Kids, Fairy Tales, and the Uses of Enchantment
Kids, Fairy Tales, and the Uses of Enchantment
This chapter focuses on the psychoanalytic engagement with the fairy tale, from the foundational ideas of Freud and Jung to current fairy-tale studies. As educational psychologist Nicholas Tucker notes, psychoanalysts have long ignored children’s books and “concentrated on those traditional fairy stories and myths that most clearly lend themselves to Freudian interpretation.” Because those stories, such as Tales from the Brothers Grimm, were understood to be traditional, analysts could take up fairly dramatic topics, like cannibalism, torture, incest, bestiality, and murder, with less fear of protest or censorship. The psychoanalytic literature on the fairy tale gradually began to intersect with the widespread belief that the fairy tale is “for” children, so that by midcentury, the fairy tale was broadly received both as a psychological genre and as cornerstone for children’s literature.
Keywords: fairy tale, Freud, Jung, traditional fairy stories, Freudian interpretation, psychoanalytic literature, psychological genre, children’s literature
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