Psychology and Fairy Tales

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Psychology and Fairy Tales

• Bruno Bettelheim

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Outline

• Bruno Bettelheim (190390)
• The Uses of Enchantment (1975)
• Child Psychology
• Basic Freudian Terminology
• Study and Review Questions

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Bruno Bettelheim
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Bruno Bettelheim (Biography)

• 1903 born in Vienna
• 1938 Dachau, Buchenwald
• 1939 Chicago
• 1943 Individual and Mass Behaviour in Extreme
  Situations
• 1944 University of Chicago, Sonia Shankman
  Orthogenic School
• 1976 The Uses of Enchantment
• 1990 suicide

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Bruno Bettelheim (Biographies)

• Nina Sutton. Bettelheim, a Life and a Legacy. Tr.
  from the French by David Sharp, in collaboration
  with the author. New York Basic Books. 1996.
• Richard Pollak. The Creation of Dr. B A
  Biography of Bruno Bettelheim. New York Simon
  and Schuster. 1996.

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Features of Childs Psychology

• Animistic thinking
• No understanding of death
• Inability to grasp abstract concepts
• Personalized understanding
• Need for magic
• Vicarious satisfaction
• Children understand in tales what they are ready
  and able to understand

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The Freudian Personality

• Id
• Ego
• Superego

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Other Terminology

• Pleasure principle
• Reality principle
• Separation anxiety
• Oedipal conflict

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The Uses of Enchantment (1)

• Who is the audience for Bettelheim's book?
• What are the respective roles of the literary and
  psychological aspects of fairy tales?
• What do children need to develop into emotionally
  healthy adults?
• How do fairy tales meet this need, while other
  children's literature does not?
• Why do children of all types prefer fairy tales
  to other childrens literature? How do we know
  that children like fairy tales?

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The Uses of Enchantment (2)

• How do children achieve understanding of their
  conscious selves?
• How is the unconscious prevented from harming
  developing children?
• What is wrong with telling children that people
  are basically good?
• What is the basic effect of moral fairy tales? Of
  amoral fairy tales?

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The Uses of Enchantment (3)

• What role does evil play in fairy tales? How do
  fairy tales encourage children to be good?
• Why is and they lived happily ever after
  comforting?
• Why are unrealistic fairy tales about lives very
  different from our own nonetheless meaningful?
  How does their lack of realism contribute to
  their meaning?

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The Uses of Enchantment (4)

• Why is it important for parents to tell fairy
  tales to their children?
• How do fairy tales differ from myths? How are
  they similar?