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There seems to be a popular claim amongst psychiatrists that scary, cruel and other ethically questionable traditional fairy tales are beneficial for the development of a child's mind.

People promoting this theory often quote Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. (NB: I haven't read the book.) According to Wikipedia,

Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms.

Is is true that traditional fairy stories help children address their fears?

Disclaimer:

The next sentence in WP's article about Bettelheim reads (emphasis mine)

If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose.

If true, this statement seems forgotten by most articles I could read on the subject, which tend to follow the first statement literally. This question not being about Bettelheim's work specifically, please disregard this precision.

Oddthinking
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Skippy le Grand Gourou
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    I don't know why this question was closed and downvoted without any comments. Seems perfectly clear to me. All I can guess is that someone didn't know what the term "structuring" means in the context of child development? But it's pretty self-explanatory – user56reinstatemonica8 Aug 28 '16 at 22:54
  • @user568458: I hadn't commented yet because I was on my phone, and it required a significant comment. – Oddthinking Aug 29 '16 at 02:23
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    The first issue is, indeed, the definition of "structuring" being used here as a noun or adjective. It isn't part of the claim on the Wikipedia page. The second issue is: What sort of evidence would convince you either way? It is a Freudian analysis - I'm not even sure it is an empirical claim. – Oddthinking Aug 29 '16 at 02:30
  • Why the new downvote ? – Skippy le Grand Gourou Aug 29 '16 at 14:19
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    Thanks for trying to fix the question; appreciate the good faith effort. However, it still has the two problems: (1) you use the word "structuring" in a way that isn't in the claim, isn't in the dictionary, and didn't match any usage I found after googling for 5 minutes. Please define it or (better still) remove it. (2) Yes, a reproduced, large-sample, double-blind, randomised control experiment in a peer-reviewed paper would be nice, but what would the control be? A cohort of children who have never heard a children's story? Seems farfetched. – Oddthinking Aug 29 '16 at 23:24
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    Sorry, I missed the point indeed — I'm not native English, and I should have challenged this word even though it seemed [a perfect translation](http://www.wordreference.com/fren/structurant) from the word "*structurant*" I heard on a French radio program on this topic. I hope it's better now. – Skippy le Grand Gourou Aug 30 '16 at 08:49
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    @Oddthinking there's a whole field of developmental psychology and yes, they do run experiments where different groups of children are exposed to different stimuli over a time frame and then observed or given a task designed to measure a trait. There are also studies based on simply observing natural interactions over time from different cultures, and correlating measurable traits in adulthood with (self reported or parent-reported) accounts of childhood experiences, and many other methodologies. Like any field, none are perfect, but there may be an answer. – user56reinstatemonica8 Aug 30 '16 at 09:02
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    I'm afraid I don't understand your second argument, though. It seems you are trying to make me define [experimental psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_psychology). How is this relevant to this question ? I already edited the question to try to clarify that **ideally**, the more strict the experimental method, the better, but that reports as loose as concerning single cases were acceptable. What else can I say ? – Skippy le Grand Gourou Aug 30 '16 at 09:03
  • @user568458 Thanks for the suggestion. I believe this question is more suitable for this site, but indeed I'd probably get more answers there. Anyway, since cross-posting is proscribed I'll wait for the fate of this question to be set. – Skippy le Grand Gourou Aug 30 '16 at 09:12
  • @user568458: Please be a little more generous in your interpretations of my words. I am trying to improve the question to make it answerable. I see now that the inappropriate use of the word *structuring* was simply an ESL issue, not an [undefined jargon](http://allpsych.com/?s=structuring) issue. – Oddthinking Aug 30 '16 at 09:16
  • @Oddthinking Thanks for your edit, but I disapprove two points of it. First, I'm not sure which kind of psys this claim is shared amongst (hence the wildcard). At least many psychanalysts, for sure. But psychiatrists ? Maybe many, maybe some, maybe none… And psychologists ? As for the reformulation of the question itself, though the WP quote only explicitely mentions fears, it seems to me that the claim is much broader, and that fears should be interpreted here as bricks of the mind bulding rather than per se. – Skippy le Grand Gourou Aug 30 '16 at 09:54
  • Wildcards are a concept from computing - pretty much limited to filenames. Please use more accessible terms for people from other disciplines - and find examples to demonstrate it. If the claim is broader, let's find some examples of those claims, so we aren't tackling strawmen. – Oddthinking Aug 30 '16 at 11:22

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