Little Red Riding Hood and the Fragmentation of the Parent-Child Structure

In a previous work, dealing with the folktale about the wolf and the kids, we emphasized the baby's failure to identify threats and protect his/her mental system (Raufman and Yigael in press). The tale about little red riding hood relates the serious complications of this failure. Behind the apparently optimistic starting point, in which we are told about a sweet, beloved little girl, a mental wound already exists, threatening to distort the girl's ability to identify her challenges and correctly choose how to react. Similarly to the tale about the wolf and the kids, this tale illustrates important things about the human mind, in a way which differs from any other attempt to reach these distant, early experiences. Clinical vignettes serve to exemplify this idea.