I too am a history major and therefore found Darnton’s essay much more interesting. I liked how he argued that fairy tales can act as cultural artifacts from which we can learn about the peasant class during the enlightenment period where upper class elitist literature and artwork abound. By closely examining these texts, we can confidently hypothesize which morals, ethics, and traits the peasant class valued.
People may easily toss out Bettelheim’s argument on how fairy tales are crucial in the upbringing of a child and its ongoing psychological development because we are looking at it in hindsight. We are adults now (18-22 years of age) and it is hard for us to remember the specific effects reading or hearing those stories had on our development as children. But I will agree with Bettelheim that we most certainly were and are psychologically effected by these stories and that these fairy tales served as the perfect medium to translate certain inexplicable fears or concerns that we alone felt and that society may have deemed taboo.
As scholars at Vanderbilt University, we are looking back on these fairy tales to study them, examine them, and interpret them. Therefore now we would take the point of view of Darnton—to view these tales as a culturally and historically rich texts. But just because we are adults now, we cannot discard the argument Bettelheim makes because most certainly we shaped some of our thoughts and ideas from these stories growing up.
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I disagree with your statement that "we cannot discard the argument Bettelheim makes". The overall argument is (like you summarized it) that "we most certainly were and are psychologically effected by these stories". And this is in my opinion also definitely true but when we go more into detail of how he argues for his argument, I think that he can be discarded. Some of his arguments are simply non-sense, for example when he talks about the Oedipus complex and how fairy tales help children deal with the topic. For how many children is this really an issue? Also the fact that he bases his argumentation on his personal experience with the work with (like he calls them) severely disturbed children shows that his theory might not really apply to "normal" children and he therewith somehow already discards himself.
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