Bruno Bettelheim

A Response to “The Child’s Need for Magic”

Bruno Bettelheim, in his essay “The Child’s Need for Magic”, states that although fairy tales and myths help children understand the world on their own terms, children have more empathy with fairy tales due to children’s animistic thinking that they were born with. After reading Bruno Bettelheim’s essay, I was intrigued by Bettelheim’s view that fairy tales give more empathy for children to understand the world on their own terms than myths do. Myths and fairy tales have the same purposes in a society which help people to learn lessons from past mistakes and identify certain values in those stories. However, different story themes give children different levels of cognition. Key points how Bettelheim distinguishes between myths and fairy tales are that those two genres

In a well-known Greek mythology, each god’s characteristic is explicitly illustrated by mythology itself. For example, Athena’s kind and brave, but stingy characteristics are literally described in Greek mythology. Therefore, a myth is more concerned about its storyline. On contrast, a fairy tale is made-up about supernatural beings and the ending is implied in the story. Thus, children can imagine and conjecture the answers by themselves through plots of fairy tales. In the “Beauty and Beast”, the author Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve never used ostensive words to describe the protagonist, Belle, does the right thing or praise Belle if she has a great virtue. Children through exploring characters’ behaviors can understand the author’s implied meaning that the “real charm comes from the inside”. Thus, fairy tales show better performance in fostering children’s creativities and developing their