Bruno Bettelheim treasured the written word. Fortunately, unlike Socrates, and despite believing that the best learning comes dialectically, he wrote. (Some)learned from him only through his writings. Early on, he abjured the dry, passive-voiced, “professional” journals, fillled with their English psychoanalytic argot that obscured more than clarified. These same journals refused to publish his account of his experience in Dachau, because they did not believe the horror of his account. Perhaps there was another imporant reason for his willingness to turn not only to writing books, but also to such magazines as the New Yorker, Redbook, and the Atlantic Monthly for his voice. He believed deeply that psychology belonged to the lay public... He believed deeply that matters of the soul, if they are true and clearly stated, will be understood by the interested layperson... matters of daily life; raising and eduicating children, erasing prejudice, living autonomously in a mass society, enjoying fairy tales.
