Fairy Tales Part 2
Fairy Tales Part 2
For Jung, "Archetypes were and still are living psychic forces….” The archetypes have a general outline and content; it is only when they are manifest for an individual or as part of a story that they become concrete. The archetype serves as a foil to explore issues that are manifest in our lives without having a direct confrontation. Fairy tales offer a way to explore types of people, wise old women who are good or evil--the proverbial evil step mother--or wise old men who are white wizards or black as illustrated in the Lord of the Rings. These figures give children and those who read the story to them the opportunity to work out emotions and ideas that might be too scary to take on directly. Jung believed that stories and myths were essential elements in our ability to be healthy and could help to make sense of things that otherwise might be opaque or confusing. He said, "That is why it is so extremely important to tell children fairy tales and legends…these things are instrumental symbols with whose help unconscious contents can be …{channeled} into consciousness, interpreted, and integrated.”
I like Jung's approach to the possibility of an afterlife, dreams, ghosts, visions and hallucinations. He believes the unconscious knows more than the conscious mind. Much of what we consider to be paranormal phenomena or messages is the unconscious coming in to consciousness. He shares this view with Freud who said, "The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its inner most nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our senses." These contents lend themselves to the wonderful fantasies that exist in stories and tales the world over. They are continually reformulated and updated in contemporary books and movies for children and adults and in the fantasy worlds of computer games.
Fairy tales and related stories offer an opportunity to practice thinking about issues, behavior and their possible consequences in the safety of a bed time reading or a library story time. The variation in the stories is immense, but there are also underlying commonalities that exist all over the world and in all cultures. Jung says, "No archetype can be reduced to a simple formula. It is a vessel which we can never empty, and never fill. It has a potential existence only, and when it takes place in matter, it is no longer what it was. It persists throughout the ages and requires interpreting ever anew." There are always new stories and new children to enjoy them along with the traditional tales of the Brothers Grim, Hans Christian Andersen and other authors. In more contemporary literature J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy or Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Earth Sea Trilogy take full advantage of the qualities of fairy tales and archetypes. All of these tales provide insights into the human condition.
For Jung, "Archetypes were and still are living psychic forces….” The archetypes have a general outline and content; it is only when they are manifest for an individual or as part of a story that they become concrete. The archetype serves as a foil to explore issues that are manifest in our lives without having a direct confrontation. Fairy tales offer a way to explore types of people, wise old women who are good or evil--the proverbial evil step mother--or wise old men who are white wizards or black as illustrated in the Lord of the Rings. These figures give children and those who read the story to them the opportunity to work out emotions and ideas that might be too scary to take on directly. Jung believed that stories and myths were essential elements in our ability to be healthy and could help to make sense of things that otherwise might be opaque or confusing. He said, "That is why it is so extremely important to tell children fairy tales and legends…these things are instrumental symbols with whose help unconscious contents can be …{channeled} into consciousness, interpreted, and integrated.”
I like Jung's approach to the possibility of an afterlife, dreams, ghosts, visions and hallucinations. He believes the unconscious knows more than the conscious mind. Much of what we consider to be paranormal phenomena or messages is the unconscious coming in to consciousness. He shares this view with Freud who said, "The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its inner most nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our senses." These contents lend themselves to the wonderful fantasies that exist in stories and tales the world over. They are continually reformulated and updated in contemporary books and movies for children and adults and in the fantasy worlds of computer games.
Fairy tales and related stories offer an opportunity to practice thinking about issues, behavior and their possible consequences in the safety of a bed time reading or a library story time. The variation in the stories is immense, but there are also underlying commonalities that exist all over the world and in all cultures. Jung says, "No archetype can be reduced to a simple formula. It is a vessel which we can never empty, and never fill. It has a potential existence only, and when it takes place in matter, it is no longer what it was. It persists throughout the ages and requires interpreting ever anew." There are always new stories and new children to enjoy them along with the traditional tales of the Brothers Grim, Hans Christian Andersen and other authors. In more contemporary literature J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy or Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Earth Sea Trilogy take full advantage of the qualities of fairy tales and archetypes. All of these tales provide insights into the human condition.