Freud's Vienna and Other Essay

Combining humanistic wisdom and clinical insight, this gathering of 18 essays reflects eminent psychoanalyst Bettelheim's concerns as both child therapist and Holocaust survivor. One provocative piece profiles Sabina Spielrein, who supposedly had a secret affair with her therapist Carl Jung, a relationship said to have played a role in Jung's breakup with Freud. Other outstanding pieces cover Bettelheim's visit to Dachau extermination camp in 1955, where he had been a prisoner; and explore sex and death in his native Vienna, birthplace of psychoanalysis. Bettelheim writes movingly of Miep Gies, the woman who sheltered Anne Frank from the Nazis. Articles on movies as an art form, and on children in relation to TV, museums and cities are bland. Bettelheim concludes with a revision of his 1962 attack on ``Jewish ghetto thinking,'' which he claims led to passivity and resignation on the part of Holocaust victims--a viewpoint challenged by many historians. (Jan.)