Psychoanalytic Theories in Children Literature

Compiled by:
Sekarlangit Umastuti

University of Pamulang | ENGLISH DEPARTMENT 2011

PREFACE
With the aim to add more understanding about Children Literature theories and to
complete the assignment in Children Literatures class, I would like to present this paper,
which is entitled: Psychoanalytic Theories in Children Literature to all of you. Speaking
about psychoanalytic criticism in literature, I can say the theory adopts the methods of
"reading" employed by Sigmund Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that
literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the
author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. Through this
paper, there are also some theories regarding to psychoanalysis in reading text from Bruno
Bettelheim and Jacques Lacan and the connections with children literature. The theory from
Freud might be too hard to understand, so hopefully this paper can get through to our
understanding in analyzing children literary works. This paper will be divided into 4 parts;
preface, content, conclusion and references. Each part will be explained circumstantially so
that would lead to a much clearer understanding. I also investigate four-selected children
literary works, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White
to see the possibility of psychoanalytic phenomenons existence.
Last, I would like to say thanks to our Lord, Allah SWT, for the time given, so this
paper can be finished on time and I would like to say thanks to Mrs. Ruisah too, as our
lecturer, for her kindness for giving us such information in finishing this paper. Hopefully this
paper will bring knowledge more profound to us in understanding Psychoanalytic Theories
in Children literature. Thank you very much.

June 16, 2014

Psychoanalytic Theories in Children Literature

1. Introduction
What is psychoanalysis? We are sure that question has been wandering inside your
head. So, what is the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature, especially children
literature (since it becomes the main discussion of this paper)? Through this paper, we will
help you getting clearer understanding about all of that.
As we know, the founder of psychoanalysis theory was Sigmund Freud. He was (6
May 1856 23 September 1939) an Austrian neurologist who became known as the
founding father of psychoanalysis. According to his profession, we can simplify the definition
of psychoanalysis; it is a talking cure, which the language and narrative are fundamental to
the curing process. For further information, according to Merriam Websters definition:
Psychoanalysis: (noun)
A system of psychological theory and therapy that aims to treat mental disorders by
investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and
bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as
dream interpretation and free association.
Psychoanalytic is the adjective form of psychoanalysis. To make it simple, this
theorydesignates accordingly three things:
1. A method of mind investigation and especially of the unconscious mind;
2. A therapy of neurosis inspired from the above method;
3. A new stand-alone discipline which is based on the knowledge acquired from applying
the investigation method and clinical experiences.
Psychoanalysis was actually a psychotherapy method to cure mental illness and the
disorders of nervous system, like brain damage, amnesia, aphasia, migraines and any other
damage related to the brain, spinal cord, and nerves. In creating psychoanalysis, a clinical
method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a
psychoanalyst, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association
and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process.The
importance of free association is that the patients spoke for themselves, rather than
repeating the ideas of the analyst; they work through their own material, rather than
parroting another's suggestions'. Freud developed the technique as an alternative to
hypnosis, because he perceived the latter as subjected to more fallibility, and because
patients could recover and comprehend crucial memories while fully conscious. However,

Freud felt that despite a subject's effort to remember, a certain resistance kept him or her
from the most painful and important memories. He eventually came to the view that certain
items were completely repressed, and off-limits, to the conscious realm of the mind. He also
used dreams as one of his techniques at that time.
Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams. He argued that
the motivation of all dream content is wish-fulfillment, and that the instigation of a dream is
often to be found in the events of the day preceding the dream, which he called the day
residue. In the case of very young children, Freud claimed, this can be easily seen, as small
children dream quite straightforwardly of the fulfillment of wishes that were aroused in
them the previous day (the dream day).

2. Content
Now we move to the psychoanalytic theories in literature. Sigmund Freud was also
someone who appreciated culture, art and a bookworm during his youth. He loved reading a
lot of literary works and it leads us to a fact that he used literature as his research field at
the time he used it also as the illustration to prove his theories which he developed.
Through some prominent literary works, such as Hamlet (William Shakespeare), Oedipus
(Sophocles) and The Brother Karamazov (Dostoyevsky), he found some types of humans
matched his theories.In a nutshell, the key to understanding the history of psychoanalytic
literary criticism is to recognize that literary criticism is about books and psychoanalysis is
about minds. Therefore, the psychoanalytic critic can only talk about the minds associated
with the book.
Psychoanalytic literary criticism is a way of analyzing and interpreting literary works
that relies on psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalytic theory was developed by Sigmund
Freud to explain the workings of the human mind. In this field of literary criticism, the major
concepts of psychoanalytic theory, such as the idea of an unconscious and conscious mind,
the divisions of the id, ego, and superego, and the Oedipus complex, are applied to
literature to gain a deeper understanding of that work.
The object of psychoanalytic literary criticism, at its very simplest, can be the
psychoanalysis of the author or of a particularly interesting character in a given work. In this
directly therapeutic form, the criticism is very similar to psychoanalysis itself, closely
following the analytic interpretive process discussed in Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams
and other works. Critics may view the fictional characters as a psychological case study,
attempting to identify such Freudian concepts as Oedipus complex, penis envy, Freudian
slips, Id, ego and superego (unconscious and conscious) and so on, and demonstrate how
they influenced the thoughts and behaviors of fictional characters.

