The story is split into two not-so-connected segments, the first of which goes from the young couple not getting their child to the witch taking it away, and tells the story of a woman who covets the witch's lettuce and will die if she can't eat it, to the point where she can sacrifice her child.
Covetousness is the primitive instinct of Libido betting, this desire is so strong that can not get to die, is the baby's omnipotent narcissism and split state, omnipotent narcissism is that "I must, I must be able to get what I want," the split state refers to the all-good, all-bad, either to have or to destroy. So the woman is the voice of the ego, the principle of pleasure, just like all our inner desires, which are never-ending without intervention.
Man (woman's husband) represents a perfect object - the nurturer who takes care of the baby, "I'll satisfy you with whatever you want"; man is also the instrument of the ego to fulfill its desires, the external hands of the baby to see it fulfilled, as if the baby cries and the mother comes. It is as if when the baby cries the mother comes, and when the baby is hungry the milk comes. This instant gratification meets the needs of the omnipotent narcissist, and the two of them perfectly fulfill the needs of the ego, which is wonderful, but at the same time it intensifies the desires, as in the fairy tale, "the desires were doubled", and the needs of the ego are not only "greedy", but also "insatiable". It is human nature to be "insatiable".
So who is the witch? In terms of Freud's personality structure, the witch is the superego that corresponds to the ego, and if the ego is allowed to fulfill itself, then the human being becomes a demon, for example, a child who has been spoiled and brought up may become a narcissistic personality disorder with egoism. The real world works in balance because the superego keeps the ego in check, just as the food chain keeps the ecology in balance. A witch demanding that a man give her his soon-to-be-born child is the price of desire. As the infant slowly realizes that there is a price to be paid to gain the love of the mother, that is, it has to learn to be good and not to ask for it with impunity because the mother can't do it all the time, the infant begins to go along with the mother's demands, experiencing the benefit of suppressing some of her desires in the form of the mother's continual love for her, which she might otherwise have lost. In a psychological sense, the baby loses its "freedom" in exchange for love; in the story, the woman loses her daughter in exchange for lettuce. "Freedom" and "daughters" are both precious things that are exchanged for the fulfillment of desires, so true freedom is conditional.
If we look at it from the perspective of auto-psychology, it may be different again. The witch represents another part of the woman's split ego, and the witch is "the most powerful" and "has a beautiful garden", The witch is "the most powerful", "has a beautiful garden", "everyone is afraid of her", which may be the idealized self of the woman, or the projection of the "powerful" self, while the woman herself is weak, and can only rely on the man's stealing to satisfy.
If you look at Jungian analytical psychology, the witch is the shadow of the woman's personality, or they are each other's shadows, the witch representing the woman's controlling and malevolent dark side, and the woman representing the witch's incompetent and greedy dark side. Both parts are presented in the story; the woman's control lies in treating men as tools to fulfill her selfish desires, and her greed lies in her inability to restrain her selfish desires; the witch's incompetence is reflected in the second part of the story, which lies in the lack of a way to control the betrayal of the lettuce girl, and the greed is the possessive desire for the lettuce girl.
Then the second part is from the time the lettuce girl grows up to the happy ending, describing the girl turning twelve and being chained by the witch to a high tower where only she can go up, and this is when the girl becomes the witch's pet: beautiful, incompetent, and loyal ...... The witch needs to use the girl to satisfy her own narcissism and attachment; narcissism is the idea that there is A thing is that I can completely control, attachment is that there is an object to me is not away from me, indicating that the original powerful witch regressed shape to the infantile desire to fulfill.
If we use the concept of "inner child", we can also explain that the witch is feeding and soothing her inner child, fulfilling her lack of a good mother when she was a child by being a good mother, and thus experiencing the satisfaction of being an inner child who is taken care of completely.
The appearance of the prince breaks the witch's narcissism and need for attachment, so the witch blinds the prince and throws the lettuce girl out into the wilderness, which is the witch's narcissistic rage - fighting her own incompetence with destruction - a The "most powerful" witch can't keep a girl locked up! Reminds me of a powerful woman who is so powerful that she can't keep a lover. The witch was born not knowing how to love, she thought that control is love, back to her once promised "I will be a good mother", how ridiculous, here alludes to the reality of many parents do not know how to love their children, rather than cut off the wings of the child, but also to keep the child around.
The girl meets the prince for the first time, and for the first time she meets a male, and her inner drive for integration is awakened. 12 is the time when a girl develops into a physical woman, and sexual development is the most important element. The intercourse with the prince causes the girl to grow into a psychologically significant woman, she gives birth in the wilderness and recognizes the prince, who has changed his face, and here Lettuce Girl completes the integration of her sexual sense of self. The prince is Lettuce Girl's Animus and the guide for a young girl to become a woman. The restoration of sight to the blind eye means that human growth must go through a period of ignorance and painful frustration, and then become enlightened to truly understand the world and have the ability to control their own lives.
This is a story of human instinctive needs and self-growth, and we see that extreme instinctive needs are broken or paid for, which means that all desire fulfillment comes at a price, the woman's price is the loss of her child, the witch's price is the loss of control and attachment, the lettuce girl's price is to go through a period of despair, but only the lettuce girl's price for real growth, she actively chose to escape control and bear the consequences, complete the worldly sense of achievement, a happy ending.
Seeing the end of an inexplicable touch, I believe that the good is always waiting for us somewhere, as long as it is firm enough.
Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman who wanted a child, but never got one. Finally, the woman hoped that God would give her a child. There was a small window at the back of their house, from which they could see a beautiful garden full of exotic flowers and plants. But there was a high wall around the garden, and no one dared to go in, because the garden belonged to a witch. This witch was so powerful that everyone in the world was afraid of her.
