Too bad that Bruno Bettelheim has been (posthumously) debunked, dethroned, and defenestrated--metaphorically. Just as "da Bears aren't da same wid'out Ditka" our modern world is missing a font of wisdom as well as the poet laureate of the fairy tale. Bruno's is a long,long story, but I think he would have something to say about a scourge of our present day: the abduction and abuse of little girls. I live in Florida where this is a common place event. Today's child psychologists and educators frown on Grimm Brothers fairy tales. Way too scary for little children. (BB had a different view, clearly and intelligibly laid out in his book
Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, ISBN 0-679-72393-5 for the Vintage Books Edition of 1989. This was originally published by Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1976. BB felt that children can mature better if they can address primitive fears, and that socially mature material like fairy tales facilitates this process.)
Let's look closely at the most famous fairy tale of all: Little Red Riding Hood. Does it tell us adults anything? Does it tell children anything? Does it help children in any way? Does it hurt them?
Little Red Riding Hood by the Brothers Grimm
: "Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by every one who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else. So she was always called Little Red Riding Hood. One day her mother said to her, "Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing. And when you go into her room, don't forget to say, good-morning, and don't peep into every corner before you do it."I will take great care, said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand on it.
The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village, and just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, a wolf met her. Little Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him. "Good-day, Little Red Riding Hood," said he.
"Thank you kindly, wolf."
"Whither away so early, Little Red Riding Hood?"
"To my grandmother's."
"What have you got in your apron?"
"Cake and wine. Yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger."
"Where does your grandmother live, Little Red Riding Hood?"
"A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood. Her house stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below. You surely must know it," replied Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf thought to himself, "What a tender young creature. What a nice plump mouthful, she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both." So he walked for a short time by the side of Little Red Riding Hood, and then he said, "see Little Red Riding Hood, how pretty the flowers are about here. Why do you not look round. I believe, too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing. You walk gravely along as if you were going to school, while everything else out here in the wood is merry." Little Red Riding Hood raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere, she thought, suppose I take grandmother a fresh nosegay. That would please her too. It is so early in the day that I shall still get there in good time. And so she ran from the path into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper into the wood. Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother's house and knocked at the door.
"Who is there?"
"Little Red Riding Hood," replied the wolf. "She is bringing cake and wine. Open the door."
"Lift the latch," called out the grandmother, "I am too weak, and cannot get up."
The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the grandmother's bed, and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap, laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.
Little Red Riding Hood, however, had been running about picking flowers, and when she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on the way to her
She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself, oh dear, how uneasy I feel to-day, and at other times I like being with grandmother so much.
She called out, "Good morning," but received no answer. So she went to the bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face, and looking very strange. "Oh, grandmother," she said, "what big ears you have."
"The better to hear you with, my child," was the reply.
"But, grandmother, what big eyes you have," she said.
"The better to see you with, my dear."
"But, grandmother, what large hands you have."
"The better to hug you with."
"Oh, but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have."
"The better to eat you with."
And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up Little Red Riding Hood.When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he lay down again in the bed, fell asleep and began to snore very loud. The huntsman was just passing the house, and thought to himself, how the old woman is snoring. I must just see if she wants anything.
So he went into the room, and when he came to the bed, he saw that the wolf was lying in it. "Do I find you here, you old sinner," said he. "I have long sought you."
Then just as he was going to fire at him, it occurred to him that the wolf might have devoured the grandmother, and that she might still be saved, so he did not fire, but took a pair of scissors, and began to cut open the stomach of the sleeping wolf.
When he had made two snips, he saw the Little Red Riding Hood shining, and then he made two snips more, and the little girl sprang out, crying, "Ah, how frightened I have been. How dark it was inside the wolf."And after that the aged grandmother came out alive also, but scarcely able to breathe. Little Red Riding Hood, however, quickly fetched great stones with which they filled the wolf's belly, and when he awoke, he wanted to run away, but the stones were so heavy that he collapsed at once, and fell dead.Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf's skin and went home with it. The grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine which Little Red Riding Hood had brought, and revived, but Little Red Riding Hood thought to herself, as long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.
It is also related that once when Little Red Riding Hood was again taking cakes to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and tried to entice her from the path. Little Red Riding Hood, however, was on her guard, and went straight forward on her way, and told her grandmother that she had met the wolf, and that he had said good-morning to her, but with such a wicked look in his eyes, that if they had not been on the public road she was certain he would have eaten her up. "Well," said the grandmother, "we will shut the door, that he may not come in." Soon afterwards the wolf knocked, and cried, "open the door, grandmother, I am Little Red Riding Hood, and am bringing you some cakes."
