43, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Unless somebody objects, I'm going to revert the reference back. Whenelvisdied (talk) 14:05, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Len Zelig met all sorts of famous people. That is relevant for the Zelig article, but not for the articles about those famous people. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:56, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Right, but Bettelheim's appearance in the film is a reflection of his public persona, and his status as a public intellectual. He didn't appear accidentally, but because Allen was using his public status in service of the documentary conceit of the film. Also, the articles of several of the famous people who appear in the film as themselves contain references to their appearances so it seems reasonable to me that Bettelheim's page does as well. Whenelvisdied (talk) 15:05, 29 April 2022 (UTC)