Peter Pan syndrome is an inability to grow up or engage in behaviour usually associated with adulthood. The term comes from the fictional children's character Peter Pan, who never ages.[1] While transageism, or adults regarding themselves as juveniles or adolescents (also referred to as "juvenilism" and "adolescentilism", respectively[2]) is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a specific mental disorder,[3] the concept is modelled on transgenderism. This transeageist concept has garnered a great deal of controversy.[4] People who exhibit characteristics associated with the Peter Pan syndrome are sometimes referred to as Peter Panners.[5]

The concept gained popularity through Dr. Dan Kiley (psychoanalyst) in his book The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up first published in 1983. His book became an international best seller and led to a wave of copycat pop-psychology books. Dr. Kiley got the idea for "The Peter Pan Syndrome" after noticing that, like the famous character in the J. M. Barrie play, many of the troubled teenage boys he treated had problems growing up and accepting adult responsibilities. This trouble continued on into adulthood.

Examples [ edit ]

An example of the Peter Pan syndrome is used in Aldous Huxley's 1962 novel Island, in which one of the characters talks about male "dangerous delinquents" and "power-loving troublemakers" who are "Peter Pans." These types of males were "boys who can't read, won't learn, don't get on with anyone, and finally turn to the more violent forms of delinquency." He uses Adolf Hitler as an archetype of this phenomenon:[6]

A Peter Pan if ever there was one. Hopeless at school. Incapable either of competing or co- operating. Envying all the normally successful boys—and, because he envied, hating them and, to make himself feel better, despising them as inferior beings. Then came the time for puberty. But Adolf was sexually backward. Other boys made advances to girls, and the girls responded. Adolf was too shy, too uncertain of his manhood. And all the time incapable of steady work, at home only in the compensatory Other World of his fancy. There, at the very least, he was Michelangelo. Here, unfortunately, he couldn't draw. His only gifts were hatred, low cunning, a set of indefatigable vocal cords and a talent for nonstop talking at the top of his voice from the depths of his Peter-Panic paranoia. Thirty or forty million deaths and heaven knows how many billions of dollars—that was the price the world had to pay for little Adolf's retarded maturation. — Aldous Huxley, Island (Huxley novel)

A prominent example of a celebrity with Peter Pan syndrome was Michael Jackson,[7][8] who said, "I am Peter Pan in my heart."[9] Jackson named the 2,700-acre Los Olivos, California property, where he lived from 1988 to 2005, Neverland Ranch[10][11] after Neverland, the fantasy island on which Peter Pan lives. He said that it was his way of claiming a childhood he never had, having started early as a performing artist with his family.[7][8] He had built there numerous statues of children, a floral clock, a petting zoo, a movie theater, and a private amusement park containing cotton candy stands, two railroads, a Ferris wheel, carousel, Zipper, Octopus, Pirate Ship, Wave Swinger, Super Slide, roller coaster, go-karts, bumper cars, a tipi village, and an amusement arcade.[12][13] As The New York Daily News staff writer, Carrie Milago, reported on 26 June 2009: "On Jackson's dime, thousands of schoolchildren visited over the years, from local kids to sick youngsters from far away." Visitors "often recalled it as dreamlike", she observed.[14] A preschool teacher visiting the site told USA Today in 2003, Neverland "smells like cinnamon rolls, vanilla and candy and sounds like children laughing".[14]

Several analysts have also associated incompetence among the Millennials and Generation Z age cohorts in regards to life skills such as cooking, cleaning, budgeting, various types of insurance, and time management.[15]

See also [ edit ]