stays the hand of the would-be suicide often belong in the domain of the teleological defense mechanisms, indeed not only as cures for psychic wounds but as protection against danger.
We turn to numberless wish structures occurring in fairy tales—also in mythology, legends, beliefs in magic, etc.—which may be pointed out with little difficulty to correspond, in part most naïvely, to human wishes created from our insufficiencies, this is one side of their significance at least. (Probably they have still another, erotic side.)
In itself it is not striking that the fairy tale should concern itself so much about kings; the matter acquires a wish coloring, however, as soon as we consider many fairy tales in which the poor peasant maid marries a prince and the shepherd boy a princess. Those are wish structures!
A whole mass of means serve for the betterment of human deficiencies. Seven league boots for Hop o' my Thumb, strength giving belts, gloves, drinks; to the wish to be able to fly correspond cloaks and enchanted birds as means of transport; a little bed, with which one may be carried everywhere one wishes; or one is changed directly into a bird; the desire to eat is fulfilled by "little table set yourself." Magic hoods and stones serve to help against persecution or then magic combs that turn into forests, magic handkerchiefs that interpose a great body of water between the pursued and the pursuer, etc. Riches are acquired through the gold-shedding mule, or by vanquishing giants by magic means. There are tubes and magic mirrors to enable one to see and to know everything that goes on over the whole world. There are magic wands for turning living or lifeless beings into what one wishes and not the least in order to injure one's enemies. There are means to look into the future and to attain one's wishes, apples of life and water of life for rejuvenation and the preservation of this otherwise all too short existence.
This enumeration is naturally quite incomplete; it contains only examples. A more detailed citation is probably superfluous as in every collection of fairy tales examples may be found without much difficulty and mythology contains numerous proofs.
Two great groups of fairy tales show, for example, in their present completed form a distinct wish formation, namely the
