Fairy tales sí, myths no: Bruno Bettelheim’s antithesis

A. Dundes is consequently eager to praise those few scholars who do undertake psychoanalytic studies of folklore. Dundes cites Bruno Bettelheim’s acclaimed study of the Grimm tales, The Uses of Enchantment, as one of “the few bright spots in the history of the psychological study of folklore in the United States”. Dundes shows that Bettelheim sometimes confuses myths with folktales. He also shows that Bettelheim wrongly assumes the universality of tale types. Dundes’ main criticism is that Bettelheim at once ignores most of his psychoanalytic predecessors and outright plagiarizes others! In the first place Bettelheim is distinctive in pitting myths against fairy tales. In the second place Bettelheim is distinctive in conspicuously favoring fairy tales over myths. In the third and final place Bettelheim does not merely prefer fairy tales to myths, as he is surely entitled to do, but inexplicably disregards contemporary Freudian approaches to myths in so doing.