ABSTRACT
Bruno Bettelheim belongs to the finest tradition of European and psychoanalytic culture criticism. Whether he is explaining the group dynamics of Jewish prisoners in concentration camps,1 unmasking the sentimental popular appeal of the Anne Frank diary,2 undermining satirically Philip Roth's spoof of psychoanalysis in Portnoy's Complaint,3 distinguishing between survival and resistance in dealing with the literature and films of the Holocaust,4 or deciphering the unconscious roots of fairy tales, Bettelheim has been at the cutting edge of critical discourse for the past forty years. His works stimulate and irritate. Even his redundancies shake us from our complacency. He does not take the consensus viewpoint. His creativity requires that he be the outsider, taking well-timed shots at various establishments, piercing the conformist point of view. His writings invariably
challenge the readers' received ideas. Bettelheim's audience is invited to reply, to get angry, to enter into dialogue with him, to see, as it were, if his tone of authority is based on substance, or if it simply expresses an authoritarian personality.
