The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  The stories on the “Two Brothers” theme add to this internal dialogue between id, ego, and superego another dichotomy: the striving for independence and self-assertion, and the opposite tendency to remain safely home, tied to the parents. From the earliest version on, the stories stress that both desires reside in each of us, and that we cannot survive deprived of either: the wish to stay tied to the past, and the urge to reach out to a new future. Through the unfolding of events, the story most often teaches that entirely cutting oneself off from one’s past leads to disaster, but that to exist only beholden to the past is stunting; while it is safe, it provides no life of one’s own. Only the thorough integration of these contrary tendencies permits a successful existence.

  While in most fairy tales on the “Two Brothers” theme the brother who leaves home runs into trouble and is rescued by the brother who stayed home, some others, including the oldest Egyptian version, stress the opposite: the undoing of the brother who remained home. If we do not spread our wings and leave the nest, these stories seem to teach, we fail to do so out of an oedipal attachment, which then destroys us. This ancient Egyptian story seems to have developed out and away from the central motif of the destructive nature of oedipal attachments and of sibling rivalry—that is, the need to separate oneself from one’s childhood home and create an independent existence. A happy resolution requires that the brothers free themselves of oedipal and sibling jealousy and support each other.

  In the Egyptian tale the younger and unmarried brother rejects the efforts of his brother’s wife to seduce him. Fearing that he might tell on her, she vilifies him, pretending to her husband that his brother tried to seduce her.* In his jealous anger, the married brother tries to kill his younger sibling. Only through the intervention of gods is the younger brother’s reputation saved and the truth made known, but by then the younger brother has sought safety in flight. He dies, a fact that becomes known to his older brother when his drinks turn bad; he goes to the rescue of his younger brother and manages to revive him.

  This ancient Egyptian tale contains the element of a person accused of what the accuser himself wants to do: the wife accuses the younger brother, whom she tried to seduce, of seducing her. Thus, the plot describes the projection of an unacceptable tendency in oneself onto another person; this suggests that such projections are as ancient as man. Since the story is told from the brothers’ side, it’s also possible that the younger brother projected his desires onto his older brother’s wife, accusing her of what he wanted to but dared not do.

  In the story the married brother is master of an extended household in which his younger brother lives. The master’s wife is, in a sense, “mother” to all the young people in this family, including the younger brother. So we can interpret the story as telling either about a mother figure who gives in to her oedipal desires for a young man who stands in the role of a son, or of a son accusing a mother figure of his own oedipal desires for her.

  Be this as it may, the story clearly suggests that for the younger son’s benefit and for protection against oedipal problems—irrespective of whether these are the son’s or the parent’s—at this time of life the young person does well to leave home.

  In this ancient rendering of the “Two Brothers” theme, the tale barely touches on the need for inner transformation to bring about the happy solution, in the form of the persecuting brother’s deep regret when he learns that his wife has unfairly accused his younger sibling, whom he had set out to destroy. In this form the tale is essentially a cautionary one, warning that we must free ourselves of our oedipal attachments, and teaching that we can do so most successfully by establishing an independent existence away from our parental home. Sibling rivalry is also shown as a strong motif in this tale, as the first impulse of the older brother is to kill his sibling out of jealousy. His better nature battles against his lower impulses and eventually wins.

  In the stories of the “Two Brothers” type, the heroes are depicted as being in what we would call the adolescent age—that period in life when the relative emotional tranquility of the prepubertal child is replaced by adolescent stress and turmoil, brought about by new psychological developments. Hearing such a story, the child comprehends (at least subconsciously) that although what he is told about are adolescent conflicts, the problems are typical of our predicament whenever we are confronted with having to move from one developmental stage to the next. This conflict is as characteristic of the oedipal child as it is of the adolescent. It occurs whenever we have to decide whether to move from a less to a more differentiated state of mind and personality, which requires loosening old ties before we have yet formed new ones.

  In more modern versions, such as the Brothers Grimm’s tale “The Two Brothers,” they are at first undifferentiated. “The two brothers went together into the forest, took counsel with each other, and came to an agreement. And as they sat down in the evening to eat, they said to their foster father: ‘We won’t touch the food and won’t take a bite until you grant us one request.’ ” Their demand is that “ ‘We must try ourselves in the world, so permit us to go forth and journey.’ ” The forest, where they go to decide that they want to have a life of their own, symbolizes the place in which inner darkness is confronted and worked through; where uncertainty is resolved about who one is; and where one begins to understand who one wants to be.

