"every ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like minute splinters in the flesh to torture him all his life long."
thus said the famous italian scientist, angelo mosso, a good many years ago. the facts of more recent research into the psychology and psychopathology of childhood, as reviewed in the preceding chapters, vindicate professor mosso's statement to an extent and in ways undreamed of by him. nor is it only the emotionally disturbing things seen, heard, or experienced by children that may have a decisively adverse influence on their development. harm may similarly and equally be done by the books and stories they[244] read, even to the extent of provoking or accentuating nervous maladies. particularly mischievous in this respect, because of their wide reading by children, are certain fairy tales which many parents—nay, i might say, nearly all parents—consider quite suitable for young readers.
you smile incredulously at the suggestion that a fairy tale could possibly affect a child harmfully. still more preposterous seems to you the idea that the harmful effects of fairy tales—if such harmful effects actually occur—may be carried over into adult life. but, listen:
to the doctor brill of the letter "k" stammering case just narrated, there once came a young man of twenty-eight, afflicted with a strange and alarming malady.
"doctor," he said, "i want your candid opinion as to what is the matter with me. physically i feel well, but mentally i am badly off. in fact, i fear i am insane, and dangerously so. for a long time i have been tormented by a strange desire to bite and[245] stab people and to torture them in all sorts of ways. i yearn for the times when everybody carried the dirk and dagger and could kill when offended. as yet i have restrained my mad impulse, but i am in terror lest i give way to it. is there anything you can do to help me?"
the mere fact that he thus clearly recognised and candidly confessed his mental state was in itself a hopeful sign. but doctor brill was well aware that it might be extremely difficult to cure him, perhaps impossible. everything would depend, in the first place, on whether the young man were actually insane or merely the victim of a psychoneurotic obsession. if the latter, there was a possibility of his being cured, provided the subconscious region of his mind could be explored with sufficient thoroughness to get at and root out the ideas underlying and responsible for his dangerous obsession. satisfying himself that it actually was a case of psychoneurosis, doctor brill began the work of mental exploration. and, knowing that submerged ideas are pretty sure[246] to reveal themselves, directly or indirectly, through the character of a person's dreams, he began by directing the young man to make a written record of his dreaming.
"whenever you have a dream," he told him, "i want you to write it down as soon as you awake, and bring me an account of it."
before long, doctor brill was in possession of a remarkable collection of dreams, many of which, as he had expected, were of an exceedingly unpleasant character. analysing these dreams, a curious fact at once became evident—namely, that the patient's mental life was largely occupied with imaginings that related, not to the world of everyday existence, but to the people and events of mythology and fairy tale.
always, too, in his subconscious imaginings, ideas of death and violence were uppermost. during the dream-analysis he recalled with special vividness such themes as the beheading of medusa, the cruelties of bluebeard, and the freezing to death of eva, heroine of bryant's "little people of the snows." even[247] trivial details in the settings of these and similar fairy tales were remembered and brought out in his dream-associations with a fulness that astonished the patient himself. dr. brill comments:
"he was very imaginative, so that the harrowing adventures enacted by fairies, genii, and greek deities, on which he was constantly fed, were deeply interwoven with his own life, and he built up for himself a strange, archaic world. he liked to be alone, and often wandered away from his companions, to act through, in his own way, the adventures of which he had just heard or read.
"he himself traced the selection of his profession—that of an actor—to these boyish actions when he tried to imitate the fleet-footed mercury, some character from fairyland or the "arabian nights," or some savage indians. he thus imagined himself flying, and beheading monsters above the clouds, or penetrating to the centre of the earth in the form of some wicked magician, all the time passing through the most harrowing scenes. by a process of condensation,[248] he fused ancient characters and episodes with persons and actions of reality, but his fancies usually began with some god-like or demon-like myth and gradually descended to human beings.
"during the first few weeks of the analysis he was in the habit of merging into a dreamy state while reproducing associations, and often became so excited that the work had to be temporarily interrupted."[14]
it was unnecessary to seek much further for the explanation of the obsession of torture. in large part, at all events, this was quite evidently the expression in consciousness of the gruesome images with which the patient's mind had been filled by the tales told him in his childhood. though faded from conscious remembrance, they had remained with him subconsciously, to influence for evil the current of his conscious thoughts. or, to put the matter tersely: had tales of cruelty and violent death not been told him in his early days, he might never have been[249] afflicted in manhood with his morbid longings to inflict pain.
