Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children's Literature

by Kenneth B. Kidd

Children’s literature has spent decades on the psychiatrist’s couch, submitting to psychoanalysis by scores of scholars and popular writers alike. Freud in Oz turns the tables, suggesting that psychoanalysts owe a significant and largely unacknowledged debt to books ostensibly written for children. In fact, Kenneth B. Kidd argues, children’s literature and psychoanalysis have influenced and interacted with each other since Freud published his first case studies. In Freud in Oz , Kidd shows how psychoanalysis developed in part through its engagement with children’s literature, which it used to articulate and dramatize its themes and methods, turning first to folklore and fairy tales, then to materials from psychoanalysis of children, and thence to children’s literary texts, especially such classic fantasies as Peter Pan and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He traces how children’s literature, and critical response to it, aided the popularization of psychoanalytic theory. With increasing acceptance of psychoanalysis came two new genres of children’s literature—known today as picture books and young adult novels—that were frequently fashioned as psychological in their forms and functions. Freud in Oz offers a history of reigning theories in the study of children’s literature and psychoanalysis, providing fresh insights on a diversity of topics, including the view that Maurice Sendak and Bruno Bettelheim can be thought of as rivals, that Sendak’s makeover of monstrosity helped lead to the likes of the Muppets, and that “Poohology” is its own kind of literary criticism—serving up Winnie the Pooh as the poster bear for theorists of widely varying stripes.

Genres: Psychology, Childrens, Literary Criticism

336 pages, Hardcover

First published November 22, 2011

About the author

Kenneth B. Kidd is a professor of English at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He works in Anglophone children’s literature studies, and is particularly interested in the connections between that literature and the areas of philosophy, psychology, and critical theory. He earned his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, and previously taught at Eastern Michigan University.

Reviews

[Leone Betts · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read from Kenneth Kidd, drawing attention to the long-standing and mutually influential relationship between psychoanalysis and children's literature. Fascinating!

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly I have no idea how I came across this book. I was searching for a reference concerning Advanced Child Psychology and the title caught my attention. Upon quickly skimming through, so far, I have been confronted with comparing Freud's "The Sexual Curiosities of Children" (1908) to Chapter 7 of A. A Milne's Winnie the Pooh, and have stumbled on an entire chapter entitled "Maurice Sendak and Picturebook Psychology." Needless to say, the subject matter is ridiculously interesting for anyone who is into Children's literature or Psychology. If you are like me and you like both, then you have hit a gold mine!

I have yet to give the book my rating since I have not yet read through it completely.

[Dayna Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A marriage of psychology and children's literary criticism which posits the symbiotic relationship between the two fields. I had to read this for a college class. Kidd looks at both genres of children's literature: trauma fiction, picture books, and fairy tales; and specific texts: the Pooh novels, the Oz series, Alice in Wonderland, and The Catcher in the Rye. It is not a textbook and I did find it interesting and worth the time it takes to read (it is only 205 pages), but I wouldn't take it to the beach for summer vacation.