"Bluebeard" was one story that especially impressed him. Another was a charming tale about a false princess who was rolled in a barrel, into which long pointed spikes had been driven.
As he grew older, there had been the usual fading from memory of these stories and the imaginings to which they had given rise. But, subconsciously, they had never been forgotten, and out of them there had gradually developed the obsessive and seemingly inexplicable dread of blood.
In another case, the "Bluebeard" story responsible for the night terrors of a sensitive little girl, remained so indelibly fixed in her subconsciousness that in adult life she often had nightmares, in which, to her great distress, she was attacked by men who were "frightful looking on account of their blue beards." Even more impressively illustrative of the permanence and possible ill effects of tales of the horrible heard in early life is the case of a man fifty years old, who had to receive medical treatment because he "could not fall asleep without living through—for at least an hour, sometimes even longer—some distorted story from fairy books or mythology."
That common phobia of childhood, fear of the dark, is often traceable to fairy tales, and, in many cases, persists in some degree through later life. Let me quote, on this important point, the testimony of a Washington physician, Doctor T. A. Williams, who has made a special study of nervousness in childhood:
"Morbid fears are a great distress to many people. They have nearly always arisen in early childhood, and have been inculcated by injudicious nurses, tales of goblins and fairies being most prolific in this respect.
"The ineradicability of fears, when inculcated in early childhood, is clearly illustrated by a Southern lady who, even in advanced age, dared not go alone into the dark, although she had long ceased to believe in the stories which had made her afraid to do so. She realised this so forcibly that she would not permit her three daughters to be told any of the alarming stories which most Southern children learn. This resulted in the girls never having known what it meant to be afraid of the dark. Indeed, it was the habit of their school fellows to send them off into dark and eery places to show off their powers."
And, from one of the most experienced psychiatrists of the United States, Doctor W. A. White, superintendent of the great Government Hospital for the Insane, at Washington, we have this emphatic statement as to the general relationship between fairy tales and mental diseases:
"You will find, not infrequently, that the precipitating factors in psychoses come from the books of fairy tales which your children are allowed to feed upon."
Of course, as already intimated, a mental overthrow from the hearing or reading of fairy tales presupposes an undue impressionability on the victim's part. But how are parents to determine whether or no their children's psychic make-up is such as to render them immune from the possible mind-enfeebling effects of "horror tales"? And, in any event, let me repeat with all the emphasis at my command, there is reason to believe that no child can escape some stunting or distorting of character if brought up on a diet of ultra-sanguinary fairy tales.