There are three, and curiously, Freud spelled them out in his very first remarks on
literature in the letter to Fliess of October 15, 1897 in which he discussed Oedipus Rex. He
applied the idea of oedipal conflict to the audience response to Oedipus and to the
character of Hamlet, Hamlet's inability to act, and he speculated about the role of oedipal
guilt in the life of William Shakespeare. Those are the three people that the psychoanalytic
critic can talk about: the author, the audience, and some character represented in or
associated with a text. From the beginning of this field to the present, that cast of characters
has never changed: author, audience, or some person derived from the text.Those are the
three minds that the psychoanalytic critic addresses.
Sigmund Freud and the Unconscious
The unconscious mind is part of a theory developed by Sigmund Freud regarding the
storage of memories and experiences. Freud suggested that all memories exist in the
unconscious mind, dormant and unremembered but still helping to direct the actions of the
individual and shape his or her personality. These unremembered experiences are often
painful and troubling, and the unconscious mind acts as a safeguard in the individual's own
mind.
Freud's Three Levels of Mind
Before we can understand Freud's theory of personality, we must first understand
his view of how the mind is organized.
According to Freud, the mind can be divided into three different levels:
The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of
our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. A part of this includes our
memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time
and brought into our awareness. Freud called this the preconscious.
The preconscious mind is the part of the mind that represents ordinary memory.
While we are not consciously aware of this information at any given time, we can retrieve it
and pull it into consciousness when needed.
The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that
outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are
unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud,
the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are
unaware of these underlying influences.

Many of us have experienced what is commonly referred to as a Freudian slip. These

misstatements are believed to reveal underlying, unconscious thoughts or feelings. Consider
this example:
James has just started a new relationship with a woman he met at school. While
talking to her one afternoon, he accidentally calls her by his ex-girlfriend's name.
If you were in this situation, how would you explain this mistake? Many of us might
blame the slip on distraction or describe it as a simple accident. However, a psychoanalytic
theorist might tell you that this is much more than a random accident. The psychoanalytic
view holds that there are inner forces outside of your awareness that are directing your
behavior. For example, a psychoanalyst might say that James misspoke due to unresolved
feelings for his ex or perhaps because of misgivings about his new relationship.
This unconscious theory from Freud also leads us to a fact that his theory of
personality (id, superego and ego) work together to create complex human behaviors. This
theory of personality can bring us to the conclusion of why most authors of children
literature build the characters by considering the unconscious mind or the id of personality
which can be seen a lot in most childrens personalities. It is becausethe id is the only
component of personality that is present from birth. This aspect of personality is entirely
unconscious and includes of the instinctive and primitive behaviors. The id is driven by the
pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs.
If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension.
Freud viewed the unconscious as a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes
or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of
psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely
negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized
by its effectsit expresses itself in the symptom. For example, William Shakespeare
psychology condition in his third period, from 1601 to 1608, as one in which he felt that the
time was out of joint, that life was a fitful fever. His father died in 1601, after great
disappointments. His best friends suffered what he calls, in Hamlet, "the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune." The great plays of this period are tragedies, among which we may
instance Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. There are also some writers
who create great works during their sadness, as the matter of writing to bear the hurt and
pain they feel. This thing works the same with other artists like painters who sexually
depressed, yet they expressed it publicly (it contrasts with the moral, ego thingy) they
express it through paints and canvas. This is what we can call as sublimation method of
expressing the unconscious mind (until it creates art and literary works).