One day the wife stood at the window and looked out into the garden, and saw very beautiful lettuces growing on a piece of ground. These lettuces were so green and watery that they immediately aroused her appetite and she wanted to eat them very much. This desire increased day by day, and when she knew that she could not eat them in any case, she became very emaciated, pale and miserable. Her husband was horrified and asked her, "My dear, what ails you?"
"Ah," she replied, "I'll die if I can't eat the lettuce from that garden behind our house."
The husband, because he loved her so much, thought, "Instead of telling his wife to go to her death, why don't we get her some lettuce, and whatever happens to it?"
At dusk he went over the wall, slipped into the witch's garden, and darted out a handful of lettuce and brought it back to her wife. The wife immediately made a salad out of the lettuce and devoured it. The taste of this lettuce is really good, the next day she wanted to eat lettuce than the previous day actually twice as much. In order to satisfy his wife, the husband had to decide to go over into the witch's garden again. So, at dusk, he sneaked into the garden, but just as he climbed down from the wall, he was startled, for he saw the witch standing right in front of him.
"How dare you," she said angrily, "sneak into my garden and steal my lettuce like a thief!"
"Alas," he replied, "have mercy on me and spare me. I have no choice but to do this. My wife has seen the lettuce in your garden from her window, and wants to eat it so badly that she will die if she cannot."
The witch slowly lost some of her anger after hearing this, and said to him, "If things are really as you say, I will let you pick as much lettuce as you like, but I have one condition: you must give me the child your wife is going to have. I will give her a good life and will treat her like a mother."
The husband, out of fear, had to agree to all the witch's conditions. The wife had just given birth to the child when the witch came and named the child "Lettuce" and took the child away.
"Lettuce" slowly grew into the most beautiful girl under the sky. When the child was twelve years old, the witch put her in a tower. This high tower in the forest, neither stairs nor door, just a small window at the top of the tower. Whenever the witch tried to get in, she stood at the foot of the tower and called, "Lettuce, lettuce, hang down your hair."
The lettuce girl had long, golden, thick hair. As soon as she heard the witch's call, she loosened her braid of hair, wrapped the top around a window hook, and let it down twenty meters. The witch then climbed up this long hair.
A year or two passed. One day, the prince was riding through the forest and happened to pass by this tower. At this time, he suddenly heard a beautiful song, could not help but stop and listen quietly. It was the lettuce girl who sang, and she had to sing to pass the time in her loneliness. The prince wanted to climb to the top of the tower to see her, so he looked around for the door, but how could he not find it. He returned to the palace, and the song had touched him so y that he rode to the forest every day to hear it.
One day, as he stood behind a tree, he saw the witch coming, and heard her call out at the top of the tower, "Lettuce, lettuce, hang down your hair." Immediately the lettuce girl hung down her braid of hair, and the witch climbed up by it. The prince thought, "If that's the ladder that lets people climb up, I might as well try my luck."
The next evening he came to the tower and called, "Lettuce, lettuce, hang down your hair."
At once the hair hung down, and the prince climbed up with it.
The lettuce girl was really surprised when she saw that it was a man who climbed up, for she had never seen a man before. But the prince spoke to her kindly, saying how his heart had been so moved by her song that he could not get a moment's peace, and that he had to come and see her.
The lettuce-girl slowly ceased to feel afraid, and when he asked her if she would marry him, she saw that the prince was young and handsome, and thought, "Surely this man will like me better than that godmother." So she said yes, and gave her hand to the prince. She said, "I would like very much to go with you, but I don't know how to get down. Why don't you bring me a piece of silk thread every time you come, and I will weave a ladder out of it. When the ladder is made up, I will climb down, and you will carry me on your horse."
Because the old witch always came in the daytime, they agreed to let the prince come every evening. The witch noticed nothing until one day the lettuce girl blurted out, "Reverend Mother, how is it that when I pull you I always feel that you are much heavier than that young prince? He was up in a flash."
"Ah! You bad boy!" The witch yelled, "What are you talking about? I thought you were cut off from the world, but I didn't think you'd lied to me!"
She angrily grabbed the lettuce girl's beautiful braid and wrapped it twice around her left hand, then manipulated a pair of scissors with her right hand and chirped a few times, and the beautiful braid fell to the ground. Then, she ruthlessly sent the lettuce girl to a wilderness, let her miserable and painful life there.
On the day the lettuce girl was sent away, the witch tied the cut braid to the window hook at the top of the tower. The prince came and called out, "Lettuce, lettuce, hang down your hair."
The witch lowered her hair, and the prince climbed up with it. However, instead of seeing his beloved lettuce girl, he saw that the witch was glaring evilly at him.
"Aha!" She taunted the prince, "You've come to fetch your beloved, haven't you? But the beautiful bird won't be singing in her nest anymore. She's been captured by the cat, and the cat is going to gouge your eyes out. Your lettuce girl is finished, and you will never see her again."
The prince was in agony and in despair jumped from the tower. He fell into a thorn bush, and though he did not perish, he was blinded in both eyes by the thorns. He walked aimlessly through the forest, eating nothing but grass roots and berries, and cried bitterly every day over the loss of his love. He went around the forest in this agonizing way for years, and finally came to the wilderness where the lettuce girl was suffering.
The lettuce girl had given birth to twins, a son and a daughter.
The prince heard voices speaking, and thinking that the voices sounded familiar, he walked towards them. As he approached, the lettuce girl immediately recognized him and threw her arms around his neck and wept. Two of her tears moistened his eyes and brought them back to light. He could see again as before. He returned to his kingdom with his wife and children and was warmly welcomed. They lived happily ever after.