The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  116. Robert Graves, Apuleius Madaurensis: The Transformations of Lucius (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951).

  117. “The Enchanted Pig” in Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green, 1890), and “The Enchanted Pig” in Mite Kremnitz, Rumänische Märchen (Leipzig, 1882).

  118. “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” in Andrew Lang, The Blue Fairy Book, op. cit.

  119. Here we may recognize once more an allusion to the loss of the hymen, the sacrifice of a small part of the woman’s body in her first experience with sex.

  The bones of chickens are such an unlikely magic object, and such a farfetched means of climbing a height, that they seem like a projection backward of the requirement to give up the little finger, or a device to make the idea of its being used to provide the last rung of the ladder more convincing. But, as mentioned in the discussion of “Cinderella,” and one of the many symbolic meanings of the wedding ceremony, for finding complete fulfillment in marriage, the woman must relinquish the wish for a phallus of her own, and be satisfied with that of her husband. Cutting off her little finger, far from signifying symbolic self-castration, may suggest what fantasies the female must give up to be happy the way she is, so that she can be happy with her husband the way he is.

  120. “Bluebeard,” Perrault, op. cit. The first English translation is reprinted in Opie and Opie, op. cit.

  Long before Perrault there are tales in which entering a forbidden chamber has far-reaching consequences. This motif appears, for example, in the “Tale of the Third Calender” in The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments and in the Pentamerone, where it is the Sixth Tale of the Fourth Day.

  121. “Mr. Fox” in Briggs, op. cit.

  122. For “Beauty and the Beast,” see Opie and Opie, op. cit.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The bibliographical information about the fairy tales and other literature mentioned in the book is given in the Notes and is not repeated here.

  The fairy-tale literature is so vast that nobody has attempted to collect all the tales. Probably the most satisfactory and readily available collection in English is that edited by Andrew Lang and published in his twelve volumes titled: The Blue, Brown, Crimson, Green, Grey, Lilac, Olive, Orange, Pink, Red, Violet, and Yellow Fairy Book. Originally published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1889 ff., these books have been recently republished by Dover Publications, New York, 1965 ff.

  The most ambitious undertaking in this field is the German collection Die Märchen der Weltliteratur. Publication was begun in 1912 by Diederichs in Jena with Friedrich von der Leyen and Paul Zaunert as editors. So far, some seventy volumes have appeared. With very few exceptions, each volume is devoted to fairy tales of only one language or culture; hence only a very small selection of fairy tales of each culture is included. To give only one example, the collection made by Leo Frobenius, Atlantis: Volksmärchen und Volksdichtungen aus Afrika (Munich: Forschungsinstitut für Kulturmorphologie, 1921–8), consists of twelve volumes, and nonetheless contains only a quite limited selection of the fairy tales of that continent.

  The literature about fairy tales is nearly as voluminous as that of fairy tales. Below, a few books are listed which seem of general interest, and some publications which were useful in the preparation of this volume without having been mentioned in the Notes.

  AARNE, ANTTI A., The Types of the Folktale. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1961.

  Archivio per lo Studio delle Tradizioni Populari. 28 vols. Palermo, 1890–1912.

  ARNASON, JON, Icelandic Folktales and Legends. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.

  BÄCHTOLD-STÄUBLI, HANS, ed., Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens. 10 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927–42.

  BASILE, GIAMBATTISTA, The Pentamerone. 2 vols. London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1932.

  BASSET, RENÉ, Contes populaires Berbères. 2 vols. Paris: Guilmoto, 1887.

  BEDIERS, JOSEPH, Les Fabliaux. Paris: Bouillou, 1893.

  BOLTE, JOHANNES, and GEORG POLIVKA, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm. 5 vols. Hildesheim: Olms, 1963.

  BRIGGS, KATHERINE M., A Dictionary of British Folk Tales. 4 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970.

  BURTON, RICHARD, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. 13 vols. London: H. S. Nichols, 1894–7.

  COX, MARIAN ROALFE, Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-five Variants. London: The Folk-Lore Society, David Nutt, 1893.

  Folklore Fellows Communications. Ed. for the Folklore Fellows, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1910ff.

  Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary of Folklore. 2 vols. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1950.

  GRIMM, THE BROTHERS, Grimm’s Fairy Tales. New York: Pantheon Books, 1944.

  —, The Grimm’s German Folk Tales. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinios University Press, 1960.

  HASTINGS, JAMES, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. 13 vols. New York: Scribner’s, 1910.

  JACOBS, JOSEPH, English Fairy Tales. London: David Nutt, 1890.

  —, More English Fairy Tales. London: David Nutt, 1895.

  Journal of American Folklore. American Folklore Society, Boston, 1888ff.

