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 Heroism and the Existential Predicament of life November 22, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Bruno Bettleheim again becomes the fount of great sanity and wisdom. In this seemingly innocent book, on the same statue as Joseph Cambell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," or Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death" and his "Birth and Death of Meaning," or indeed even Freud's "Civilization's and its Discontents," this giant of our era, lays out a map of how we think using the morality of Fairy Tales as his raw material and as a springboard to the real subtext of the book which is: How man is to deal with his own problems of existence.
What he tells us is basically this: that for all peoples of all races, the primary problem of life is developing smoothly into adulthood and overcoming the inherent psychological debilities of youth and immaturity -- namely overcoming narcissistic disappoints, unearned entitlements, self-doubts, oedipal dilemmas, sibling rivalries, relinquishing childhood dependencies, gaining a feeling of selfhood, self-mastery, self-respect and self-worth, and eventually developing a sense of moral obligation, duty and responsibility. In this life project, and at all ages, the unconscious is the most powerful determinant of our behavior. Obviously, not understanding the role that it plays as a determinant in our behavior means that many of us will never fully mature into adulthood. We first need to learn to understand what is going on within our conscious selves in order to then be able better to cope with that which goes on and affects us from the unconscious.
Bettleheim tells us that we can achieve this understanding, and with it an ability to cope, not always through logic and rational comprehension of the nature of the content of the unconscious, but most often by becoming familiar with it through tales, myths, legends, dreams, and daydreams - ruminating, rearranging, and fantasizing about suitable story elements in response to weakly perceived unconscious pressures. By doing this, we learn slowly to fit unconscious content into various aspects of our conscious lives in our own way and at our own speed. That is to say that through our dreams, simulated games, myth-making, and other ways of fantasizing, and even through our art, music and dramas, we learn to better deal with the unconscious content buried deep inside our minds.
It is here that fairy tales for the child, and myths of heroism for the maturing adult, have unequaled value. This is true because they both offer new dimensions of discovery and new modalities for the imagination to cling to. For the adult, especially adult males, myths of heroism open up a shared stage for the playing out of collective subconscious dramas, dramas of narcissism, and of illicit (even Oedipal) desires, of repressed hatred, imaginings of being a hero in ones own self-scripted drama, etc. - all things whose relevant dimensions are embedded deeply within the unconscious.
In various ways, art, our fantasies, that is the imagined stage, the tales of heroism, the dramas upon which they are based, and their respective scripts are but sublimated and simulated ways of release that allow us to play out the things animating our unconscious feelings in a more or less safe and harmless way. The Fairy Tales that we tell our children, are nothing but a stripped-down versions of how we relate to our own unconscious mind.
Bettleheim tells us, the same as does Freud and Becker, that when the unconscious is repressed and its content denied direct entrance into awareness, then it will find indirect ways to express itself and the person's conscious mind will be partially overwhelmed by derivatives of these subconscious elements. They will seep out in less acceptable and less respectable ways. Or else, as the pressures build up and there are no avenues of release, a person is forced to keep such rigid, compulsive control over them that his personality may become severely warped and crippled. But when unconscious material is allowed to escape into consciousness, even to a small extent, and is allowed to work its way through a person's imagination and fantasies, its potential for causing harm - to himself and to others - is often very much reduced. Some of its forces, as is the case with the arts, can in fact be redirected to serve positive purposes.
However, and this is a key point of Bettleheim's analysis, the conventional mode of operating our everyday lives is to run away from things that trouble us even in the least, not to mention things that bother us most. We also teach this lesson to our children -- both directly, by blocking any un-pleasantries from their eyes and from entering their lives -- and indirectly, by our own examples of mental jujitsu where we invariably end up in the land of fantasy and escapism, often a very great distance away from reality. Formless and nameless anxieties, chaos, anger, violent fantasies, sexual repression, pressing everyday problems, etc. are often the source of many of our problems.
But since we have learned to operate on the unwritten cultural law that only conscious reality matters, and that it always should be pleasant and wish-fulfilling, we turn our heads away from the un-pleasantries of life. The dominant American culture, for instance, chooses to pretend that the dark side of America does not exist. In fact a cottage industry has been built on the premise that wish-fulfilling thoughts can somehow "will into existence" a "much dreamed of" problem-free life.
One of the main ways that we get sidelined from finding a direct route to maturity and mastery over our own inner demons and thus reaching complete closure to adulthood, is through the kind of personal denial we engage in when we refuse to face the fact that most of what goes wrong in our lives has to do with our very own human natures. We tell ourselves that most of our problems lie outside ourselves, outside our own carefully build categories and "constructs," outside our basic rules of conduct and our basic natures, that is outside of our own self-proscribed cultures and humanities. But the truth is that even when they are not internally caused, most of the problems driving our lives come from the seven sins that have been driving human nature from time immemorial. They serve to shape our humanity as much as they shape our everyday activities, and certainly as much as anything else does. And of course they do so from deep within the psyche, well beneath consciousness.
