Bruno Bettelheim
The Uses of Enchantment, pp 3-41
- Who is the audience for Bettelheim's book?
- What are the respective roles of the literary and psychological aspects of fairy tales?
- What do children need to develop into emotionally healthy adults?
- How does literature meet this need?
- How do fairy tales meet this need, while other children's literature does not?
- Why do children of all types prefer fairy tales to other children's literature? How do we know that children like fairy tales?
- Why is death, and particularly the death of parents, so common in fairy tales?
- How do children achieve understanding of their conscious selves?
- How is the unconscious prevented from harming developing children?
- What is wrong with telling children that people are basically good?
- What is the basic effect of moral fairy tales? Of amoral fairy tales?
- What role does evil play in fairy tales? How do fairy tales encourage children to be good?
- Why is "and they lived happily ever after" comforting?
- Why are unrealistic fairy tales about lives very different from our own nonetheless meaningful? How does their lack of realism contribute to their meaning?
- Why is it important for parents to tell fairy tales to their children?
- How do fairy tales differ from myths? How are they similar?