The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. The Nordic languages have only one word for both: saga. German has retained the word Sage for myths, while fairy stories are called Märchen. It is unfortunate that both the English and French names for these stories emphasize the role of fairies in them—because in most, no fairies appear. Myths and fairy tales alike attain a definite form only when they are committed to writing and are no longer subject to continuous change. Before being written down, these stories were either condensed or vastly elaborated in the retelling over the centuries; some stories merged with others. All became modified by what the teller thought was of greatest interest to his listeners, by what his concerns of the moment or the special problems of his era were.

  Some fairy and folk stories evolved out of myths; others were incorporated into them. Both forms embodied the cumulative experience of a society as men wished to recall past wisdom for themselves and transmit it to future generations. These tales are the purveyors of deep insights that have sustained mankind through the long vicissitudes of its existence, a heritage that is not revealed in any other form as simply and directly, or as accessibly, to children.

  Myths and fairy tales have much in common. But in myths, much more than in fairy stories, the culture hero is presented to the listener as a figure he ought to emulate in his own life, as far as possible.

  A myth, like a fairy tale, may express an inner conflict in symbolic form and suggest how it may be solved—but this is not necessarily the myth’s central concern. The myth presents its theme in a majestic way; it carries spiritual force; and the divine is present and is experienced in the form of superhuman heroes who make constant demands on mere mortals. Much as we, the mortals, may strive to be like these heroes, we will remain always and obviously inferior to them.

  The figures and events of fairy tales also personify and illustrate inner conflicts, but they suggest ever so subtly how these conflicts may be solved, and what the next steps in the development toward a higher humanity might be. The fairy tale is presented in a simple, homely way; no demands are made on the listener. This prevents even the smallest child from feeling compelled to act in specific ways, and he is never made to feel inferior. Far from making demands, the fairy tale reassures, gives hope for the future, and holds out the promise of a happy ending. That is why Lewis Carroll called it a “love-gift”—a term hardly applicable to a myth.*

  Obviously, not every story contained in a collection called “Fairy Tales” meets these criteria. Many of these stories are simply diversions, cautionary tales, or fables. If they are fables, they tell by means of words, actions, or events—fabulous though these may be—what one ought to do. Fables demand and threaten—they are moralistic—or they just entertain. To decide whether a story is a fairy tale or something entirely different, one might ask whether it could rightly be called a love-gift to a child. That is not a bad way to arrive at a classification.

  To understand how a child views fairy tales, let us consider as examples the many fairy stories in which a child outwits a giant who scares him or even threatens his life. That children intuitively understand what these “giants” stand for is illustrated by the spontaneous reaction of a five-year-old.

  Encouraged by discussion about the importance fairy tales have for children, a mother overcame her hesitation about telling such “gory and threatening” stories to her son. From her conversations with him, she knew that her son already had fantasies about eating people, or people getting eaten. So she told him the tale of “Jack the Giant Killer.”4 His response at the end of the story was: “There aren’t any such things as giants, are there?” Before the mother could give her son the reassuring reply which was on her tongue—and which would have destroyed the value of the story for him—he continued, “But there are such things as grownups, and they’re like giants.” At the ripe old age of five, he understood the encouraging message of the story: although adults can be experienced as frightening giants, a little boy with cunning can get the better of them.

  This remark reveals one source of adult reluctance to tell fairy stories: we are not comfortable with the thought that occasionally we look like threatening giants to our children, although we do. Nor do we want to accept how easy they think it is to fool us, or to make fools of us, and how delighted they are by this idea. But whether or not we tell fairy tales to them, we do—as the example of this little boy proves—appear to them as selfish giants who wish to keep to ourselves all the wonderful things which give us power. Fairy stories provide reassurance to children that they can eventually get the better of the giant—i.e., they can grow up to be like the giant and acquire the same powers. These are “the mighty hopes that make us men.”5

  Most significantly, if we parents tell such fairy stories to our children, we can give them the most important reassurance of all: that we approve of their playing with the idea of getting the better of these giants. Here reading is not the same as being told the story, because while reading alone the child may think that only some stranger—the person who wrote the story or arranged the book—approves of outwitting and cutting down the giant. But when his parents tell him the story, a child can be sure that they approve of his retaliating in fantasy for the threat which adult dominance entails.

  *Child of the pure unclouded brow

  And dreaming eyes of wonder!

  Though time be fleet, and I and thou Are half a life asunder,

  Thy loving smile will surely hail

  The love-gift of a fairy-tale.

  C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), in Through the Looking-Glass

  “THE FISHERMAN

  AND THE JINNY”

  FAIRY TALE COMPARED TO FABLE

  One of the Arabian Nights tales, “The Fisherman and the Jinny,” gives an almost complete rendering of the fairy-tale motif which features a giant in conflict with an ordinary person.6 This theme is common to all cultures in some form, since children everywhere fear and chafe under the power adults hold over them. (In the West, the theme is best known in the form exemplified by the Brothers Grimm’s story “The Spirit in the Bottle.”) Children know that, short of doing adults’ bidding, they have only one way to be safe from adult wrath: through outwitting them.

