(I also considered naming my post "Yes, Jimmy Jon is Bad with Titles"; also, there is no hyphen in your name)
The first article, Bruno Bettelheim's "The Struggle for Meaning," provides a psychoanalytical approach towards analyzing fairy tales and their impact, both past and present, on the development of a child's psychology. Bettelhim suggests that a fairy tale should serve to fuel the imagination of a child in order to provide a blueprint for handling real-life situations. In other words, molding the subconscious to stimulate the conscious when the time comes. By not merely presenting a story wrapped in sunshine and rainbows, a "good" fairy tale trains the child for what he/she is truly bound to face growing up (unless of course you know of someone that was granted an unlimited number of wishes and is living happily ever after...)
The second article, Robert Darnton's "Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose," simultaneously dismisses Bettelheim's psychoanalytic babble while promoting the historical value of fairy tales. To Darnton, modern fairy tales are not merely the conversion of the crass tales of yesteryear to the subliminally sexual bout between the id, ego, and superego, but rather a means to track progression of the same tales through different cultures and time frames. Darnton lists numerous tales that were altered in some way as they were passed on from person to person, region to region. By giving different versions of the same story, Darnton is trying to discredit Bettelheim's psychoanalytic interpretations of a various details when those details are not entirely consistent through all versions of the story.
Unfortunately for Darnton, his argument actually strengthens Bettelheim's claims.
Fairy tales are what they are, which is to say they are absolutely anything at all. Bettelheim is using his background in childhood psychology to interpret the meaning behind fairy tales and how they impact the audience (primarily, children). Darnton is using his background (I'm assuming as a historian based on his long list of names, dates, etc. and tendency to use these blandly draw out a point...) to interpret fairy tales and their cultural significance. They are both doing the same thing, just in different ways. Fairy tales are open to interpretation on behalf of both the teller and audience. Bettelheim's psychoanalytical analysis of fairy tales shouldn't be dismissed just because Darnton is convinced the true value lies in the cultural/historical background of said tales. Fairy tales are like a Rorschach test consisting of magic and princesses, there's no right answer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm inclined to agree on the aspect of Bettelheim not actually being incorrect, to a degree. As I mentioned in my post, Darnton criticized Bettelheim for having too narrow a scope but never proved that he was wrong. What is true of fairy tales (that they were entirely open to interpretation) is true of any medium, really. People can find meaning, or symbolism or any of a million other things in any work.
ReplyDeleteSo, when I got lost in Darnton's condensed analysis of Bettelheim's id, ego and superego approach to Little Red Riding Hood, I began to realize exactly what you are saying - everything could be anything. However, psychoanalysts simply use that idea as a bit of a scapegoat to make sure they cover all their bases (i.e. make sure they cannot be proven wrong). When a psychoanalyst can change his interpretation of a story on a whim simply to work better with his theory, well, the theory loses a little legitimacy, don't you think? Of course, at the surface Bettelheim interpreted the story one way, which is fine, it just bothers me when he does it in the name of science.
I'm still torn on what I think about Bettelheim's suggestion of fairy tales teaching children to cope with the real world through their imaginations. On one hand, I know that the areas of the brain that process logic and reasoning are not well-developed until well into adolescence and thus it would be hard for children to garner their own moral lessons from fairy tales, but it's not like children who read Little Red Riding Hood walk around thinking that wolves are going to eat then dress as their relatives. On the other hand, psychoanalysts extremely over-inflate the importance and power of the subconscious, which is essentially how Bettelheim believes the stories impart their real-world coping abilities. If fairy tales do indeed teach children how to cope with the read world, it is not by nurturing their subconscious, nor is it by appealing to their nonexistent logical reasoning brain centers, so there must be something else at play. Just a thought.