Fairy Tales: "Fairy tales and Psychology"

The relationship between fairy tales and psychology has many connections by consciousness, psychosexual stages of development, and defensive mechanisms.  Carl Jung also came up with idea of the collective unconscious and many archetypes that appear in fairy tales.  The collective unconscious is proposed to be an experience or memory that all of us share, for example we all have the experience of being embarrassed once in our lives and it is something that lives in our unconscious.  It might be believed that fairy tales are related to our dreams and that might be how they were written and why the relate to all of us in way or another.

The father of psychoanalysis Freud and Jung both studied fairy tales to better understand the human mind.  For example, a lot of fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel represent the transformation from the oral psychosexual stage to a higher stage of development.  The oral stage representing the time whe children are very dependent on their parents for food and care.  The go through the experience of being pushed out into the world.  This is also a good tale to represent Freud's theories on how the relate to the "id" the pleasure principle of our brain.  The "id" is best represented in small children because all they do is think of what they want, for example, food, toys, and attention.  In this tale they are forced to act on their "ego" which is their reality principle, which means they have to be acting upon their thoughts.  Hansel did this in the first part of the story by realizing he would have to find the way home and left pebbles to find his way back.  Gretel used her ego at the end of the story to get them out of trouble.
Their are also archetypes that represent something in all the stories they appear in.  For example, their is the primeval forest which appears a lot in fairy tales represents the unconscious.
Some psychologists use fairy tales in psychotherapy.  Adults have favorite fairy tales as well, and can enjoy them as much as children.  A favorite story can represent a reason why they like hearing the story. A specific character can represent someone in their life.  They can also see themselves as the enemy which must be defeated.  Because of what and who characters represent in our lives on the psychoanalysis front, it is easy to find a source of pain or a hidden secret within the fairy tales a person enjoys or dislikes.
I enjoyed Dr. Mazeroff's  lecture, and learned where to connect the dots in fairy tales. I also saw a lot of connections in the defense mechanism developed in the mind, in some fairy tales.  Also how he related the archetypes to those seen in the modern fairy tales like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.  Also how some of the archetypes represent the unconscious or our darker side.  There is also the same type of family romance in fairy tales but explained in a simpler way.  Everything in a fairy tale is explained simpler than in real life which is why it is so easy to get inside someone's  through their fairy tales.  Fairy tales are a simpler version of how our lives should be with the small exaggeration of marrying a prince and being very wealthy, sometimes all we can hope for is to succeed as far as we can.  That is what fairy tales give us hope, through the fairy tales that are mentally right and great in preparing us for the future.
Fractured Fairy Tales: Hansel and Gretel