Description: Fairy tales accompany us throughout our lives. During childhood, their imaginative properties fill periods of boredom, and their emotional power punctuates difficult family situations. In adolescence, they serve as both a potential remedy for and rescue from this painful passage. Then, once we become parents, we rediscover these tales' warm presence through the excitement of our own children. Au plaisir du conte is the work of a psychoanalyst who has been passionate since childhood about fairy tales and their "magic" power. Written in the first person, this book allows us to delve deeply into this universe -- fantastical, enigmatic, scary, ambivalent -- and its infinite resources. B. Chouvier describes each of the characters (elves, devils, etc.) who populate fairy tales, detailing their characteristics and histories. He presents two traditional tales (Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella) and describes the common locations we see in such stories, such as mountains and forests. Tangentially, he analyzes the symbolic meaning of all these elements and, so doing, gives us keys to better understand ourselves.
