The theoretical bases for the panel are J.R.R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories,” Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny, The Ego and the Id, Interpretation of Dreams, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and On Sexuality, Jacques Lacan’s The Mirror Stage and The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire, Charles Horton Cooley’s Human Nature and the Social Order, and Carl Jung’s Phenomenology of the Self.The psychoanalytic sources cover the relation of the inner psyche to one’s self in distinct contexts, such as primitivism, society, culture, language, and gender.
Joseph Ferrerosa’s paper, “Dreams of Another Self and the Duality of the Fairytale: The Sandman and the Alice Novels,” will set the stage for the panel by clarifying and negotiating the definition of a “fairytale.” Ferrerosa argues that, while Tolkien proposes that a literary work can only be classified as a fairytale if the magic within is not “explained away,” such as upon placement in a dream sequence, Freud’s theory that all dreams originate from material reality validates that a literary piece whose extant magic is in the dream sequence can be classified as a fairytale. Ferrerosa consequently endorses the classification of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There in the fairytale genre. He also establishes E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Sandman” as a fairytale by demonstrating the extreme seriousness with which the fantasy within is to be presented; he pinpoints the legend of the Sandman as the ultimate cause of the disintegration of the protagonist, Nathanael. He applies Freud’s concepts by rendering Nathanael’s consequent fugue state the exemplification of the duality of the Id and Superego in the self and tracing Nathanael’s personification of an Id in the Oedipus Complex and death drive that Nathanael portrays. Ferrerosa presents an alternate psychological impact of the fantasy world in Carroll’s novels by arguing that Wonderland and the looking-glass evoke Alice’s dual nature of self in multiple ways. Ferrerosa first celebrates Alice’s journey through Wonderland and the looking-glass as an encounter with her “looking-glass self,” a psychological scenario proposed by Cooley. He then interprets Alice’s claim that she is two selves as the development of her Id and Superego and traces her consequent maturation from child towards adulthood.
Bouterra Bochra and Lachouri Toufik’s paper, “Understanding the Wonders of the Symbolic Order: A Lacanian Analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” will supplement Ferrerosa’s linkage of Alice’s Wonderland journey with her maturation by analyzing the seminal and linguistic dimensions of Wonderland. The panelists set up Wonderland as a world of signs and symbols; the Symbolic Order that Alice is introduced to upon entry. They argue that Alice understands and identifies with herself and consequently grows up when encountering the Symbolic Order. Bochra and Toufik thus celebrate Wonderland as the rite-of-passage of Alice’s transition from the Mirror Stage into the Symbolic Order; a focal point in Lacanian research.
Avinanda Datta’s paper, “Engendered Shadows: A Jungian Reading of Grimm Brothers’ Little Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood,” would supplement the earlier panelists’ application of Freud's and Lacan's psychoanalytic theories by deconstructing the psychoanalysis of Jung, who has been less explored in the field of fairytale scholarship. She interprets the characters in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Little Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood as “autonomous complex” and individual “archetype” figures of Jung’s “Model of Psyche”: the protagonists, Snow White and Little Red, as the “Ego,” the Evil Queen and wolf as the “Shadow,” and the Prince and the Huntsman as the “Animus” of their respective psyche. Datta argues that, contrary to the true Shadow of Jung’s model which never perishes, the Evil Queen and the wolf, being illegitimate parts of their respective Psyche, have to obliterate themselves after the final union of the Ego with its true Animus. She thus reads the fairytales as integral mechanisms within the respective immature feminine psyche and examines the narratives as psychodynamic process of individuation, narcissism, and transcendence.
Padmini Sukumaran’s closing presentation, “Fairyland in The Faerie Queene and A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Realm of the Inner Psyche,” will exemplify, through the device of metafiction, the psychotherapeutic effect of reading a fairytale. Sukumaran sets up the human protagonist’s exploration of Fairyland in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the reading of a fairytale; thus rendering the protagonist the stand-in for the reader of a fairytale. Sukumaran interprets Fairyland as the mirror of the protagonist’s inner psyche that underlies the layer of consciousness and argues that the protagonist, upon exploring Fairyland, confronts subconscious fears, desires, etc., to ultimately achieve maturation and completion in his/her identity. She, hence, exemplifies Tolkien’s theory that by reading a fairytale, one will perceive the Primary World of reality with a refreshed perspective.
“Psychotherapeutic Optimization of Humanity via Fairyland” would therefore endorse fairytale psychoanalysis as a valid field of literary scholarship, upon pinpointing the field’s implicate critical revelations on the human species. The panel even has the promise of ultimately innovating additional angles of focus for the lens of fairytale psychoanalysis.