Fairy tales and the healing journey
: Myths and fairy tales can play an important role in overcoming childhood trauma. Just as the symbolic figures in nightly dreams reflect the realities of our waking life, the symbols to be found in fairy tales and myths (which are the collective dreams of entire cultures) provide useful metaphors for grappling with the hard truths of our existence. These old tales have much to say about heroism; about how one finds the courage to fight and prevail against adversity. They are tales of children abandoned in the woods , of daughters who are handed poisoned apples or pressured to enter their fathers' beds , of sons betrayed and brothers be-spelled , or who hack off their own sisters' limbs . The old tales, which were often dark and brutal, were not considered mere children's stories at all -- not until the 20th century, when the pendulum of adult literary fashion swung sharply toward novels of strict realism, and oral tales (associated with the lower classes, and with wo...