  In most stories of two brothers, one, like Sindbad the Sailor, rushes out into the world and courts dangers, while the other, like Sindbad the Porter, simply remains home. In many European fairy tales the brother who leaves soon finds himself in a deep, dark forest, where he feels lost, having given up the organization of his life which the parental home provided, and not yet having built up the inner structures which we develop only under the impact of life experiences we have to master more or less on our own. Since ancient times the near-impenetrable forest in which we get lost has symbolized the dark, hidden, near-impenetrable world of our unconscious. If we have lost the framework which gave structure to our past life and must now find our own way to become ourselves, and have entered this wilderness with an as yet undeveloped personality, when we succeed in finding our way out we shall emerge with a much more highly developed humanity.*

  In this dark forest the fairy-tale hero often encounters the creation of our wishes and anxieties—the witch—as does one of the brothers in the Brothers Grimm’s tale “The Two Brothers.” Who would not like to have the power of the witch—or a fairy, or a sorcerer—and use it to satisfy all his desires, to give him all the good things he wishes for himself, and to punish his enemies? And who does not fear such powers if some other possesses them and might use them against him? The witch—more than the other creations of our imagination which we have invested with magic powers, the fairy and the sorcerer—in her opposite aspects is a reincarnation of the all-good mother of infancy and the all-bad mother of the oedipal crisis. But she is no longer seen halfway realistically, as a mother who is lovingly all-giving and an opposite stepmother who is rejectingly demanding, but entirely unrealistically, as either superhumanly rewarding or inhumanly destructive.

  These two aspects of the witch are clearly delineated in fairy tales where the hero, lost in the forest, encounters an irresistibly attractive witch who, at first, satisfies all his desires during their relation. This is the all-giving mother of our infancy, whom we all hope to encounter again in our life. Preconsciously or unconsciously, it is this hope of finding her somewhere which gives us the strength to leave home. Thus, in fairy-story manner, we are given to understand that false hopes often lure us on, when we fool ourselves that all we are seeking is an independent existence.

  After the witch has fulfilled all the desires of the hero who went out into the world, at some point—usually when he refuses to do her bidding—she turns against him and changes him into an animal, or into stone. That is, she deprives him of all humanity. In these stories the witch resembles the way in which the pre-oedipal mother appears to the
child: all-giving, all-satisfying, as long as he does not insist on doing things his way and remains symbiotically tied to her. But as the child begins to assert himself more and do more on his own, the “No’s” naturally increase. The child who has put all his trust in this woman, has tied his fate to her—or felt that it is tied to her—now experiences deepest disenchantment; what has given him bread has turned to stone, or so it seems.

  Whatever the details, in the stories of the “Two Brothers” type there comes the moment when the brothers differentiate from each other, as every child has to move out of the undifferentiated stage. What happens then symbolizes as much the inner conflict within us—represented by the different actions of the two brothers—as the necessity to give up one form of existence to achieve a higher one. Whatever the age of a person, when he is confronted with the problem of whether to break away from his parents—which we all do to different degrees at various times in our lives—there is always a wish to have an existence entirely free of them and what they stand for in our psyche, along with the opposite desire to remain bound closely to them. This is acutely so during the period that immediately precedes school age, and also during the other one which ends it. The first of the two separates infancy from childhood; the second, childhood from early adulthood.

  The Brothers Grimm’s “The Two Brothers” begins by impressing the hearer with the idea that tragedy occurs if the two brothers—i.e., the two divergent aspects of our personality—do not become integrated. It starts, “Once upon a time there were two brothers, a rich one and a poor one. The rich one was a goldsmith, and his heart was evil; the poor one sustained himself by making brooms, and he was good and honest. The poor man had two children who were twins and looked so alike as one drop of water is to another.”

  The good brother finds a golden bird, and in a roundabout way his twin children, through eating the heart and liver of the bird, acquire the ability to find each morning a piece of gold under their pillows. The evil brother, eaten up by envy, persuades the father of the twins that this is the doing of the devil, and that for his salvation he must rid himself of the boys. Confounded by his evil brother, the father casts the children out; a hunter chances upon them and adopts them as his foster children. After the children have grown, they retire into the forest and decide there that they must go out into the world. Their foster father agrees that they ought to do so, and on parting gives them a knife, which is the magic object of this story.

  As was mentioned at the beginning of the discussion of the “Two Brothers” motif, one typical feature of these stories is that some magic life token, which symbolizes the identity of the two, indicates to one when the other is in serious danger, and this sets the rescue going. If, as suggested above, the two brothers stand for inner psychic processes which must all be functioning together for us to exist, then the dying or rotting of the magic object—that is, its disintegration—suggests the disintegration of our personality if not all of its aspects are cooperating. In “The Two Brothers” the magic object is “a bright and shiny knife” which their foster father gives them on parting, telling them, “If you separate some day, drive the knife into a tree at the crossroad; if one returns, he can see from it how things stand with the absent one, because the side of the knife in the direction of which he left rusts if he dies; as long as he is alive it remains shiny.”

  The twin brothers part (after having stuck the knife in a tree) and lead different lives. After many adventures, one is turned into stone by a witch. The other happens upon the knife and finds his brother’s side of it rusty; realizing that his brother has died, he goes to rescue him and succeeds. After the brothers are united—which is a symbol of having achieved integration of the discordant tendencies within us—they live happily ever after.

