The author wrote this book to help adults become aware of the irreplacable importance of fairy tales. By revealing the true content of such stories he shows how children may make use of them to cope with their baffling emotions, whether they be feelings of smallness and helplessness or the anxieties the child feels about strangers and the mysteries of the outside world. Taking the best-known stories in turn, he demonstrates how they work, consciously or unconsciously, to support and free the child.

This text argues that the scientific and technological advances of the last millennium have not been matched by advances in the way we think. The author believes that the emphasis in thinking on what is needs to be changed to what can be if we are to resolve the conflicts of the past.