ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the parallelism between the primary level of mental organization and the mother–son relationship as presented in fairy tales. It focuses on the folk tales' tradition of East-European Jews and how it reflects aspects of mother–son relationships as they function in their foundation matrix. The tale "The talking heart" is recorded in the Israeli Folktale Archive (IFA) and was told by Jews who arrived in Israel from Eastern Europe. Various idiomatic expressions of different languages include the word "heart". The Jewish mother stereotype is common among Jews and non-Jews around the world. Psychoanalytic literature dealing with mother–child relationships and with the process of separation distinguishes between sons and daughters' development. Several studies of the national character were published in the middle of the twentieth century, but almost disappeared later and were considered psychological reductionism until recently. Jewish tradition ennobles motherhood and the only role of the mothers in the European shtetl was to take care of their family.
