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Author
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Comment
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Jess
Unregistered User
(7/20/02 10:04:26 am)
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Bettelheim v. ?
In trying to understand the psychological impact of tales on children, I have been told by many here that Bruno Bettelheim is much discredited for his Freudian approach. I would love to have the board's feedback as to which authors do the best job in actually describing that impact. I need to build a small, but complete library on the topic since my own public library is woefully ill-equipped. Any and all thoughts are appreciated.
Jess
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Helen
Registered User
(7/20/02 11:13:26 am)
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Re: Bettelheim v. ?
Well, I'd definitely recommend Maria Tatar as an opponent; in _The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales_, she does an excellent job of puncturing his (many) misconceptions. In _From the Beast to the Blonde_, Marina Warner also provides some skillful analysis of where he went wrong. Dundes and Cashdan are proponents of his theories, who manage to make them sound fairly reasonable; being more of a Jungian by nature myself, I disagree with them in most cases despite the beauty of their phrasing. Apparently, that attitude comes through loud and clear in my work; I just found a paper online that someone put up about my work on Donkeyskin (?!?!) which sets me up as the opponent of Bettelheim and co.'s Freudian analysis in favor of a socio-historical approach. (Perhaps someone should have referred *them* to Tatar and Warner... ) It's kind of weird to see yourself mentioned in the third person, and, as the paper of mine that the person is referring to is the one that I wrote about modern retellings (Jane, Terri, and Robin McKinley), I find myself wondering how they could have conceivably imagined my applying a Freudian analysis to pieces that so clearly posited the abuse as a literal fact ... But maybe chopping logic with Freudians is an excercise in futility at best. (I still get steamed up when I read lines like "the victim's obvious guilt" ... arrgghh.)
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Kate
Unregistered User
(7/20/02 1:57:14 pm)
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Off subject a bit
Helen--
What's the link to this discussion of your paper? I'd like to see it . . .
This reminds me that I need to write to you about your thesis (great) and our maybe book. Are you settled in now, is this a good time?
Best,
Kate
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Helen
Registered User
(7/20/02 2:35:36 pm)
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Re: Off subject a bit
Dear Kate:
Sorry to have been out of touch for so long! Things have been moderately insane - it took me two weeks to find a place (which is, thankfully, quite nice now that my shelves are all in place, and my waterbug problem has been solved). Everything is fairly under control now - classes at Columbia are fascinating, Tor is amazing, and I'm very eager to get started on the book! I was actually planning to e-mail you tonight - I picked up the latest copy of "Locus," and, lo and behold, found a review for the revised edition of _Mirror, Mirror_ by Farren Miller. Favorable, on the whole; she writes, "The ungainly concept 'fairy tale' applies to material from Irish, Russian, French, African, and Arabian sources, which evolved from harsh originals into slightly tamed 19th-century compilations and inventions, then radical modern takes. It's like an untidy storehouse crammed with the stuff of pantheism, misogyny, enpowerment, lunacy, enlightenment ... take your pick."
The link to the paper can be found at a site called Trivium - here is the address:
www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wad...p3?sid=107
I think that it's an interesting paper, overall, and I'm really happy to be used as a source; but I don't know if I'm entirely the right person to parallel the Freudians, as I'm using a socio-historical reading on the basis of the authors' stances on the original stories. When I look at older tales, I do acknowledge the psychoanalytic (though I admit that I lean more towards von Franz then Bettelheim).
Will e-mail more extensively tonight - hope you're well!
Best,
Helen
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Don
Registered User
(7/20/02 3:57:59 pm)
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Bettelheim
In my view the best critique of Bettelheim remains the one Zipes published in "Breaking the Magic Spell." In fact, Zipes has updated that chapter for the revised, expanded edition of "Breaking the Magic Spell," which has just been republished by University Press of Kentucky.
While Dundes does advocate a psychoanlytic approach to folktales, he seems to favor Roheim's work over Bettelheim's, whom he faults for knowing too little about comparative folktale research and for drawing on a too limited selection of variants in his interpretations. In any case, an understanding of Dundes's attitude toward Bettelheim has to take into account Dundes's revelations of Bettelheim's plagiarism in "The Uses of Enchantment."
On the question of the actual psychological and psychosocial impact of fairy tales--in contrast to pscyhoanlaytic readings of tales--the only works that shed any credible light have to be empirical or historical. The rest is mere speculation--interesting, provocative, and stimulating, to be sure, but initially only speculation.
