Casamassima S.; Russello C.; Berivi S.; Grassi A

KeyWords: abandonment, neglect, over-care, mistreatment, mother

Abstract

According to Jungian Analytical Psychology and its advocator Marie Louis von Franz, it is possible to observe the purest expression of the psychic processes of the collective unconscious through fairy tales, as “they represent the archetypes in a simple and concise form” (von Franz 1970).

Looking at the fairy tale of Hänsel and Gretel by the Grimm Brothers (1951), we glimpse at the archetypes of the maternal figure’s shadow, as the fairy tale portrays a situation in which the mother is absent. Instead, there is a figure of a stepmother who urges the father to abandon the children in the woods. The story is further complicated by the presence of a “poor” father and the witch who nurtures the children in an unregulated manner. According to the writers, these figures, exemplifying both an unhelpful and unloving mother and an inadequate father are part of the so-called ” pathology of care ” or “those conditions in which the parents or legal guardians of the child do not adequately provide for their physical and psychological needs in relation to their developmental age” (Montecchi 1998).

The main forms of care pathology are: Incuria or Neglect when physical and mental care is insufficient compared to the child’s needs, Discuria or miscare when there is distorted and inappropriate care and Hypercuria – overcare in the presence of excessive and disproportionate care (Montecchi 2006).

According to modern authors (Montecchi 2006, Berivi and Grassi 2018), these care pathologies are considered forms of wrongfully-given care and give rise to important psychopathological disorders such as substance use and personality disorders in the most serious cases. Milder cases involve scholastic problems, relational difficulties, promiscuity, delinquency and overdependence.

In light of these premises, through the interpretation of the Grimm fairy tale “Hänsel and Gretel“, the authors offer a clinical and archetypal interpretation of the most crucial aspects of the child’s trauma, the repercussions on growth and intrapsychic development, the journey to healing family intrapsychic dynamics and the realization of the Self.

The authors therefore share the thesis of von Franz (1970) who sustained that almost all fairy tales attempt to metaphorically describe the process of identification. In fact, the fairy tale of Hänsel and Gretel is an example of the path that one can undertake to achieve the realization of Self.

Introduction

In late ancient philosophy, the word Archetype refers to the universal forms of sensitive things, precisely the original or the first forms created by God and to which the res of the living world conform ( Serino, Battaglini 2018).

For Jung the archetype is an “a priori category of experience and knowledge” (1936-1954), the archetypes, or primordial images, are representations “of the same motif which, despite their individual and even sensitive variations, continue to derive from the same fundamental model […] the Eternal is “to arketupon fos”, for the Corpus Hermeticum” (Jung 1981).

The archetypes “belong” to the collective unconscious and are manifestations of a universal container, dream symbols, mystical visions, mystical elaborations, images linked to the religious dimension. “The collective unconscious is a part of the psyche that can be negatively distinguished from the personal unconscious, due to the fact that it does not, like the latter, owe its experience to personal experience and is therefore not a personal acquisition” (Jung 1936) . Unlike the personal unconscious “made up essentially of contents that were once “conscious” and which were then “forgotten or removed”, the “contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness and therefore have never been acquired individually, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity” (Jung 1936). And on the other hand, the personal unconscious consists above all of “complexes”, while the collective unconscious is instead composed of “archetypes”, “determined forms” of the psyche, present always and in any case (ibidem).

In the research conducted by Jung (1936), one of the most important archetypes (along with the Senex, the Puer Eternus, the Shadow, the Persona, the Anima, the Animus, the Self) is that of the Mother. An archetype that refers to the idea of the Mother, whose formulation is initially connected with the Jungian notion of Soul, described by the author in his works: Psychological Types (1921) and The Ego and the Unconscious (1916/1928). According to Jung, like the archetype of the Soul, the archetype of the Mother involves a plurality of aspects, from mythology, religion, philosophy, the natural and animal world, the human civilization and its fundamental structures such as places with a universal meaning, recurring in different environments and societies. Thus he showed the readers the common archetypal origin of mythical symbols, such as Demeter and Kore, of “places of birth or procreation“, of objects with high symbolic value, such as the oven or the pot. Each aspect is the repository of a perennial ambivalence pertaining to the mother, experienced as a “loving mother” and “terrifying mother” (Neumann 1956).

Like any archetype, that of the mother also has an almost infinite quantity of aspects: “the personal mother and grandmother, the stepmother and the mother-in-law, any woman with whom a relationship exists (the nurse, the nanny…) in a higher and more figuratively the goddess and finally the Virgin. In a broader sense: the Church, the university, the city, the homeland, the sky, the earth, the forest, the sea and stagnant water, matter, the underground world, the moon. In a narrower sense: the places of birth or procreation, the garden, the cave, the tree, the deep well. In an even stricter sense: the uterus, every hollow shape, the oven, the pot, and various animals such as the cow, the hare and every helpful animal in general. All these symbols can have a positive or negative meaning” (Jung 1939-1954).

Features of the archetypes of the Mother and the maternal figure that have a positive meaning refer to everything that is benevolent, protective, tolerant, conducive for growth, fertility, nutrition, places of rebirth and helpful instincts. The malevolent and nefarious aspect is instead represented by what is secret, occult, dark; the abyss, the world of the dead; what devours, seduces, intoxicates and generates anguish. Regarding this, Neumann (1956) also designated the extreme poles of these attributes as loving mother and a bad mother. According to Bettelheim (1975), a nefarious symbol is the witch, the personification of the destructive aspects of orality with her tendency to devour children.

