Bettelheim sees fairytales as a means of connecting to one’s unconscious and cultivating imagination and exploring the boundaries of the unconscious so that it can be dealt with in the conscious. He is concerned that as children develop their egos they need ways to translate their urges that society sees a taboo and unspeakable so children negotiate these urges and fantasies by bringing them to the conscious in a safe way with fairytales. Although I agree with Bettelheim in the beginning of his essay and liked when he said, “to find deeper meaning, one must become able to transcend the narrow confines of a self-centered existence and believe that one will make a significant contribution to life…our positive feelings give us the strength to develop our rationality”. And I agree with him that the most important influences on a child are his or her parents. However, I do not necessarily believe that fairytales help exorcise our unconscious fantasies into our conscious minds. I think he is mixing the realm of fantasy with our unconscious as though the two are one and the same, which I don’t agree with. Even though fairytales do operate in a universal, magical, and almost timeless world outside our reality, that does not mean they operate in our unconscious or that we read them with our unconscious minds any more than we read or interpret everything else in our lives.
I think Darnton makes a more compelling argument when he discusses that you cannot take symbols from these stories and interpret them as with common meanings for all people. Bettelheim assumes all people have the same problems, fantasies, and ways of dealing with them while I think Darnton is more realistic and acknowledges that these stories have multiple variations, come from varying cultural environments which they are adapted to, and are read by different people different ways. I think Bettelheim has some good ideas but he takes them too far. I agree with Darnton and find his assertion that we can learn something about the peasant illiterate classes from these tales interesting. But I don’t’ think these tales are as specifically illustrative of the peasant class as he argues. Yes, these fairytales began with stories from the peasant class but the stories we have today have been contaminated by simple fact that they are no longer oral tales of the peasant class but instead they are literature written by and for the elite in society. So the tales we read today are not necessarily genuinely reflective of the peasant classes. I don’t think you have to take sides on this debate, both authors have their strengths and weaknesses although I find Darnton’s argument more reasonable.
I think that you bring up some really good points. I definitely agree that Bettelheim seemingly wants to compare a fairy tale to the unconscious, and this is certainly not possible. It's almost as if Bettelheim is interpreting a fairy tale as a psychoanalyst would interpret a dream (which is, of course, part of the unconscious). However, there are many big differences between a dream and a fairy tale, so I agree with your point that the two cannot be so easily compared.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I agree that Darnton's assertion about the peasant class goes further than it should. Just because the peasant communities were the ones to share and pass along the fairy tales does not necessarily mean that the fairy tales will tell us anything about their culture or history. Just because a group is known for telling a story (or stories) does not mean that those particular stories somehow relate to the storytellers. They could have just been told for entertainment.