Professionals and parents praise Bettelheim's books on childcare yet few realise that his work is based on a curious paradox: his imprisonment in Nazi prison camps profoundly influenced his understanding of children.

In Dachau and then Buchenwald, Bettelheim fought to preserve his own sanity and observed how the human personality reacts to extreme stress. He noted similarities between psychological breakdown in prisoners and severe breakdown in children.

Bruno Bettelheim describes how this helped him understand and treat such children.