But they did not speak, or open the door, so the grey-beard stole twice or thrice round the house, and at last jumped on the roof, intending to wait until Little Red Riding Hood went home in the evening, and then to steal after her and devour her in the darkness. But the grandmother saw what was in his thoughts. In front of the house was a great stone trough, so she said to the child, take the pail, Little Red Riding Hood. I made some sausages yesterday, so carry the water in which I boiled them to the trough. Little Red Riding Hood carried until the great trough was quite full. Then the smell of the sausages reached the wolf, and he sniffed and peeped down, and at last stretched out his neck so far that he could no longer keep his footing and began to slip, and slipped down from the roof straight into the great trough, and was drowned. But Little Red Riding Hood went joyously home, and no one ever did anything to harm her again." English translation by Margaret Hunt;
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/grimm/redridinghood.html.
The sexual predator lives among us and presents a socially acceptable appearance. And, since our politically correct society encourages diversity of all sorts, what is socially acceptable appearance today is broader than in years past. Many sexual predators are so labelled from actions they committed years and years before: Romeo and Juliet crimes. Many live within the household: the rich and beneficent uncle in
Monsoon Wedding. Many are locked away for good. But that still leaves enough of these wolves to harm our children on a daily basis. Granted, many victims are not murdered. But all are injured severely. The four legged wolf has been eradicated in most parts of America. In fact, it is being reintroduced as an important part of the ecosystem in some states. (The increasing problem of deer overpopulation and attendant auto accidents, crop damage, landscaping damage, and rising threat of cervid wasting disease calls for some sort of predator. With the popularity of deer hunting on the wane, and the dense populations of humans sharing the deer habitat the human is less able to fill that role. So I suppose it is just a matter of time and we will hear wolves howling in the night.)
But a much more deadly, two legged variety of wolf is out and about. And our children are their prey.
Protecting Kids From Predators: Signs of Abuse, What to Do.
Thursday, August 17, 2006 By Colette Bouchez; http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,209058,00.html.
"Now if you're thinking this means cautioning your children about taking candy from strangers and holding their hand extra tight in the shopping mall -- well, you're only partly right. According to BJS (U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics) , assault by a stranger accounts for just 3 percent of molestations in children under the age of 6, and just 5 percent in children aged six to 11.
Since winning the child's trust is part of the abuse pattern, the vast majority of sexual abuse occurs with adults the child knows and comes to trust. And it often occurs right in their home.
"Sexual offenders are not 'dirty old men' or strangers lurking in alleys. More often, they are known and trusted by the children they victimize, and frequently are members of the family," says Esther Deblinger, PhD, a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, and the developer of a treatment for childhood sexual abuse.
Amaranth says the abuser can just as easily be a neighbor, a close family friend, a baby sitter, a soccer coach, a scout leader, or anyone in a position of trust and authority.
While experts caution parents to be vigilant about all those who seek exclusive contact with their children, they also caution against starting a "witch hunt" for anyone who is nice to their kid.
"The message you don't want to give your child is that the world is a bad or scary place -- or that they should be afraid of everyone who is nice to them," says Amaranth.
So how do you strike a balance between protecting your child and encouraging growth and trust?
It begins, say experts, by building awareness and trust into your own relationship with your children."
This article states BJS data that only five per cent of sexual assaults in children age six to eleven are committed by strangers. That does not seem intuitively correct. But I suspect that the data are including a broad range of assaults. If one took abduction for sexual purposes and murder for the subset, I believe the number of such crimes committed by strangers would be much, much higher than five per cent. These numbers are hard to come by, or at least so far it has seemed that way to me. And there is a continual back round noise generated by people who oppose such "panic incitement" on the part of media and concerned parents. Some of the counter talk is at a minimum strange. A paranoid person might think the wolves preying on children have an advocacy group. And indeed, there have been recent cases where family members covered for a sexual predator and likely facilitated murder of a child--right here in Florida.
Predator Panic: A Closer Look: Special Report
Ben Radford
Volume 30.5, September / October 2006; http://www.csicop.org/si/show/predator_panic_a_closer_look/
Recidivism Revisited:
"Much of the concern over sex offenders stems from the perception that if they have committed one sex offense, they are almost certain to commit more. This is the reason given for why sex offenders (instead of, say, murderers or armed robbers) should be monitored and separated from the public once released from prison. While it’s true that serial sex offenders (like serial killers) are by definition likely to strike again, the reality is that very few sex offenders commit further sex crimes.
