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Transformations: The Fantasy of the Wicked Stepmother Bruno Bettelheim At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sigmund F,.eud p,.oposed a theory of dreams andamethodfo,. thei,.interp,.etation.lt was a smallstep/0,.him to recognize a s;mila,.ity between d,.eams andfolklore. Folklo,.e was but acollective d,.eam, amenable to the same type ofanalysis and inte,.p,.etation. The psychoanalytic inte,.p,.etation of folklo,.e offered startling new pe,.spectives on the meaning and motivation of myths, beliefs, and tales. Rapacious wolves, f,.iendly woodcutte,.s, glass slippe,.s, and wicked stepmothers were not asfantastic as theyfirst appea,.ed. Behindthesefairytale images lay ,.ealities that we,.e frighteningly familiar. Folktales are not st,.ictly child,.en's folklo,.e. Ra,.ely do children tellfolktales to one another. Folktales are usually toldto, readto, oreditedfor children byadults. Neverthe., less, folktales often do captu,.e the imaginations of children and they may have significant and enduring effects (p,.eud 1958:12: 279-87). In the following excerpt, Bruno Bettelheim brings a psychoanalytic pe,.spective to the folktale image 0/ the wicked stepmothet:. He attempts to show the sense ofthis image in the psychology of the child, and he evidences his inte,.pretation with mate,.ial f,.om clinical practice. p,.eud wrote readable int,.oductions to psychoanalysis (1961:15:15-239; 1963:16: 243-496) which have appeared in paperback editions, and Jones (1930) demonstrated the application ofpsychoanalytictheory to follelore. For contempo,.ary interpretations of folklore from a psychoanalytic perspective see the essays of Alan Dundes (1980, 1987). While Bettelheim believes very st,.ongly in the positive psychological value 0/ fairytales for child,.en, there is no consensus on this issue. A su,.vey ofsome ofthe views to the cont,.ary can be found in Stone (1981). There is a right time for certain growth experiences, and childhood is the time to learn bridging the immense gap between inner experiences and the real world. Fairy tales may seem senseless, fantastic, scary, and totally unbelievable to the adult who was deprived of fairy story fantasy in his own childhood, or has repressed these memories. An adult who has not achieved a satisfactory integration of the two worlds of reality and imagination is put off by such tales. But an adult who in his own life is able to From The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairytales by Bruno Bettelheim, 66-73. Copyright @ 1975, 1976 by Bruno Bettelheim. Portions of book originally appeared in The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Not for further reproduction. 178 Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: A Reader integrate rational order with the illogic of his unconscious will be responsive to the manner in which fairy tales help the child with this integration. To the child, and to the adult who, like Socrates, knows that there is still a child in the wisest of us, fairy tales reveal truths about mankind and oneself. In ULittle Red Riding Hood" the kindly grandmother undergoes a sudden replacement by the rapacious wolf which threatens to destroy the child. How silly a transformation when viewed objectively, and how frightening-we might think the transformation unnecessarily scary, contrary to all possible reality. But when viewed in terms of a child's ways of experiencing, is it really any more scary than the sudden transformation of his own kindly grandma into a figure who threatens his very sense of self when she humiliates him for apants-wetting accident? To the child, Grandma is no longer the same person she was just a moment before; she has become an ogre. How can someone who was so very kind, who brought presents and was more understanding and tolerant and uncritical than even his own mommy, suddenly act in such a radically different fashion? Unable to see any congruence between the different manifestations, the child truly experiences Grandma as two separate entities-the loving and the threatening. She is indeed Grandma and the wolf. By dividing her up, so to speak, the child can preserve his image of the good grandmother. If she changes into a wolf-well, that's certainly scary, but he need not compromise his vision of Grandma's benevolence. And in any case, as the story tells him, the wolf is a passing manifestation-Grandma will return triumphant. Similarly, although Mother is most often the all-giving protector, she can change into the cruel stepmother if she is so evil as to deny the...

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