This little book consists of conversations between a psychologist and mothers of children (yes, there are a few fathers, too). The goal is to help parents live more easily with their children, by educating them to choose the best response in daily interactions.

Bettelheim uses a sort of Socratic method to get parents to ask the "right" questions. This book makes interesting although sometimes dated reading from a childcare expert who was radical in 1962, due to his openness in discussing various topics, such as masturbation, spanking, etc. He comes off as rather benevolently patronizing to the various women with whom he speaks.

Worth adding to the parenting bookshelf!

...but he blamed the parents, while reaearch has shown that many mental illnesses have a bio-chemicl bases.

Bettelheim discusses the particulars of many of our most treasured fairy stories (particularly the Brothers Grimm) and outlines how events in the stories do not explicitly state, but parallel the developmental stages in a child's life. Periods of human development such as toddlerhood, puberty, and young adulthood are conveyed through symbols such as colors, numbers, and animals. Bettelheim states that many fairy tales have a lesson to teach with a somewhat risque or violent story, and while acknowledging that this could make some parents uncomfortable, states that authors that have sought to temper these effects have actually ruined the teaching and palliative effects of these stories. All said, Bettelheim makes a strong case for fairy tales as teachers about life. The lessons; however, are presented in an abstract or fantasy way that allows children to detach from, and therefore externalize, their own life questions and problems.

It is the mark of brilliance when something commonplace, approached from a new angle, becomes a world of startling insight and fascination. Such is the case with Bruno Bettelheim's masterwork, The Uses of Enchantment (1975).

Bettelheim's book is a key to the apparently simple world of fairy tales, taking us deep inside the inner workings of many popular tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella, to name a few) and unlocking the powerful psychological contents hidden within.

Fairy tales, the author shows us, are actually powerful psychological messages for children, carefully packaged into a sweet-tasting pill of enchantment. Over thousands of years, Bettelheim says these stories have evolved into the best experiences (next to good parenting) that a child can have in its arduous struggle to mature into a successful adult.

I often use a pen to mark the most significant ideas and discoveries I encounter while reading; in this book, I found myself squiggling, starring, check-marking, and exclamating all over the place--the pages are chock-full of surprising revelations and sudden bursts of light around dark corners. Essential for parents, storytellers, psychologists, or any student of humanity, this book is a genuine classic, a fairy-tale come true.

By the way--for a discussion of archetypal elements in stories, this blows the Hero With 1,000 Faces out of the water.

For those who love the written word (and that would be anyone browsing here, I suspect), we all have the desire to infect others with our same literary enthusiasm. And study after study has shown that reading to children is best way to ensure children's success in school. So the question is not DO we read to children, but HOW and WHAT do we read to children.

The answer provided in this book is, I feel, the best. As parents and caretakers we have a natural and healthy instinct to protect children from harm. But if we think back to our own childhoods, we will find them inhabited by all sorts of irrational fears. And if we are realistic, we will admit that these cannot be entirely prevented. Nor, perhaps, ought they to be.

Bettleheim argues that the perils and deliverance from those childhood perils are suggested in fairy tales, though only indirectly. And it is their indirectness that makes them uniquely useful, because children are not always able to consciously understand and articulate their conflicts. And it is this very unspokenness, unrealized nature of the conflicts that makes them easier to grapple with.

This should give pause to any who seek to sanitize children's mythos from ALL depictions of violence. Children's thoughts are full of violence, no matter how idyllic one tries to make the child's circumstances. What we need to teach children is not that violence does not exist, but how to deal with both psychic and physical violence. And while fairy tales ARE violent, the violence is vengeful or retributive, but never senseless. Evil is punished and good wins out. And, as Bettleheim observes, adults are always punished for their rash resorts to violence and ill will, but children are always given opportunities to atone and restore.

Even if (as the reader from or-id asserts) childhood as a unique stage of development was denied in Mideival times, that does not mean that childhood was "invented" by Victorians. These are the same sorts of people who insist that romantic love was invented by French Troubaours. That is absurd and easily refuted by even a cursory review of ancient texts. We see romantic love as far back as we have written texts (see the Epic of Gilgamesh, for plenty of romantic love, some of which is illegal in some states). And for those who doubt that the ancient world was ignorant of the notion of childhood, I refer you to I Corinthians 13:11. Paul, at least, understood that children thought and behaved differently from adults, and I doubt that (inspired though he may have been) he was the only one to have figured it out.

Psychoanalysis has been mostly discredited in the psychological profession, but I think it has some value still. Whether Bettleheim's meanings seem obvious (red a symbol of loss of sexual innocence) or far-fetched (frogs representing sexual fulfillment), they are always thought-provoking. Even if you reject the suppositions of psychoanalysis, or have serious qualms about Bettleheim's career, I still maintain that this is a humane and fascinating book for anyone who loves children, and loves reading to children.

I would go further than Bettleheim on some points, however. Bettleheim believes that the surabondance of royalty themes in fairy tales is because of the child's initial belief that he is the center of the universe. And relatedly, the step-parent motif is a rebellion against the reality principle, when the formerly all-accepting, all-providing mother now demands obedience and chores. I think it goes back to something even more fundamental, more religious and mystical than Bettleheim probably believed and certainly more than he would have dared write about. I believe that we are all children of God, and as such truly DO have a royal parentage. Our mortal parents are custodians entrusted with our growth, but our true parents are God. This understanding, though obscured through a "veil of forgetfulness" still manages to leak out as -- in Wordsworth's phrase -- "intimations of immortality": "Not in entire forgetfulness/And not in utter nakedness/But trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God, who is our home:/Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"

If these intimations are correct, then ultimately all fairy tales are true. And a "happily ever after" ending awaits all of us who are just and faithful to the end.

