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Although informative and certainly most interesting, this paper is not a very satisfying one to me for the following reasons.
First, while the review of the Cinderella myth taught me several things for which I would thank the author, I do not think that this study tells us much that is new analytically. For instance, when we are told that slippers can be vagina symbols, it seems less significant in this day and age than the non-analytic information sketching in the history of the Pantomime version of Cinderella or the mistranslation of vair as verre. But this latter kind of information does not derive from psychoanalytic thinking or technique.
Second, the clinical material does not seem very much related to the Cinderella myth. The same reported material could just as well be hooked up to a dozen other myths or be handled in some other completely different way. The Cinderella myth is not illuminated by the clinical material or vice versa.
Third, I really dislike the unfair advantage that some analytic authors take with data when they “prove” a point with such vocabulary as “penis-pink ballet shoes.” This kind of cleverness avoids the need to prove anything and hides itself under “artistic sensibility.”
Fourth, when one wants to search for the bisexual implications of symbols, one has a field day because it is possible to do so with just about anything (with or without accompanying free associations). This is as undisciplined as the “penis-pink” kind of game.
Fifth, some of the conclusions severely stretch the elasticity of the case material. For example, if the author is trying to say something about youngest children, she has not proven her point, for we all know so many exceptions to her rule that it is hard to believe there is any rule. … Or, if she is trying to state a proposition that such people have wide swings of mood, she ought to present an adequate series to demonstrate this to us; and if she wants us to know that “they all have loss of identity,” we would gai