Behind the Bastards
Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp
27 Feb 2025
Bruno Bettelheim has now made it to the United States, where he executes his elaborate plan to fix "emotionally disturbed" children by making a nice concentration camp.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Full Episode
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people and problematic people. And we've got both this week with the story of Bruno Bettelheim, a man who is really, really testing my previous conclusion that there's no wrong way to react to having been in a concentration camp. Maybe this way. Bruno might have been the guy to figure out the wrong way. Had to lose all sympathy. Yeah.
My guest with me again, as in part one, Alison Raskin. Alison, how are you doing? It's the same day, but we pretend it's a separate one.
I'm good. What I didn't reveal in episode one, which I feel like will be more relevant for this part of his life story, is that I actually have had OCD since I was four years old. So I was someone who was treated for pretty...
severe mental illness as a young child and was put on Prozac when I was four and was actually incredibly thankful for my parents being proactive in that way and getting me the help that I needed. So I'm like not someone that is at all against taking children's mental health seriously. And it's like kind of a lot of the activism I do.
But I think we're about to explore a scenario where that goes wrong.
Horribly, horribly wrong.
Yes, exactly.
Well, it's also – it's interesting because a big part of Bruno's story and a big part of like where people go wrong because like as you said, it's good to be involved and care about your children's mental health and the mental health of children in general. Bruno, as a young man, takes this kid in who is like neurodivergent and her mom just like, I don't want to raise a kid. Right.
Find someone else to do it for me. And Bruno's whole business as an adult is not just I'm helping kids who are having problems. It's I am taking these kids away from their rich parents who do not want to deal with them and handling them. Which is very different from the healthy version of this where you're just – because I have a lot of empathy even in this time, right?
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