Poor Rumpelstiltskin

"Rumpelstiltskin" is a fairy tale that has interested psychoanalysts in their search for additional ways to understand their patients. Several of my women patients have brought it up at various times for different reasons. It lends itself easily to elaborations of transference feelings in my practice since it begins, "In a certain kingdom, once lived a poor miller who had a very beautiful daughter" (Opie and Opie, 1974, p. 196). The story describes how this miller brags to his king about his daughter's beauty and her ability to spin straw into gold. The king challenges the miller to prove this or forfeit both his and his daughter's lives. The daughter is confined in a room full of straw. She has no idea of what to do but is visited by a misshapen dwarf who says that he can spin the straw into gold. The daughter negotiates with the little man, and he agrees to perform the miracle for a necklace on the first night and for a ring on the second night. On the third and last night, the daughter, unable to find another payment, promises him her firstborn baby. After three nights and three rooms full of gold, the king keeps his promise and marries the miller's daughter. Later, when she has her first child, the little man returns to collect his payment. When she begs for a way out of this contract, he agrees that she can keep her child if she can guess his name. As queen, she sends messengers throughout the land to bring her lists of possible names. For two days she makes incorrect guesses. The third day, a messenger brings word of having overheard a little dwarf singing about getting a baby and identifying his name as Rumpelstiltskin. The queen teases the little man by naming other names and then states the name Rumpelstiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin becomes enraged, and in one version he jumps up and down, gets one foot stuck in the ground,