All these archetypal aspects can be observed in fairy tales. In fact they are the purest expression of the psychic processes of the collective unconscious and they represent the archetypes in a simple and concise form. In this pure form, archetypal images offer us the best clues to understanding the processes that take place in the collective psyche (von Franz 1970). According to Jung’s concept (1936), each archetype is in its essence an unknown psychic factor: it is impossible, therefore, to translate its content into intellectual terms.

Here our aim is to offer an interpretation of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale (1951).

“Hänsel and Gretel” places the emphasis on psychic functions of the archetype of the Great Mother, on the importance of the father’s archetype and on the roles that the latter assumes in transference terms from the point of view of Analytical Psychology with a Communicative Orientation.

The fairy tale illustrates how it is possible to identify the path to follow to achieve self-realization. By overcoming trials that the protagonists are called to face (crossing the forest, killing the witch, crossing the river), we observe the deployment of forces and psychic energies that contribute to individual development and growth. The forest is the metaphor of the transformation process in which one is involved within a psychoanalytic path, in which the integration between conscious and unconscious determines the change in the personality of the subject involved (Bettlheim 1975).

This is the meaning that we will try to analyze in this discussion by identifying the shadow aspects of the mother and the father and the traumatic repercussions on the child’s development. Repercussions that can be read in clinical terms as a pathological expression of care, precisely as “incuria” , ” hypercuria ” and ” discuria”. We will specify the relationship between neglect, overcare and miscare later.

Shadow aspects of the maternal figure in Hansel and Gretel

In this section we begin to focus in particular on four characters of the fairy tale who, in our opinion, allow us to analytically understand the Shadow aspects of the maternal:

1. The absent mother
2. Step mother
3. The Witch
4. The sister

We will now provide a very brief summary of the fairy tale of Hänsel and Gretel set in a forest in Germany in the 17th century, a period of terrible famine linked to the spread of the plague epidemic. The fairy tale is a story of two little brother and sister who are abandoned in the woods by their father, a poor woodcutter, and their stepmother because they can no longer feed them. The summary of the fairy tale is this: on the first time of abandonment, the two little kids manage to return home thanks to the smart Hänsel who sowed some pebbles along the way. The second time, the brother left traces of bread crumbs that were eaten by the birds, hence he is no longer able to return home with his sister. The two little kids thus get lost in the woods from which they manage to find a way out only on the third day, attracted by a little house made of bread and sugar. The children begin to eat the house from the roof and windows until the evil witch appears and lures them and traps them with the intention to cook and eat them. Hänsel is locked in a coop and fattened by the witch like a chicken, with the witch’s intent to eat him. Grethel instead is forced to cook the most delicious food for her brother. The day arrives when the witch decides to eat Hänsel and orders Gretel to light the fire and fill pot full of water. The smart Gretel pushes the witch into the stove causing her to burn to death. The whole house is full of pearls and precious stones: the two children fill their pockets and leave and search for the way home. They reach a river that they cannot cross and Gretel asks for help from a duck who rescues them and takes them to the other side of the river. The two children thus find their home where their father happily welcomes them, while their stepmother is dead. They will now have enough wealth and will no longer need to struggle (Grimm 1951).

The condition of poverty and abandonment represents the central theme from which the whole story unfolds and heralds the problem which is a pathological family structure characterized by the absence of the mother, the presence of the stepmother and a father who is unable to take on the responsibilities of a father. He represents a father who does not fulfill his roles and is incapable of satisfying his own and his family’s survival needs: eating, sleeping and protecting his children. The aspect of impoverishment increasingly refers, in addition to economic and material condition, also to psychic malnutrition, understood as the inability of the paternal function to have a profound impact on the unconscious of their children. In Jungian terms we could say that this father has a ^[1]negative Anima. The Anima is the symbol of Eros and by recognizing Eros, man can learn to establish relationships based on a value judgment, i.e. on feeling. Only if combined with the capacity for symbolization of the feminine, the strength and fertilizing power of the masculine principle can lead to action understood as directed will (Berivi, Carabini 2006).

Jung stated in this regard that the more a woman is able to strengthen her Anima functions, the more she will be able to integrate, through love for a man with a positive Animus, the male functions and unite them in a union that makes her even more feminine. Just as the man capable of using the Animus will be able to integrate the Anima and masculinize himself in the encounter with the feminine. In the fairy tale, the figure of the stepmother who the father accompanies represents precisely the representation of his negative Anima.

Jung (1931) considered the father an element that creates, stabilizes and guides. This thus allows dynamic evolution and favors the child’s integration to the outside world. On the other hand, the absence of the father or the presence of an inadequate father figure can negatively influence the child’s development process. Several modern authors stated that the absence of the father can have negative repercussions on the adolescent in terms of self-esteem, academic performance, social skills (Lamb 2004) and in the ability to give up the immediate satisfaction of instinctual needs (Guy Corneau 1991). Furthermore, the destruction of the paternal relationship also has a halo effect on the entire society in which human relationships are dominated by drug addiction, bullying, competitiveness, oppression and abuse (Grassi 2010).

