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Fairy tales and myths have attracted scientific interest since Freud drew attention to their close relationship to the world of dreams, hysteria, and psychosis. Especially masterful was his analysis of the role of the fairy tale in the neurosis of the “Wolf Man”. (1) Many of the early psychoanalytic investigators specifically noted the rich symbolism and the character of wishfulfillment in the fairy tale. We recall that psychoanalysis was under bitter attack at this time and the early defenders turned to fairy tales and myths with the enthusiasms of miners uncovering a rich vein of gold. Their assay of the new raw material through the device of dream analysis uncovered the true nature of the mechanisms of both symbolism and wish in fairy tales.
The universal and perpetual attraction of fairy tales, as with myths and legends, is based upon the ego-syntonic character of the libidinal aspirations. Franz Ricklin (2), in a classical monograph written in 1915, reviewed large groups of fairy tales from various countries and marked their universal psyehosexual themes. He drew attention particularly to the wishful character of these themes with respect to the oedipal strivings of children. Ricklin also noted two additional themes in the tales he examined: (1) the almost inevitable presence of the cruel stepmother, and (2) the sexual pursuit of the daughter by the father.