Tyler
Campbell
Dr.
Smith
English
4633
April
21, 2014
A Final Look Back Into
“Why We Need Fantasy”
Once
upon a time a nightingale landed on the windowsill of Princess Serima's bedroom
in Baghdad and told her to beware of the wicked vizier, Khanid…Now just a
moment! Nightingales can't talk! If we tell young children such a story we will
give them false beliefs about reality. Most people, though, consider this kind
of fantasy harmless; even if young children might initially believe that
certain birds can talk, they will learn soon enough that birds can't talk in
reality and only in stories. But other confusions created by fantasy stories,
more subtle ones, are perhaps less easily sorted out, and remain to distort our
understanding throughout life. Such stories may set in place stereotypes, not
just of bent old women being witch-like, but more subtly of why people
sometimes rob banks or sacrifice their leisure to help a handicapped
acquaintance and supposing the cause of such behaviors as due to inherent evil or
goodness. The range of distorted beliefs people hold may not all derive from
fantasy stories, of course, but some of the greatest educational thinkers, such
as Plato, Rousseau, Montessori, and others, have been implacable foes of
fantasy for children because they concluded that it certainly contributes to
falsehood and confusion in profound ways. Our normal reaction to such a claim
today is to dismiss it. That's the trouble with these refined theorists, we are
inclined to think, their theories lead them away from simple common-sense. How
can reading stories about Baba-Yaga or Peter Rabbit or following the progress
of Richard Scary's Lowly Worm driving a sports car have these pernicious
effects? To-day's common-sense, it is well to remember, is simply yesterday's
theory accepted without question. So we might sensibly begin considering the
values or dangers of fantasy by looking briefly at the competing theories, and
see whether they can help us decide whether or not the stories we tell children
should include fantasy.
But even before that we should ask what is fantasy
anyway, and why is it so appealing? There are complex theories here too, of
course, notably Freud's and Jung's, both of which seem to me not without a
touch of fantasy of their own. I will suggest a rather simpler and perhaps
surprising explanation that will offer some guidance to our choice of stories. It
does not require refined theories to recognize that telling children certain
kinds of fantasy stories can induce fear from the not-really-believed monsters
under the bed who might grab your bare ankles with their cold, bony fingers to
seriously disabling phobias that bring night-terrors and years of insomnia. On
the other hand, in some stories we are offered a fantasy world that is
ubiquitously cute and saccharine, a world of "happy-fantasy" from
which the inconveniences of pain, death, disease, cruelty, and so on, are
completely absent. How should we deal with fantasy stories that induce fear and
those that present a world free of pain?
If we
wish to tell a story that involves characters moving from one place to another,
what difference does it make to have them travel by bus or by magic carpet?
This question helps to focus the topic of this chapter. Is the latter mode of
transport a lie that at best creates false hopes and feeds an illusory longing
for an unattainable world, or is it a liberation of the mind, a stimulus to the
imagination, that enables us to think about our real world more effectively?
Or, turning from these serious social and psychological concerns, is it just
harmless fun, justified on simple aesthetic grounds? Harmless
fun?! Fantasy has been located as the source of catastrophic psychic and social
damage and also as vitally important for children's psychological well-being
and social adjustment! Let us begin with the heavies and see if there is any
room left for fun.
Plato
argues that the beginning of children's education must come in the form of
stories, and so "our first business will be to supervise the making of
fables and legends, rejecting all which are unsatisfactory; and we will ask
nurses and mothers to tell their children only those which we have approved,
and to think more of molding children's souls with these stories than they now
do of rubbing their limbs to make them strong and shapely" (Republic).
