The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  A seemingly insignificant but important feature of “The Fisherman and the Jinny” is that the fisherman has to experience three defeats before he catches the vessel with the Jinny in it. Although it would be simpler to begin the story with the netting of the fateful bottle, this element tells the child without any moralizing that one cannot expect success with the first, or even the second or the third try. Things are not quite so easy to accomplish as one may imagine or wish. To a less persistent person, the fisherman’s first three catches would suggest giving up because each effort leads only to worse things. That one must not give up, despite initial failure, is such an important message for children that many fables and fairy tales contain it. The message is effective as long as it is delivered not as a moral or demand, but in a casual way which indicates that this is how life is. Further, the magic event of overpowering the giant Jinny does not take place without effort or cunning; these are good reasons to sharpen one’s mind and continue one’s efforts, whatever the task may be.

  Another detail in this story that may likewise seem insignificant, but whose elimination would similarly weaken the story’s impact, is the parallel made between the four efforts of the fisherman which are finally crowned by success, and the four steps in the increasing anger of the Jinny. This juxtaposes the maturity of the parent-fisherman and the immaturity of the Jinny, and addresses the crucial problem which life early presents to all of us: whether to be governed by our emotions or by our rationality.

  To put the conflict into psychoanalytic terms, it symbolizes the difficult battle we all have to struggle with: should we give in to the pleasure principle, which drives us to gain immediate satisfaction of our wants or to seek violent revenge for our frustrations, even on those who have nothing to do with them—or should we relinquish living by such impulses and settle for a life dominated by the reality principle, according to which we must be willing to accept many frustrations in order to gain lasting rewards? The fisherman, by not permitting his disappointing catches to deter him from continuing his efforts, chose the reality principle, which finally gained him success.

  The decision about the pleasure principle is so important that many fairy tales and myths try to teach it. To illustrate the direct, didactic way a myth deals with this crucial choice compared to the gentle, indirect, undemanding, and therefore psychologically more effective way in which fairy tales convey this message, let us consider the myth of Hercules.8

  In the myth, we are told that for Hercules “the time had come when it was to be seen whether he would use his gifts for good or for evil. Hercules left the shepherds and went to a solitary region to consider what his course in life should be. As he sat pondering, he saw two women tall in stature coming toward him. One was beautiful and noble, of modest mien. The other was full-bosomed and seductive and carried herself arrogantly.” The first woman, the tale continues, is Virtue; the second is Pleasure. Each woman offers promises for Hercules’ future if he chooses the path she suggests as his life’s course.

  Hercules at the crossroads is a paradigmatic image because we all, like him, are enticed by the vision of eternal easy enjoyment where we “will reap the fruits of another’s labor and refuse nothing that could bring profit,” as promised by “Idle Pleasure, camouflaged as Permanent Happiness.” But we also are beckoned by Virtue and its “long and hard way to satisfaction,” which tells “that nothing is granted to man without effort and toil” and that “if you would be held in esteem by a city, you must render it services; if you would harvest, you must sow.”

  The difference between myth and fairy tale is highlighted by the myth telling us directly that the two women speaking to Hercules are “Idle Pleasure” and “Virtue.” Similar to figures in a fairy tale, these two women are embodiments of the conflicting inner tendencies and the thoughts of the hero. In this myth the two are described as alternatives, although it is clearly implied that in fact they are not—between Idle Pleasure and Virtue, we must choose the latter. The fairy tale never confronts us so directly, or tells us outright how we must choose. Instead, the fairy tale helps children to develop the desire for a higher consciousness through what is implied in the story. The fairy tale convinces through the appeal it makes to our imagination and the attractive outcome of events, which entices us.

  *How upsetting it is for a child to think that, unbeknownst to him, powerful processes are going on within him may be illustrated by what happened to one seven-year-old when his parents tried to explain to him that his emotions had carried him away to do things of which they—and he—severely disapproved. The child’s reaction was: “You mean there is a machine in me that ticks away all the time and at any moment may explode me?” From then on, this boy lived for a time in real terror of impending self-destruction.

  FAIRY TALE

  VERSUS MYTH

  OPTIMISM VERSUS PESSIMISM

  Plato—who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to “real” people and everyday events—knew what intellectual experiences make for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings. Even Aristotle, master of pure reason, said: “The friend of wisdom is also a friend of myth.”

