Bettelheim argues that fairy tales reflect reality in a way that children can understand. He claims that children believe all things to be living much like humans and that fairy tales allow for children to understand the world on their own terms. He says that children have their own beliefs and understanding of how the world works based on their own experiences and what adults teach them goes against the knowledge they have from their own experiences. He uses an example of children and a model comet, and how the children became disillusioned with the model once they had realized the comet in their hand wasn’t the real comet. Bettelheim claims that children are incapable of understanding abstract concepts that contradict their own experiences. By contradicting their experiences, children thereby begin to distrust their own experiences. Fairy tales, he says, follow the knowledge gained from the the children’s experiences and allows children to feel secure in their environments until they are capable of abstract thought and truly comprehending the concepts they were taught in the past. One major aspect of fairy tales is the lessons that we learn from them, and Bettelheim claims that children are especially susceptible to the lessons of fairy tales.
Bettelheim also discusses children’s behavior and desires and how they can transfer them to their toys and dreams. Though I can understand how a child’s desires can be reflected in one's dreams, some of the examples seem too mildly disturbing to be true. For example, a child's transference of an Electra or Oedipus complex and desire to have a child with their parent onto a doll and to care for the doll as a baby seems a little far fetched. However, thinking about it some more makes some sense. Bettelheim claims that fairy tales allow children to express and articulate their desires rather than keeping them suppressed and transferring them onto something else.