Plato believed that the stories children hear early in their lives will have a
profound influence on them, and so he wanted to get rid of any that created, to
put it in his terms, a false view of reality in children's souls. And he wanted
less effort expended on therapeutic massage of the body than on stories'
therapeutic massage of the mind. Looking at the role of stories with such
serious intent, it was no wonder he concludes: "Most of the stories now in
use must be discarded" (Republic). We
must recognize, he says, that a "child cannot distinguish the allegorical
sense [of a story] from the literal sense" (Republic). So, he insists,
mothers and nurses are not to "scare children with mischievous stories of
spirits that go about by night in all sorts of outlandish shapes. They would
only be blaspheming the gods and at the same time making cowards of their
children" (Republic). His negative caution is that we must avoid those
stories that can create "the presence of falsehood in the soul concerning
reality. To be deceived about the truth of things and so to be in ignorance and
error and to harbor untruth in the soul is a thing no-one would consent
to" (Republic). The positive use of stories is to stimulate courage, to
teach that death is not to be feared, to inculcate nobility of heart and
adherence to truth. Ignorance or error about reality is among the worst
disasters that can befall us, according to Plato, and from these so many other
pains and disasters follow; and fantasy is a contributor to that worst
disaster.
Two
thousand years later Jean-Jacques Rousseau took up the same theme. He used the
example of a fantasy story commonly told to children in the eighteenth-century:
La Fontaine's "The fox and the crow." You will no doubt know a
version of it. The crow sits on a branch with a fine chunk of cheese in its
beak. The fox sees it and begins to flatter the crow, saying that the crow is
so wonderful in every way that it must also have a most beautiful singing
voice. The foolish crow is so delighted with the flattery that it opens its
mouth to sing. The cheese falls. The fox grabs the cheese and lopes off.
Rousseau analyses the story in detail, showing how confusing it is for young
children unfamiliar with all the conventions which it assumes. But his main
criticism is that the moral lesson it conveys to children is entirely unlike
what is intended. Children do not take the role of the crow and learn that they
should not be deceived by flattery. Rather they associate with the witty fox
and learn to take advantage of the shortcomings of others. The fable exposes a
world in which people flatter and lie for profit, and does so in a manner that
invites the child to admire the vices the story describes. His brief analyses
of other La Fontaine stories similarly show that they hold up deceit,
injustice, immoderation, cruelty, acquisitiveness, and a range of other vices,
to the child's admiration. Much the same could be said of many of the Grimm
fairly tales which are so widely available for children today.
These
are not stupid arguments, even though they run against the grain of current
common-sense: a common-sense informed in particular by the psychoanalytic
theories about the nature and uses of fantasy from the early twentieth century.
We are, after all, surrounded by deceit, injustice, cruelty, acquisitiveness—surrounded
and invaded—and while it would seem outrageous to lay the whole blame for these
vices at the door of fantasy stories, it is not so obvious they are entirely
innocent of all blame. As we look around at our fellow-citizens, and within
ourselves if we have the courage, we see much untruth about reality in our
souls. How do we construct our varied and discordant beliefs, and do the
fantasies of childhood contribute to them as Plato and Rousseau suggest?
Rousseau
concluded that fantasy was all right for adults, but children should deal only
with reality. In light of this, it is worth remembering, as J.R.R. Tolkien
(1947) pointed out, that what we consider classic children's fantasy stories,
such as La Fontaine's and the Grimms' collection, were not originally written
for children. He likened their descent to the nursery when they went out of
fashion among adults as like the descent, among his class and time, of
old-fashioned furniture from the adults' living room to the children's play
room.
One of
the better known, and more assertive, arguments for the value of fantasy
stories has been made by Bruno Bettelheim (1976). As mentioned in the previous
chapter, he drew heavily on Freud in arguing that fantasy stories are vitally
important for young children's psychological health. Real-life stories, in his
view, are much more likely to cause psychological problems, or create falsehood
about reality in the soul, than are fantasies. Real-life heroes can be
oppressive to young children's developing sense of themselves, emphasizing the
child's insignificance in contrast to the confidence, goodness, or power of the
hero. How can one be as good as Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela? One value of
fantasy characters is that children do not see them in comparison to
themselves; and so they do not feel oppressed by Superman or Snow White a
result. Also stories which stay close to the child's everyday real world, Bettelheim
argues against Plato and Rousseau, are more likely to confuse the child as to
what is real and what is not, because children lack the experience to sort what
may be real but unusual from what is false but plausible--say, monks from
star-warriors or telephone hygienists from vampires. The value of fantasy is
that children recognize very early that it is different from their everyday
world.