  LANG, ANDREW, ed., The Fairy Books. 12 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1889ff.

  —, Perrault’s Popular Tales. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1888.

  LEFFTZ, J., Märchen der Brüder Grimm: Urfassung. Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1927.

  LEYEN, FRIEDRICH VON DER, and PAUL ZAUNERT, eds., Die Märchen der Weltliteratur. 70 vols. Jena: Diederichs, 1912ff.

  MACKENSEN, LUTZ, ed., Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens. 2 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1930–40.

  Melusine. 10 vols. Paris, 1878–1901.

  OPIE, IONA and PETER, The Classic Fairy Tales. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.

  PERRAULT, CHARLES, Histoires ou Contes du temps passé. Paris, 1697.

  SAINTYVES, PAUL, Les Contes de Perrault et les récits parallèles. Paris: E. Nourry, 1923.

  SCHWAB, GUSTAV, Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece. New York: Pantheon Books, 1946.

  SORIANO, MARC, Les Contes de Perrault. Paris: Gallimard, 1968.

  STRAPAROLA, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO, The Facetious Nights of Straparola. 4 vols. London: Society of Bibliophiles, 1901.

  THOMPSON, STITH, Motif Index of Folk Literature. 6 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955.

  —, The Folk Tale. New York: Dryden Press, 1946.

  INTERPRETATIONS

  BAUSINGER, HERMANN, “Aschenputtel: Zum Problem der Märchen-Symbolik,” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, vol. 52 (1955).

  BEIT, HEDWIG VON, Symbolik des Märchens and Gegensatz und Erneuerung im Märchen. Bern: A. Francke, 1952 and 1956.

  BILZ, JOSEPHINE, “Märchengeschehen und Reifungsvorgänge unter tiefen-psychologischem Gesichtspunkt,” in Bühler and Bilz, Das Märchen und die Phantasie des Kindes. München: Barth, 1958.

  BITTNER, GUENTHER, “Über die Symbolik weiblicher Reifung im Volksmärchen,” Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, vol. 12 (1963).

  BORNSTEIN, STEFF, “Das Märchen vom Dornröschen in psychoanalytischer Darstellung,” Imago, vol. 19 (1933).

  BÜHLER, CHARLOTTE, Das Märchen und die Phantasie des Kindes. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie, vol. 17 (1918).

  COOK, ELIZABETH, The Ordinary and the Fabulous: An Introduction to Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales for Teachers and Storytellers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

  DIECKMANN, HANNS, Märchen und Träume als Helfer des Menschen. Stuttgart: Adolf Bonz, 1966.

  —, “Wert des Märchens für die seelische Entwicklung des Kindes,” Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, vol. 15 (1966).

  HANDSCHIN-NINCK, MARIANNE, “Ältester und Jüngster im Märchen,” Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, vol. 5 (1956).

  JOLLES, ANDRE, Einfache Formen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969.

  KIENLE, G., “Das Märchen in der Psyc
hotherapie,” Zeitschrift für Psychotherapie und medizinische Psychologie, 1959.

  LAIBLIN, WILHELM, “Die Symbolik der Erlösung und Wiedergeburt im deutschen Volksmärchen,” Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie und ihre Grenzgebiete, 1943.

  LEBER, GABRIELE, “Über tiefenpsychologische Aspekte von Märchenmotiven,” Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, vol. 4 (1955).

  LEYEN, FRIEDRICH VON DER, Das Märchen. Leipzig: Quelle und Meyer, 1925.

  LOEFFLER-DELACHAUX, M., Le Symbolisme des contes de fées. Paris, 1949.

  LÜTHI, MAX, Es war einmal—Vom Wesen des Volksmärchens. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962.

  —, Märchen. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1962.

  —, Volksmärchen und Volkssage. Bern: Francke, 1961.

  MALLET, CARL-HEINZ, “Die zweite und dritte Nacht im Märchen ‘Das Gruseln,’ ” Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, vol. 14 (1965).

  MENDELSOHN, J., “Das Tiermärchen und seine Bedeutung als Ausdruck seelischer Entwicklungsstruktur,” Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, vol. 10 (1961).

  —, “Die Bedeutung des Volksmärchens für das seelische Wachstum des Kindes,” Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, vol. 7 (1958).

  OBENAUER, KARL JUSTUS, Das Märchen, Dichtung und Deutung. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1959.

  SANTUCCI, LUIGI, Das Kind—Sein Mythos und sein Märchen. Hanover: Schroedel, 1964.

  TEGETHOFF, ERNST, Studien zum Märchentypus von Amor und Psyche. Bonn: Schroeder, 1922.

  ZILLINGER, G. “Zur Frage der Angst und der Darstellung psychosexueller Reifungsstufen im Märchen vom Gruseln,” Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, vol. 12 (1963).

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