The impoverishment above all concerns the maternal aspect as well. It is symbolized by the absence of the mother and the presence in her place of the stepmother who serves as an expression of the destructive, deceptive and expulsive maternal aspect which aims to kill children for her own survival and which has replaced the maternal in her light function.

In this fairy tale, the presence of the stepmother and the witch brings us back to the distinction of the two main characters of the Great Mother archetype , the “elementary” one and the “transformative” one (Neumann 1956).

As von Franz (1988) claimed, Mother Nature is the womb of life; she gives endlessly without reserve. But she is also the grave. She relentlessly kills and devours everything that lives (von Franz 1988). The first woman a man meets is his mother. The goal that the mother sets for herself in life is to satisfy her child’s hunger, to take care of his body, to worry about his well-being. She has immense power. Her steps ease the child’s pain; her arms, cradling him, make him fall asleep. She satisfies all his physical and emotional needs. The relationship between mother and child is one of nature’s most fascinating mysteries. But nature is also cruel” (von Franz 1988).

In its positive elementary character, the maternal world is life and psyche in one, it nourishes and provides pleasure, protects and warms, consoles and forgives: this mother is always the one who grants, gives and helps. The symbolism of the “Great Circle” of which Neumann (1956) spoke in relation to the elementary character, evokes an image certainly not unknown to Jung, the alchemical one of the One/All, the indistinct and magmatic universe, devoid of form, within which the latent and irresistible force of nature is expressed. That Great Circle is the Ouroboros serpent, ^[2]symbol of the negative maternal (Neumann1956).

The second character of the Great Mother archetype identified by Neumann (1956) is the one called “transformer”: it “places emphasis on the dynamic element of the psyche, which, in contrast with the conservative tendency of the elementary character, pushes us to move, to change, therefore to transform”.

In the fairy tale, the two characters “elementary” and “transformer” are represented by the witch, a devouring figure (elementary character) who keeps the children in the house, feeding them until they fatten up, and by the stepmother who chases children away from their home. As we will see below, from the latter figure, we can observe how the expulsive mode, in its transformative polarity, can represent for children an escape route from the dysfunctional mother.

At the same time, when children grow up and enter into a process of autonomy, they themselves are prey to predatory and greedy urges that make them easy victims of a devouring mother. They must eliminate the witch to resume their journey in a healthier way. This can make us reflect on the journey of growth that an adolescent must face, in which his/her challenge is precisely to be able to control greedy impulses such as eating, without running into dangerous situations.

As Neumann (1956) stated, the Great Mother is therefore the giver not only of life, but also of death and the subtraction of love can appear as the subtraction of all the functions that constitute the positive aspect of the elementary character. Thus hunger and thirst correspond to nourishment, cold to heat, lack of protection to protection, need to satisfaction. According to Neumann (1956) the transformative character assumes in positive terms the role of development in the sense of generating and liberating while in negative terms it assumes the role of reducing and devouring.

In the fairy tale, the roles of rejection and deprivation, primarily created by the stepmother both belong to the dark aspect of the feminine archetype.

“Understood in a positive sense, the role of rejection is a fundamental function of the elementary maternal character, which sets young adolescents free and – as happens within animals – pushes them away at a certain stage. Therefore, in refusal, part of the transformative character of the Archetype of the Feminine is also expressed, which helps living creatures achieve their natural development. […]. In the individual’s experience, rejection begins when containment ends, that is, every time that the necessary development leads to overcoming containment in the Ouroboros, in the Great Mother. This constellation is the basis of what is defined in personal terms as “birth trauma”, and which has been interpreted as the cause of all evil. It is actually an existential condition, the Ego and the individual, who emerge from a phase of containment, in a gradual and imperceptible development or in a sudden “birth”, experience this situation as rejection. […]. Every time an old situation of containment is resolved, the ego experiences this revolution in which an old way of existing is shattered, such as rejection by the mother. The role of refusal is closely connected with deprivation, which in the elementary circle constitutes the function opposed to giving” (Neumann 1956).

In the fairy tale, the maternal function as we have seen is represented by the absence of the mother, the presence of the stepmother and the witch who deceives the two children to kill them and feed on them. The witch represents the dark side of the great mother, a negative and destructive aspect, the deadly side, everything that is opposed to conscience (von Franz 1977). She is the personification of the destructive aspects of orality, which is why, in all fairy tales, the food used by the witch symbolizes the lack of limits which is typical in greed. “Greed – infinite and insatiable hunger, seems to be the form that shapes the pain associated with the experience of limits, indispensable for access to the symbolic dimension” (Grassi 2010). In fact, this greed is the basis of many psychopathological disorders such as eating disorders or pathological addictions.

The evil witch, like both parents in the beginning, places the two children in a condition of mental and physical deprivation, meaning Hänsel is imprisoned and forced to eat continuously while Gretel is forced to serve the witch by taking care of the household chores. Both the feminine and the masculine are placed in a condition of inferiority with respect to their real potential for growth and development. In other words, they are in a condition of mistreatment.

In the scientific field, there are numerous notions that define the conditions that characterize mistreatment. According to the Council of Europe held in Strasbourg in 1978, child abuse means “acts and deficits which seriously disturb boys and girls, attack their bodily integrity, their physical, emotional, intellectual and moral development, whose manifestations are neglect and/or physical and/or psychological and/or sexual injuries by a family member or third parties”. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a condition of abuse and mistreatment occurs when parents or legal guardians take advantage of their privileged condition and behave against the provisions of the Convention of New York on the Rights of the Child (1989)^[3].

