Founded in 1915, The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, also known simply as the Orthogenic School or informally as the O’School, is a residential treatment center a day school, and a therapeutic school for children and adolescents typically classified as emotionally challenged. The Orthogenic School specialized in the treatment of youth with behavioral and emotional problems.

The well-known and controversial psychoanalytic theorist Bruno Bettelheim served as director of the Orthogenic School during the mid-20th century (1944 to 1973). During the time he spent there the school became relatively well known for treating children with autism, a field in which Bettelheim studied. He was considered the pioneer of milieu therapy with his work at the school.

Sources vary as to whether Bettelheim’s degree was in art history or philosophy (aesthetics); it was not in psychology. Ralph Tyler, who first brought Bettelheim to the University of Chicago, stated in 1990 that he assumed Bettelheim had two PhDs, one in art history and the other in psychology, and in some of his writings Bettelheim himself implied that he wrote a dissertation on the philosophy of education. A 1995 article in the UK’s The Independent stated that Bettelheim “despite claims to the contrary, possessed no psychology qualifications of any sort.” A 1997 article in the Chicago Tribune stated, “But when the directorship of the Orthogenic School became available, he evidently gambled that because of the war no one would be able to check on his credentials. . . when his transcript was posthumously examined, it showed that he had taken but three introductory courses in the field.”

Later directors and some counselors at the Orthogenic School see Bettelheim merely as using corporal punishment even though he stated that such was counterproductive, while many but not all residential students report seeing rage and out-of-control violence on Bettelheim’s part.

Richard Pollak’s 1997 biography of Bettelheim states that two separate women reported that Bettelheim fondled their breasts and those of other female students at the school while he was ostensibly apologized to each for beating them.

A 1990 Chicago Tribune article reported: “Of the 19 alumni of the Orthogenic School interviewed for this story, some are still bitterly angry at Bettelheim, 20 or 30 years after leaving the institution. Others say their stays did them good, and they express gratitude for having had the opportunity to be at the school. All agree that Bettelheim frequently struck his young and vulnerable patients. What is equally significant is that none of Bettelheim’s successors at the Orthogenic School now contradicts these reports.”

This same article reported abusive treatment, such as:

• That Bettelheim pulled an adolescent girl out of a shower and hit and berated her in front of dormitory mates.
• That he summoned another teenage girl from a toilet stall for a thrashing,
• That he did not allow a male student to take asthma medication, on the theory that asthma was psychologically caused
• Ronald Angres wrote in a Commentary magazine essay, “I lived for years in terror of his beatings, in terror of his footsteps in the dorms-in abject, animal terror.”