The reviewers who praised this book didn't check the facts and neither did the author. In fact, the book is highly inaccurate both in its facts and conclusions. The book merely applies the same pseudopsychoanalysis as the subject applied to his "patients," including me.

I was a source for the book and nearly everything in it about me is totally wrong. I shared considerable information with the author following a 1990 article in the Washington Post I wrote detailing Bettelheim's unsupported claims and physical and psychological abuse of his wards. The author promised that I could control anything that appeared in the book about me. But the book came out with all sorts of unsourced untruths about me that the author never bothered to check with me. From the looks of them, I suspect some she made up and some she heard from Bettelheim's defenders who worked at the school and broke their professional code of silence to reveal "information" about a "patient." It evidently never occured to the author that these people may have wanted to smear me to save their own reputations. The author even had the nerve to state as fact how I was feeling, which is amazing because she never asked me. In fact, I never felt the way she said I felt.

The book just amounted to the same type of Freudian nonsense I was subject to at Bettleheim's school -- someone else telling you that you don't feel what you feel -- you really feel what I tell you you feel. The book even managed to completely misrepresent what I wrote in the Washington Post. I have been quoted in many publiciations on this and other matters but I have never seen anything so far from the truth. The author didn't like my thesis and couldn't get me on the facts, so she apparently made up her own.

Immediately upon the book's publication, I notified the publisher by letter of the book's errors, but the publisher never corrected them in subsequent printings. And no one even had the decency to answer my letter. To this very day, the company continues to sell a book it knows is inaccurate.

I simply wish to say that there would no controversy if thoughtful, sensitive people were in control of their own emotions and were objective enough to put Bruno Bettelheim and his times in perspecitve. This is one of the implicit themes of the book.The author, a journalist, has study the facts and has the intuition to understand as much as any biographer can at this time a complex suffering personality. I hope only that the time will come when such a understanding can be objectively drawn. But meanwhile the biographer has made at least this attentive and by no means unskeptical reader understand the controversy and the facts of the case are not always one and the same...

This book moved me deeply. Not only did it tell me a fascinating story about a man whose life span the century, but it moved me deeply. It's not a funny book, but it is a riveting one. Rather than pretending to know it all, the author takes her reader on an investigative journey: Who was the true Bettelheim? She shares her doubts as well as her discoveries some of which I shall never forget. And in the end, everything seems to fall into place - the good, the bad, everything human, I guess.

My English instructor had assigned us to analyize part of the book. As a non-English speaker, I really had hard time to read it. The ideas were not clear. Overall, I didn't like it at all.

It is a hard book describing situations people who live in a free society just don't have to face. It illuminates issues of personal choice in the face of overwhelming external pressure. I first read it eight years ago and I still remember it. The bit about the psychology of the Nazi salute was remarkable. Also his view on the nature of (and need for) work in a person's life is worth considering. I have lost my copy and am in the process of getting another copy to replace it. The highest accolade .. it is a book worth spending money on!

The unique perspective of Bettelheim, as a survivor of Nazi Concentration Camps, is invaluable to us today. How could people be so passive in such horrible conditions? What could have been different?

Bettelheim outlines his beliefs on how individuals must act when freedom is threatened, if freedom is to be maintained. We forget today how tenuous freedom can be.

I was fortunate to meet Dr. Bettelheim in his later life, and found the strength of the persona every bit as enlightening as this book. A remarkable book by a remarkable man. A man who overcame much and came to understand.

Unbelievable. Bettelheim -- who faked his academic credentials and invented his "data" out of thin air -- was unmasked as a fake years ago. (See Richard Pollak's book "The Creation of Dr. B"). His "research" blamed neglectful parents (and specifically cruel mothers) for causing autism in their children. It was an utterly false accusation that caused untold amounts of pain to the parents of disabled children. That the Free Press still has this fraud in print is appalling and indefensible.

From the beginning of this magnificent book until the last page, the reader will gain knowledge that is significant and of great importance. I highly recommend it to all mental health professionals seeking a deeper understanding of the psyche and the development of the personality. Often lambasted for his views that the child suffers from a lack of love from his or her parents, a truth that offends many support groups, Bettelheim captures a rarity - the truth - and expands upon it in ways that wil enlighten and expand the reader's vision.

Just recently Dr. James Dobson came on the radio reporting that an orphanage in Belgium was so understaffed that workers never had time to hold the babies, even when feeding them. Not surprisingly, ALL the babies suffered from pervasive arrested develpment--autism. For some reason no one gets mad at Dobson for describing the exact thing pointed out by Bettelheim. The only difference is that Bettelheim dared to suggest that there are neglectful mothers in the world who might behave just like the over-worked staff in the Belgium orphanage. The facts are there for all to see. All one has to do is open the damn book! Bettelheim simply provided a theoretical basis for Dobson's observations. Moreover, Bettelheim believed that ANY sort of trauma during a critical phase of develpment can lead to autism. On top of that, he believed that even minor trauma can lead to autism if an infant has a CONSTITUTIONAL PREDISPOSITION to autism.

People who read this book and get enraged and nauseated have chips of their shoulders. They're like ignorant Mau Mau's getting all excited over NOTHING.