What Do Fairy Tales Really Tell Us? 

Freud, the Unconscious, and the Hidden Language of Story

For most of us, fairy tales bring to mind enchanted forests, wicked stepmothers, magical creatures, and faraway castles. These are the stories we first heard as children, nestled in bed or sitting in a circle at school—simple, fantastical tales meant to entertain, teach lessons, or lull us to sleep.

But what if these stories were doing much more than that? What if, beneath their charming surfaces, fairy tales were speaking the language of the unconscious—giving shape to our deepest fears, desires, and internal conflicts?

That was the view of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, who believed that dreams, myths, and folk stories all drew from the same well: the murky, repressed world of the unconscious mind.

Fairy Tales as a Mirror of the Psyche

Freud argued that the mind is structured like an iceberg—what we are conscious of is only a small part of the whole. Beneath it lies a vast underworld of forgotten memories, repressed wishes, and unresolved conflicts. Dreams, he claimed, offered clues to this hidden terrain. So too, it turns out, do stories—especially the strange, symbolic narratives found in traditional fairy tales.

Take Little Red Riding Hood, for example. On the surface, it’s a tale of a naïve girl and a predatory wolf. But viewed through a Freudian lens, the story becomes a metaphor for sexual awakening, danger, and the crossing of childhood thresholds. Similarly, the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel—a place that simultaneously attracts and threatens—can represent a distorted image of the maternal figure, blending themes of nourishment and destruction.

These aren’t just academic curiosities. For Freud and the generations of psychoanalysts who followed him, stories like these were cultural dreams—shared, symbolic narratives that externalize what individuals often can’t say aloud.

Why Freud Still Matters (Especially in Fairytales)

Freud has become a controversial figure in modern psychology—his theories of sexuality, repression, and development have been challenged, revised, and sometimes discarded altogether. But when it comes to literature, art, and myth, his influence is still profound.

His insight that stories may encode unconscious content has shaped everything from literary criticism to film theory. Fairy tales, in particular, offer a rich site for analysis because they deal so openly in archetypes, taboos, and transformation. They allow for a kind of symbolic expression that resonates across cultures and generations.

Freud himself was fascinated by myths like Oedipus and Narcissus, and though he wrote little about fairy tales directly, later thinkers like Bruno Bettelheim and Carl Jung would extend his ideas into the realm of folklore and storytelling. Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment famously argued that fairy tales help children make sense of their own internal struggles by projecting them onto external characters and situations.

Reading Stories Differently

Approaching fairy tales with psychoanalysis in mind doesn’t mean “ruining” them or over-intellectualising what are often quite simple narratives. Instead, it means becoming more attuned to their layers. A wicked stepmother might be more than a villain; she could represent the darker side of maternal love, or the child’s ambivalence toward parental authority. A magic forest might symbolize the unknown regions of the self. A transformation—from beast to prince, for example—might echo the painful work of emotional integration.

For writers, educators, therapists, and readers alike, this approach offers a way to engage stories not just as entertainment, but as psychic maps. It asks us to listen to what fairy tales are whispering beneath the surface.

Why It Matters Now

In a time when many of us are looking for deeper meaning—whether in art, therapy, or even just in personal reflection—revisiting classic stories through a Freudian lens can be surprisingly enlightening. It encourages us to see ourselves in the tales we thought we knew, and to recognize that even the most fantastical stories may be grounded in very human experiences: fear, longing, conflict, and the desire to grow.

If you're curious about the role fairy tales play in exploring our desires and fears and in general, in our inner lives, you might find our Online Freud and Fairy Tales Course helpful. One of our favourite bibliotherapy courses in this space, it offers 4+ hours of fascinating insights that can be completed online and as it is self-paced, you can complete it at your own convenience. You also get one year's access: https://www.booktherapy.io/products/freud-fairytales-online-course 

And if you'd like to learn more about bibliotherapy, it's history, how it works and stories from my bibliotherapy room, you might find my book, Bibliotherapy: The Healing Power of Reading a helpful read :) It's been translated into 10 languages so far, with more to come. You can find the edition you'd like to read here