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Helen
Registered User
(7/20/02 5:44:01 pm)
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Re: Bettelheim
The dichotomy between the speculative nature the field of psychoanalytic analysis and the emphatic voice employed by many theorists - Bettelheim in particular - is one of the things that makes it somewhat difficult to accept at face value. For example, in _the Uses of Enchantment_, in the chapter on "Cinderella," Bettelheim makes the initial interpretation that tales in which the daughter is threatened with the affections of her father conceal an oedipal attachment. Later details of the story are assessed in the same light; thus, her flight from the ball becomes a flight to escape ravishment *or* to escape her own desires. This reading may have a certain validity - Bettelheim was undeniably brilliant, though many of his ideas are controversial, to say the least - but it is not the only possible reading of the situation. It has an unfortunate ring of "blaming the victim" that cannot be overlooked, but the alternative, more literal, interpretations of such tales are rarely acknowledged. In the time when Bettelheim wrote, perhaps such ideas would have been rejected as unpalatable; however, today, they still receive less attention then would seem to be due to them.
Socio-historical analysis can also, without a doubt, be somewhat unreliable without specific examples. When connections between fact and fiction are provided - occasionally tennuous connections, due to the lack or loss of documented information, but theoretically sound ones - conclusions can be drawn, cautiously. Warner is particularly good at providing concrete information to substantiate her theories. For example, in _From the Beast to the Blonde_, after relating the details of Saint Dympana's life - similar to that of Donkeyskin, except in the fact that her father found her after she fled, and slew her - Warner notes her later cannonization as the patron saint of the mad, and those who had suffered from abuse, and theorizes that this figure may have provided a kind of template for later tales.
Both schools of though provide insight into the tales that we love.
Similarly, both need to be taken with a grain of salt ... the size
depending on the biases of both the writer, and the reader.
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(7/21/02 2:09:31 am)
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My two cents
The strong-minded psychological interps of tales (imho) rarely allow for the fact of changes in transmission. Indeed, they insist on a certain rigidity in the tale in order to make a point. But one of the great values of folklore is surely its malleability and its adaptablity.
I always distrust someone (like a Bettleheim) who offers the One True Interpretation. Though I love the Warners who give you valuable historical insights that--as a writer--I can work wonders with.
Jane
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Don
Registered User
(7/21/02 9:05:22 am)
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Bettelheim etc.
I can echo the thoughts of Jane and Helen. Specificity is important to making any approach compelling.
Where the psychoanalytic and the sociohistorical intersect is in the question about the impact of fairy tales on children (or anyone, for that matter)--i.e., the impact on behavior, values, and understanding of social reality. If we want to know what the impact IS, then we can't rely ultimately on the theoretical or speculative. Theories ought to stimulate investigations that apply the theories. In Bettelheim's case, as Jane notes, he doesn't so much present a theory as he does purport to state a truth. In answering this particular question about "impact," I think it's essential to know what empirical or historical studies have shown. (Generally, they don't support Bettelheim's specific claims.) In other words, to answer the question--Is Bettelheim right?--it's necessary to go beyond Bettelheim to studies that test his ideas, such as those I've provided in an earlier post under another thread.
Edited by: Don at: 7/21/02 9:21:41 am
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CCalabrese
Unregistered User
(7/22/02 1:40:35 pm)
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Bettleheim
The following quote is from the Discovery Institute (www.discovery.org):
"In 1976, the very year when the Sunday Times exposed the fraudulence of Sir Cyril Burt, Bruno Bettelheim (an immigrant from Austria who boasted of a heroic past as a resistance fighter) published his bestselling book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales,produced with one of the lucrative grants he obtained. Bettelheim made himself famous as the foremost authority on childhood autism, and operator of the private Orthogenic School for severely disturbed children in Chicago. Bettelheim stressed the authenticity of exact story details that developed "through the centuries (if not the millennia) during which, in their retelling, fairytales became ever more refined." In light of the fact that he focused upon tales from the Brothers Grimm, which were faked and "refined"at one fell swoop in the 1800s, the authenticity of the allegedly meaningful details evaporates. Now the authenticity of Bettelheim has evaporated also.
