The falseness of prophets

I was reading The Onion last night. I often read The Onion. Where else will I learn that I will win the lottery that day unless I read this horoscope? Where else will I be able to check weekly for them to top (no pun intended) the all-time best Onion headline ever: "Trophy Wife Mounted"? In addition to reading the fake horoscopes (which I realize is redundant), I also read the real stuff: movie reviews, interviews, and so on in The A.V. Club section.

What I didn't expect to learn from this fine publication was the following. Ever drawn to all things Wild Things, I homed in on an interview with Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze. Midway through the published piece, I came across their discussion of how Where the Wild Things Are was received at its initial publication. Apparently, there was an outcry, largely because there was no "lesson" in the book: Max gets no comeuppance--he gets his dinner. His mother calls him a name, yet it's OK. Oh, how very quaint to expect a children's book to have a message that only adults would appreciate.

The two interviewees relate that one of the most outspoken critics of the book was a "famous" child psychologist who, as it turns out, had never actually read the book. Not bothered to read the 10 lines of text in a children's book before publicly bashing its content.*

Who was that brazen, false child psychologist, you may ask?

Why, Dr. Refrigerator Mothers himself, Bruno Bettelheim.

Surprised? Strangely, I was not. There's no surprise to me that a man who would willfully and carelessly destroy the family dynamic, parental self esteem, and childhood potential of hundreds of autism families would, with no basis in experience, bash one of the best children's books of all time.

*I have not independently confirmed this statement. But...I have read Where the Wild Things Are. Thousands of times. I think that at least independently helps to confirm that I am not a refrigerator mother.