In March 1999 in Geneva, during the Consultation on Child Abuse Prevention, a unique and worldwide agreement was reached on the definition of maltreatment, understanding it as “including all forms of physical and/or psycho-emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, commercial exploitation or the absence of action and care, resulting in actual, potential or developmental damage to the health, survival, development or dignity of the minor in the context of a relationship of responsibility, of trust or of power” .

During the occasion, four distinct forms of abuse were also specified: physical mistreatment; sexual abuse; psycho-emotional abuse; neglect or serious neglect. The term child abuse is all-encompassing for all forms of abuse.

In the literature, physical abuse and neglect are often treated together. Only recently have researchers begun to consider neglect as a phenomenon conceptually different from abuse which requires specific attention.

Cawson, et al. (2000) argued that neglect should be primarily considered in terms of the absence of parental care, while Stevenson (1998) defined it as a wide range of behaviors ranging from poor physical care to lack of supervision and control. The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (1998 ) defined neglect as a type of maltreatment that refers to the failure of the parent or caregiver to provide necessary care (sanitary conditions, housing, nutrition, etc.) and the affectivity appropriate to the child’s age, despite their capacity to provide them.

The generic term “neglect” can refer to a heterogeneous range of conditions that are commonly divided into three different types: psychological, physical and educational neglect. “Physical neglect” means the refusal or delay in providing the child with essential care, leaving him/her alone and not taking care of his/her primary needs (nutrition, clothing and hygiene). From a physical point of view, neglected children may experience growth retardation with short stature (psychosocial dwarfism), dental and eye problems, malnutrition or over-nutrition, dermatitis, frequent domestic accidents which can cause the ingestion of toxic substances. “Educational neglect” refers to a situation of chronic school dropout, whereby the child is not enrolled in compulsory schooling or is absent from school at least five times a month without reasonable reasons. Such children are at greater risk of having poor academic performance which can lead them to experience constant failure.

The term “psychological neglect” refers to all the acts or omissions by the caregiver that can lead the child to develop behavioral, cognitive, emotional or mental disorders such as insufficient emotional support, exposure to domestic violence and refusal or delay in providing necessary psychological treatment. From a psychological point of view, these children may demonstrate psychomotor and language delay, hyperactivity, attention disorders, pseudo mental deficit, inhibition, demotivation, chronic fatigue, difficulty in relating to others, lack of trust in themselves and in others. (Montecchi 2002).

On a diagnostic level, the DSM-5 places abuse and neglect within the new chapter “Disorders related to traumatic and stressful events”, which highlights at least a correlation between traumatic and stressful “events” and subsequent disorders.

There is now ample documentation in the literature attesting to how the experience of traumatic events of different nature can contribute substantially to alterations of the individual’s psychological and neurobiological functioning, both immediately after the trauma itself and over time, even after 30 years. The traumatic event involves more serious risks if the exposure occurs in the period from birth to adolescence. (Morgan, Scouurfield, Williams, Jasper, Lewis, 2003).

The World Health Organization in its Action Plan 2013-2020 (WHO, 2013) stated that exposure to stressful events at a young age is an established risk factor for the onset of mental disorders. Many research reports the correlation between the traumas suffered during the first age of life, the so-called Adverse Childhood Experiences (Adverse Childhood Experiences-ACE, 2006) and various pathological outcomes, at a somatic, psychological and social level. According to Filetti & Anda (2006), negative life events, traumas and bereavements should in fact be considered non-specific factors capable of increasing the risk of developing physical and mental illness, influencing its course and worsening its prognosis. They can also cause relapses in the case of pathologies of chronic nature. The first Adverse Childhood Experiences influence the developing brain, determining lasting effects and especially at a neuronal and neurobiological level, as well at an affective one (Faretta 2014).

Under the pressure of recent new studies on brain-behavior relationships, the impact of trauma on the neurobiological level is increasingly being investigated. It has been proven that environmental experience plays a fundamental role on the differentiation of brain tissue (Cicchetti 2002) and that traumatic experiences alter the activity of the hypothalamic/pituitary/corticoadrenal (HPA) axis and the neuroendocrine system evolved in mammals in coping danger and threat. A dysregulation of the HPA axis is often found in neurobiological studies on maltreatment which reveal a cortisol deficiency and therefore a lower cortisol reactivity, alongside a lower social competence and greater externalizing behavior in maltreated children (Hart, Gunnar, Cicchetti, 1995). The authors carried out their studies with preschool children subjected to maltreatment and they hypothesized how the reduced activity of the HPA axis could have an adaptive value, protecting them from the consequences of chronic hypercortisolism, however at the cost of reduced social competence and an increased anxious behaviors (internalizing).

Recent studies (Bremner 1999) found a reduction in the size of the amygdala or hippocampus in people diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), both adults, war veterans and abused children. The reduction is more evident if the trauma is early, i.e. it occurred at a critical moment in development and where the trauma is repeated (cumulative effect) (Nicolais, Speranza, Bacigalupi & Gentile, 2005). In other words, it seems that traumas linked to mistreatment during childhood influence the development of the right hemisphere which is dominant for attachment responses, processing of non-verbal stimuli, regulation of emotions and modulation of responses to stress. Numerous neuroscientific studies proved the importance of the right hemisphere in the processing of emotional intelligence and the understanding of positive and negative emotions (Grassi 2012).