After his death in 1990 a professor of anthropology at the University of Berkeley sadly announced that The Uses of Enchantment was copied from a 1963 book titled A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales. Bettelheim was a plagiarist and, worse yet, no psychiatrist. He was an imposter. After his death, it came out that he was a child-abuser. He claimed, "As an educator and therapist of severely disturbed children, my main task was to restore meaning to their lives." To the contrary, he misdiagnosed normal children as mentally disturbed in order to claim later that he had cured them. Bettelheim vindictively blamed autism on bad mothering (a cruellie). All that desperate parents got for trusting this slick predator with their children and their money was false guilt and true grief; yet he remained a venerated celebrity in his lifetime. As autism expert Bernard Rimland has observed grimly, "He will not be missed." (Bettleheim accused mothers of autistic children of being refrigerator mothers and causing their child to be autistic, a theory Dr. Rimland spent a lifetime getting reversed.)
Chris
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Gregor9
Registered User
(7/23/02 12:56:29 pm)
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Must be in the water
As Chicago is also the locus of an huge "false memory syndrome" lawsuit against a psychiatric clinic that convinced many of its patients they'd been extensively abused by their parents in Satanic rituals. The (and I use the term loosely) physcians also spearheaded a nationwide network proporting to have uncovered a vast Satanic conspiracy withing these recovered "memories." Amazing what you can do with a little hypnosis and a lot of control.
Greg
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Kate
Unregistered User
(7/24/02 8:47:03 am)
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Bettelheim
Is this information from the Discovery Institute represented elsewhere, in a book or article? I've never come across details of plagiarism or sex abuse (proven?) about Bettelheim anywhere else. Why has this not become widespread knowledge?
Officially, my major complaint with Bettelheim is the same as Jane's: any totalizing theory repels me intellectually.
But I am curious about these differently odious details.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(7/24/02 11:20:42 am)
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Thank you all
I feel better able now to approach Bettelheim and others works in this area (Heidi, Erz - thanks for your patience). Oh, and what an interesting thread this has become.
Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. Additional comments/suggestions
are very welcome. As usual, it will be off to the bookstore for
me.
Jess
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CCalabrese
Unregistered User
(7/24/02 3:07:25 pm)
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Bettleheim
Bettleheim has never been accused of sexual abuse.
His legacy in autism was eventually revealed as a total catastrophe.
All the hoopla about his very questionable claims of being a resistance fighter, his psychiatry credentials, the source of his book moneys and book content etc. were eventually left to rest, and that is appropriate because he is deceased.
Many books evolve from materials in other books without giving proper acknowledgement to the origian source material. The 'Uses of Enchantment' stands on it's own because it simply makes statements that can prove useful to us in thinking about fairy tales from different angles.
Discovery Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan, public policy think tank headquartered in Seattle dealing with national and international affairs. The Institute is dedicated to exploring and promoting public policies that advance representative democracy, free enterprise and individual liberty. They can provide us with more information on their posted position regarding Bettleheim They encourage e-mail to: views@discovery.org
I refer to Uses of Enchantment to trip off questions or ideas when I'm writing. . . always keeping in mind the larger picture behind this work.
I prefer to embrace material that derives from the passion of a great-souled ethical author. . .and we are blessed to have them on this list.
Chris
A book can make the NY Times bestseller list with a no-nonsense publisher and be a fraud. There was such a book several years ago written as an autobiographical account of a childhood in a concentration camp. The publisher was Random House.
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Kate
Unregistered User
(7/24/02 4:49:23 pm)
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Great souled ethical people
DO abound on this list--that is so true! Thank goodness for that.
Chris, thanks for the additional information about the Discovery Institute. I'd never heard of it, I'll check it out.
I also refer to Uses of Enchantment--sort of as an emotional prompt to myself, somehow? NOT as a source of lovely, like-minded inspiration, but some other form of--as you put it--tripping off!
Best,
Kate
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CCalabrese
Unregistered User
(7/24/02 9:11:45 pm)
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J. Heuscher Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairy Tales
The source work that Bettleheim drew from is:
A Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairy tales by Heuscher, J. E. published by Charles Thomas Springfield Ill in 1963. 2nd printing 1974.
I'm reading the 2nd ed.
Chris
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mariabrenna
Unregistered User
(7/26/02 11:59:52 pm)
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response
If you just ask kids what they think of fairytales you may get a clue. I am surrounded by kids day and night. It's like war, almost. The call to arms knows no fairness.
Anyways, my experience as a girl was wanting to be beautiful and perfect, for my prince. Little girls identify with the princess. Children become the heroes. They can try to understand the plight of the heroes. If they achieve success in empathy, they will be able to recite the moral of the story. Little kids are smart. Just watch what they can pick up from a picture book about Big Bird's Bad Day. Or let alone their older siblings. <sigh>. But I advise you to try and find out for yourself. See what you can get out the kid and the books.
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