individual’ (Cooper 1983:154). The problem with such criticism is that it reduces images
in fairy tales to fixed allegorical meanings without regard for historical and social
contexts, as the Jungian critic basically explains metaphor with metaphor. Northrop
Frye’s discussion of archetypes in terms of convention and genre is an attempt to avoid
such reductionism (1957). What makes the Jungian approach attractive to interpreters
of children’s literature is that the theory assumes an original wholeness that can be
regained after alienation is overcome. This coincides with the comic resolution of so
many narratives for children and young adults.
In Jungian literary criticism children’s literature is often seen as privileged, just as the
‘primitive psyche’ of the child is in Jungian psychoanalysis. ‘Children’s literature
initiates us into psychic reality, by telling about the creatures and perils of the soul and
the heart’s possibilities of blessing in images of universal intelligibility’ (Hillman 1980:5).
At its best Jungian criticism is able to integrate the author’s and the reader’s needs as
exemplified in Lynn Rosenthal’s interpretation of Lucy Boston’s The Children of Green
Knowe (1980).
Ego Psychology and Object Relations TheoriesThe generation of psychoanalysts that was influenced by, reacted against and revised
Freud, distinguishes itself by overcoming Freud’s pessimism regarding the ego’s
inevitable discontent. While the new focus does not deny the existence of the
unconscious, it emphasises the possibility of healthy growth and development in the ego’s
self-realisation in relation to its environment. Karen Horney and Abraham Maslow,
Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott describe possibilities for growth through
constructive management of the id’s pressures. Each insists that the developing psyche
of the child responds to environmental conditions with a positive urge to self-
actualisation that is thwarted only by hostile environments. From the perspective of ego
psychology, author and reader participate in a shareable fantasy that constructively
breaks down ‘for a time the boundaries between self and other, inner and outer, past
and future, and...may neutralise the primal aggressions bound up in those separations’
(Holland 1968:340). Psychoanalytic literary critics have, however, also been concerned
that ego psychology tends to be in one direction only, ‘namely from the ego as a publicly
adjusted identity’ (Wright 1984:57).
Karen Horney and Abraham MaslowAccording to Horney, the goal of psychoanalysis is the patient’s discovery of the
possibility of self-realisation and the recognition that good human relations are an
essential part of this, along with the faculty for creative work and the acceptance of
personal responsibility (1950:334). Persistent denial of childhood conflicts and their
screening with defensive self-delusions block self-realisation. Irrational expectations or
‘neurotic claims’ such as self-idealisation obscure not only self-hate, but also ‘the
unique alive forces’ that each self possesses and that are distorted by the self-illusions.
The therapeutic process weakens the obstructive forces so that the constructive forces
90 THEORY AND CRITICAL APPROACHES