The Art of the Obvious

In 1977 the renowned psychologist Bruno Bettelheim was invited by his colleague, psychiatrist Alvin Rosenfeld, to help conduct a weekly seminar for trainee psychotherapists at Stanford University. Over the next six years, these seminars became so influential that established psychotherapists came to discuss their own most difficult cases. Bruno Bettelheim's final book, "The Art of the Obvious" is the distilled essence of these celebrated seminars, an insider's view of how psychotherapists learn their craft. From more than one hundred transcripts, the authors fashioned five ideal sessions which address commonly encountered issues: such as building a patient's trust from the start; finding empathy for a violent, destructive child; avoiding preconceptions and prejudices about a patient; treating the elderly; and assessing the achievements and limitations of a psychotherapeutic approach. These discussions embrace broader human concerns far outside pyschology. And Bettelheim gives many of his last reflections on subjects such as his lifelong argument with the behavioural approach, his sense that research and therapy sometimes compete, and his acknowledgment of his discipline's limits.
A moving last glimpse of a wise and humanistic teacher, this is also an accessible and enlightening exploration of psychotherapy, that alchemy of intuition and technique that Bettelheim called "the art of the obvious". Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990) was Distinguished Professor of Education Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of both psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago. Alvin A. Rosenfeld practises adult, adolescent and child psychiatry in New York City and directs Psychiatric Services at the Jewish Child Care Association.