Bruno Bettelheim and the Oedipus complex

The Oedipal complex is a term used by Sigmund Freud in his theory of psychosexual
stagesof development to describe a boy's feelings of desire for his mother and jealously and
anger towards his father. Essentially, a boy feels like he is in competition with his father for
possession of his mother. He views his father as a rival for her attentions and affections.The
Oedipal complex occurs in the phallic stage of psychosexual development between the ages
of three and five. The term was named after the character in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex who
accidentally kills his father and marries his mother.
Bruno Bettelheim is a classical Freudian gives the example of Oedipus complex which
occurred in Cinderella story. It is unpleasantly to eventually find Oedipus complex in such a
Children literature work. But it is about finding the hidden message which indirectly affects
the children (if they find one). Just like a saying, what we read what we become. So this is
why there is literary criticism; to criticize such a literary work apart of its internal elements.
If we recall to the story of poor Cinderella living with her stepmother and sisters, the parent
figure, which is not actually Cinderellas mother represents the oedipal desire of children to
eliminate the parent of their own sex and thus pave the way for the relationship they
unconsciously desire with the parent of other sex. According to his explanation, Cinderellas
situation at the beginning of the story represents the self-disgust a child feels about her
desire to be loved by the parent of the opposite sex.
Bettelheim also explains about castration anxiety in Cinderella story. The slipper lost
near the end of the story represents castration anxiety which centers on her imagining that
originally all children had penises and that girls somehow lost theirs (Freud, 266), just as
Cinderella loses her slipper. The slipper represents the vagina and the prince symbolically
offers her femininity in the form of the golden slipper-vagina. This thing is described the
male acceptance of the vagina and love for the woman as the ultimate male validation of
the desirable of her femininity.

Explorations:
Choose a fairytale you remember particularly enjoying as a child. After reading a
psychoanalytical commentary about the tale, like Bettelheims Uses of Enchantment,
consider what your response might tell you about your preoccupations or fantasies as a
child. To what degree is it relevant that you might not have been conscious of the
unconscious aspects of this text?
1. We use Little Red Riding Hood to give responses toward Bettelheims Uses of
Enchantment essay. Youve got to go by the mill, which you can see right over there, and

hers is the first house on the right (Perrault 343). This line explains the girl with red hood
just told the stranger she met about her destination. Then the stranger, which is a bad wolf
walked to the location (grandmas house of the girl) to replace her granny so that this bad
wolf could eat her. According to Bruno Bettelheim, author of The Uses of Enchantment: The
Meaning and Importance of Fairytales, when a young village girl utters these words to a
stranger, they transform into a subconscious death wish aimed at the family matriarch in
order for the girl to bed her father. In his book, Bettelheim utilizes widely known Freudian
beliefs to argue the meaning behind every detail in Charles Perraults classic version of Little
Red Riding Hood. Specifically, he manipulates Little Reds irresponsible, yet innocent,
response to a stranger as her unconscious id struggling with an Oedipus complex. The storys
commonly understood moral is to warn youth against talking to strangers, however,
Bettelheim is an unreliable source that creates substance where it is simply not found. This
irresponsible side of the girl is relevant that we might not have been conscious that there is
the irresponsible side from the girl. This is because she was warned by her mother to not
talking to strangers, yet she did it.
2. We also used Snow White and Beauty and the Beast as some other explorations
regarding to Bettelheims Uses of Enchantment essay. In Bruno Bettelheim's essay, The Uses
of Enchantment, he explains the fairy tale of Snow White in a way which makes the reader
think critically. He makes the reader explore their mind to better understand a tale in a way,
which they have not explored.
This essay begins with Bettelheim talking about "Narcissus, who was a Greek god
who loved only himself, so much that he became swallowed up by his self-love." (Bettelheim
p202) With this statement Bettelheim begins to explain his reasoning with his Freudian or
oedipal perspective with this story. He explains this using Snow White and the wicked
stepmother. The wicked stepmother becomes jealous when Snow White begins her
transcend into a women. Snow White is becoming a beautiful woman and the wicked
stepmother is becoming older and older, making her less attractive. Snow White is
becoming older, more attractive and noticed. This sets up a competition for the fathers' love
between stepmother and daughter, creating what Bettelheim says is the oedipal
complex.The analogous stage for girls is known as the Electra complex in which girls feel
desire for their fathers and jealousy of their mothers. Belle in Beauty and the Beast is also
another example of Electra complex. We can see how Belle can be so brave in asking
permission to the Beast to come back to her house in a matter of her lovely father is lying on
bed, bearing his sickness. Belle also tries to attract her fathers attention to ask for a simple
gift (a rose), unlike the other 2 sisters of her who ask lavish stuff. We can sense her love
toward her father by being a sweet daughter. There is no other powerful thing, but love in
this world until in this case, a human can be so brave in facing a beast which can be so mad
(anytime) and do harm to her. So both Belle and Snow White have Electra complexes while

