Quote

The deep inner conflicts originating in our primitive drives and our violent emotions are all denied in much of modern children’s literature, and so the child is not helped in coping with them. But the child is subject to desperate feelings of loneliness and isolation, and he often experiences mortal anxiety. More often than not, he is unable to express these feelings in words, or he can do so only by indirection: fear of the dark, of some animal, anxiety about his body. Since it creates discomfort in a parent to recognize these emotions in his child, the parent tends to overlook them, or he belittles these spoken fears out of his own anxiety, believing this will cover over the child’s fears.

Quote ID: 02808

Author

Bruno Bettelheim

Source

The Uses Of Enchantment

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