of course, if this case stood by itself it would be of no great significance. but the fact is that during the past few years—or since physicians began to appreciate the part played by childhood impressions in causing mental and nervous disease—evidence has been accumulating to indicate that the almost universal custom of telling fairy tales to children does entail grave risks to their character and their health. the child of normal nervous constitution is likely to be affected only in character; the supersensitive, neurotic child may be hurried, by the tales he hears or reads, into some more or less serious mental or nervous malady.
let me hasten to add that this does not mean that the fairy tale should be entirely banished from the literature of childhood. it means only that parents should exercise more discrimination than they usually show in selecting fairy tales for their children. the rightly chosen fairy tale is indeed an almost indispensable[250] aid in the early education of children, for reasons that are admirably summarised by an american educator, mr. percival chubb, in these words:
"one value in fairy stories for the young is that they embody and commemorate the man-child's first rude assertion of the lordship of mind, and subserve the development of a later sense of spiritual freedom and autonomy. another is that they are expressive, as all art is expressive, of the idealistic hunger at the heart of men. again, as forms of art, they select and co-ordinate those facts which bring out the spiritual meanings of life. that is, they release from the unsifted materials of experience the imprisoned 'soul of fact.' and not only do they embody the basic moral insights and interpretations of childish man, but they express the simple and larger emotions, and so feed the heart of the child. they quicken, too, the imagination—that master-faculty without which the sympathy which is man's highest and richest endowment fails of fruition.[251] they are an aid to culture by giving an outlook upon all nations and kindreds, all countries and conditions of life. finally, along with their allied forms of literary invention, the myth, saga, fable, and so on, they are a condition to understanding the innumerable allusions with which the literature of the world is studded."[15]
all this is assuredly the function of the fairy tale, but frequently it is frustrated by the kind of fairy tales children are allowed to read. for one thing, the imaginative faculty is scarcely stimulated in a healthy fashion when the mind is led to dwell constantly, as in the case of doctor brill's patient, on thoughts of cruelty and pain. nor can the fairy tale be said to have exerted a healthy influence in such a case as that represented by a little girl who was brought for treatment to another medical psychologist, and whose morbid irritability, disobedience, and crying spells were, by psychological[252] analysis, traced to an excessive jealousy of her brother. in the course of the analysis the discovery was made that the girl had frequent dreams of seeing both her mother and her brother cruelly treated. in one dream, witches shut her mother in a cave to starve to death, and threw her brother into a large caldron of boiling water, leaving her to perish miserably.
"this dream," the little girl na?vely explained to the physician who was analysing her mental states, "is just like the fairy tales i read."
other dreams of cruelty were likewise found to be drawn from the reading of unpleasant fairy tales. so that, although in this case jealousy was undoubtedly the chief cause of the nervous condition for which treatment was required, fairy tales also played a part in directing the course of the little girl's morbid thinking and her difficult behaviour. warned by this revelation of the dream-analysis, her physician made it a point to notify her mother that unless steps were taken to change the girl's reading[253] matter she might develop traits of character—harshness, coldness, indifference to the sufferings of others—that would handicap her throughout life.
or, instead of causing an abnormal harshness, the fairy tale abounding in gory elements may breed an equally abnormal timidity, passing sometimes beyond the category of a character defect to that of positive disease. a typical instance is found in the experience of a young new york boy.
"our son," his parents told the physician, to whom they took him for treatment, "has suddenly become excitable and nervous, afraid to go outdoors alone, and still more afraid to sleep alone. if left to himself after having been put to bed, he often wakes out of a sound sleep, shrieking for us. when we go to him he seems dazed, and for some moments does not recognise us. but he cannot tell us what has frightened him, and in the morning does not remember his alarm."
from this brief description the physician at once recognised that he had to deal with a case of what is[254] technically known as pavor nocturnus, but better known to the lay public as "night terrors." having had a thorough training in medical psychology, he was well aware that night terrors are grounded in disturbing experiences of the waking life. accordingly, he questioned the parents closely.
insistently they denied that anything had occurred to cause their son undue anxiety or alarm. then the physician resorted to psychological analysis of the boy's mental states and, before long, made the discovery that his mind was full of frightful images of giants, wizards, and slimy monsters. promptly he summoned the father and mother to a conference, and asked them:
"have you been reading or telling fairy stories to your boy lately?"
"why, yes," the mother replied. "he is passionately fond of them, and i tell him some every day."
"and what, may i ask, are the stories that you tell to him most frequently?"
"'jack the giant killer' is one. he is also particularly[255] fond of 'the boy who did not know how to shiver.'"
