This was originally posted on the Transmundane Press blog for the anthology “After the Happily Ever After”, published December 2016
Bruno Bettelheim has had a bad press. He’s been pilloried for extending the influence of nurture much further than we’re comfortable with. He was even so unfashionable as to believe we could all be nurtured by exposure to stories. In The Uses of Enchantment he puts it like this:
“Explaining to a child why a fairy tale is so captivating… destroys… the story’s enchantment. Adult interpretations rob the child of the opportunity… through repeated hearing and ruminating about the story, to cope successfully with a difficult situation. We grow, we find meaning in life and security in ourselves, by having understood and solved personal problems on our own, not by having them explained to us by others.” Continue reading “Author News: A Grace Given in Sorrow – Stories as Soulcraft with Edward Cooke”
Recent Comments