Freud on the Bobsled

If Freud had never lived, Walt Disney would undoubtedly have created him--and wired him to guide tourists through Disneyland. Last week 6,600 of those tourists took over Disneyland for a night, and an unusual group they were: members and relatives of members of the American Psychiatric Association, which held its annual convention at Anaheim, Calif. In a happy exercise of regression, they all visited the Mad Hatter's tea party, bought Mickey Mouse hats and hugged Goofy the Dog as if he had just returned from a traumatic trip to the vet. Explained Dr. Miles Shore, superintendent of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston: "You enjoy the fantasies of your childhood again, and it acts as a rejuvenation so you can go back happily to the problems of the adult world."

In a paper that he read to the convention, Dr. Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist from Washington, D.C., analyzed Disney's favorite stories as classic Freudian cases. The tale of the three little pigs demonstrates the "virtues of obsessiveness": the little oinker that builds his house of bricks shows his superiority over his less obsessive brothers and the big bad wolf. Brody cites the bobsled ride around the Matterhorn at Disneyland as an example of a means of mastering castration anxieties and other fears. Freud and Disney, concluded Brody, were both concerned with fantasy, and they both looked to childhood for the answer to happiness.

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