The Sociopsychological Analysis of Folktales

The major divisions of the article deal with the following topics: introduction, situations of innovation, symbolism, structure of the tale, psychological functions, sociological functions, relation to reality and research suggestions. The term folktale is used broadly to refer to any traditional dramatic narrative of more or less fixed form, transmitted primarily in oral tradition. Myths, legends, fables, etc., are thus intended by the term as well as tales in the narrow sense of stereotyped narratives told for entertainment without concern for their truth value. It is tempting to subtract the "folk" from "folktale" and extend the scope of discussion to include written tales as well. For some purposes there is no objection to doing this, but the introduction of writing brings in additional problems as to structure and function so written literature is not specifically discussed. In the sociopsychological study of folktales at least three semi-independent systems are involved: (1) the tale itself, considered as connected and rather tightly structured discourse; (2) the modal personality of the typical audience-narrator group for the tale; and (3) the social system relevant to the tale, including not only that segment of the society in which are found the active and passive participants in the tale (i.e., the "bearers" of the tale as an item of culture) but the pattern of the whole society. The sociopsychological analysis of folktales involves the study of the relations between the first of these systems and the other two. The objective is to discover to what extent and in what way the form and content of tales coming from a given society are related to features of the personality of the bearers of these tales and to features of the social system of these bearers. This analysis presupposes a separate understanding of each of the three systems: tale, personality, and society. The latter two are not discussed except as they concern folktale analysis, but the former is discussed as a self-contained system in the section entitled "Structure of the Tale. " Relations between tales on the one hand and the psychological and social systems on the other are discussed in terms of the social and psychological content of tales, the relation of the tale images to social and psychological reality, and the functions of tale narration in psychological and social activity. Some of the principal positions taken on these questions are: (1) the series of dramatic images evoked by a folktale may be regarded as consisting of symbolic references to features of the psychological structure of the bearers of the tale and the social structure of their community; (2) the symbolism is most commonly overdetermined (multiple) and ambivalent, but this should not be taken to mean that there is an indefinite number of cultural meanings to a tale, nor that all meanings are of equal prominence; (3) folktales may aid emotional adjustment both by providing catharsis and wish fulfillment, but the process varies in different kinds of tale; (4) tales have the function of supporting social values, but these values may be those of a social group of any size from a fairly small segment of a community on up. In supporting the values of one group, the tale may oppose the values of another, even within a community, and may therefore tend to produce social fission on a higher level as well as integration on a lower; (5) tale collections may be used eventually to diagnose a number of features of psychological and social structure, but for the most effective work one needs a sizeable representative collection of tales with information on the audience and audience attitude toward each tale. In the final section, attention is called to some research which is relevant to testing and elaborating the propositions in the body of the article, and to establishing the relative importance of various sociological and psychological factors in influencing the body of folktales in a society.