It seems useful to us at this point to give a more specific definition of trauma to define its frame of reference. In psychopathology, trauma means an extreme, unbearable, inevitable threatening experience, in the face of which an individual is helpless.” (Hermann, 1992b; Krystal, 1988; Ven der Kolk, 1996).

According to Janet (1893-4), psychological trauma is an event whose features are “non-integrable” into the person’s previous psychic system, threatening his/her mental cohesion. Sometimes the traumatic experience remains dissociated from the rest of the psychic experience, causing a psychopathological symptom called “dissociation”.

Balint (1969) defined the traumatic situation within the relationship and specified that to generate a trauma the presence of at least two people is essential, one in the internal world and one in the external world.

The consequences of trauma on the child’s development can be very serious since it is precisely the first experiences that establish the trajectory of future development (Beebe 2006, Hawkins 2004, Schore 2011).

The contribution of epigenetics is crucial which allows us to study the molecular mechanisms through which environmental situations can influence gene expression without modifying the DNA sequences. The revolutionary aspect of some studies involves the possibility of a ‘transgenerational transmission’ of trauma at an epigenetic level. The effects of a trauma could be linked to alterations in the expression of genes, which are perpetuated even in the absence of the event that generated them. Unlike the DNA sequence, which is mostly static throughout life, epigenetic markers can undergo major changes over the course of development while not altering the DNA’s genetic code.

It has therefore been demonstrated that psychological trauma induces epigenetic changes that can have short- and long-term effects on neuronal function, brain plasticity and behavioral adaptations to psychological stress (Zannas et al., 2015).

In a study conducted by Romens et al. (2015) on a sample of pre-adolescents (aged 11 to 14) who suffered physical abuse from their parents, it was observed that a high level of stress caused epigenetic modifications capable of influencing a gene involved in the regulation of stress (Romens et al . 2015). The alteration of the hormonal system determined a series of cascading changes at a biological and behavioral level, responsible for the future development of physical and psychological disorders (ibidem).

It is often the combination of genetic and environmental risk that pushes the child towards a maladaptive development path. Epigenetics is a process that continues throughout existence and each modification of the epigenetic complement influences our way of reacting to future environmental events (ibidem). To confirm what has been said, through studies conducted on animals, it has been demonstrated how maternal mistreatment can cause epigenetic modifications responsible for the alteration of reactivity to stress and how this alteration is transmitted to the next generation (Champagne et al. 2006).

Another study demonstrated that chronic and unpredictable maternal separation induces depressive-like behaviors, not only in the first generation of mice, but also in their offspring. These surprising results allow us to hypothesize that even in human, the cycle of abuse and its negative effects can be repeated from one generation to the next (Franklin et al., 2010).

A factor to consider is also the timing of traumatic exposure and its temporal relationship with epigenetic changes and the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Trauma early in life is associated with lasting epigenetic changes.

Although both intergenerational and transgenerational transmission of the effects of environmental adversity have been established in animal models, human studies have not yet demonstrated that the effects of trauma are heritable.

In reference to studies conducted in human, we mention an important contribution by Porges (2001), who in his polyvagal system identifies three phylogenetic stages in which he describes the reactions that are implemented during many traumatizing situations (ventral complex-vagal, sympathetic-adrenergic system and dorsal-vagal complex). Of the three systems, the ventro-vagal one responsible for social involvement (Porges 2001) is present from birth and assumes significant importance in the regulation of mother-newborn interaction, acting as a mediator in attachment modalities. Since the ventro-vagal system requires maturation, and therefore a favorable environment, it is conceivable that the quality of the caregiver’s early care influences the quality of the individual’s future functioning also at the regulation of the autonomic nervous system. In fact, in very early abused or neglected children, sometimes serious alterations can be detected, even after many years, at the level of visceral functions coordinated by the protoreptilian brain (dysregulation of arousal, heart and respiratory rate, altered perceptions and processing of stimuli, in particular hunger, sleep, thirst, pain, proprioception (Perry 2005). This system is activated according to Porges (2001) through social interaction in a safe environment^[4] which in turn activates the attachment, socialization, play and exploration system (van der Hart et al. 2006) allowing maturation and growth of the nervous system, through brain neuroplasticity, also present in adulthood (Doidge 2007). The situation of an insecure environment instead activates the sympathetic system, facilitating active avoidant reactions, which at that moment are adaptive as they allow one to attack or escape. Finally, the life-threatening situation induces passive avoidance reactions (submission, passive freezing, numbing, dissociation, tonic immobility and feigned death).

It is important to underline that exposure to trauma does not always lead to the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and therefore epigenetic changes following exposure to trauma do not necessarily cause a psychological disorder, but rather in some cases, they can determine the learning of new behaviors to avoid exposure to trauma or other adaptive mechanisms. The principle of epigenetic plasticity implies that changes to the epigenome could reset when environmental adversities are no longer present or when we develop an alternative way to deal with environmental challenges. In this case we can talk about a construct that in psychology that is called resilience. The most widely shared definition of resilience in psychology is that of the American Psychological Association (2020), which described it as: “a process of readjustment in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress – such as family problems and relational problems, serious health problems, or serious financial and work situations”.

