Heroes and Villains: A Deep Dive into Humankind's Thinking Through Fairy Tales

Exploring Childhood and Adult Splitting, the good, the bad and the evil.

The good mother says yes.

I will never forget when I was a little boy and we saw the movie The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was an enchanting experience. One of the many characters who stood out in my mind was the evil witch. She was terrifying, and that stuck in my mind for a long time. All the different characters were fantastic. My reaction to the witch was typical of what children experience with fairy tales. It is part of the way children think. Children are very concrete in the way they think. Concrete means that they see things in either black or white terms. In a child's mind, there are no gray areas. How is this explained in psychological terms?

Decades of research on child development have revealed that children, teenagers, and adults go through stages of growth in their thinking. Object relations theory, one area of psychology related to childhood thinking, is rooted in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theories.

Object relations theory, a concept deeply rooted in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theories, offers a relatable perspective. According to this theory, everything is cognitively represented as an object, from people to toys to our houses. We absorb images into our minds to represent our parents, families, friends, neighborhoods, etc. These objects remain in our minds forever, a concept we can all relate to.

However, how we view these objects changes as we develop. Has size already been said in a child's mind whose thinking is very concrete? There are suitable objects, and there are harmful objects. When Mommy cares for me, smiles, and loves me, she is considered an appropriate object. However, when Mommy says no, you cannot eat that chocolate bar before dinner, or if Mommy disapproves of my behavior, she becomes "a bad object." Mommy is split into "a good object" and "a bad object."

The bad mother says no.

The enduring popularity of fairy tales is a testament to their profound psychological significance. They provide a unique insight into how we think, especially as children. Even in adulthood, we can quickly revert to concrete thinking, which adds to the intrigue of these timeless tales.

Below, I summarize Cinderella:

Cinderella is a classic fairy tale about a young girl who lives with her cruel stepmother and stepsisters. They force her to do all the household chores and treat her poorly while they live in comfort. One day, the king announces a royal ball, and everyone in the kingdom is invited. Cinderella wishes to attend, but her stepmother denies her the chance.

With the help of her fairy godmother, Cinderella's rags are transformed into a beautiful gown, and she is given a carriage to take her to the ball. The fairy godmother warns her that the magic will only last until midnight. At the ball, the prince is captivated by Cinderella. Still, she leaves hurriedly when the clock strikes twelve, leaving behind a glass slipper. The prince searches the kingdom for the slipper's owner, and when he finds Cinderella, they are reunited. In the end, Cinderella and the prince marry, and she leaves behind her life of hardship to live happily ever after.

The cruel stepmother and stepsisters are "bad" objects in object relations. The Fairy Godmother is a "good" object. Typically, the fairy tale ends happily ever after. The evil stepmother, stepsisters, and fairy godmother are all the same person. They all represent a child's point of view and different aspects of Mommy. It is essential to understand that all of this is unconscious. The child is unaware of how their mind works.

As adult humans, we revert to concrete black-and-white thinking. Sadly, the war between Israel and its enemies is thought of in concrete terms by many Americans and people in other countries. In this scenario, some people view the Israelis as all bad and the Palestinians as all good. What further complicates the issue for people who are Jewish is that this is a representation of the historical hatred of Jewish people.

Here in the United States, the "MAGA" Republicans, with Donald Trump as their leader, portray immigrants, especially Haitian immigrants, as all bad. Add to that, Kamala Harris, a candidate running against Trump in the upcoming election for president, is portrayed as someone who is not a black person. Trump keeps reinforcing this idea, ignoring the fact that she is a woman of color and, therefore, a minority. Trump has also warned that if he loses the election, it will be the fault of American Jews. He says this even though his son-in-law is Jewish. Hatred has no boundaries.

Even though we are adults, we can revert to our childhood thinking. Tragically, the danger of reverting to concrete thinking is warfare under the right circumstances.

There was a time when people believed that children should not be exposed to fairy tales because they were frightening. They failed to understand that the stories and characters in Fairy Tales are already in our children's minds, which is why they have endured for as long as humankind.

The profound enigma we face today is overcoming humankind's concrete ways of thinking to bring peace to our world finally. So many problems need to be solved, and these problems threaten our existence. Among these are climate change, air pollution, poverty, and disease, among many other existential issues.

I invite everyone to submit their comments.