474
PARTISAN REVIEW
denied. Where's his story-line? Editorial deadlines impend. "Big deal
you say, " he declares, "but it's a hassle for me because I got responsibil–
ities
to
the big guys. They pay me my advance and I better come across
with my pound of concepts, right?" Where
Kentucky Ham
is not
simply embarrassing in its arrogant superficiality, it is simply distaste–
ful.
NEIL SCHMITZ
THE USES OF ANALYSIS
THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT: THE MEANING AND IMPORTANCE
OF FAIRY TALES·.
By Bru no Bettelhei m. Alfred
A.
Knopf. $12.50.
In his beautifully titled book
The Uses of Enchantment
Dr.
Bruno Bettelheim applies "the insights of depth analysis to our
favorite fairy tales." He discovers once again, that poets say what they
didn't know they knew and proves that the tellers of these ancient
stories have "given body in symbolic form" to their, and our, psycho–
logical processes. Dr. Bettelheim argues persuasivel
y
that children
unconsciously understand this unconscious content, and that they are
deeply and essentially benefited by it but Dr. Bettelheim may fail
to
convince us of the claim, implied by his subtitle, that
this
is "The
Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales."
Where the poet's figure meets the psychiatrist's language in mid–
sentence the effect can seem funny in a charming, or in a silly way, for
instance: "Internally, the pigs' actions show progress from the id–
dominated personality to the super-ego controlled personality [but]
only the third and oldest pig has learned
to
behave in accordance with
the reality principle." Or: "The blood oozing out of [Cinderella'S]
slippers is but another symbolic equation of slipper-vagina bleeding as
in menstruation." Dr. Bettelheim says that the prince's failure to notice
the blood at first points to his castration anxiety.
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