If I were to try to analyze "The Frog Prince," I would probably come up with a simple discussion about how it is a coming-of-age story. The princess starts as an irresponsible child, who makes promises that she has no intention of keeping. Her father, the king, forces her to keep her promises regardless of how repulsive they may be. And finally, the fact that she keeps her promises enables her to marry the handsome prince.

Which is probably why I'm not a psychoanalyst. Two psychoanalytic analyses of the tale read a great deal more into it.

Bruno Bettleheim's vision of the tale is another of the extraordinarily complex and occaisionally contradictory analyses that characterize him. It does include the basic coming-of-age motif that I saw in the tale; however, it has a great deal more stuff that is clearly derived from Freud and from Bettleheim's extensive experience with disturbed children.

A few points in his analysis are worth pointing out. There is an apparent contradiction in his analysis of the bedroom scene. He claims here that the princess is, in this scene, changing from a girl into a woman as she discovers sexual experience. But he also claims here that the frog is still in the phase of a child who wants to crawl into bed with his mother. These two would only seem to work together if Bettleheim were implying some sort of Oedipal relationship between the frog and the princess. Bettleheim is very fond of the Oedipal relationship, and would not hesitate to point one out if he thought there was one. The fact that he doesn't mention it in this analysis suggests that he didn't see one, which makes the views of the princess and the frog, going into this scene, fairly irreconcilable.

As usual, Bettleheim also goes much too far looking for symbolism. He claims here, for instance, that children associate the "tacky, clammy" feelings that frogs evoke in him with similar sensations from his sexual organs. Perhaps I'm unusual, but I have a hard time imagining a young child picking up a frog and saying, "this reminds me of feelings in my sexual organs!" Bettleheim also goes to great lengths here to associate toads in general with sex, which leaves one wondering what he would think about the Grimms' "Tales About Toads."

Another psychological analysis of "The Frog Prince" can be found near the bottom of this page, which is an illustrator's discussion of her attempt to come to grips with the tale of the Frog King. While Bettleheim sees the princess as succeeding because she obeys her father, the analyst quoted in the discussion sees her decision to rebel (to throw the frog against the wall) as her defining moment. He sees both the frog and the princess as incapable of love up until that moment, the frog because "frogs have never learned how to love" and the princess because she is still trapped in the "little-girl stage."

Both analysts agree in seeing the well as a maternal symbol: the above analyst sees it as a generic "symbol of motherliness" while Bettleheim sees it as a womb from which the frog is "born."

This page produced by Dan Harris-Warrick for Once Upon A Time: the Frog Prince