  Modern thinkers who have studied myths and fairy tales from a philosophical or psychological viewpoint arrive at the same conclusion, regardless of their original persuasion. Mircea Eliade, for one, describes these stories as “models for human behavior [that,] by that very fact, give meaning and value to life.” Drawing on anthropological parallels, he and others suggest that myths and fairy tales were derived from, or give symbolic expression to, initiation rites or other rites de passage—such as a metaphoric death of an old, inadequate self in order to be reborn on a higher plane of existence. He feels that this is why these tales meet a strongly felt need and are carriers of such deep meaning.9 *

  Other investigators with a depth-psychological orientation emphasize the similarities between the fantastic events in myths and fairy tales and those in adult dreams and daydreams—the fulfillment of wishes, the winning out over all competitors, the destruction of enemies—and conclude that one attraction of this literature is its expression of that which is normally prevented from coming to awareness.10

  There are, of course, very significant differences between fairy tales and dreams. For example, in dreams more often than not the wish fulfillment is disguised, while in fairy tales much of it is openly expressed. To a considerable degree, dreams are the result of inner pressures which have found no relief, of problems which beset a person to which he knows no solution and to which the dream finds none. The fairy tale does the opposite: it projects the relief of all pressures and not only offers ways to solve problems but promises that a “happy” solution will be found.

  We cannot control what goes on in our dreams. Although our inner censorship influences what we may dream, such control occurs on an unconscious level The fairy tale, on the other hand, is very much the result of common conscious and unconscious content having been shaped by the conscious mind, not of one particular person, but the consensus of many in regard to what they view as universal human problems, and what they accept as desirable solutions. If all these elements were not present in a fairy tale, it would not be retold by generation after generation. Only if a fairy tale met the conscious and unconscious requirements of many people was it repeatedly retold, and listened to with great interest. No dream of a person could arouse such persistent interest unless it was worked into a myth, as was the story of the pharaoh’s dreams as interpreted by Joseph in the Bible.

  There is general agreement that myths and fairy tales speak to us in the language of symbols representing unconscious content. Their appeal is simultaneously to our conscious and unconscious mind, to all three of its aspects—id, ego, and superego—and to our need for ego-ideals as well. This makes i
t very effective; and in the tales’ content, inner psychological phenomena are given body in symbolic form.

  Freudian psychoanalysts concern themselves with showing what kind of repressed or otherwise unconscious material underlies myths and fairy tales, and how these relate to dreams and daydreams.11

  Jungian psychoanalysts stress in addition that the figures and events of these stories conform to and hence represent archetypical psychological phenomena, and symbolically suggest the need for gaining a higher state of selfhood—an inner renewal which is achieved as personal and racial unconscious forces become available to the person.12

  There are not only essential similarities between myths and fairy tales; there are also inherent differences. Although the same exemplary figures and situations are found in both and equally miraculous events occur in both, there is a crucial difference in the way these are communicated. Put simply, the dominant feeling a myth conveys is: this is absolutely unique; it could not have happened to any other person, or in any other setting; such events are grandiose, awe-inspiring, and could not possibly happen to an ordinary mortal like you or me. The reason is not so much that what takes place is miraculous, but that it is described as such. By contrast, although the events which occur in fairy tales are often unusual and most improbable, they are always presented as ordinary, something that could happen to you or me or the person next door when out on a walk in the woods. Even the most remarkable encounters are related in casual, everyday ways in fairy tales.

  An even more significant difference between these two kinds of story is the ending, which in myths is nearly always tragic, while always happy in fairy tales. For this reason, some of the best-known stories found in collections of fairy tales don’t really belong in this category. For example, Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” and “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” are beautiful but extremely sad; they do not convey the feeling of consolation characteristic of fairy tales at the end. Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” on the other hand, comes quite close to being a true fairy tale.

  The myth is pessimistic, while the fairy story is optimistic, no matter how terrifyingly serious some features of the story may be. It is this decisive difference which sets the fairy tale apart from other stories in which equally fantastic events occur, whether the happy outcome is due to the virtues of the hero, chance, or the interference of supernatural figures.

  Myths typically involve superego demands in conflict with id-motivated action, and with the self-preserving desires of the ego. A mere mortal is too frail to meet the challenges of the gods. Paris, who does the bidding of Zeus as conveyed to him by Hermes, and obeys the demand of the three goddesses in choosing which shall have the apple, is destroyed for having followed these commands, as are untold other mortals in the wake of this fateful choice.

  Try as hard as we may, we can never live up fully to what the superego, as represented in myths by the gods, seems to require of us. The more we try to please it, the more implacable its demands. Even when the hero does not know that he gave in to the proddings of his id, he is still made to suffer horribly for it. When a mortal incurs the displeasure of a god without having done anything wrong, he is destroyed by these supreme superego representations. The pessimism of myths is superbly exemplified in that paradigmatic myth of psychoanalysis, the tragedy of Oedipus.

  The myth of Oedipus, particularly when well performed on the stage, arouses powerful intellectual and emotional reactions in the adult—so much so, that it may provide a cathartic experience, as Aristotle taught all tragedy does. After watching Oedipus, a viewer may wonder why he is so deeply moved; and in responding to what he observes as his emotional reaction, ruminating about the mythical events and what these mean to him, a person may come to clarify his thoughts and feelings. With this, certain inner tensions which are the consequence of events long past may be relieved; previously unconscious material can then enter one’s awareness and become accessible for conscious working through. This can happen if the observer is deeply moved emotionally by the myth, and at the same time strongly motivated intellectually to understand it.

