Growth, development and creativity, mainly the literal one, belong to the central interests of Tor-Björn and Vilja Hägglund. In their new book, it has been possible to unite these orientations: the aim of the book is to demonstrate the unconscious significance of folk fairy tales for human growth, both individually and collectively.

The investigator of the Finnish folklore enjoys a special advantage of the fact that the folklore archives of the Society for Finnish Literature are among the greatest in the world. Even folk fairy tales have been collected systematically ever since the middle of 19th century and their classification is far advanced. For instance, the theme of dragon fight makes its appearance in 196 fairy tale variations collected from different parts of Finland.

The book consists of five separate articles with the following titles: “The relation of psychoanalysis to ethnography”, “Fantasies in the service of growth”, “Fantasies and the illustration of the mind”, “The Finnish folk