  “The Fisherman and the Jinny” tells how a poor fisherman casts his net into the sea four times. First he catches a dead jackass, the second time a pitcher full of sand and mud. The third effort gains him less than the preceding ones: potsherds and broken glass. The fourth time around, the fisherman brings up a copper jar. As he opens it, a huge cloud emerges, which materializes into a giant Jinny (genie) that threatens to kill him, despite all the fisherman’s entreaties. The fisherman saves himself with his wits: he taunts the Jinny by doubting aloud that the huge Jinny could ever have fitted into such a small vessel; thus he induces the Jinny to return into the jar to prove it. Then the fisherman quickly caps and seals the jar and throws it back into the ocean.

  In other cultures the same motif may appear in a version where the evil figure materializes as a big, ferocious animal which threatens to devour the hero, who, except for his cunning, is in no way a match for this adversary. The hero then reflects aloud that it must be easy for such a powerful spirit to take the form of a huge creature, but that it could not possibly turn itself into a little animal, such as a mouse or a bird. This appeal to the vanity of the spirit spells its doom. To show that nothing is impossible to it, the evil spirit transforms itself into the tiny animal, which is then easily vanquished by the hero.7

  The story of “The Fisherman and the Jinny” is richer in hidden messages than other versions of this fairy-tale motif, as it contains significant details not always found in other renderings. One feature is an account of how the Jinny came to be so ruthless as to wish to kill the person who sets him free; another feature is that three unsuccessful attempts are finally rewarded on the fourth try.

  Accord
ing to adult morality, the longer an imprisonment lasts, the more grateful the prisoner should be to the person who liberates him. But this is not how the Jinny describes it: As he sat confined in the bottle during the first hundred years, he “said in my heart, ‘Whoso shall release me, him will I enrich for ever and ever.’ But the full century went by, and when no one set me free, I entered upon the second five score saying: ‘Whoso shall release me, for him I will open the hoards of the earth.’ Still no one set me free, and thus four hundred years passed away. Then quoth I, ‘Whoso shall release me, for him will I fulfill three wishes.’ Yet no one set me free. Thereupon I waxed wroth with exceeding wrath and said to myself, ‘Whoso shall release me from this time forth, him will I slay….’ ”

  This is exactly how a young child feels when he has been “deserted.” First he thinks to himself how happy he will be when his mother comes back; or when sent to his room, how glad he will be when permitted to leave it again, and how he will reward Mother. But as time passes, the child becomes angrier and angrier, and he fantasizes the terrible revenge he will take on those who have deprived him. The fact that, in reality, he may be very happy when reprieved does not change how his thoughts move from rewarding to punishing those who have inflicted discomfort on him. Thus, the way the Jinny’s thoughts evolve gives the story psychological truth for a child.

  An example of this progression of feelings was shown by a three-year-old boy whose parents had gone abroad for several weeks. The boy had been speaking quite well before his parents’ departure, and continued to do so with the woman taking care of him and with others. But on his parents’ return, he wouldn’t say a word to them or anybody else for two weeks. From what he had told his caretaker, it was clear that during the first few days of his parents’ absence he had looked forward with great anticipation to their return. By the end of the first week, however, he began to talk about how angry he was that they had left him, and how he would get even with them on their return. A week later, he refused even to speak about his parents, and became violently angry at anyone who mentioned them. When his mother and father did finally arrive, he silently turned away from them. Despite all efforts to reach him, the boy remained frozen in his rejection. It took several weeks of compassionate understanding of his predicament on the part of his parents before the boy could become his old self again. It seems clear that as time passed, the child’s anger had increased until it became so violent and overwhelming as to make him fear that if he let himself go, he would destroy his parents or be destroyed in retaliation. His refusal to talk was his defense: his way of protecting both himself and his parents against the consequences of his towering rage.

  There is no way to know whether in the original language of “The Fisherman and the Jinny” there is a saying similar to ours about “bottled-up” feelings. But the image of confinement in a bottle was as apt then as it is for us now. In some form, every child has experiences similar to those of the three-year-old boy, though usually in less extreme form and without overt reactions like his. On his own, the child does not know what has happened to him—all he knows is that he has to act this way. Efforts to help such a child understand rationally will not affect the child, and will leave him defeated to boot, since he does not yet think rationally.

  If you tell a small child that a little boy became so angry at his parents that he didn’t talk to them for two weeks, his reaction will be: “That’s stupid!” If you try to explain why the boy didn’t speak for two weeks, your listening child feels even more that to act this way is stupid—now, not only because he considers the action foolish, but also because the explanation does not make sense to him.

