NOT THE THING I WAS: Thirteen Years at Bruno Bettelheim's Orthogenic School

Eliot's striking memoir chronicles a childhood and adolescence spent within the luxurious confines of the University of Chicago Sonia Shankman Orthogenic school, then run by émigré psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim. In an era when most mental institutions were sterile and unforgiving, Bettelheim's school during Eliot's stint (1963–1976) boasted fine china, classic film screenings, open discussions of sexuality and an unlocked, fully stocked "candy closet" that the children were allowed to raid at will. It's also a place where, according to Eliot, Bettelheim ruled supreme, said nasty things to the kids and publicly slapped them. A concentration camp survivor, "Dr. B." (as both staff and patients called him) passionately believed that "if the Nazis could create an environment to destroy personality... he could build an environment that could foster and re-create personality"—orthogenic means "path to truth" in Greek. And the school's methods are stunningly unorthodox; upon his arrival, eight-year-old Stephen is given a stuffed lion––not, Bettelheim explains, so that he has something to love, but so that he'll have something to hit that can't hit him back. The children, of varying ages, are all there for different reasons; Stephen, a precocious child who could read before he was two, describes them as people with a certain "limp in life," and his own case as involving anxiety and castration fears and borderline schizophrenia. Unfortunately, the memoir shuttles back and forth in time too rapidly—each chapter, ostensibly about a different topic, moves confusingly through the 13 years of Eliot's treatment. A simple year-by-year structure would have made this memoir, which has a real story to tell (and which will inevitably be compared with Girl, Interrupted) more coherent. (Mar.)