At the basis of human resilience is precisely the ability to respond flexibly to environmental stimuli. Just as traumatic experiences can be transmitted transgenerationally, so too can the ability to face and overcome trauma with the aid of resilience.

In the fairy tale, the two protagonists, through overcoming the tests they are called to face (crossing the woods, killing the witch, crossing the river) reveal to us the deployment of forces and psychic energies that contribute to the development and personal growth, recalling precisely what Porges (2001) theorized.

The resilience of Hansel and Gretel

The two little kids abandoned in the woods are the representation of the image of an internal state which shows, on one hand, the desire and the regressive drive to return to the parental home and seek parental support; on the other hand, the desire to lose oneself in the forest and then discover the dream house. Conversely, crossing the forest understood in evolutionary terms leads to the discovery of the new. In the woods, the hero, in a spiritual retreat, undertakes a profound introversion. He dives into the unconscious, draws from it the forces necessary for his own rebirth (J. De la Rocheterie 2004). From a symbolic point of view, as a primitive and wild place, the forest has an initiatory value which requires those who pass through it to face a series of tests, the overcoming of which represents a passage from one condition to another. In this sense, the forest is also a place of metamorphosis and represents the hero’s journey, the journey that the Ego must undertake to achieve self-realization and Individuation (Jung 1935). Each crucial phase of life is marked by profound changes of internal transformation and psychological death, aspects that must necessarily die in order to welcome the new. Individuation in Jungian terms is “a process of differentiation which has as its goal the development of the individual personality” (Jung 1921). “Individuation therefore represents an expansion of the sphere of consciousness and conscious psychological life” (Ibid.).

The treasure that the hero ultimately discovers on his journey is his true Self. Jung (1921) therefore did not interpret Individuation as a strengthening of the Ego, but rather the encounter with the Self, “inner nucleus of divine nature and also a subjection to it. This journey, intended precisely as research, is full of dangers and pitfalls, and constitutes a shocking experience” (von Franz 1977).

The archetype of the hero begins the process of identification which starts with the presence of a dissonance that leads us to abandon current reality, to change our way of seeing things and to abandon the now structured fixed points, to leave space to the evolution of still unexpressed potential. The journey never begins randomly, but does in moments of crisis and precariousness which, on a personal level, often coincide with the perception of feeling trapped in a reality that does not satisfy us and with the desire to achieve new personal goals. This process is characterized by the alternation of rewards and obstacles that the person cannot foresee and which pushes the individual to reactivate different personal resources. At the same time it is associated with symbolic death, with the need to abandon previous mental patterns and leave parts of oneself behind in order to be reborn by overcoming new evolutionary phases.

The first phase of the journey is associated with the archetype of the innocent (Jung 1936), which is linked to the family context of origin, to a muffled and protective space which, however, at a certain point in our lives begins to appear as too binding, something to disengage from.

The second stage is associated with the archetype of the orphan (Jung 1936), a phase characterized by the abandonment of the context of origin and all the transformations implied in it. Leaving the original condition behind allows the person to come into contact with different realities and characters and uses those previously taken for granted. The new destabilizes old points of reference and structured beliefs, causing our sense of direction to falter. The loss of grip linked to a natural reality taken for granted can translate into a state of fear and uncertainty, but also of nostalgia associated with a strong desire to return to the point of origin associated with a tendency to idealize the latter (Ibidem).

The next phase of the journey is marked by the abandonment of the sense of impotence and nostalgia and by the encounter with the archetype of the warrior (Jung 1936). Living new experiences and entering previously unknown worlds acts as a lever that encourages us to bring out the resources required by the actual context. This archetype is associated with strength, vitality and perseverance to overcome obstacles and failures. This leaves room for a new vision of reality. The final stage of the hero’s journey is the encounter with the archetypal magician (Jung 1936). This archetype is expressed through conscious contact and the transformation of one’s consciousness, with the aim of changing oneself and the external world. This evolutionary phase is therefore linked to full awareness of one’s personal history. In the common imagination, the image of the forest can have many different notions ranging from a positive ones for example a lush, uncontaminated environmental context, brimming with life and to a negative meanings of a dark and mysterious place, disturbing and hostile. Entering a forest is like coming across the cave that everyone carries within themselves, in other words, what Jung defined as the Shadow^[5], (Jung 1916/1928). Awareness can only arise within an inexhaustible dialectic with its unconscious matrix. In fact, only a laborious comparison with the contents of the unconscious and a consequent synthesis of conscious and unconscious aspects can lead to a totality (Ibidem).

Therefore, this is the meaning of the initiation journey that the two children will have to undertake inside the forest, that of coming into contact with their own Shadow, each with their own individuality and together as a couple that forms the hermaphroditic totality of the Self (von Franz 1977). The recognition of one’s Shadow is the first stage of the identification process and our contact with it and its recognition is a chronological phase of development. The integration of the Shadow with consciousness is a work that can last a lifetime and represents its existential trait (Trevi 1975).

In the fairy tale, we note how at the journey’s beginning towards the Shadow there are several elements that denote a strong attachment of the children towards everything that represents their known and familiar world: Hänsel’s tendency to look back several times while walking away from home, watching her kitten on the roof and leaving pebbles in order to find her way back. This denotes the need that human beings have to turn towards what they know, which gives them a sense of belonging, protection and familiarity and how instead going towards the unknown is something that scares. The desire to go back expresses the desire to avoid fighting the battle for identification, but once adults, the message of the fairy tale is incisive in this, that is, if one does not begin to use one’s own internal resources, the forces of instinct and the need to depend can prove destructive enough to lead the person to regression and death.