"well, madam," said the physician, gravely, "i must ask you either to stop telling him fairy tales or to choose for him fairy tales with less gruesome elements in them. he is a boy of nervous temperament, and, figuratively speaking, he has been poisoned by the fear-images that are so abundant in the stories he has heard. take him out into the open air, turn his thoughts to other things, and be more discreet in your choice of reading matter for him. unless you do this, there is danger that he will yet suffer from something far more serious than night terrors."
the truth of this last statement may be concretely re-enforced by another citation from recent medical experience—the case, not of a young boy, but of a man of thirty, who came to doctor brill with a remarkable story.
"ever since my boyhood," he related, "i have fainted at seeing blood. now i feel weak and dizzy,[256] and sometimes i faint outright, at anything which merely brings into my mind the thought of blood. i am afraid to talk to certain people because they are likely to speak about accidents which make me think of blood. the sight of a man who looks like a doctor suggests an operation, and at once i feel faint. on one occasion i fainted away while my blood pressure was being taken. it was not that i was afraid of having my blood pressure taken; it was simply that the word 'blood' brought on the usual attack. you do not appreciate the difficulty i have in telling you all this. every time i mention the word to you i have to get a grip on myself. i fear i must seem very weak and foolish, but i cannot overcome the horror i feel. unless you help me, i do not know what i shall do. i cannot go on this way indefinitely."
in answer to doctor brill's questions, he insisted nothing had occurred in his life that could give rise to his "phobia," or morbid dread of blood. he had been in no bad accident, had undergone no serious[257] surgical operation, had witnessed no sanguinary scenes of any sort.
"nevertheless," doctor brill assured him, "there is a logical reason for your abnormal fear. it is evidently buried deep in your mind; but there are ways of getting at it, and get at it we must."
psychological analysis, patiently carried on for many days, ultimately brought the truth to light. his phobia, it appeared, had its real starting point in early childhood, and, not least, in certain sensational fairy stories read to him by a nurse when he was quite young—stories which he himself continued to read at a later age.
"these bloody and horrible stories," to quote doctor brill, "made a strong impression upon him. he would form fancies about them on going to sleep at night, substituting himself for the hero."
"bluebeard" was one story that especially impressed him. another was a charming tale about a false princess who was rolled in a barrel, into which long pointed spikes had been driven.
[258]
as he grew older, there had been the usual fading from memory of these stories and the imaginings to which they had given rise. but, subconsciously, they had never been forgotten, and out of them there had gradually developed the obsessive and seemingly inexplicable dread of blood.
in another case, the "bluebeard" story responsible for the night terrors of a sensitive little girl, remained so indelibly fixed in her subconsciousness that in adult life she often had nightmares, in which, to her great distress, she was attacked by men who were "frightful looking on account of their blue beards." even more impressively illustrative of the permanence and possible ill effects of tales of the horrible heard in early life is the case of a man fifty years old, who had to receive medical treatment because he "could not fall asleep without living through—for at least an hour, sometimes even longer—some distorted story from fairy books or mythology."
that common phobia of childhood, fear of the[259] dark, is often traceable to fairy tales, and, in many cases, persists in some degree through later life. let me quote, on this important point, the testimony of a washington physician, doctor t. a. williams, who has made a special study of nervousness in childhood:
"morbid fears are a great distress to many people. they have nearly always arisen in early childhood, and have been inculcated by injudicious nurses, tales of goblins and fairies being most prolific in this respect.
"the ineradicability of fears, when inculcated in early childhood, is clearly illustrated by a southern lady who, even in advanced age, dared not go alone into the dark, although she had long ceased to believe in the stories which had made her afraid to do so. she realised this so forcibly that she would not permit her three daughters to be told any of the alarming stories which most southern children learn. this resulted in the girls never having known what it meant to be afraid of the dark. indeed, it was the[260] habit of their school fellows to send them off into dark and eery places to show off their powers."
and, from one of the most experienced psychiatrists of the united states, doctor w. a. white, superintendent of the great government hospital for the insane, at washington, we have this emphatic statement as to the general relationship between fairy tales and mental diseases:
"you will find, not infrequently, that the precipitating factors in psychoses come from the books of fairy tales which your children are allowed to feed upon."
of course, as already intimated, a mental overthrow from the hearing or reading of fairy tales presupposes an undue impressionability on the victim's part. but how are parents to determine whether or no their children's psychic make-up is such as to render them immune from the possible mind-enfeebling effects of "horror tales"? and, in any event, let me repeat with all the emphasis at my command, there is reason to believe that no child[261] can escape some stunting or distorting of character if brought up on a diet of ultra-sanguinary fairy tales.
