Posted by Daisym on October 8, 2007, at 0:05:07
In reply to Re: Fairy Tales » happyflower, posted by Phillipa on October 7, 2007, at 23:42:47
The major message in Bruno Bettelheim's work is that fairy tales should be graphic and clearly have a good guy and a bad guy. We water down children's stories now so that kids don't get scared but the whole point of a fairy tales was to teach a lesson.
I find myself reacting to the phrase "silver lining" -- that sounds different to me than discussing the adaptive characteristics which were perhaps strengthened by the environment of abuse. A silver lining implies something good imbedded in a negative experience - a "saving grace" if you will. Speaking only for myself - there was nothing good about being raped repeatedly.
I find these kinds of paper assignments reductive - trying to take an awful experience and simplify it down to the left over positive parts. I think that is the teacher wishing (hoping and needing) something positive to help justify these acts somehow. It is an innately human hope. We have a very hard time tolerating that bad things happen for no good reason to people who didn't deserve for them to happen. I think looking for the positives is just yet another way to deny how destructive child abuse is.
poster:Daisym
thread:787547
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070929/msgs/787765.html