Quotes from Bruno Bettelheim

The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal , they are not untrue ...

The ability to read becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one's life.

The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales' concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual.

Since there are thousands of fairy tales, one may safely guess that there are probably equal numbers where the courage and determination of females rescue males, and vice versa.

If we hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence, then our greatest need and most difficult achievement is to find meaning in our lives.

You can't teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.

Nuestra reacción ante la lectura está más en la función de lo que sucede en nuestro interior que del contenido del libro... Los libros reposan en espera de que estemos preparados.

Even Aristotle, master of pure reason, said: 'The friend of wisdom is also a friend of myth.

what redeems us as human beings and restores us to our humanity is solicitude for those whom we love.

The child, so much more insecure than an adult, needs assurance that his need to engage in fantasy, or his inability to stop doing so, is not a deficiency.

He disappears, and her endless wanderings in search of him take her to the moon, the sun, and the wind.

All my life, I have been working with children whose lives were destroyed because their mothers hated them." 1981 re: cause of autism

Maybe if more of our adolescents had been brought up on fairy tales, they would (unconsciously) remain aware of the fact that their conflict is not with the adult world, or society, but really only with their parents. Further, threatening as the parent may seem at some time, it is always the child who wins out in the long

Therefore, even more than at the times fairy tales were invented, it is important to provide the modern child with images of heroes who have to go out into the world all by themselves and who, although originally ignorant of the ultimate things, find secure places in the world by following their right way with deep inner confidence.

When a world goes to pieces, when inhumanity reigns supreme, man cannot go on with business as usual.

He said: "My mother washed out my mouth with soap because of all the bad words I used, and these had been pretty bad, I admit. What she did not know was that by washing out all the bad words, she also washed out all the good ones." In therapy all these bad words were freed, and

Freud's prescription is that only by struggling courageously against what seem like overwhelming odds can man succeed in wringing meaning out of his existence.

But had Minkowski and Einstein not recognized it long before us, our schizophrenic children would have taught us that space-time is a unity that precedes any separate understanding of either category; just as grasping this unity is a precondition for understanding causality.

If you are gone [from your homeland] for fifteen years, you will not return. Even if you return, you will not return.

If only we could recall how we felt when we were small, or could imagine how utterly defeated a young child feels when his play companions or older siblings temporarily reject him or can obviously do things better than he can, or when adults—worst of all, his parents—seem to make fun of him or belittle him, then we would know why the child often feels like an outcast:

The last, if not the greatest, of the human freedoms: to choose their own attitude in any given circumstance.

Raising children is a creative endeavor, an art rather than a science.

Punishment may make us obey the orders we are given, but at best it will only teach an obedience to authority, not a self-control which enhances our self-respect.

Creativity stands at the center of all education.