C. S.
Lewis, author of the Narnia books, makes a similar observation: "I think
what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to
deceive them [than are fantasy stories]. I never expected the real world to be
like the fairy tales. I think that I did expect school to be like school
stories. The fantasies did not deceive me: the school stories did" (1982).
A
further value of fantasy stories, according to Bettelheim, is that they allow
the child to play with ideas. They can provide comfort and consolation with
regard to pressing real-life problems: "Like all great art, fairy tales
both delight and instruct; their special genius is that they do so in terms
which speak directly to children" (Bettelheim). In dealing with life's
problems, fantasy stories have the additional value that they are richly
suggestive of solutions: "Fairy tales leave the [children] fantasizing
whether and how to apply to [themselves] what the story reveals about life and
human nature" So "whatever the content of the fairy tale, it is but
fanciful elaborations and exaggerations of the tasks [children have] to meet, and
of [their] hopes and fears"
William
Kilpatrick and Gregory and Suzanne M. Wolfe (1944) similarly emphasize the
value of fantasy over real-life stories. They suggest that a child whose
parents are going through a divorce does not necessarily get help from reading
stories about children with divorcing parents. They quote the mother of a
ten-year-old describing her son's struggle with cancer: "At first he was
very upbeat, but after several painful treatments his optimism faded. We were
afraid that he was ready to give up. We were really afraid for his life. Then
he came upon the story of the labors of Hercules in a book of myths, and he
read it and re-read it, and it seemed to give him back his spirit". The
authors go on to observe: "The story about Hercules allowed the boy to
transcend his fears and to cast his personal struggle on a mythic level. He was
probably fortunate that some well-meaning adult didn't hand him a book about a
boy with cancer. That sort of thing often serves only to increase the
depression". They make an important point, though we might want to be
cautious in interpreting the boy's increasing spirit as due entirely to the
story. We might also bear in mind C.S. Lewis's often-repeated point, that young
children's taste and interest in stories is no less varied than adults', and
that a sensitive story about a boy with cancer might have had a similar
beneficial effect with another child as Hercules seems to have had with this
child.
Fantasy,
then, allows us to create an imaginary world in which children can rehearse and
begin to deal with many of the most fundamental psychological problems that
come with the territory of being human. "In all the forms of fantasy,
whether dreams, daydreams, private musings or make-believe play, we give expression
to perfectly real preoccupations, fears and desires, however bizarre or
impossible the imagined events embodying them" (Harding, 1977). Jealousy,
fear, hate, cruelty, selfishness, as well as love, compassion, courage,
security, patience are variously present in fantasy. To provide children with
stories that show only the latter set, with the expectation that they will then
internalize these, is to leave them with the guilty suspicion that they are the
only ones who harbor wicked impulses. This suspicion leads to shame,
secretiveness, deception, and profound psychological insecurity. That, anyway
is the claim of modern psychoanalytic writers about the value of fantasy.
Fantasy
can also provide a psychological resource for children whose reality offers them
very little. Consider the role it played for Tamara Pierce: "Fantasy
is also important for a group that I deeply hope is small: those whose lives
are so grim that they cling to everything that takes them completely away for
any length of time. I speak of readers like I was, from families that are now
called dysfunctional. While the act of reading transported me out of reality
for the time it took me to read, nothing carried over into my thoughts and
dreams until I discovered fantasy. I visited Tolkien's Mordor often for years,
not because I liked what went on there, but because on that dead horizon, and
then throughout the sky overhead, I could see the interplay and the lasting
power of light and hope. It got me through" (1993).
So
what are we to conclude? That fantasy stories do subtle but profound harm by
confusing our minds about reality or that they are vital to our psychological
health? Or both? Or neither? Or perhaps both are partially true? Some kinds of
fantasy stories might do harm and some good and the same story might do harm or
good to different children in different circumstances? Well, that all helps to
confuse us even further. But I
think we can answer one part of the general question about whether we should
encourage or suppress fantasy by making a common observation. That is that
fantasy is a culturally universal and it is energetically active in all
cultures and it seems irrepressible.
