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KMID : 0385320000110010039
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Journal of Korean Psychoanalytic Society
2000 Volume.11 No. 1 p.39 ~ p.46
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A Psychodynamic Study on the Korean Folk Fairy Tale : "A Fairy and a Woodcutter"
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Ha Jee-Hyun
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Abstract
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Sociocultural and developmental general properties of human nature become intergrated and incorporated in folk fairy tales through the years they are handed down from generation to generation. Folklores are somewhat similar to dreams in the way they fulfill unconscious wishes, transmit education and culture, and extend imaginations in children. Fairy tales function as a curative fantasy in a child`s development, help him to gain the mastery of intrapsychic conflict or developmental task, so that the memories of those childhood fairy tales act as screen memories even after he is fully grown up. The heroes and heroins of a fairy tale could signify important agents in a child`s life cycle or internal agents such as id, superego and ego, and this is gained through various ways according to the developmental stage or through the situation the child is confronting. Therefore, there are fairy tales appropriate for certain cognitive, psychosexual developmental stage and the author reviewed this hypothesis through a psychodynamic study of Korean folk fairy tale "A Fairy and a Woodcutter". The summery of the story follows. With the help of a deer, a woodcutter with only mother married a fairy after stealing her fairy suit while she was taking a bath in a waterfall . The deer told him not to show her the fairy suit until she gave birth to his fourth child but ignoring this he gave it to her after the third child was born. The fairy then with her three children deserted him and went to heaven. To the despaired woodcutter the deer reappeared and told him how to get reunited with the fairy by going to the heaven in a bucket. He followed his advice and he could live happily in heaven with his fairy wife but, he came to miss his only mother one day. He came to visit his mother despite his fairy wife`s dissuasion. He made a promise with his fairy wife not to step on the earth, otherwise he could never return to heaven where his fairy wife and children were. But to his misfortune he did step on the earth. Not being able to go back he morned nights and days. Finally he became a chicken. The hero of this simple fairy tale represents the developmental stage where full identification with the father a male child is made. The fairy wife symbolizes the child`s mental representation of ?an image of an ideal mother?, whereas the mother represents ?the mother in real life?. The story composes of the object of oedipus fantasy, the fear of loss of love and the object. The developmental stages from preoedipal period to latency are dealt. The woodcutter, the hero shows ambivalence between sexual desire for an opposite sex as a husband and the oedipus fantasy as a son. In the developmental aspect, the fact that this fairy tale does not end in a happy ending requires at least the reality testing ability and the development of cognitive function in a child. Development of ego to overcome the frustration of wish fulfillment in fantasy is also required which makes this fairy tail suitable for children in latency stage. Considering the development of superego this tale deals with intrapersonal relationship where the hero punishes himself for breaking the rule he himself has made, represents that this fairy tale affects the development of superego and education. But in the pure aspect of the development and perfection of superego, not only latency in the biological sense of developmental stage is considered. Summing up, the fairy tale of "a fairy and a woodcutter" is for children in latency on the developmental stage and is aimed to accomplish the development of superego and its maturation.
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KEYWORD
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Fairy tale, Superego, Latency
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