The uses of enchantment : the meaning and importance of fairy tales / Bruno Bettelheim.
By: Bettelheim, Bruno.
Material type: BookPublisher: London : Penguin, 1991Description: viii, 339 p. ; 20 cm + pbk.ISBN: 0140137270.Subject(s): Fairy tales -- History and criticism | Psychoanalysis -- Folklore | Folklore -- Children | Children's stories -- Psychological aspectsDDC classification: 398.45Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
General Lending | MTU Bishopstown Library Store Item | 398.45 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00016122 | ||
General Lending | MTU Bishopstown Library Store Item | 398.45 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00016121 | ||
General Lending | MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending | 398.45 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00064724 | ||
General Lending | MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending | 398.45 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00088973 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Wicked stepmothers and beautiful princesses ... magic forests and enchanted towers ... little pigs and big bad wolves ... Fairy tales have been an integral part of childhood for hundreds of years. But what do they really mean?
In this award-winning work of criticism, renowned psychoanalyst Dr Bruno Bettelheim presents a thought provoking and stimulating exploration of the best-known fairy stories. He reveals the true content of the stories and shows how children can use them to cope with their baffling emotions and anxieties.
Bibliography: (pages 325-328) and index.
Part one: A pocketful of magic -- Part two: In fairy land.
CIT Module EDUC 8012 - Core reading.
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Kirkus Book Review
For more than 25 years Bruno Bettelheim has shared his original observations on child development in numerous books and articles. This book (parts of which appeared in The New Yorker) imaginatively explores the importance of fairy tales in the young child's life and the deeper meanings of some of the better-known stories. Fairy tales are essential for children because they acknowledge that good and evil are attractive, that struggle is a crucial part of human existence, that there are advantages to moral behavior. They give assurance that any person--however weak or small--can overcome obstacles and find satisfaction in the effort. By simplifying situations and characters, fairy tales speak directly to the emotional and psychological core of the child. Repeatedly Bettelheim Finds deep psychological significance in seemingly random details: e.g., two brothers as one person with conflicting desires, or a giant undone by a simpleton's cunning. Seeing that story-problems can be resolved enables a child to act out his own inner conflicts through a fantasy life structured and enriched by literary analogy. Bettelheim looks closely at seven of the more famous stories (Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc.) and at some of the tales featuring transformations. As always, he writes with authority and a profound respect for children. An invaluable reference for those involved with children and their literature. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Bruno Bettelheim had remarkable success in treating deeply emotionally disturbed children. A pupil of Sigmund Freud, he was a vehement opponent of the operant conditioning methods of B. F. Skinner and other behaviorists. Austrian-born, Bettelheim came to the United States in 1939. Profoundly influenced by the year he spent in a German concentration camp during World War II, he reflects in his writings his sensitivity and knowledge of the fear and anxiety induced under such conditions. His famous Individual and Mass Behavior (1943), first published in a scientific periodical and then in pamphlet form, is a study of the human personality under the stress of totalitarian terror and concentration-camp living. Bettelheim sees a relationship between the disturbances of the concentration camp survivors and those of the autistic, or rigidly withdrawn, children whom he describes in The Empty Fortress (1967), because both have lived through extreme situations.The Children of the Dream (1969) describes with considerable enthusiasm the absence of neurosis in children brought up on kibbutzim in Israel in groups of other children and cared for by adults who are not their parents. Bettelheim believes that American ghetto children would benefit from this kind of experience in preference to the at best partial help of present programs designed to accelerate educational progress for the deprived.
From 1944 to 1973, Bettelheim served as the principal of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a residential laboratory for the treatment of disturbed children at the University of Chicago. Up until his death in 1990, Bettelheim remained active in his scholarly pursuits, continuing to write about the nurturing of healthy children and devoting himself to improving the human condition.
(Bowker Author Biography)