What
is fantasy?
The
main explanations of fantasy have come from the psychoanalytic theories of Freud
and Jung. For Freud, fantasy is a primary process activity, which operates, and
generates its peculiar images, according to the rules of substitution,
displacement, and so on. For Jung, it is a result of spontaneous eruptions from
the unconscious, perhaps liberating archetypes, which become the subject for
active imaginative shaping. For these explanations to be convincing, or even to
make sense, one has to accept the main claims of these psychoanalytic schools.
If one has difficulty accepting them, or even if one doesn't, where might one
turn for an alternative explanation of fantasy that might be a bit more
straightforward? I
suggested above that fantasy just comes along with language. That is, fantasy
is primarily a product of the languaged mind, and so we might look at early
language development for clues as to where fantasy originates. Anyway, here's
another theory in brief.
Consider
how young children begin to gain a languaged grasp over the world. The toddler
is sitting in a high-chair and touches a cup of milk directly from the
refrigerator. Fingers are withdrawn with a frown. "Cold," says the
mother. Attracted by an open fire, the toddler walks towards it until the
father puts out a protective arm. "Hot," says the father. Children
first notice, necessarily, temperatures that are hotter and colder than their
bodies, and typically begin their languaged grasp over temperature with words
like "hot" and "cold." The child can then learn a word like
"warm" that comfortable temperature about the same as the body's own.
Putting a cautious toe or finger towards the bath water, the child can announce
"hot!" if it is too hot or "cold!" if it is too cold, and
the parent can encourage the child with assurances that it is just beautifully "warm."
Further temperature terms, such as "cool' or "pretty hot" can be
learned to fit along the continuum from hot to cold.This
way of learning to grasp the world in language and concepts is clearly very
common. Young children first learn opposites based on their bodies "hot"
is hotter than the body, "cold" is colder; "big" is bigger
than their body, "little" is smaller; "hard" is harder than
the body, "soft" is softer; and so on. Young children learn a great
deal about the world using this procedure wet/dry, rough/smooth, fast/slow, and
so on. Children's perceptions of their own bodies provide their first yardstick
for making sense of the world around them, and gaining a conceptual grasp over
it by means of language. Once they have formed an opposition, they can learn
other terms along the continuum between such opposites. While
they are very young, most children learn that some things are alive, like us
and the cat and birds, and other things are dead: perhaps it might be the death
of a pet, or a dead bird brought into the house by a cat, or perhaps the idea
of death might be learned through a story or by the experience of their own or
a friends' grandparent or great grandparent dying. Most of us learned the
opposition life/death long before we can remember. What
do you get when you apply to those opposites the same procedure that has been
so successful in gaining a conceptual grasp over the physical world? What fits
between "life" and "death," as "warm" fits
between "hot" and "cold"? Well, ghosts, for example. Ghosts
are to life and death as warm is to hot and cold. A ghost is a mediation
between life and death; ghosts are in some sense alive and in some sense dead.
When
children are three or four years old, they might tell their cat or pet rabbit
all their secrets. But, unlike Alice's White Rabbit or Peter Rabbit, the animal
will not tell you its secrets back. Or, at least, it will not tell them in the
language the child uses. Some cultures would put this differently, of course.
Some cultures do claim that animals communicate with humans. But all cultures
recognize a fundamental distinction between human and animal. Human/animal,
like life/death, are opposites that do not have a mediating category; they are
not ends of a continuum, but discrete concepts. So what do we get if we try to
mediate between them, if we treat them as though they are not discrete and are
ends of a continuum? Well, we get creatures like mermaids, Yetis, Sasquatches
are those half-human, half-animal creatures that are so familiar to the Western
imagination and that are common in the mythologies of all oral cultures.
