Fairy Tales and the Existential Predicament
Bettelheim's Book Says Scary Folk Tales are Good for Kids
The old practice of reading fairy stories and folk tales to young children has fallen into disrepute in recent years, as parents worry about effect that such gory and scary concepts might have on their children. The tendency has been to favour de-sanitised stories with happy endings.
Nevertheless, educationalist and psychologist, Dr Bruno Bettelheim, one-time professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, argues that scary folk tales, such as the work of the Brothers Grimm, may help children deal with their existential anxieties of life through symbolism. The following ideas have been taken from his 1976 work, The Uses of Enchantment [Knopf], a book which won the New York Critic’s Choice Prize that year and the National Book Award in 1977.
The Existential Predicament
Bettelheim refers to the existential predicament as something that afflicts everyone, even the very young. He believes that children are consciously and subconsciously dealing with the concept and reality of death, the fear of abandonment, of separation from their parents, narcissistic disappointment, oedipal dilemmas and sibling rivalries – and even the task of trying to make sense of life. Children, he says, often have “formless, nameless anxieties”, and chaotic, angry and even violent fantasies.
Many people can relate to these issues, recalling their own early terror of death or the prospect of the death of their own parents. Most parents have, at some time, had to deal with these anxious, gloomy questions from their own children.
Fairy Tales and the Existential
This, says Bettelheim, is where those dark, scary, mythic tales come in. The fairy tale teaches the child that there will be a need to struggle against severe difficulties throughout life, and by meeting them head on, one masters all obstacles. Fairy tales often confront the child with the truth that people age and die, but do so in a form that the child can remain removed from, and assimilate the ideas and deal with them symbolically and grow safely into maturity.
Evil in Fairy Tales
Similarly, evil in the world and in people is acknowledged, rather than pushed aside "for later", in a pretense that the dark side of humanity doesn’t exist. In fairy tales, good and evil are embodied in simply drawn characters, in blunt plots without subtlety and without the nuances and ambivalences of flawed good people, or bad people with some good qualities. The child can identify with the good character, not because he values goodness per se, but because he identifies with the situation the character is placed in and wants to see him escape or triumph. Nevertheless, the morality of the situation is not lost on the child and he or she learns to value good over evil.
Children Gain Assurance From Fairy Tales
Bettelheim argues that what children really gain from these grim and troubling stories of being shoved in a witches oven, having one’s head cut off, or being eaten by a wolf (all not exactly a ball of fun) is the symbolic assurance that all difficulties in life can be mastered with the right attitude and some courage. Folk tale characters experience existential anxieties that are inherent in human nature: the need to be loved, the fear that one is thought worthless (look at poor Jack with his handful of beans!), the value of life and joy, and the ever-present spectre of death.
Independent Living Exemplified in Fairy tales
One of the most noteworthy aspects of many folk tales is the scary demand on quite young children to act alone in the world, either after the death of parents or sent out to seek their fortune by parents. The child learns through following the vicissitudes of the character he or she identifies with that it is only by stepping out, letting go of the apron strings that self-hood is found and success in life is possible. The fairy tale is future-oriented.
Living Happily Ever After
The “happy ever after” ending, Bettelheim claims, is not unrealistic wish-fulfilment, but shows the child that, while eternal life on Earth might not be possible, a “truly satisfying bond with another” will make our lives worthwhile. It shows that the separation anxiety the child feels with his parents is not overcome by hanging on, but by risking the move away to a more satisfying adult relationship.
What Bettelheim said in the '70s makes sense in existential theory, but parents must assess whether his fairy tale interpretation warrants the revitalisation of the fairytale telling tradition. Presumably, Bettelheim himself was told such tales as a child. It did not stop him from suffering acute depression all his life or from committing suicide.
Source: Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment, NY: Vintage, 1989.
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