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

Bettelheim argues that meaning and meaning-making—that is, making sense of one’s experiences—is fundamental to human happiness and the ability to cope with adversity. Parents cannot impose their own sense of meaning on a child; rather, the child must find it itself and at their own pace. Bettelheim believes self-understanding is the most essential step towards meaning: By understanding oneself, one can progress to understanding others and forming relationships with them.

Writing as a psychoanalytic therapist to troubled children in the 1970s, Bettelheim believes that his duty is to restore a sense of meaning to their lives. He finds that many modern children’s books do not help him in this endeavor, as they do not prepare children sufficiently for problems in the real world. These books share the dominant cultural view that young children should be offered a sanitized version of the world, where harsh realities—such as death, aging, and the worst aspects of human behavior—are removed. The problem with this is that “children know that they are not always good; and often, even when they are, they would prefer not to be” (7). Thus, the censored characters in modern children’s literature contradict what children know to be true about themselves, and this makes the child “a monster in his own eyes” (7).

In contrast, says Bettelheim, fairy tales written and retold prior to the 20th century are better equipped to help a child deal with their turbulent feelings. These stories, which feature polarities of good and evil and show their young protagonists encountering the worst of human behavior, take seriously the most frightening parts of life while providing an optimistic view of a child’s ability to face such challenges. From a psychoanalytic perspective, these tales encourage ego development: They relieve unconscious pressures by giving license to the id and showing how these shadowy parts can be brought into alignment with the expectations of the ego and superego. Importantly, the fairy tale, like psychoanalytic therapy, enables the child to accept the inevitable obstacles of life without being defeated by them.

While evil characters pervade fairy tales, these tales guide the reader toward morality by having them identify with the hero. Importantly, Bettelheim emphasizes that a child’s moral behavior is predicated not on an altruistic impulse towards good but on a desire to resemble the hero. Similarly, these tales deal with universal fears, such as a fear of death, by offering the consolation of a lifelong bond to another. With such a happy ending, the fact of one’s eventual death seems irrelevant.

The “future-orientated” nature of the fairy tale negotiates the other universal in childhood development—separation anxiety and the unconscious wish to hold onto one’s mother eternally (11). Tales such as Hansel and Gretel show how those who aim to continue to depend on their parents are forced to change as they embark on the journey towards satisfying independence and peer bonds. Bettelheim argues that the changes in lifestyle between the time of fairy tales and the late 20th century are almost irrelevant, as the developmental problems children face are the same, especially regarding the sense of isolation present in childhood. Just as fairy tale heroes act alone, Bettelheim envisages a modern, city-dwelling child separated from their extended family and looking for meaning and rewarding interactions with the surrounding world.

Bettelheim writes the book to bring awareness to the importance of fairy tales. He argues that fairy tales are great works of art, and like all such works, each tale will meet each reader differently depending on their state of development. Rather than prescribing tales to their children and dictating what they should find significant, parents should instead allow their child to make their own journey through the stories, accepting that the child is finding motifs that support their development in the present moment.

Although Bettelheim urges parents to seek out the most original version of the fairy tale, he contradicts himself by saying the exact origins of the tales are obscure. He stresses that while most fairy tales have been lost, he will focus on the most popular and enduring ones.