Remarks on the Popularity of Mickey Mouse: Fritz Moellenhoff. American Imago, I, No. 3, 1940.

For children the Mickey Mouse films contain the gratification of presenting a daydream playfully substituted by a series of pictures in which smallness is victorious. The adult onlooker demonstrates an unusually uninhibited process of identification. Mickey Mouse is ill adapted to physical expressions of love. He represents a lively though neutral sex. The conscious or unconscious jealousy for the person with whom we try to identify does not enter in the case of Mickey Mouse. The films represent a child's world of visions and fantasies and they unfold a mechanized fairy tale. They resolutely follow the pleasure principle. Mickey Mouse is a happy child and the satisfaction of his desire is still his supreme law. A unique magic restoration regularly takes place. Reality and fantasy are no longer opposed. The laws of gravity and logic are denied. Very important is the feature of all Mickey Mouse films that they ridicule the machine age. Symbolically Mickey Mouse could be called a desexualized phallus. The audience feels that, and although Mickey remains a mouse and a phallus he does not stir up wishes which have to be suppressed; consequently he does not arouse anxiety.