The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim

I meant to read this book many years ago. When it first came out in the mid-seventies, children's literature was quite a new field of study at UBC. Bettelheim's ideas about how fairy tales convey psychological support to children as they grow and develop fascinate me still. After picking up this well-worn copy from the VPL, I crossed the breezeway, got a coffee and settled right down to read.

Fairy tales, says child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, are "works of art which are fully comprehensible to the child." They use imagination to show “the process of healthy development” and make it "attractive for the child to engage in." The author asserts that fairy tales make "great and positive psychological contributions to the child's inner growth." He contrasts traditional fairy tales with current engineered forms of children's literature. Some books are designed to teach reading, but to Bettelheim, the idea of trying to teach the skill of reading irrespective of meaning is shallow.

Modern stories written for young children, he says, often studiously avoid the existential problems that "are critical issues for all of us." Reading is a difficult skill, and "becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one's life."

He supports this strong claim with arguments about the crucial need to achieve psychological wholeness. Life is a difficult business, and rather than belittling childish fears and other strong emotions, adults should support kids by giving "full credence to the seriousness of the child's predicaments, while simultaneously promoting confidence" in his or her future.

Calling the unconscious "a powerful determinant of behaviour," he warns of the danger of repressing it. On the other hand, "when unconscious material is...permitted to come to awareness and worked through in imagination, its potential for causing harm...is much reduced" and "some of its forces can then be made to serve positive purposes."

Fairy tales provide "a moral education which subtly, and by implication only, conveys...the advantages of moral behaviour, not through abstract ethical concepts but through what seems tangibly right and meaningful." Such works "speak simultaneously to all levels of the human personality." This line of thought is much more than speculation from the ivory tower of psychology.

It is undeniable that "one-sided [reading] fare nourishes the mind only in a one-sided way, and real life is not always sunny." The author alludes to the "widespread refusal to let children know that the source of much that goes wrong in life is due to our very own natures, the propensity...for acting aggressively, asocially, selfishly, out of anger and anxiety." But, he warns, "children know they are not always good; and often, even when they are, they would prefer not to be." This sobering realization can "make the child a monster in his own eyes."

"Reading and being read to are essential means of education," states Bettelheim. Now, four decades after the publication of the book, I wonder how many people have given up reading to their children in exchange for sharing the rising tide of visual culture with them, or more often, leaving them to negotiate that all-too-pervasive culture alone. I muse too, on how such a dramatic change in child-rearing might influence the psychological well-being of future generations.

Returning to Bettelheim's fairy tale interpretations, we may begin with The Three Little Pigs. This well-loved story portrays the process of maturation. "The child identifies with each of them in turn, and recognizes the progression of identity." Since the story represents "stages in the development of man, the disappearance of the first two little pigs is not traumatic; the child understands subconsciously that we have to shed earlier forms of existence if we wish to move on to higher ones." There is nothing didactic in this message, and it permits children to draw their own conclusions. This process "makes for true maturing,” and contrasts sharply with telling the child what to do, which only “replaces the bondage of his own immaturity with a bondage of servitude to the dicta of adults."

Another popular fairy tale is Little Red Riding Hood. In this story, "the kindly grandmother undergoes a sudden replacement by the rapacious wolf which threatens to destroy the child." Though we adults "may think the transformation unnecessarily scary," it is no more scary than feeling the sudden rage of a real granny, who may appear to have become an ogre when a fit of anger makes her "suddenly act in a radically different fashion." The story assures the child "the Wolf is a passing manifestation -- Grandma will return triumphant." Moreover, "the fantasy of the wicked stepmother ... preserves the image of the good mother," and "helps the child not to be devastated by experiencing his mother as evil."

Interestingly, ten years before this book's initial publication, the song Li'l Red Riding Hood hit the top of the charts. Introduced by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, it was later sung by such popular groups as the Lovin' Spoonful, the Trogs, the Animals and the Rolling Stones. The lyrics make explicit the dark side of predatory male tendencies, presented in concert with the male narrator's conscious and rational decision to curb them.

Bettelheim explains the psychology of integration through stories of two brothers, or a brother and sister [Hansel and Gretel can be interpreted as opposing aspects of the personality functioning as a team and working to their strengths]. The powerful developmental stage of the Oedipal complex is portrayed through stories of damsels in distress and knights in shining armour. While a boy inevitably passes through the stage where he "wants Mother to admire him as the greatest hero of all, that means he must somehow get Father out of the way," and this idea "creates anxiety: one the one hand, how would the family thrive without Father's protection, and on the other, how would the small and relatively powerless boy cope with his potential revenge?"

Similarly fascinating interpretations are given for such well-known tales as Jack and the Beanstalk [moving away from the mother and achieving manhood] and Snow White [coming to terms with the sexual bleeding of menstruation, intercourse and birth, as well as oedipal issues].

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, says Bettelheim, is laden with meaning. Though it "lacks the most important feature of a true fairy tale" (a happy ending), it "deals symbolically with some of the most important growing-up problems of the child: the struggle with the oedipal predicaments; the search for identity, and sibling rivalry."

Pointing out that fairy tales are common to all cultures, he also interprets a variation of the Genie and the Lamp, from the 1001 Arabian Nights. Called The Fisherman and the Jinny, this version of the tale, is "richer in hidden messages than other versions." Trapped in the bottle, the genie goes through the same stages of attitude and emotion as a child whose parent has left for a time. First, he will be happy and reward the person who releases him; then he decides to grant three wishes to the one who releases him. Finally, though, as more time passes with no rescuer in sight, he waxes "exceeding wroth" and tells himself that he will slay the one who lets him out. "The way the Jinny's thoughts evolve gives the story psychological truth for a child."

To conclude, "Myths and fairy stories answer the eternal questions: what is the world really like? How am I to live in it? How can I truly be myself?" Sanitized, engineered and didactic works of literature fail to provide the nourishing intellectual and emotional food that can be found in fairy tales. Indeed, if these tales did not provide the developmentally supportive nourishment children crave, why would children insist on hearing the same ones again and again?