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The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual.

Bruno Bettelheim

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Bruno Bettelheim
Age: 86 †
Born: 1903
Born: August 28
Died: 1990
Died: March 13
Philosopher
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Process
Object
Rationalists
Makes
Obvious
Unrealistic
Nature
Inner
Device
Place
Concern
External
Important
Objects
Devices
World
Taking
Fairy
Information
Tales
Individual
Useful

More quotes by Bruno Bettelheim

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You can't teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.
Bruno Bettelheim
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The only effective way to help well-intentioned, intelligent persons to do the best they can in raising children is to encourage and guide them always to do their own thinking in their attempts at understanding and dealing with child-rearing situations and problems, and not to rely blindly on the opinions of others.
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From a child's play, we can gain understanding of how he sees and construes the world--what he would like it to be, what his concerns are, what problems are besetting him.
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Most advice on child-rearing is sought in the hope that it will confirm our prior convictions. If the parent had wished to proceedin a certain way but was made insecure by opposing opinions of neighbors, friends, or relatives, then it gives him great comfort to find his ideas seconded by an expert.
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Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because--despite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content--these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own.
Bruno Bettelheim
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The ability to read becomes devalued when what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one's life.
Bruno Bettelheim
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Whoever influences the child's life ought to try to give him a positive view of himself and of his world. The child's future happiness and his ability to cope with life and relate to others will depend on it.
Bruno Bettelheim
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A parent who from his own childhood experience is convinced of the value of fairy tales will have no difficulty in answering his child's questions but an adult who thinks these tales are only a bunch of lies had better not try telling them he won't be able to related them in a way which would enrich the child's life.
Bruno Bettelheim
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Play permits the child to resolve in symbolic form unsolved problems of the past and to cope directly or symbolically with present concerns. It is also his most significant tool for preparing himself for the future and its tasks.
Bruno Bettelheim
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Among the most valuable but least appreciated experiences parenthood can provide are the opportunities it offers for exploring, reliving, and resolving one's own childhood problems in the context of one's relation to one's child.
Bruno Bettelheim
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Not only is our love for our children sometimes tinged with annoyance, discouragement, and disappointment, the same is true for the love our children feel for us.
Bruno Bettelheim
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Raising children is a creative endeavor, an art rather than a science.
Bruno Bettelheim
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The parent must not give in to his desire to try to create the child he would like to have, but rather help the child to develop--in his own good time--to the fullest, into what he wishes to be and can be, in line with his natural endowment and as the consequence of his unique life in history.
Bruno Bettelheim
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What children learn from punishment is that might makes right. When they are old and strong enough, they will try to get their ownback thus many children punish their parents by acting in ways distressing to them.
Bruno Bettelheim
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As the creative adult needs to toy with ideas, the child, to form his ideas, needs toys--and plenty of leisure and scope to play with them as he likes, and not just the way adults think proper. This is why he must be given this freedom for his play to be successful and truly serve him well.
Bruno Bettelheim
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Creativity stands at the center of all education.
Bruno Bettelheim
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The question for the child is not Do I want to be good? but Whom do I want to be like?
Bruno Bettelheim
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For those who immerse themselves in what the fairy tale has to communicate, it becomes a deep, quiet pool which at first seems to reflect only our own image but behind it we soon discover the inner turmoils of our soul - its depth, and ways to gain peace within ourselves and with the world, which is the reward of our struggles.
Bruno Bettelheim
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Since there are thousands of fairy tales, one may safely guess that there are probably equal numbers where the courage and determination of females rescue males, and vice versa.
Bruno Bettelheim