In fact, the second time Hänsel is unable to find the way back home, but together with his sister he enters the woods. This represents the feat of finding oneself, of becoming an independent person through knowledge of the world. He has no initiative and in doing so can only return to passivity and guarantee himself an eternally rewarding and at the same time deadly dependence.

The fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel shows us how this attitude does not work in the long run and teaches us about the debilitating consequences of trying to deal with life’s problems through regression and denial, which reduce the individual’s ability to solve problems (Bettelheim 1975).

The regression to primary oral dependence on the mother suppresses all individualization and independence. It ends up endangering the very existence of the individual, given that cannibalistic inclinations are embodied in the figure of the witch. The witch, who is a personification of the destructive aspects of orality, has the same tendency to devour children who come to demolish her gingerbread house. When children give in to the Id’s uncontrolled impulses, symbolized by their unbridled voracity, they risk being destroyed by them (Bettelheim 1975).

In fact, in the fairy tale the two children try to return to the house using stratagems to get back home.

The two characters are unable to find a solution to their problems and when they find themselves in front of the Gingerbread House they give full vent to their oral regression, but this leads them to fall into the witch’s trap. The temptations to which children give in actually represent the need for care and nourishment that had been inadequate until then both due to the absence of the maternal figure and the presence of an inadequate paternal figure from a containment and regulatory point of view. In this scene the fairy tale shows us on one hand how early neglect causes the child to be trapped in the oral phase in which he is dominated by dimensions of greed and voracity, and on the other hand it highlights the difficult resilient strategies to be implemented to progress towards healthy development.

What has been said allows us to reflect on the profound meaning of healthy nutrition and care. Care and nourishment cannot only represent the satisfaction of a primary need but must necessarily be accompanied by the emotional and affective component, the attribution of sense and significance, the use of rules, limits and a sense of proportion.

At this point it is necessary to try to delineate the boundary between care and hyper-care, comparing ourselves, even if briefly, with the debate around the ethics of care, understood as care. On the one hand, “care for others can be exercised as a function of self-referential narcissism, I exist because I am the center of your world, or, because I take care of you, I expect that you will never leave me. In this case, hyper-care is nothing other than the restrain of the other person, it is undermining his autonomy and at the same time offering rewards that hold the child back, as the gingerbread house held back the famous Hansel and Gretel (Grimm, 1951), whose destiny, not surprisingly, is to then be devoured by the witch. In other words you must remain a child in need of care for your whole life” (Berivi S, Grassi A, 2018).

“The ethics of care, in order to truly be called ethics, needs to integrate, in addition to universal justice, ethics as the existence of laws and rules that the human person carries within himself and which requires the recognition of the meaning that every relationship has, roles that are exercised, generational boundaries that must be respected. It involves accepting the sense of limit that the “basic rules of life”, as described by Robert Langs (1998), contribute to giving, in the continuous and widespread comparison of daily behaviors and the profound meaning that these have. In our opinion, the ethics of care implies the recognition of the other, as much loved precisely because he is left free to move towards life and towards a man or woman who becomes the center of his own existence, in an exogamous sense” (Ibidem) . In this perspective, the authors Berivi and Grassi (2018) proposed the integrated formulation of “Ethics of the meaning of care”.

According to the ethics of the meaning of care, hyper-care is therefore not just an “excess of care”, which can generate dependence, poor autonomy and insecurity, but we can speak of hyper-care, “another aspect of mere relationality, every time the mother or father or family passes from a vertical dimension of existence, necessary for the growth and development of the moral sense, to a horizontal one where everything and the opposite of everything is true, where the moral system is strongly compromised because it is relativized, where secondary material advantages make release impossible” (Berivi, 2011).

In the field of evolutionary psychology there are now numerous studies on very similar phenomena. “Overinvolvement/overprotectiveness (excessive care/overprotection) is an intrusive and anxious parenting style that does not allow the child to face the natural challenges of life and prevents the development of adversity management skills” (Patrizi et Altri, 2010). This category includes intrusiveness, the encouragement of dependence and the exclusion of the child from the outside world (Parker, 1983). Some authors, through meta-analysis on clinical samples, suggested how internalizing disorders, depression and anxiety, which often underlie the use of substances, are correlated with a hyperactivation of attachment linked to passivity and the poor development of itself (Van Jzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranemburg, 2008). In fact, if a parent exercises excessive psychological control over the child, he or she denies the child’s psychological independence (Barber, 1996, Barber and Harmon, 2002; Kering, 2003). Overprotectiveness, still understood as inhibition of behavior and encouragement of dependence, falls into this category, also because the supportive characteristics of a parental style that favors autonomy and psychological growth are lacking (Grolnick et al, 2002; Gronlick and Ryan, 1989; Pomerantz and Rubble, 1998; Grolnick, 2003).

Conclusions

Through the interpretation of the fairy tale it was possible to analyze the effects of over-care, miscare and neglect as sides of a single coin, an expression of a malfunction of the ethics of the meaning of care ( Berivi, Grassi 2018). It is also possible to see how much this harms the psycho-physical development of the child, who must instead be able to find the way to become indipendent on his parents and grow up.

