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June 03, 2002
Pithy 1: consisting of or abounding in pith.
From Webster's:
hippie a usu. young person who rejects the mores of established society (as by dressing unconventionally or favoring communal living), advocates a nonviolent ethic, and often uses psychedelic drugs or marijuana; broadly: a long-haired unconventionally dressed young person
I'm reading Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, a book recommended to me by my wonderful high school English teacher Mr. Hagar lo these many years ago. It's a book about the psychology of fairy tales which so far has managed not to leap outside my very limited sphere of knowledge -- id, ego, superego. (My psych professor in college was very interested in encouraging us to sleep nude in the forest or go train-hopping and not so interested in, well, the subject.) The author keeps claiming that all these symbols will naturally resonate in a child's subconscious, and that she'll understand that Hansel and Gretel getting ditched in a forest does not mean that mommy and daddy are going to ditch you in a forest. Apparently she associates the bad parent figures with her own parents when they are cruel and deny her, say, cookies, or won't let her put a parachute on the hamster and drop it off the roof because hamsters are expensive. So she can live out her fantasies of surmounting these troubles, and at the end she can return to reality and happy family life.
I dunno. My mom refused to read me abandonment stories. (Though she was all the time trying to lose me in grocery stores.) I got read books about Sesame Street. Lots of non-gender-specific muppets and anthropomorphic animals playing together in the primary-colored real world. I don't think I turned out too badly because of that, although Bettelheim does make the point that reading a child fairy tales both encourages them to engage in a fantasy life and enables them to embrace reality as they get older. Now we all know I have
Posted by didofoot at June 3, 2002 12:00 PM
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