According to this great child psychologist, the problems that define our lives are more often than not sublimated spin-offs of negative feelings that we have about ourselves, or that others have about us, or about themselves. Either that or, they are about our respective uncertain relationships to the world outside us. When we don't act aggressively, selfishly, angrily, antisocially, or thoughtlessly, we can usually cope with the other problematic aspects of life, no matter from where they might originate.
As Professor Bettleheim tells us, and as we learned from Dostoevsky's novels, from Shakespeare's dramas, from Ernest Becker's writings, and from Sartre philosophy, as well as from others such as Professor Cornel West, neither psychoanalysis nor existentialism was invented to make life easier for us, but to enable us to accept the problematic nature of life without being defeated by it, or giving in to escapism. As one other reviewer noted, and as Professor West has emphasized in his writings, even Freud's best prescription for life is that we have no choice but to struggle courageously against overwhelming odds if we are to wring any meaning out of our existence.
Anyone who has read Cornel West's Reader would know this and will readily recognize that Bruno Bettleheim's philosophy is the foundation stone upon which West's Chehovian Christianity is built. Only in West's writing have I seen anything quite as powerful as this. This is heady stuff and will make the reader thirst for more. Ten stars.
For fairy tale fans and Freud students September 2, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I love this book. I keep coming back to it, borrowing it from multiple libraries around the country to re-read, buying it and then loosing it in storage, finding it again and discovering its charm and appeal over and over again. It's a fantastic find, and I will be forever indebted to the now-forgotten college professor who recommended it to me.
For most of the first part of the book, Bruno Bettelheim discusses where fairy tales come from and how they can subconsciously help children with such Freudian problems as the Oedipal complex, and with ordinary problems such as sibling rivalry. He also discusses why some people have tried to ban fairy tales throughout history, something that could draw parallels to recent cases of Harry Potter banning. However, the part of the book that I enjoy the most is where Bettelheim dissects several fairy tales to discover their possible hidden meanings. If you enjoyed the Broadway musical "Into the Woods," this may be your favorite section as well, since the musical also looks for the underlying meaning in certain fairy tales. Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Cinderella and more are all discussed at length.
If you're a fan of fairy tales, this book should be a part of your personal reference library. Highly recommended.
Insights from a new perspective December 1, 2005
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Whatever opinion scholars have of Bettelheim, this is an extraordinarily eye-opening work for a layman. Just the insights into the magical thinking of children--how fairy tales make sense to them because a parent's abilities to predict behavior, for example, seems magical to them too--is "worth the price of admission" for any parent.
A classic psychoanalytical view of fairy tales April 28, 2005
34 out of 36 found this review helpful
It is well known that storytelling is an innate expression of civilization, in an effort to define who we are and to make sense of the world. The fairy tale is an important part of this tradition that has a long and rich history spanning thousands of years.
First published in 1975, Bruno Bettleheim, one of Sigmund Freud's followers and an important contributor to psychoanalysis, has written an incredible book, suggesting that the fairy tale has a pedagogical use, educating the child about the struggles in life, that these struggles are an intrinsic aspect of existence. Following Plato, he believes that the literary education of children should begin with the telling of myths. In other words, the fairy tale can present models for behaviour, providing meaning and value to our lives. This wonderful book expresses this view extremely well and also provides a frame of reference towards the child's overall psychological development.
I have read Freud for some years, and nowhere, including Freud himself, have I read a more succinctly expressed view on the ultimate purpose of psychoanalysis, than in this book by Dr. Bettleheim, he writes,
"Psychoanalysis was created to enable man to accept the problematic nature of life without being defeated by it, or giving in to escapism. Freud's prescription is that only by struggling courageously against what seems like unwieldy odds can man succeed in wringing meaning out of existence." (P.8)
Fairy tales inform us about life's struggles, hardships and the reality of death. From Bettleheim's point of view, the fairy tale is a "manifold form" that communicates to the child, educates them, against life's vagaries and realities, which are the unavoidable aspects of our existence. More specifically, the fairy tale is an educational tool to help children grow and develop into adults. He goes on to say that the child needs to be given "...suggestions in symbolic form about how he may deal with these issues and grow safely into maturity." (P.9)
Bettleheim adeptly sets out to prove his theses by analysing well known fairy tales in the context of psychoanalytic theory, persuasively arguing the value of these tales towards the child's psychological development.
If you are interested in psychoanalysis and would like to know more about the profound positive effects the telling of fairy tales can have on our young, this incredible book is indispensable.
 Take with a LARGE grain of salt April 17, 2004
21 out of 33 found this review helpful
I've noticed that one reviewer pointed to Richard Pollak's biography of the author, "The Creation of Dr. B," as a source of information on Bruno Bettelheim's legitimacy as a psychoanalyst (or lack thereof). I would second that recommendation. Before reading "The Uses of Enchantment," one should be aware that large portions of this book were brazenly plagiarized from other sources, such as Julius Heuscher's "A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales: Their Origin, Meaning and Usefulness." Several passages were lifted directly from this work, published in 1963 (more than a decade before Bettelheim began writing "The Uses of Enchantment"), and barely even paraphrased. Heuscher was cited only once by Bettelheim, and not for any of these virtually direct quotes. I would think long and hard before taking anything Bettelheim attempted to pass off as his own work seriously.
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