Fairy Tales are short narratives that entertain and instruct. Since the time of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung they have been interpreted as accounts of an inner psychological significance. Jung thought that fairy tales have a unique relationship to the Collective Unconscious and human development because of universal meanings that correspond to our lives. The word, fairy, derives from a Latin word meaning fate (fatum).
When we read fairy tales analytically we appreciate that they always start with a key setting from which challenges and consequences occur. We look at how the characters reflect psychological attributes and become allegories of life. There are often encounters with good and evil. Reading them from a Jungian lens helps us see how we all experience the same material found in fairy tales. This takes the symbolic approach to both our personal and collective understanding. There will be critical encounters in critical times. Any of us may find that we have lost our way when we do not listen to the direction of the Self (for Jungians this is an archetype of wholeness).
Meaning is found within oneself and in both fairy tales and dreams psychic harmony cannot be located outside of us. Often dreams will resemble the structure of a fairy tale, and in the tales (fate) it is often remarkable how a solution to a question is uncovered. Our reading of fairy tales follows this model that emerged from the depth psychology of Carl Jung.