Enchantment

Bruno Bettelheim was born in Vienna in 1903 and died in Chicago in 1990, barbituates in his bloodstream and a plastic bag over his face. In the time between, he studied Freudian psychiatry, spent time in Dachau and Buchenwald, put forth (and then disavowed) the theory that autism was caused by bad mothering, and wrote The Uses of Enchantment, a popular and somewhat scandalously Freudian book on fairy tales. Temple Grandin is a high-functioning autistic woman who designs more humane slaughterhouses. Widespread implementation of her designs has revolutionized the meat industry. Enchantment explores the reverberations between these two extraordinary lives.