  Vicariously experiencing what happened to Oedipus, what he did and what he suffered, may permit the adult to bring his mature understanding to what until then had remained childish anxieties, preserved intact in infantile form in the unconscious mind. But this possibility exists only because the myth refers to events which happened in the most distant times, as the adult’s oedipal longings and anxieties belong to the dimmest past of his life. If the underlying meaning of a myth were spelled out and presented as an event that could have happened in the person’s adult conscious lifetime, then this would vastly increase old anxieties, and result in deeper repression.

  A myth is not a cautionary tale like a fable which, by arousing anxiety, prevents us from acting in ways which are described as damaging to us. The myth of Oedipus can never be experienced as warning us not to get caught in an oedipal constellation. If one is born and raised as a child of two parents, oedipal conflicts are inescapable.

  The oedipus complex is the crucial problem of childhood—unless a child remains fixated at an even earlier stage of development, such as the oral stage. A young child is completely caught up in oedipal conflicts as the inescapable reality of his life. The older child, from about age five on, is struggling to extricate himself by partly repressing the conflict, partly solving it by forming emotional attachments to others besides his parents, and partly sublimating it. What such a child needs least of all is to have his oedipal conflicts activated by such a myth. Suppose that the child still actively wishes, or has barely repressed the desire, to rid himself of one parent in order to have the other exclusively; if he is exposed—even though only in symbolic form—to the idea that by chance, unknowingly, one may murder a parent and marry the other, then what the child has played with only in fantasy suddenly assumes gruesome reality. The consequence of this exposure can only be increased anxiety about himself and the world.

  A child not only dreams about marrying his parent of the other sex, but actively spins fantasies around it. The myth of Oedipus tells what happens if that dream becomes reality—and still the child cannot yet give up wishful fantasies of marrying the parent at some future time. After hearing the myth of Oedipus, the conclusion in the child’s mind could only be that similar horrible things—the death of a parent and mutilation of himself—will happen to him.

  At this age, from four until puberty, what the child needs most is to be presented with symbolic images which reassure him that there is a happy solution to his oedipal problems—though he may find this difficult to believe—provided that he slowly works himself out of them. But reassurance about a happy outcome has to come first, because only then will the child have the courage to labor confidently to extricate himself from his oedipal predicament.

  In childhood, more than in any other age, all is becoming. As long as we have not yet achieved considerable security within ourselves, we cannot engage in difficult psychological struggles unless a positive outcome seems certain to us, whatever the chances for this may be in reality. The fairy tale offers fantasy materials which suggest to the child in symbolic form what the battle to achieve self-realization is all about, and it guarantees a happy ending.

  Mythical heroes offer excellent images for the development of the superego, but the demands they embody are so rigorous as to discourage the child in his fledgling strivings to achieve personality integration. While the mythical hero experiences a transfiguration into eternal life in heaven, the central figure of the fairy tale lives happily ever after on earth, right among the rest of us. Some fairy tales conclude with the information that if perchance he has not yet died, the hero may be still alive. Thus, a happy though ordinary existence is projected by fairy tales as the outcome of the trials and tribulations involved in the normal growing-up process.

  True, these psychosocial crises of growing up are imaginatively embroidered and symbolically represented in fairy tal
es as encounters with fairies, witches, ferocious animals, or figures of superhuman intelligence or cunning—but the essential humanity of the hero, despite his strange experiences, is affirmed by the reminder that he will have to die like the rest of us. Whatever strange events the fairy-tale hero experiences, they do not make him superhuman, as is true for the mythical hero. This real humanity suggests to the child that, whatever the content of the fairy tale, it is but fanciful elaborations and exaggerations of the tasks he has to meet, and of his hopes and fears.

  Though the fairy tale offers fantastic symbolic images for the solution of problems, the problems presented in them are ordinary ones: a child’s suffering from the jealousy and discrimination of his siblings, as is true for Cinderella; a child being thought incompetent by his parent, as happens in many fairy tales—for example, in the Brothers Grimm’s story “The Spirit in the Bottle.” Further, the fairy-tale hero wins out over these problems right here on earth, not by some reward reaped in heaven.

  The psychological wisdom of the ages accounts for the fact that every myth is the story of a particular hero: Theseus, Hercules, Beowulf, Brunhild. Not only do these mythical characters have names, but we are also told the names of their parents, and of the other major figures in a myth. It just wouldn’t do to name the myth of Theseus “The Man Who Slew the Bull,” or that of Niobe “The Mother Who Had Seven Daughters and Seven Sons.”