information 26/2013/E 17

Heike vom Orde Children need fairy tales

Bruno Bettelheim’s

In The uses of enchantment, Bruno influential today, on the one hand be- truth of our imagination, not that Bettelheim analyzes and discusses cause it rehabilitates fairy tales, and of normal causality” (Bettelheim, the emotional, symbolic and thera­ on the other hand because it proves 1989, p. 117). Following Freud, he peutic importance of fairy tales that these can contribute to the un- sees fairy-tale figures as symboliz- from the for chil­ derstanding of children’s inner life. ing the elements of the personality, dren. This article summarizes key The uses of enchantment was the first the “ego”, “id” and “super-ego”. The findings, their reception and criti­ comprehensive study in re- aspect of the stories he is most inter- cism. search to be based on Freudian psy- ested in is their effect, that is, to what choanalysis. extent fairy tales offer aids to pro- jection which can foster children’s 00 years ago, Jacob and Wil- development. In The uses of enchant- Why do children need helm Grimm published the ment, Bettelheim puts forward the fairy tales? 2first volume of their Kinder- thesis that fairy tales give children und Hausmärchen (“Children’s and In The uses of enchantment, Bettel- the opportunity to understand inner household tales”). Generations of heim demonstrates a correspondence conflicts which they experience in children grew up with these timeless between the fairy-tale world and the the phases of their spiritual and in- stories. experience and thinking of children. tellectual development, and to act In The uses of enchantment: the Here he argues on various levels, and these out and resolve them in their meaning and importance of fairy relates the structure of the fairy tale imagination. tales, Bruno Bettelheim investigated to children’s thinking, the content from a psychoanalytical perspective of fairy tales to children’s develop- Fairy tales offer knowledge of life why these stories were so important mental tasks, and fairy-tale themes to from the inside and enthralling for children. children’s developmental crises (cf. For Bettelheim, the narratives in It became Bruno Bettelheim’s most Hoeppel, 1994). folktales are “life divined from the popular work, published at a time in The first part of the book also con- inside” (ibid., 1989, p. 24), because which fairy tales were regarded with tains theoretical reflections, in which they give expression to inner pro­ suspicion, as instruments of bourgeois observations from Bettelheim’s child cesses and make these comprehensi- oppression used to transmit false practice are related to ble. In his view, children intuitively ideas and attitudes to young people. motifs and figures from the German understand that these stories represent The representations of violence, par- folk tale. the essential developmental steps to- ticularly in the tales of the Brothers The extensive second part consists wards independent existence. From Grimm, played an important part in of interpretations showing how fairy Bettelheim’s psychoanalytical per- these discussions. Thus it was argued tales can be read and understood from spective, many fairy tales deal – in from a social theory perspective that a psychoanalytical viewpoint. The a manner that is “unreal, but not un- fairy tales legitimized violence by following article summarizes some true” (ibid., p. 73) – with oral and modelling aggressive modes of con- of Bettelheim’s key statements. oedipal conflicts, with violent and flict resolution. From a pedagogical phallic fantasies, with fear of sexu- point of view, it was suspected that Fairy tales help children to project, ality or castration, with humiliation, the violence represented co