In 1938, when the Nazis overtook Austria, Bruno Bettelheim was one of hundreds of Jews sent to German concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald.  After being held for only one year, he immigrated to the United States.  Soon after, Bettelheim became a research assistant with the Progressive Education Association at the University of Chicago.

In October of 1943, Bettelheim wrote an article, "Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations", which was based on his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps.  In this study, Bettelheim examined human adaptability to the stresses of concentration-camp life and looked at the effects of the terrorisms inflicted by the Nazis on personality.  For this article, Bettelheim received world-wide recognition.

By 1944, Bettelheim claimed to have earned a doctorate at the University of Vienna.   This same year, he became both assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and the head of the university's Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a place of research on 6- to 14- year old children with serious emotional problems.  After writing several books on his work, including Love is not Enough(1950) and Truants from Life (1954), Bettelheim retired from teaching and directing the school in 1973.

March 13, 1990, after suffering from depression from his wife's death in 1984 and suffering a stroke in 1987, Bruno Bettelheim committed suicide.  His reputation shortly thereafter, was clouded by revelations that he had invented his academic credentials from Vienna and that he abused and misdiagnosed a number of children under his care.