![]() ![]() "We want our children to believe that, inherently, all men are good," he wrote. Bettelheim's view was that fairy tales in their original form address even a modern child's deepest psychological needs. In 1975 the child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim published his groundbreaking and widely influential The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. But would you want to read it to your child? It's "The Stubborn Child," from the Grimms' celebrated Nursery and Household Tales. This isn't something made up by a parent frazzled to the point of near-sadism. After she had done that, the arm withdrew, and then, for the first time, the child had peace beneath the earth." In the end "the child's mother had to go to the grave herself and smack the little arm with a switch. ![]() ![]() He would stick his right arm up through the ground, despite repeated efforts to cover it over with fresh dirt. Yet even from the grave his wilfulness continued to assert itself. ONCE UPON a time there was a little boy who was so disobedient that when he got sick the good Lord allowed him to die. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood By Maria Tatar Princeton University Press 295 pp. ![]()
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