  A child cannot consciously accept that his anger may make him speechless, or that he may wish to destroy those on whom he depends for his existence. To understand this would mean he must accept the fact that his own emotions may so overpower him that he does not have control over them—a very scary thought. The idea that forces may reside within us which are beyond our control is too threatening to be entertained, and not just by a child.*

  Action takes the place of understanding for a child, and this becomes increasingly true the more strongly he feels. A child may have learned to say otherwise under adult guidance, but as he really sees it, people do not cry because they are sad; they just cry. People do not hit out and destroy, or stop talking because they are angry; they just do these things. A child may have learned he can placate adults by explaining his action thus: “I did it because I am angry”—but that does not change the fact that the child does not experience anger as anger, but only as an impulse to hit, to destroy, to keep silent. Not before puberty do we begin to recognize our emotions for what they are without immediately acting on them, or wishing to do so.

  The child’s unconscious processes can become clarified for him only through images which speak directly to his unconscious. The images evoked by fairy tales do this. As the child does not think, “When Mother comes back, I’ll be happy” but “I’ll give her something,” so the Jinny said to himself, “Whoever will release me, I’ll enrich.” As the child does not think, “I’m so angry I could kill this person” but “When I see him, I’ll kill him,” so the Jinny says “I’ll slay whoever releases me.” If a real person is said to think or act this way, that idea arouses too much anxiety to permit understanding. But the child knows that the Jinny is an imaginary figure, so he can afford to recognize what motivates the Jinny, without being forced to make a direct application to himself.

  As the child spins fantasies around the story—and unless he does, the fairy tale loses most of its impact—he slowly becomes familiar with how the Jinny responds to frustration and incarceration, an important step toward becoming acquainted with parallel reactions in himself. Since it is a fairy tale out of never-never-land which presents the child with these images of behaving, he can swing back and forth in his own mind between “It’s true, that’s how one acts and reacts” and “It’s all untrue, it’s just a story,” depending on how ready he is to recognize these processes in himself.

  Most important of all, since the fairy tale guarantees a happy outcome, the child need not fear permitting his unconscious to come to the fore in line with the story’s content, because he knows that, whatever he may find out, he’ll “live happily ever after.”

  The fantastic exaggerations of the story, such as being “bottled up” for centuries, make reactions plausible and acceptable where situations presented more realistically, such as a parent’s absence, would not. To the child, the parent’s absence seems an eternity—a feeling that remains unaffected by Mother’s truthful explanation that she was gone for only half an hour. So the fairy tale’s fantastic exaggerations give it the ring of psychological truth—while realistic explanations seem psychologically untrue, however true to fact.

  “The Fisherman and the Jinny” illustrates why the simplified and bowdlerized fairy tale loses all value. Looking at the story from the outside, it would seem unnecessary to have the Jinny’s thought undergo such changes from wishing to reward the person who will set him free to deciding to punish him. The story could be told as just an evil Jinny wishing to kill his liberator, who, although only a weak human, nevertheless manages to outsmart the powerful spirit. But in this simplified form it becomes just a scary tale with a happy ending, without psychological truth to it. It is the Jinny’s change from wishing-to-reward to wishing-to-punish which permits the child to empathize with the story. Since the story so truthfully describes what went on in the Jinny’s mind, the idea that the fisherman may be able to outwit the Jinny also attains veracity. It is the elimination of such seemingly insignificant elements which makes fairy tales lose their deeper meaning, and thus makes them uninteresting to the child.

  Without being conscious of it, the child rejoices in the fairy tale’s warning to those who hold the power to “bottle him up.” There are plenty of modern children’s stories in which a child outwits an adult. But because they are too direct, these stories d
o not offer relief in imagination from always having to live under the sway of adult power; or else they scare the child, whose security rests on the adult being more accomplished than he, and able to protect him reliably.

  This is the value of outsmarting a Jinny or a giant, as opposed to doing the same to an adult. If the child is told he can get the better of somebody like his parents, this does offer a pleasurable thought, but at the same time it creates anxiety, because if that is possible, then the child might not be adequately protected by such gullible people. But since a giant is an imaginary figure, the child can fantasize outsmarting him to the degree of being able not only to overpower but to destroy him, and still retain real grownup people as protectors.

  The fairy story “The Fisherman and the Jinny” has several advantages over those of the Jack (“Jack the Giant Killer,” “Jack and the Beanstalk”) cycle. Since the fisherman is not only an adult but, as we are told, the father of children, the child is told implicitly by the story that his parent may feel threatened by powers stronger than he, but is so clever that he overcomes them. According to this tale, the child can truly have the best of both worlds. He can cast himself in the role of the fisherman and imagine himself getting the better of the giant. Or he can cast his parent in the role of the fisherman, and imagine himself as a spirit that can threaten his parent, while being assured that the same parent will win out.