the first one is willingly to serve herself into a beasts dinner plate and the latter one is trying
to attract her fathers attention (in order to protect herself from her wicked stepmother).
With this, it helped us to better understand what was going on in the tale. The tale
was not just about a wicked stepmother or a fearful-looking beast. These are complicated
tales that involve critical reasoning between two people. One-person feels threatened by
the other, in this case the wicked stepmother is feeling threatened by the young beauty of
Snow White, while the other one is forced by fearful-looking beast to separate from her
family. It shows us that there will always be the story we had not bargained for.
Jacques Lacan and the Language of the Unconscious
The Unconscious is structured like a Language
For Lacan language is the necessary first step by which the child enters culture but is
also viewed as a sign system which organizes or shapes culture by directing what can be
known and recognized and what cannot. Language is conceived as the foundation of, or as
encapsulating, culture. Moreover, in Lacanian thought, the self and sexuality are socially
constructed in that there can be no sexed self - no masculine or feminine person prior to
the formation of the subject in language.
Some feminists hate Lacan because of his fixation with the phallus, others love him
because they claim that Lacan's thought provides a key to understanding the socialization
and symbolization processes which have shaped woman's specificity through the ages.
Lacan thought that sexual identity is not based on biological gender, or any other innate
factor, but is learned through the dynamics of identification and language.
Lacan borrows some ideas of linguistics that Freud did not have access to. The
structure of language, as we know, its grammar, is a set of unspoken rules-ones speakers
may even be unconscious of, for many people who have never formally learned grammar
nevertheless speak grammatically. These rules of grammar allow people to make
meaningful statements to one another. According to Lacan, then, the unconscious consists
of something like those grammatical rules. It is a set of hidden codes or conditions that
allow human beings to speak as and perceive them as individuals. For example, people see
themselves as being in control when they say I speak, which means I am the one who
chooses what to say, but actually their meaning is circumscribed by other components of
the entities they are part ort (I can be understood to be speaking only through my
relationship with, and subjection to, the meaning of the verb speak). It is because people
can speak only through a shared language, the I who speaks must always express a
communalvision rather than a unique private one.Lacan sees the Cinderella story as the
story of castration anxiety in the process of becoming themselves.

Explorations:
Choose a popular fairy tale that features a male hero, such as Jack and the Beanstalk or Puss
in Boots. Do the happy endings of these tales also require their heroes to accept
symbolically the power of the phallus? How are the endings of these tales like and unlike
tales such as Cinderella, in which young women are the central characters?
1. We used Puss in Boots to explore more about Lacan theories. The happy ending
of this tale requires a young boy, who is the son of a miller. When his father died,
this young boy receives nothing but the cat and he often complains bitterly of his
cat. It is because the other two older brothers of him fared very well. Then the
cat helps him to make this young boy a Prince of unknown land after he agreed
to give the cat a pair of boots. Then with all of the cats power, this young boy
can be the Prince and marry the daughter of the noble lord from another
kingdom. So yeah, we can see the happy ending from the main character after
the cat requires agreement from the power of phallus (male). In this case is the
King from another Kingdom. This ending shows similar thing that happened to
Cinderella. While Cinderella is accepted to be the Queen of the Prince after she
fits the slipper which belongs to her, the acceptance can be received only when
the owner of the phallus (the Prince) is so helplessly falling in love to her.

3. Conclusion
We can conclude that psychoanalytic theories have helped the readers to
understand the hidden message that is created through symbol and sentences made by the
authors. As for children literature, it is important to understand this thing, since the hidden
message may be noticed by the children.
How does all this relate to literature? Psychoanalytic criticism can tell us something
about how literary texts are actually formed, and reveal something of the meaning of that
formation. There are four kinds of psychoanalytical literary criticism. The focus of analysis
can be (1) the author of the work; (2) the work's contents; (3) the work's formal
construction; or (4) the reader.
Freud notes that literary texts are like dreams; they embody or express unconscious
material in the form of complex displacements and condensations. Literature is not a direct
translation of the unconscious into symbols that stand for unconscious meanings. Rather,
literature displaces unconscious desires, drives, and motives into imagery that might bear
no resemblance to its origin, but nonetheless expresses it.

Freudian psychoanalytic critics see the literary work as having a conscious and an
unconscious meaning, that is, the work has a surface meaning and then there is what the
work is really about. This kind of analysis can look at the unconscious motives of both
author and characters, and identify psychoanalytic features in the text, such as the existence
of an Oedipus complex.