  By juxtaposing what happens between the good and the evil brother and the twin sons of the first, the story implies that if the contradictory aspects of the personality remain separated from each other, nothing but misery is the consequence: even the good brother is defeated by life. He loses his sons because he fails to comprehend the evil propensities of our nature—represented by his brother—and hence is helpless to free himself of its consequences. The twin brothers, by contrast, after having lived very different lives, come to each other’s rescue, which symbolizes achieving inner integration, and hence can have a “happy” life.*

  *The Biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, which is placed in an Egyptian setting, probably goes back to this part of the ancient tale.

  *It is this ancient image Dante evokes at the beginning of The Divine Comedy: “In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.” There he also finds a “magic” helper, Virgil, who offers guidance on this most famous peregrination, which first leads Dante through hell, then purgatory, until heaven is reached at the journey’s end.

  *The identity of the twins is repeatedly emphasized, although in symbolic ways. For example, they encounter a hare, a fox, a wolf, a bear, and finally a lion. They spare the lives of these animals, and, in gratitude, each gives them two young ones of its breed. When they separate, each takes with him one of these two sets of animals, which remain their faithful companions. The animals work together and, through doing so repeatedly, help their masters escape great dangers. This shows once more in fairy-tale fashion that successful living requires the working together, the integration of the quite different aspects of our personality—here symbolized by the differences between hare, fox, wolf, bear, and lion.

  “THE THREE LANGUAGES”

  BUILDING INTEGRATION

  If we want to understand our true selves, we must become familiar with the inner workings of our mind. If we want to function well, we have to integrate the discordant tendencies which are inherent in our being. Isolating these tendencies and projecting them into separate figures, as illustrated by “Brother and Sister” and “The Two Brothers,” is one way fairy tales help us visualize and thus better grasp what goes on within us.

  Another fairy-tale approach to showing the desirability of this integration is symbolized by a hero who encounters these various tendencies one at a time and builds them into his personality until all coalesce within him, as is necessary for gaining full independence and humanity. The Brothers Grimm’s “The Three Languages” is a fairy story of this type. It has a history reaching quite far back, and versions were found in many European and some Asian countries. Despite its antiquity, this timeless fairy tale reads as if it could have been written for the adolescent of today about his conflicts with his parents, or about parents’ inability to understand what moves their adolescent children.

  The story begins: “In Switzerland there once lived an old count who had only one son, but he was stupid and couldn’t learn anything. So the father said, ‘Listen, my son, I can’t get anything into your head, as hard as I try. You’ve got to get away from here. I’ll turn you over to a famous master; he shall have a try with you.’ ”34 The son studied with this master for a year. When he returned, the father was disgusted to hear that all he had learned was “what the dogs bark.” Sent out for another year of study with a different master, the son returned to tell that he had learned “what the birds speak.” Furious that his son had again wasted his time, the father threatened, “I’ll send you to a third master, but if again you learn nothing, I shall no longer be your father.” When the year was over, the son’s reply to the question of what he had learned was “what the frogs croak.” In great rage, the father cast his son out, ordering his servants to take the son into the forest and do away with him. But the servants had pity on the son, and simply left him in the forest.

  Many fairy-tale plots begin with children being cast out, an event which occurs in two basic forms: prepubertal children who are forced to leave on their own (“Brother and Sister”) or are deserted in a place from which they cannot find their way back (“Hansel and Gretel”); and pubertal or adolescent youngsters who are handed over to ser
vants ordered to kill them, but are spared because the servants take pity and only pretend to have murdered the child (“The Three Languages,” “Snow White”). In the first form the child’s fear of desertion is given expression; in the second, his anxiety about retaliation.

  Being “cast out” can unconsciously be experienced either as the child wishing to be rid of the parent, or as his belief that the parent wants to be rid of him. The child’s being sent out into the world, or deserted in a forest, symbolizes both the parent’s wish that the child become independent and the child’s desire for, or anxiety about, independence.

  The young child in such tales is simply deserted—like Hansel and Gretel—for the anxiety of the prepubertal age is “If I am not a good, obedient child, if I give trouble to my parents, they will no longer take good care of me; they might even desert me.” The pubertal child, more confident that he might be able to take care of himself, feels less anxious about desertion and thus has more courage to stand up to his parent. In the stories where the child is handed over to a servant to be killed, he has threatened the parent’s dominance or self-respect, as Snow White does by being more beautiful than the queen. In “The Three Languages” the count’s parental authority is put into question by the son’s so obviously not learning what the father thinks he should.

  Because the parent does not murder his child but entrusts the evil deed to a servant, and because the servant releases the child, this suggests that on one level the conflict is not with adults in general, but only with the parents. The other adults are as helpful as they dare to be, without coming directly into conflict with the authority of the parent. On another level this indicates that, despite the adolescent’s anxiety about the parent holding power over his life, this is not so—because, as outraged as the parent is, he does not vent his anger directly on the child, but has to use an intermediary such as the servant. Since the parent’s plan is not carried out, this shows the inherent impotence of the parent’s position when he tries to misuse his authority.