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FAIRY TALES, CHILDREN'S STORIES, AND BEDTIME RITUALS ARE serious business. In part, at least, they provide relief from tension when the need for sleep is countered by unconscious wishes to rework the residues of the day's problems and to hold on to loved ones. Bedtime stories may be thought of as way stations into the world of fantasy and dreams, as the ego's functioning and the hold on reality are progressively relaxed. Anticipation of sleep may bring not only fears of separation, but also changes in body and self images. These threats to cohesiveness are often associated with the transition from waking to sleeping states and enhance the possibilities for splitting, dissociation, and fragmentation of the self.
While fairy tales serve many masters (Waelder, 1960), we can select only a few for discussion. We will touch on the child's obvious and not so obvious attempts to deal with eruptions of instinctual anxiety and on the hierarchy of defenses mustered against these eruptions: the creative subliminatory functions of the ego ideal and superego of the child who listens and the parent who reads.