Behavior: Terrible Tales

Coping with fear of infanticide

Hansel and Gretel are abandoned by their father and stepmother in a forest. Snow White is pursued by an assassin sent by her stepmother, the Queen, and then by the Queen herself. Fairy tales are, in fact, full of parents and stepparents with a murderous bent toward kids. So why do children continue to read them? Manhattan Psychoanalyst Dorothy Bloch, 66, believes she knows why: the small child has an "almost built-in" fear of infanticide, which these hoary horror stories help expunge.

Bloch's view is part of her new book, So the Witch Won't Eat Me (Houghton Mifflin;...

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