4. References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/psychlit.php
http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/theory/psychoanalysis_in_literature.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurological_disorder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurological_disorder
http://www.freudfile.org/psychoanalysis/definition.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_association_(psychology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_interpretation#Freud
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-psychoanalytic-literary-criticism.htm
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-unconscious-mind.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/oindex/g/def_oedipuscomp.htm
https://bu.digication.com/wr150l8_kurban12/Little_Red_Riding_Hood_-_Paper_1
http://www.directessays.com/viewpaper/59810.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/eindex/g/def_electracomp.htm
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/sophocles/a/OedipusRex.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/consciousuncon.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/f/freudian-slip.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/personalityelem.htm
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/fourperiods.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis#Jacques_Lacan_and_Lacanian_psychoa
nalysis
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/psychoanalysis/articles/lacanian_psychoanalys
is.htm
http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/lacan.htm

TERMS
1: Neurologist: A neurologist is a medical doctor or osteopath who has trained in the
diagnosis and treatment of nervous system disorders, including diseases of the brain, spinal
cord, nerves and muscles.
2: Dream interpretation: Dream Interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to
dreams.
3: Free association: Free association is a technique used in psychoanalysis (and also in
psychodynamic theory) which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic
method of his mentor and coworker, Josef Breuer.
4: Psychopathology: Psychopathology is the scientific study of mental disorders, including
efforts to understand their genetic, biological, psychological, and social causes; effective
classification schemes (nosology); course across all stages of development; manifestations;
and treatment.
5: Hypnosis: Hypnosis is a psychological state with physiological attributes superficially
resembling sleep and marked by an individual's level of awareness other than the ordinary
conscious state.
6: Day residue:According to Freud's theory of dreams, day's residues are memory traces left
by the events and psychic processes of the waking state; they are used as raw material by
the dream-work that serves the wishes of the dreamer.
7: Dream day:the day before the dream, and from which it gathers its material.
8: Hamlet: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a
tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in
the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revenge Prince Hamlet is instructed to
enact on his uncle Claudius. Claudius had murdered his own brother, Hamlet's father King
Hamlet and then taken the throne, marrying his deceased brother's widow, Hamlet's
mother Gertrude.
10: The Brother Karamazov: The Brothers Karamazov (Russian: ,
Brat'yaKaramazovy, pronounced *bratjkrmazv]) is the final novel by the Russian
author Fyodor Dostoyevsky.The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set
in 19th century Russia, which enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and
morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set
against a modernizing Russia. Dostoyevsky composed much of the novel in StarayaRussa,
which inspired the main setting. Since its publication, it has been acclaimed as one of the
supreme achievements in literature.

13: Oedipus complex: The Oedipal complex is a term used by Sigmund Freud in his theory of
psychosexual stages of development to describe a boy's feelings of desire for his mother
and jealously and anger towards his father
15: Freudian slips: A Freudian slip, also called par praxis, is an error in speech, memory, or
physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of an unconscious
("dynamically repressed") subdued wish, conflict, or train of thought guided by the ego and
the rules of correct behavior. They reveal a "source outside the speech". The concept is thus
part of classical psychoanalysis.
23: Id, ego and superego (unconscious and conscious): Id, ego and super-ego are the three
parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche;
they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental
life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated
instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the
organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. The
super-ego can stop one from doing certain things that your id may want to do.
22: Oedipus Rex: Freud's Oedipus Complex is based on a supposedly deep-seated and
common male desire to sleep with one's mother. The term comes from the most famous
tragedy by Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (also known as Oedipus the king or Oedipus Tyrannus),
and one that Aristotle, a century later, held up as the paradigm of dramatic virtue. Despite
the importance of this play, nowhere in the Oedipus Rex do we encounter this desire to kill
one's father or to commit knowing incest.
16: Psychosexual stages of development: Proposed by the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund
Freud, the theory of psychosexual development describes how personality develops during
childhood. The stages are The Oral Stage(Age Range: Birth to 1 Year, Erogenous Zone:
Mouth), The Anal Stage (Age Range: 1 to 3 years, Erogenous Zone: Bowel and Bladder
Control), The Phallic Stage (Age Range: 3 to 6 Years, Erogenous Zone: Genitals), The Latent
Period (Age Range: 6 to Puberty, Erogenous Zone: Sexual Feelings Are Inactive), and The
Genital Stage (Age Range: Puberty to Death, Erogenous Zone: Maturing Sexual Interests).
17: Bruno Bettelheim: Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 March 13, 1990) was an
Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation
for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children.
18: Castration Anxiety: Castration anxiety is the fear of emasculation in both the literal and
metaphorical sense. Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the
penis; one of Sigmund Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theories.

19: Bettelheims Uses of Enchantment: The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and
Importance of Fairy Tales is a 1976 book by Austria-born American psychologist Bruno
Bettelheim in which he analyzes fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology.
21: Matriarch: A woman who controls a family, group, or government.