as i write these lines, a stupendous war is raging in europe with a ferocity that appals the outside world. especially atrocious is the policy of one of the embattled nations, formerly regarded as a leader in modern civilisation. to attain its ends, this nation has violated treaty obligations as though they were of no consequence whatever; it has ruthlessly slain innocent noncombatants, even the citizens of neutral countries; wherever it has been victorious, it stands accused of vile brutalities. in its attitude towards its own soldiers it has displayed an almost incredible callousness, hurling them to certain destruction with cold-blooded nonchalance.
beholding all this, the people of other lands marvel and question. that, in the twentieth century, even under the stress of war, a civilised nation should thus revert to barbarism seems to baffle explanation. for myself, however, i am convinced that at least a[262] partial explanation is to be found in the fact that the offending nation is one among whom the myth, the legend, and the fairy tale have pre-eminently flourished.
in the stories which distinguished scholars have eagerly assisted to make available to the youth of this nation, indifference to human suffering and human life are too often conspicuous elements. too often they are tinged by more than a suggestion of bloodthirstiness, cruelty, and the principle of revenge. when the childish mind has been fed upon these, stimulated by them to unhealthy fancies, and re-enforced in those instincts inherited from the primitive, which it should be the business of education to weaken and repress, is it to be wondered at that, in the crisis of war, there has been a veritable relapse to primitive savagery?
in some degree, moreover, all the warring nations have been bred on fairy tales, and, in some degree, all have exhibited the same tendency to the cruel ways of primitive man. throughout the world a[263] fairy tale reform is needed for the development and maintenance of a true civilisation.
but, mark you, it is a reform that is needed, not a banishment of the fairy tale. as some one has well said, a child who never hears a fairy tale is developing a tract in his soul that, in later life, will grow barren. more than this, cases are on record indicating that unless the child's instinctive craving for the romantic and the ideal is satisfied by well-chosen fairy tales, he may gratify this craving in ways that shock his elders.
i will give one instance, by way of concrete illustration. for knowledge of this i am indebted to president hall, of clark university, and i give it in president hall's own words:
"two immigrants in new york brought up their daughter, born here, on a diet of literal truth, and tabooed fiction, poetry, and imagination as lies. she was bright, at twelve had never read a fairy tale or a story book, but was continually dreamy and ardent-souled, with a great passion and talent for[264] music. her mother once told her that she might, perhaps, play some time to the president. soon after, at the dedication of grant's tomb, she saw mr. and mrs. mckinley. one day, soon afterwards, she rushed in, breathless, saying that they had visited her school, heard her play, might adopt her, would give papa a place in washington, and so on; but mrs. mckinley was out of funds, and her husband was in washington.
"accordingly, gertrude's father drew a hundred from his fortune of fourteen hundred dollars in the bank and sent it by his daughter, who brought back costly flowers. upon more excuses, more money was loaned, and more presents were sent to gertrude's parents—a canary, a puppy, a diamond ring. gertrude conversed intelligently on political topics, and her father gave up his position, as he was about to accept a five-thousand-dollar job in washington.
"then came the crash. gertrude had never met the president or his wife, but had made lavish presents and had bought many articles, which she had[265] stored with a neighbour; and, to her parents' especial horror, had laid in a large stock of fairy tales and other fiction."
with justification, president hall adds: "this points a moral against the pedagogic theory that would starve the imagination."[16]
in truth, the cultivation of the imaginative faculty by means of the fairy tale is one of the great opportunities of parenthood. only see to it that the fairy tales employed for this purpose do not reek of brutality and gore, of treachery and cunning.
and see to it that elements like these are not unduly conspicuous in any other kind of tales you put into the hands of your children. give them no books to read, tell them no stories that may react on a sensitive mind to the development either of callousness or fear. be careful even with regard to the tales you tell your children in the course of their religious education. dwell on the rewards of goodness[266] rather than on the punishments of sin. in the religious instruction of the young, as in all other instruction, over-emphasis on the grim and the terrifying may have unfavourable consequences, persisting to the end of life.
recall, if you please, the case of the overworked boston young man, mentioned in "psychology and parenthood" (p. 273). obsessed with an idea that he had committed "the unpardonable sin," he was surely drifting to some institution for the insane, when he was fortunate enough to come under the care of a physician familiar with the new psychological discoveries and methods. recall this young man's autobiographical statement, given to his physician, after the latter had helped him back to health:
"my abnormal fear certainly originated from doctrines of hell which i heard in early childhood, particularly from a rather ignorant elderly woman who taught sunday-school. my early religious thought was chiefly concerned with the direful eternity[267] of torture that might be awaiting me if i was not good enough to be saved."
you are careful as to the food you give your child's body. be no less careful as to the food you give his mind.
