Last lecture Todays lecture

1
Last lecture Todays lecture

• Animal tales, also called trickster tales
• The basic distinctions involved
• Seen as violent, disgusting by adults
• Popular culture, cartoon examples

• Basic Freud
• Stages of development
• Why tales are good and helpful in development
  (according to Bettelheim)

2
Animal/trickster tale review

• Issue is not trick it is basic distinction that
  small child has to master
• Note successful non-folk material with same
  approach Green Eggs and Ham
• Failure to make distinction can have nasty
  consequences children and wall sockets
• Children treated like animals to protect them
  children on leash, in pens

3
Value of tales (versus admonition)

• Provide context (and help make sense of the
  situation, distinction)
• Provide confirmation not one persons view, but
  general truth
• Allow for distancing which permits discussion
  of things that might otherwise be too scary

4
Freud

• Influence of Freud, his importance to
  intellectual history
• Mental illness is not physical cannot be
  surgically treated
• Mental illness is not moral failure cannot be
  cured by punishment
• Concept of id and ego
• Id and ego in the child

5
Freud continued

• Normal development and orifice control oral,
  anal sexual
• Illness lt development problems
• Examples eating disorders, excessive cleanliness
• Cause hidden in unconscious, needs to be
  extracted (from symbols) by therapist
• Making conscious causes abreaction and leads to
  cure
• Post-Freud growing reliance on drugs

6
Stages of development

• Clear sequence of physical development, including
  in uterus
• Must be sequence of neurological development
• Neurological development in child
• Experiments on neurological development in utero
• Experiments testing development after birth
• Stimulation MUST occur after certain points after
  birth for child to be able to see, hear

7
Psychological development

• As there are clear sequences of development
  physical, neurological, so there must be
  psychological
• Id/ego balance, later super ego
• Tied to orifice control
• Later social issues

8
Bettelheim why tales are good

• Reflect child thought product of oral telling
• Tales are not real, but true help develop
  internal/external distinctions
• Are universal, apply to everyman
• Are multifunctional
• Deal with issues of concern to child, like
  aggression (distinct from trickster violence)