THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT
by BRUNO BETTELHEIM 328 pages. Knopf. $12.50.
Once, in a certain country, there lived a great sage named Bruno Bettelheim. Rich in experience, wise beyond his 72 years, Dr. Bettelheim had survived the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald to become the most celebrated child psychologist of his time. He had written of autism in infants and prejudice in adults, of social change and mental unbalance, and each book had become a classic. Now he turned his searching intelligence upon a rich and neglected topic: the fairy tale.
In The Uses of Enchantment Dr. Bettelheim finds that these adventures are not mere bedtime stories. They are life divined from the inside. Once decoded they can be apprehended as allegories of unconscious terror and yearning. "To the child," Bettelheim writes in this provocative and quirky book, "and to the adult who, like Socrates, knows that there is still a child in the wisest of us, fairy tales reveal truths about mankind and himself."
Animistic Universe. One of these truths concerns the duality of human response. A child's mother is usually perceived as benign and loving. But she may also be seen as arbitrary and punitive. In the tales, this harsher figure can be masked as a witch or wicked stepmother. The father, alternately protective and threatening, is usually cast in the role of giant or king. In these guises, the author believes, parents may be disliked and defeated without guilt or remorse.
Another truth concerns the child's profound craving for the miraculous. The very young live in an animistic universe, where chairs have souls and conversations take place with dolls and trees. Fairy tales mirror these credences —but place them in perspective. Through the nerves the child learns that a kick at a door hurts the foot, not the door. Through the narratives a child understands that the supernatural belongs, in the words of the Grimms' Frog Prince, "in the old days, when wishing still helped." When actuality intrudes too abruptly upon the child's world, the price may be prohibitive. Argues Bettelheim: "Many young people, who today suddenly seek escape in drug-induced dreams, who apprentice themselves to some guru ... or who in some other fashion escape from reality into daydreams... were prematurely pressed to view reality in an adult way."