Abstract
Introduction
Since the early theoretical explorations by Freud, fairy-tales and myths have been perceived as a valuable source for the exploration of the human mind and its workings, including the possible unconscious meanings. He claimed that for some peoples, the act of recollecting fairy tales plays a role equivalent to that of collecting childhood memories (Freud, 1913). Central to Freud’s thinking was the Oedipus trilogy in which Freud found a central dynamic of male development. His view of myths and tales was adopted by a variety of other analytic scholars who offered opinions and their interpretations of these enduring annotated tales. Where the written word has gradually been replaced by movies and animations the realm of fairy tale material has expanded to include The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Harry Potter (2001) movies and books, and The Hunger Games (2012). In each the hero or heroine faces a danger and /or a journey, must overcome odds and in victory remain morally pure and sexually innocent. Recently this conceptualization of folk tales has been included in the concept of the social unconscious that accounts for the social embeddings of our behaviour, thought and cautions (Hopper and Weinberg 2011).
The social unconscious (Hopper, 2003; Hopper and Weinberg, 2011; Weinberg, 2007) refers to the existence of restraints and constraints of social, cultural and communication arrangements of which people are ‘unaware’ to varying degrees. It includes anxieties, fantasies, myths, defences and object relations, as well as various aspects of socio-cultural-economic-political factors and forces; many of which are also co-constructed unconsciously by the members of particular groupings. According to Weinberg’s recent (Raufman and Weinberg, 2014) definition of the social unconscious, myths and fairy-tales are included as carrying these messages and reveal anxieties in a particular society. These theories make no claim that myths and fairy tales are unconscious, but rather conscious products that may express, reflect and echo some unconscious dimension in an indirect way and help to integrate these two estranged divisions of the mind within societies and individuals.
In most of these modern family romances tales, the hero or heroine has an older advisor, must overcome a danger or dangerous opponent, and often ‘return home’ or find security and identity. In terms of fairy tales, myths and folk tales there is a co-constructed interaction between the individual and ‘the tale’, a social embedded-ness for each tale and a person or social group that ‘invented’ the tales within social contexts and anxieties.
As one of my interests have been ‘understanding’ the psychoanalytic impact of multi-stimulating movies I am aware that there is a long, political-economic-creative process that occurs prior to the final construction and release of a movie. In addition, any movie is a group process much as viewing the stimulating event occurs in a group setting in which a benign regression occurs to make the movie ‘real’ if only temporarily. While investigating the movie Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) applying Bion’s (1970) selected fact perspective to account for its various symbolic contents, I came upon Zipes’ (2006) writing on fairy tales. He offers a nuanced developmental perspective about how fairy tales and myths originated in ancient oral cultures out of human cross-cultural experience and how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print. Zipes’ (2006) understanding fits easily into the conceptualization of the social unconscious. Now in our own time, imaginary tales continue to change through their adaptation in an ever-growing variety of media and games.
Importantly for current purposes, Zipes argues that it was not until the 19th-century that fairy tales were collected for and told to women. In addition, most of the collections of tales, those who could write and read collected myths, religious books, etc., and that requirement mostly excluded women. Why is this important?
The movie Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) may serve as an example. The heroine of the film, Ophelia, sacrifices herself so her unborn brother might survive. Her actions are protective, quite noble and heroic. After her death, she returns to her rightful place in a mythic pre-Christian kingdom. Importantly this Spanish film was not written by a woman but was written and directed by a man, Guillermo del Torro. Zipes (1987) warns that adult males author most tales in which a young girl makes such a sacrifice for a male sibling.
The discussion of the relationship between fairy tales and the social unconscious seems to ignore this literature which locates these tales as authored by and for males, or perhaps simply they were put off by its orientation. It seems clear that the cultural entrenchment of fairy tales in western societies was in a male dominated culture and often for male children. For example, according to Zipes (1987) Ruth in the Bible is one of the few discernable female characters in those books written by men. In fact, until recently, women were prohibited from learning Hebrew.
As I earlier raised the issue of sacrifice, it may be noted the central figure in most religions are male; Buddha, Christ and Moses for example. Certainly, from a psychoanalytic perspective this is not accidental.
The relevancy is: Fairy tales and religious contributions to the social unconscious appear to be predominantly male. How does this affect the dynamic understanding of the social unconscious?