| This thesis is an examination of several familiar fairy tales interpreted from the standpoint of Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology. The dissertation argues that although Freud's depth psychology has been extensively applied to interpret children's literature in general and fairy tales in particular, a valuable range of critical insight is lost to the scholarly reader if the perspective of Individual Psychology is excluded. The text presents and exemplifies clarifying principles to compare and contrast Psychoanalysis and Individual Psychology as applied to the literature of fairy tales. Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment is the main source of psychoanalytic interpretation and it is Bettleheim's Freudian readings of "Hansel and Gretel", "Beauty and the Beast", "The Three Little Pigs", "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Goose Girl", "Cinderella", "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "The Sleeping Beauty" which are contrasted with Adlerian readings of the same tales. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)... |
