ABSTRACT
Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim shows how fairy tales reveal to us the true concerns in a child’s unconscious. One of the most prevalent themes dealt with in fairy tales is the split between the good and the bad mother. Married couples think this about each other; children think it about parents; parents think it about their children. Hate, sometimes manifested as the desire for the death of a loved one, is often the only means we have of separating ourselves from others. Fantasies of a loved one’s death serve as compensation for a relationship in which the lives and minds of two people are too closely intertwined. Hate also sustains us when the pain of loss is too great to tolerate. It intervenes until another feeling can take its place. Hate developed side by side with love because in order to have friends, you need to have enemies.
