It's important that readers of this extremely dangerous and destructive book realize that not only the theories but the man himself have been completely debunked. Almost everything he said about himself and his work was a lie.Bettelheim did not have three Ph.D.s as he said (he had one -- in "asthetics"); never studied psychoanalysis at all, much less under the eminent teachers he claims to have studied with; never met Freud, much less was praised by him; was not released from a concentration camp by Eleanor Roosevelt's intervention (his family bought his way out); was not a member of the anti-Nazi resistance; never took "several" (or any) autistic children into his home whom he then "cured"; regularly hit and abused the children he DID have under his care in his "Orthogenic School" and on and on. All of this came to light after his suicide in 1990. Don't believe a word this book says until after you do the research.