If
we listen to toddlers' stunningly rapid language development from eighteen
months to adolescence the average child learns a new word every two hours and we
may notice a common, powerful, and very successful procedure in use for
elaborating a conceptual grasp over the world around them. Oppositions are
created from continua of size, speed, temperature, texture, and also, of
course, of morality, so we get good/bad, love/hate, fear/security, and so on.
The world is inconvenient in facing us with such discrete categories as
life/death, human/animal, nature/culture, and, in the modern world,
human/machine. What one finds in the invented mediations between these
categories are the stuff of all the fantasy stories and myths of the world,
from zombies to werewolves to talking ravens to Mr. Data of Star Trek. Is
that all there is to it? Fantasy is simply a product of misapplying one of the
procedures by which we learn about the physical world? Well, it does have the
virtues of simplicity and economy as an explanation. But obviously this is not
all that needs to be said about fantasy, and no doubt the theories of Freud and
Jung may help to elaborate other dimensions of it. The explanation given here,
however, is certainly plausible and accounts for the common forms of fantasy in
a surprising and convincing way. (I stole it in part from Claude Lévi-Strauss
[1966]).
One
implication of this explanation is that fantasy is inevitable, given the way
language grapples with the complexity of the world. This explanation also
supports those who claim that fantasy is not simply idle confusion. Fantasy may
represent a kind of confusion, but it involves also a meditation on some of the
basic questions that face us: Why and how are we unlike other animals? Why do
we die, and what is death? Why and how does our culture separate us from the
natural world? And while one might reasonably doubt about Bettelheim's Freudian
readings of the Grimm fairy tales and his claims for their psychotherapeutic
necessity, this explanation supports his sense that they involve important
intellectual engagements with problematic features of the world and human
experience. In our
choice of stories for children, then, we will want to include talking animals
and the other mediating categories: ghosts, monsters, living technology, and so
on. The meditations begun in such stories stay with us throughout our lives,
and in adult stories we find characters similarly poised in the non-existent
realm between discrete oppositions. Indeed, current prime-time T.V. series seem
to have little else from immortals, to Mr. Data, to X-Files, etc. These
mediating categories for children commonly involve the beginnings of what will
later become philosophical problems; or, if this puts it too grandly, they are
stimulants to reflection about the nature of the world and of ourselves.
Socrates suggested, perhaps a bit snobbishly, that the unexamined life is not
worth living; if so, fantasy stories are important stimuli to examining life.
Conclusion
I
think it fair to conclude that the accusation that fantasy stories confuse
children's minds is not in general true. The counter-argument that fantasy is a
prerequisite both for a range of intellectual skills and for an imaginative and
flexible engagement with reality is better warranted. Clearly there are cases
where fantasy can combine with psychological problems and perhaps even make
them worse. Even in the worst cases, where the mind "escapes from
reality," it may well be that fantasy provides some coping resources. The
fantasy, in such cases, is only a symptom, perhaps a catalyst, of something
darker, and the fantasy may be the child's one beneficial tool.
Lloyd
Alexander, author of the wonderful Prydain Chronicles, says that we need to
hold some clear distinction between the real and the imaginary: "I
wouldn't, for example, feel comfortable in an airplane if the pilot decided to
hand over the controls to the Easter Bunny" (1993, p. 32). In the
imaginary world, he distinguishes further between "illusions" and
"delusions." A delusion is a belief about reality, held despite
unquestionable evidence to the contrary: "People whose delusions overstep
a certain boundary usually go for treatment in mental hospitals; in extreme
cases, they go into politics" (p. 34). Delusions are always more or less
destructive, and they do not help understanding nor contribute to the abundance
of life. Illusions, on the other hand, only seem to be real, but aren't. Yet
illusions can seem more real than reality, and "show facets of truth we
never saw before" (p. 35). Illusion can lead towards enhancing life, and
is, of course, the foundation of art. We can tie ourselves into endless
philosophical knots investigating the odd and potent art that is spun with
illusions, with such stuff as dreams are made on. It can affect us as much as
or even more than the real-world events of our lives, and yet we do well to
come back to the realisation that "it has the value of simply giving
pleasure" (p. 42).
No comments:
Post a Comment