Bruno Bettelheim, the psychoanalyst whose deep empathy for children led him to a lifelong effort to heal the emotional wounds of early life, died Tuesday at a retirement home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 86.

Maryland's chief medical examiner, Dr. John E. Smialek, said that one of his deputies who examined Bettelheim had determined the cause of death was suicidal asphyxiation. Smialek declined to give details. Friends said Bettelheim recently had suffered a stroke.

Bruno Bettelheim died 52 years to the day after the Nazis marched into his native Austria on March 13, 1938. That day began an odyssey. The insights into the human condition Bettleheim gained in a desperate year in Nazi captivity were foundations for a revolutionary and humane approach to treating disturbed children in his pioneering treatment center, the Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago.