The Uses of Enchantment : The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, Clumsy
Review: "...a profound book about fairy tales." --John Updike

What a profound book it is! Bettelheim has convinced me not only why children and adults love these stories-- "Little Red Riding Hood," "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," ARABIAN NIGHTS, "Snow White," "Hansel and Gretel," "Jack and the Beanstalk" and many more-- he has also convinced me that the elements that comprise these stories are essential for children to grow up healthy and emotionally sound. He makes a great case for not bowdlerizing the stories, nor imposing strict logic upon them. They speak, in his Freudian terminology, directly to the sub-conscious.

While he occasionally goes overboard with Freudian psychoanalysis (Bettelheim is, after all, a Freudian psychoanalyst), he manages several times on each page of the book to shed new light on these tales and how they work. For anyone who is interested in the power of storytelling, here is a great book.

I read it based on the recommendation of playwright David Mamet, who prefers it to Joseph Campbell's HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. In any case, the implications of Bettelheim's book expand far beyond only fairy tales. Fairy tales are simply the first stories that we hear, refined for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years in the oral tradition. If we look at them closely enough, we can see our greater humanity. Highly recommended for anyone, writers or parents or both, who tell stories and re-tell them.

Rating:
Summary: "A charming book about enchantment..."
Review: "...a profound book about fairy tales." --John Updike

What a profound book it is! Bettelheim has convinced me not only why children and adults love these stories-- "Little Red Riding Hood," "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," ARABIAN NIGHTS, "Snow White," "Hansel and Gretel," "Jack and the Beanstalk" and many more-- he has also convinced me that the elements that comprise these stories are essential for children to grow up healthy and emotionally sound. He makes a great case for not bowdlerizing the stories, nor imposing strict logic upon them. They speak, in his Freudian terminology, directly to the sub-conscious.

While he occasionally goes overboard with Freudian psychoanalysis (Bettelheim is, after all, a Freudian psychoanalyst), he manages several times on each page of the book to shed new light on these tales and how they work. For anyone who is interested in the power of storytelling, here is a great book.

I read it based on the recommendation of playwright David Mamet, who prefers it to Joseph Campbell's HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. In any case, the implications of Bettelheim's book expand far beyond only fairy tales. Fairy tales are simply the first stories that we hear, refined for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years in the oral tradition. If we look at them closely enough, we can see our greater humanity. Highly recommended for anyone, writers or parents or both, who tell stories and re-tell them.

Rating:
Summary: A school Librarian had long suspected ...
Review: ... childrens' fairy tales were more than just stories. When I heard about Bettleheim's book I leaped at it. The times he grew up in, his experiences (the holocaust!), his professional training, are all vastly different than mine. Nevertheless there was much in this book that I found valuable and I still reread it and buy copies to pass onto other librarians and therapists who work with children. One example: When a school I worked in was doing our yearly "Stranger Danger" week, I read "Little Red Riding Hood" to ALL grade levels and as with all my stories encouraged the kids to talk about the story, the art work, what it made them think of ... and in every class someone quickly had that dawning look of discovery on their face when they made the connection that even long ago you had to look out for bad strangers, and even bad people in your own family. Then, because you're a little kid, the answer is to run and tell people, and KEEP telling people, until someone believes you and runs to help you. I think they'll remember "Little Red Riding Hood" a lot longer than what they were told in class.

Rating:
Summary: A school Librarian had long suspected ...
Review: ... childrens' fairy tales were more than just stories. When I heard about Bettleheim's book I leaped at it. The times he grew up in, his experiences (the holocaust!), his professional training, are all vastly different than mine. Nevertheless there was much in this book that I found valuable and I still reread it and buy copies to pass onto other librarians and therapists who work with children. One example: When a school I worked in was doing our yearly "Stranger Danger" week, I read "Little Red Riding Hood" to ALL grade levels and as with all my stories encouraged the kids to talk about the story, the art work, what it made them think of ... and in every class someone quickly had that dawning look of discovery on their face when they made the connection that even long ago you had to look out for bad strangers, and even bad people in your own family. Then, because you're a little kid, the answer is to run and tell people, and KEEP telling people, until someone believes you and runs to help you. I think they'll remember "Little Red Riding Hood" a lot longer than what they were told in class.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, Clumsy
Review: Bettelheim by most accounts was a monster; perhaps that's what enabled him to unearth the monstrousness in our fairy tales. This often brilliant book, hampered by repetitive and awakward prose, shows how the stories we grow up with help us to symbolize and work through our inner conflicts. I know of no other book like this and I found it evoked childhood feelings of mine -- as well as present problems derived from them -- with great acuity.

What the book is lacking in is wit, a sense of proportion, a historical sensibility, and overall design. Shockingly the book completely unravels when Bettelheim analyzes the most popular fairy tale of all time, Cinderella. As this tale doesn't fit in as well as others with psychoanalytic theory, one feels him jamming his theories inappropriately into it, not unlike the stepsisters forcing their feet into the glass slipper by hacking off their toes and heels. Bettelheim doesn't self-destruct that badly, but the reader definitely gets a glimpse at the end into the obstinacy and grandiosity of a brilliant and troubled man.

Rating:
Summary: Real World at a Detached Distance
Review: Bettelheim discusses the particulars of many of our most treasured fairy stories (particularly the Brothers Grimm) and outlines how events in the stories do not explicitly state, but parallel the developmental stages in a child's life. Periods of human development such as toddlerhood, puberty, and young adulthood are conveyed through symbols such as colors, numbers, and animals. Bettelheim states that many fairy tales have a lesson to teach with a somewhat risque or violent story, and while acknowledging that this could make some parents uncomfortable, states that authors that have sought to temper these effects have actually ruined the teaching and palliative effects of these stories. All said, Bettelheim makes a strong case for fairy tales as teachers about life. The lessons; however, are presented in an abstract or fantasy way that allows children to detach from, and therefore externalize, their own life questions and problems.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but gets too Freudian
Review: Bettelheim knows a lot and he gives interesting close readings of many tales but it gets tedious to hear about how everything turns on OEDIPAL situations and that all girls love their fathers and have to learn how to separate from them. A good place to start but there are better books out there on fairy tales.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, with a grain or two of salt....
Review: Bettelheim's viewpoints are interesting but overly prescriptive. I feel that symbolism is not so solid and concrete that each and every person who reads about a frog or whatever subconsciously recognizes it an X. Bettelheim seems to assume the audience for these stories is now and has always been children (hm.... there were adults around the firesides long ago too) and that we all pull the same things out of the collective unconscious -- we don't. I laughed out loud at the "Cinderella story = p---s envy" idea. That certainly wasn't my take on it when I was a little girl!

I believe I read several years ago that some of Bettelheim's little patients and study subjects, all grown up now, took issue with his methods and raised many questions about his research. I don't have any details on that though.

Whatever. This book is an interesting read, if only to compare how you felt about these stories as a child with how he says they can affect kids. Just don't take it as gospel, and don't think that kids these days will without a doubt respond, consciously or not, as Bettelheim suggests they might.

Rating:
Summary: A very good book, indeed...
Review: Bruno Bettelheim makes a very good case for the importance of reading fairy tales to children. He proposes that by hearing about life-threatening problems, serious problems, children are given vital information for the planning of their lives and the formation of their personalities.

By hearing of success against great odds, children are given hope that they, too, as powerless as they may feel themselves (as children), can one day hope to "live happily ever after."

This is in sharp contrast to programming such as "Barney" which presents an unreal fairy-tale present. While children may enjoy seeing programs where there is no violence, they nevertheless DO need to have the reassurance that the difficulties they experience in daily living are universal, and that by perseverance they can develop into good strong, kind people.

The author defines a fairy story as one in which there is a happy ending. Exceptions are (notably) "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" and "The Little Match Girl".

I took a renewed interest in reading these tales to my youngsters, and found that indeed they did appear to be most receptive to them. And no longer did rather gory details disturb me, as the children DO seem to realize that 1) it is just a story, and 2) there is in fact some reasonableness to the idea of unhappy people in this suffering world.

I recommend this book very highly, indeed, to parents of young children. But Dr. Bettelheim cautions against telling the children how good the stories are for them, lest the full impact be somewhat dissipated.

Rating:
Summary: Forget What The Naysayers Tell You!
Review: Bruno Bettelheim's book is excellent in looking at the psychology behind fairy tales. I think what most modern readers forget is that the Fairy Tales were moral tales, and that we cannot really look at them with modern eyes. In the earlier eras, Children were viewed as "miniature adults" that had to be shown the ropes of what was considered the modes of good and acceptable behavior in society. I read this book after the release of the film "The Company of Wolves" which took Little Red Riding Hood and put it into a tale of adolecence and budding sensuality against what is considered staying on the straight and narrow path. The effect was pure Bettelhiem. I would definitely recommend this book to give a new perspective on fairy tales and their importance in the collective consciousness of our world.