The high recidivism rate among sex offenders is repeated so often that it is accepted as truth, but in fact recent studies show that the recidivism rates for sex offenses is not unusually high. According to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics study (“Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994”), just five percent of sex offenders followed for three years after their release from prison in 1994 were arrested for another sex crime. A study released in 2003 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that within three years, 3.3 percent of the released child molesters were arrested again for committing another sex crime against a child. Three to five percent is hardly a high repeat offender rate.
In the largest and most comprehensive study ever done of prison recidivism, the Justice Department found that sex offenders were in fact less likely to reoffend than other criminals. The 2003 study of nearly 10,000 men convicted of rape, sexual assault, and child molestation found that sex offenders had a re-arrest rate 25 percent lower than for all other criminals. Part of the reason is that serial sex offenders—those who pose the greatest threat—rarely get released from prison, and the ones who do are unlikely to re-offend. If released sex offenders are in fact no more likely to re-offend than murderers or armed robbers, there seems little justification for the public’s fear and the monitoring laws targeting them. (Studies also suggest that sex offenders living near schools or playgrounds are no more likely to commit a sex crime than those living elsewhere.)
While the abduction, rape, and killing of children by strangers is very, very rare, such incidents receive a lot of media coverage, leading the public to overestimate how common these cases are."
Italics and bold face are mine. Here is a suggestion of a sexual offenders' advocacy. Well, ours is a big country with room for a lot of people. Right.
By now I am sure you want to know more about Bruno Bettelheim, so I include the following discussion of his biographer's slant on the subject. This is courtesy of :
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/01/26/reviews/970126.boxer.html; Sarah Boxer reviewing Richard Pollak's book, January 27, 1997, for the New York Times.
THE CREATION OF DR. B A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim.By Richard Pollak.Illustrated. 478 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $28.
"Bruno BETTELHEIM'S new biographer lays his cards on the table right away: he thinks Bettelheim was a pathological liar. Richard Pollak, the former executive editor and literary editor of The Nation, got interested in the famous psychotherapist and author in order to learn more about his own younger brother, who died on a family vacation in 1948 when he slipped through a hayloft chute during a game of hide-and-seek. The boy had been at the Orthogenic School for emotionally disturbed children at the University of Chicago for five years before he died, so, in 1969, Mr. Pollak figured Bettelheim, the director of the school, could tell him about his dead brother.
Instead, Bettelheim called Mr. Pollak's father a simple-minded ''schlemiel'' and his mother a false martyr. Then he bluntly announced that the child had committed suicide. And, he added, Mr. Pollak's mother was largely to blame, because she had rejected him at birth. ''What is it about these Jewish mothers?'' Bettelheim fumed.
Mr. Pollak left reeling. On reflection, though, something seemed fishy. He recalled that the hayloft his brother died in was so treacherous that he himself had almost fallen, too. And his mother, whatever her quirks, was not the harpy Bettelheim described. Mr. Pollak began exploring other options. What if the great Dr. Bettelheim, the champion of emotionally disturbed children and the author of ''The Uses of Enchantment,'' ''Freud and Man's Soul'' and ''The Empty Fortress,'' was in fact a bitter, sadistic, anti-Semitic, mother-hating liar?
That is the hypothesis Mr. Pollak follows in ''The Creation of Dr. B.'' Although Bettelheim declined to be interviewed for the book, Mr. Pollak interviewed two of Bettelheim's three children, his first wife and a slew of colleagues, editors, students and friends. And many of them agreed that, in the words of Jacquelyn Seevak Sanders, Bettelheim's successor at the Orthogenic School, ''you couldn't believe anything he said.''
One would be well advised to suspend belief when the biographer has so much animus. I am going to ask you beloved readers to read Bruno for yourself. Maybe he was a tortured soul--you might remember the cameo appearance in Woody Allen's mock documentary, Zelig (1983). Bruno Bettelheim accepted Woody Allen's invitation to appear as himself in the film. It presaged his tragic end by suicide March 13, 1990. He suffered the indignity of concentration camp life and later wrote about the experience. At least he was spared the indignity and pain of his biographer's cruelty. He helped a lot of people. His book on fairy tales helped me and my children. I know he would have had something to offer us, were he still here. WWBBD.
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