“The child trapped in a domineering environment finds himself having to face a tremendously complex task to adapt. He will have to find a way to maintain a sense of trust in unreliable people, security in a treacherous environment, control in a situation of absolute unpredictability, a sense of power in a condition of lack of power” (Herman 1992).

The child’s unconscious objective is to “escape” from neglect, hypercare and miscare to access a spiritual dimension, well represented in the fairy tale by the “symbol of transcendence” (Jung 1984).

Overprotection and overcare represent in all respects a crime of mistreatment, but it is precisely the lack of limits that in reality does not favor autonomy and psychological growth, more than any other emotional aspect.

Overcare is something that goes beyond overprotectiveness: it means forcing the child to physically remain an eternal child, creating real abuse, both physical and psychological. It represents the madness of a matriarchal regime, currently extremely widespread and hidden, which effectively supplants the maternal one and becomes its dark side (von Franz 1972).

As already highlighted, this fairy tale shows us in a clear example on the possible consequences of early neglect, as it traps the child in a primitive oral dimension (gingerbread house) in which he devours and is devoured. It interrupts the child’s development, relegating him to the phase governed by orality. The protagonists of the fairy tale manage in a resilient way to escape from this dimension of predatory which, as we have seen, represents an evil and destructive maternal figure. Hänsel offers the witch a little bone, pretending to be still too thin to eat and Gretel instead manages to deceive the witch by pretending not to have understood and pushing her into the oven.

To survive, the children must develop initiatives as a psychic quality and realize that their only resource consists of intelligent planning and action: the replacement of the finger with the bone, the stratagem that induces the witch to climb into the oven. Eventually Hänsel and Gretel find their internal resources and learn how to put them to good use.

Apparently this passage, in which the two little children overcome the oral phase to reach the next phase which starts the Oedipal phase, could be read in evolutionary terms, but in fact it is a missing passage because the new family constellation in which the figure is absent maternal, represents in psychological terms the absence of a valid feeling perspective (von Franz 2002).

“This absence effectively represents the lack of a barrier against incest” ( Russello et. al 2023).

“Once one’s Oedipal difficulties have been overcome, one’s oral anxieties have been dominated, one’s desires that cannot be realistically satisfied have been sublimated […] the child is ready to return to live happily with his parents” (Bettelheim 1975). However, in reference to this last aspect which highlights how the reunion with the parents can represent the happy ending of the fairy tale, in our opinion, contrary to what Bettelheim claimed, we believe that the evolutionary path that the two little kids take from being children to becoming adolescents and slowly adults, can represent real growth only if they detach from the family. If the child renounces the infantile desire for union with his father and mother, to take note of his mortality, in this way he would begin to grow and cooperate with others and become a part of the society. The challenge for children is to take responsibility for their own suffering, to be who they are, no matter how painful it may be to deal with the wounds they have received, to understand that ultimately it is precisely the failure of the outside world to respond to our needs that motivates journey towards the conquest of what we are and what we want to achieve (Jung 1936).

Only when we recognize the dangers inherent in remaining attached to our destructive primitive orality, does the way open to a higher stage of development. As children transcend their oral anxiety and free themselves from the habit of relying on oral satisfaction for their safety, they can also free themselves from the image of the threatening mother: the witch.

“The child symbolizes this completely spontaneous ability, inherent in each of us, to resolve a situation. The genuine and spontaneous part can act in a constructive way” (von Franz 1977).

To the danger that comes from being abandoned, the child must not react by letting himself go to the desire for regression, but must seek his own path, a path that leads him to achieving an ever greater degree of self-sufficiency. This path can be found through industriousness, that is, the ability to derive something good even from unpromising material or the ability to implement one’s intentions even if at the beginning one feels absolutely inadequate.

It is not possible to live for too long in the environment of one’s childhood or within the family without this constituting a certain danger for the health of the spirit. Life calls us out towards independence and one who does not follow this call is risking neurosis. Once neurosis has occurred, it will progressively become an increasingly valid reason to escape the struggle with life and to become entangled forever in the morally poisonous atmosphere of childhood.

We must get to the point of killing the stepmother, in order to be able to free ourselves from all the negative attitudes as well as from the dependent relationship, so that our true Self can be born and can flourish.

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1.  The Anima is the archetype of life and is equivalent to a true inner personality. Psychologically it represents the unconscious femininity contained in the man’s psyche. See Jung 1950 ↑
2. Depiction of a snake or crocodile biting its tail, which according to analytical psychology represents an archetypal symbol of the indistinct condition that comes before the development of personality. ↑
3. The Convention obliges the States involved to align the rules of domestic law with those of the Convention. This aims to implement all the necessary measures to assist parents and institutions in fulfilling their obligations towards minors.
   According to the definition of the Convention, “children” (the English term “children“, in reality, should be translated into “children and adolescents”) are individuals under the age of 18 (art. 1), whose interests must be taken into account in all circumstances (art. 3). ↑
4. Feeling safe for Porges depends on three conditions: 1) the autonomic nervous system cannot be in a defensive state, 2) the social engagement system needs to be activated to decrease sympathetic activation and contains, on a functional level, the sympathetic nervous system and the dorsal-vagal circuit within an optimal range (homeostasis) that would support health, growth and energy recovery; 3) in order to detect safety cues through neuroception. ↑
5. Unconscious part of the personality characterized by traits and behaviors that the conscious ego tries to remove or ignore ↑