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A society caught in a mesh of self-mutilating behavior, here merciless childrearing, may begin to frame its ominous situation by an ingeniously indirect narrative. The destructiveness of the society's mode of bringing up its children is unconsciously assessed, giving rise to disquiet. The issue is addressed obliquely because of fears of criticizing the past maltreatment by the now internalized parents as well as hesitation to evoke censure by rabid defenders of the culture. Further, the parents grimly hold onto the gratifications yielded by now being the oppressor of the children.
The furtive formulation of the issue in a symbol-drenched product like the Pied Piper of Hamelin manifests the ambivalent effort by humankind to free itself from being snagged on a paranoid-narcissistic position of a life marked by a fractured identity structure, magical thinking, urges to ill-treat others, and feeling beleaguered in an ominous world. With some misgiving, the group eyes a position of compassionate relatedness to others seen in the fullness of their good and bad qualities, although it means bearing the guilt for evil urges toward them (cf. Klein, 1935; Klein and Riviere, 1937). In humankind's vacillating endeavor to temper apprehensions intrinsic to a paranoid-narcissistic posture and to evolve psychologically, unceasingly fantasies are composed to express, grasp, and at times to better its location in this contest.
Nowhere is the contest more important than in the society's style of childrearing since this is a crucible molding whether the group's national character will be caring, productive, and autonomous; whether the society's shared unconscious fantasies facilitate reality-oriented thinking and constructive action; and whether the well-being of little ones is attended. The folk creation challenges the society to contemplate the social arrangements it sets up. The art product permits reexperiencing common traumatic events that cause and result from the abusiv