Psychology of the Fairy Tales

Fuente:

http://adelacinderellainafairytaleworld.blogspot.com.es/2012/02/psychology-of-fairy-tales.html

Información:

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2012

Psychology of the Fairy Tales

 Each tale follows a path and in this path shows the changes of a person in this journey. It delivers a message as we go toward in our path we develop, we grow, we change and in the end we come back as a different person. In the end of our journey we have collected so much and we have changed so much so we understand the world in a different way. But each journey of each person is different but the similarity is that everyone has to go through the journey everyone has to go through the experience, through this path and everyone will return in the end but he will return changed as a person that has done its journey and has learned all the important stuff. This seems more like the path of our life’s, this is our journey and each of us will live it, experience different things in different ways but in the end we have to go back  there where we came from.

This week our guest lecture Dr. Mazeroff introduced and explained to us the interpretation of fairy tales from the psychological perspective. And this as Dr. Mazeroff did explain could not be explained better than from the perspective and interpretation of two most important schools of thoughts Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. Through they had different points of view on the psychology of how human mind function and perceive things or dreams, their ideas make you think. The first time that Jung met with Freud in 1906 they talked for 13 hours and as they would describe their talk as "interminable”.

The study of Myths and Fairy Tales started with Freud but not until 19 century. Freud believed that every explanation of fairy tales and dreams one would interpret as reflection of the persons own Id, Ego and Superego. Same as fairy tales dreams come from the persons subconscious. According to Freud fairy tales can be best explained in the psycho analysis of the explanation of( Id) that personify the pleasure, the( ego) the personifies the rational thinking, and the( superego) the moral behind every thought.

Jung interpretation of fairy tales goes through many psychological concepts such as the collective unconsciousness, the archetype, the synchronicity and the complex. The collective unconscious as a repository of racial memories encoded in cells and passed genetically. So according to Jung even though we are from different part of the world we do not share the same culture, language or religion, we embody same component of unconscious. Archetypes emerge in fairy tales or dreams for example the “shadow” that personify part of us that it is negative or underdeveloped, etc. Despite our diversity we all perceive the same archetype figure described in fairy tales such as the “evil step-mother” etc. Jung accepts that every detail in fairy tales has a purpose and delivers a message.

Fairy tales, explain phenomena that connect the present with the past, teaches lessons and delivers messages. According to Freud fairy tales express underlying conflict and developmental issue. According to Jung fairy tale express growth and transformation.

We can see dreams personalized in Fairy tales and Fairy tales personalized in dreams.

I would like to thank Dr. Mazeroff for his interesting lecture. And for all the interested in Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud ideas and how they affected each other, I would recommend the  new movie “ A Dangerous Method” .

Sources:

Dr. Mazeroff’s lecture

Class notes