The psychoanalytic reading of The Snow White and Hansel and Gretel is a stark manifestation of the widespread reductionism and adulteration which aim at comprehending the truth by dividing it into innumerable parts. Instead of looking at the bigger picture, trying to dig deep into the meaning, if any, of a story looks like to be a commendable path to take. But deciphering the meaning hidden in the cultural phenomena is one thing and attributing a meaning which is not there to them is another.
Freudian analysis of Snow White is one example of such imposition of a particular meaning that could easily be claimed not to be there at all. For instance, ascribing jealousy to the affection that a child feels more deeply toward one of his parents than the other is simply forcing some volatile interpretations into a concept developped over the centuries. This is nothing but 'psychological deception,' a tendency to reduce everything to psychological factors and to call into question not only what is intellectual, which is related to truth, or spiritual, which is related to life in and by truth (in Fairy Tales' case, they are surely more spiritual than simply intellectual), but also the human spirit, which is the core that makes one who he is and who he is not.
Psychoanalytical (Freudian, especially) reading of anything is meaningless enough and when it is applied to a realm that necessarily belongs to children(maybe this was not the case when fairy tales were first created but now they mainly function in the realm of children literature), it is dangerous, as well as totally meaningless. With its assault on human spirit, pschoanalysis also questions its capacity of being good and pure, and still more evidently, its interior illumination and heavenly transcendence. Unfortunately, this subversive tendency is easily noticeable in psychoanalytic readings of fairy tales.
As Schuon suggests, what gives psychoanalysis its sinister originality is its determination, as could widely be seen in the analysis of Bettleheim, to attribute every reflex (Hansel and Gratel's giving in to gluttony when they come across with the house built of bread, cake and sugar) and every disposition of the soul (Snow White's so called jeaolusy of her mother and fondness for her father) to mean causes and its exclusion and disregard of spiritual factors.
Daring to call a child's inclinations and preferences 'psychosexual' is but a notorious tendency to see health in what is commonplace and vulgar and to see neorosis in what is noble and profound. I believe it is of great necessity to keep, if possible, such kind of analysis away from the domain that belong to the children. Because, the traditonal interpretations of the fairy tales have in them what reductionist, unbalanced and sex addicted people have never grasped: the spirit which is both divine and mundane and which is capable of tilting towards both goodness or vice and/but which is always good and noble in its essence. Psychoanalysists have hardly grasped the truth that human being stands in balance only through disequilibrium.
Psychoanalytic avocations to decipher fairy tales like The Snow White or Hansel and Gretel from beneath simply undermines the wisdom that has been gathered thorughout the ages and instilled into the narratives. It is not that people do not ever have such instincts that are listed by the pschoanalysists. What is wrong is looking for vice and sexual anomalies in the children and then trying to heal it by means of overexposure. It is such a perverted approach to the most delicate aspects of mankind that, for example, instead of abolishing sin, psychoanalysis abolishes the sense of guilt, thus allow the patient to to go serenly to hell.
Fairy tales should remain in the realm there are meant to and should be let keep their innocence for children are innocent.