Bettelheim's Analysis Of Disturbed Children

Bettelheim is an educator and therapist of severely disturbed children. Bettelheim’s main task was to restore meaning to the children’s lives. He shows the approach to the psychological problems and how it relates to the fairy tales. Bettelheim makes some agreeable points and debatable points in his analysis of fairy tales. An agreeable point Bettelheim makes is as “appealing as naïveté is, it is dangerous to remain naïve all one’s life.” If a person is naïve all their life, they could fall into many dangerous situations. Such as someone could be kidnapped if they are naïve enough to get into a stranger’s car with the promise of a gift. Another dangerous situation a naïve person could come across is getting poisoned because they took candy from a stranger. …show more content…
Bettelheim makes a good point when he says the “Grandmother is not free of blame.” The Grandmother is not free of blame because she should be acting like a good role model and shouldn’t spoil Red Cap since it isn’t good for her. Red Cap will end up growing up to be naïve and spoiled. Grandparents are supposed to protect, teach, and feed their grandchild. Little Red Cap’s Grandmother failed at all these tasks when Red Cap met the first wolf. The Grandmother was unable to protect Red Cap the first time, didn’t teach Red Cap how to deal with the wolf, and didn’t feed Red Cap. These are all agreeable points Bettelheim makes in his analysis of fairy tales. However, Bettelheim makes some disagreeable, dubious, and incorrect insights in his analysis on “Blue Beard,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and