Peter Pan

"...‘Second to the right, and straight on till morning.’ That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland..."  Excerpt from Peter Pan

Pedro - Spanish for Peter

"...The puer et senex duality was a central cult in Phoenician society, worshipping the father-son relationship, the procreative masculine spirit and the phallic quality of Libido. The puer (boy) and senex (old man) were polar aspects of the archetype. The young and all its attributes coexists in continuous relation with the old in all its aspects and manifestations. It is an ordering pattern essential to healthy self-identity throughout the stages of life. Jungians sense that a separation leads to pathologizing one or the other. The young becomes self-indulgent, possessed with an immeasurable death wish, challenging the gods (as demonstrated by James Dean and other icons of pop culture); the old in turn is cut off from his "other" and adopts a rigid cynical attitude towards life. Pan is youth; Hook is old age. Both in this tale share traits that make them different sides of the same coin. A difficulty relating to others (which leads to isolation and self-centeredness), a lust for power and control and a fear of the passage of time (leading Peter to the decision to never grow up and Hook to an ultimately vain attempt to escape the crocodile <named 'tic toc'>) are some of the characteristics the two hold in common.

In contrast to the Phoenicians, Western culture during the second part of the 20th century idealized the young (Dean, Monroe, Morrison, <Michael Jackson>), wanted to resist change (plastic surgery) and undervalued old age (nursing homes as final destination). Peter Pan became almost exclusively identified with eternal youth, childhood innocence and imaginative spontaneity. Less appealing aspects of Pan’s youthfulness were conveniently downplayed; Peter’s cruelty and merciless forgetfulness, for example, and his absence of a conscience. Early performances of Peter Pan featured him with pipes and a live goat. He was lascivious in addition to being childlike. The two are not mutually exclusive. Simply because children are unaware of their lascivious actions does not mean they are incapable of lewd and lecherous behavior.

Disney, in early obligence to political correctness (pouring out prim and proper 50’s family values), pitched good vs. evil in a post war world that needed just that: sanitization. However, it is not exactly what Barrie wrote. His Edwardian restraints may well have accounted for a certain sentimental, proper use of language, but the images, atmospheres and story he conjures up clearly point to his deep affliction with a very complex issue. In Barrie’s novel the island of childhood exists apart from and invisible to the adult world. They are separate. Whereas a child is driven to explore Neverland for its adventures and freedom (having no concept of its dangers), the adult may remember something through the veils of nostalgia: quiet identification might be permissible. 

When and why were the boy and old man separated? To what purpose? The initiation of the young in tribes around the world is conducted by same sex elders. Ancient depictions show a young Dionysus with an adult beard, the divine child. Puer aeternus was an ambiguous double figure. There was a ludeness, a sexual adventurousness to Pan, the Greek God with the goat, the one from whom Peter inherited his name.

Jungians claim that the puer-et-senex unity is necessary for a healthy society. Separation leads to repression and denial. The father-son relation faded into the background at some point in history and in its place the mother-son as lover dyad took hold (Venus-Adonis etc.). The industrialization of the West solidified this separation of father and son. The father (predominately the breadwinner) now worked away home. The son spent the day at home with the mother. Thus, the son’s concept of adult male was based more on the mother’s perception of the father as husband and lover, rather than the father directly. The son developed into the mother’s ideal of a man.

Jung says: "Too much mother and too much father can be as burdensome an inheritance as too little. Mother becomes…Mother Welfare State, Mother University, the beloved Alma Mater, defended by father who becomes Father Hierarchy, Father Law, Father Status Quo. We unconsciously interject the power inherent in these archetypal figures which, in the absence of the individuation process, remain intact at an infantile level. So long as they remain intact, uninterrupted by the consciousness that can disempower them, the inner dictators enslave more cruelly than the outer." Marie-Louise v. Frantz says the puer is kept out of life by an over-possessive death-mother. He leads a provisional life, the instinctual mother-child bond turns into an emotional tie determining the child’s life path into adulthood. 

Mr. Darling is a perfect example of the proper mama’s boy. He has internalized the good boy behavior to such an extent that he is completely enslaved by it. He does exactly what he thinks is expected from him. The neighbors have taken on the role of a control-mother, hence his struggle to be like them. In his desperate moments, he turns to Mrs. Darling, his surrogate mother, to help him through the crisis, be it a tie that simply will not tie, or an insight. The service to the archetypal mother is kept up through duty to one’s family, profession, participation and fulfillment in and of civic and cultural life. These are the material provinces of the great goddess. Cultural institutions like church, school etc. start representing the archetypal mother. Blind obedience to those institutions can lead to the avoidance of one’s own destiny. One does what one is asked to do, not what one needs to do.

Peter and Hook long for a mother, yet keep her out of their domain. Both instinctually sense her power over their struggle to find their destiny. They also avoid recognizing each other as the opposite that is needed to complete the ambivalent puer-senex duality. Therefore they stagger on to their other, pathologized destiny. Hook, a bitter old man is consumed by the crocodile, swallowed by death before his time. Peter is forever excluded from consciousness, never able to gain an awareness of himself, never able to grow up.

Why were puer and senex separated? No simple answer can be given, Barrie struggled with this separation all his life. Every individual, regardless of gender, seems to have to face this void in their lives.

The individual and the collective psyche tend to believe that outside of the order of conformity lies chaos, death and destruction. For the sake of conformity, society has sacrificed the virile, sexual, brash, violent relationship between boy-old man that once enabled a boy to become an adult. Recent history suggests that society needs to reevaluate this position in light of chaos, death and destruction that has happened within this conformity."  Information taken from:  Peter Pan: Puer et Senex by Sven Miller

  Songs referenced: 

Operation Peter Pan