PPS is not a fatal affliction (although some victims commit suicide). It is, however, devastating to the emotional well-being of the individual and his family. When the PPS is in its fully developed form, the victim's path to adulthood is blocked by fatalistic procrastination, irrational and magical thinking, and a denial system that borders on the bizarre.
The people who love these men are frustrated beyond belief. PPS victims desperately want to get out of their rut.
Yet if you reach down to give them a hand, they will smite you with emotional abuse. They cry for attention; but when you give it, they snicker at the folly of your caring.
Older victims have insight into their condition, but stead-fastly refuse to seek or profit from help. Many of you will recognize a friend or loved one as a victim of the Peter Pan Syndrome. You will also empathize with the frustration.
You don't know whether to hug 'em or hit 'em.
THE PETER PAN SYNDROME: AN OVERVIEW 35 I've worked with these men for many years. I've seen the Peter Pan Syndrome in its early stages and witnessed the destruction during middle age.
As you might expect, it's tough to get the victims into meaningful psychotherapy. Their spirit is so flighty that I'm often tempted to close and bar all my office windows to prevent them from flying away. Indeed, if they had access to magical dust, they would soar away to a Never Never Land of their own making.
My first exposure to the PPS victim is usually when he is in his early teens to mid-twenties. Typically, he lives at home and is going to school or working part time with only marginal success. He professes to be an accomplished heterosexual but, in truth, feels very inadequate around women. His partying and disrespect cause his parents to be gravely concerned about his future.
For a reason you will understand later, it is the victim's mother who is successful in coercing her son to seek help.
The threat is vague but demanding. "You'd better get your life together or else."
Mom usually doesn't spell out exactly what she means by
"or else," but the kid gets the message. "Go or else your free ride is over."
It's a good bet that Mom won't follow through with this threat, but the guy doesn't want to risk it. He also doesn't want to take the chance of hurting his mother's feelings. So he shows up at my office at least once. He's hostile, but he comes.
No sooner does he sit down than he starts complaining about Mom's squeeze play. "I don't need a shrink. I'm not crazy. But if I don't show up, she'll just keep bitching and nagging till I do."
Rarely will the victim admit to sponging off his parents long after he should be making a life of his own. Nor does he appear willing to talk about his loneliness and irre-sponsibility. T h e prognosis is not good. T h e cornerstones
THE PETER PAN SYNDROME
and intermediate symptoms are firmly entrenched.
When I react to the complaint about Mom, he has a knee-jerk guilt reaction. In a state of near panic, he apolo-gizes. "I didn't mean anything by that. Don't get me wrong. My mom is great. It's just t h a t . . . well, I guess she worries about me. You know how moms are, don't you?"
When I reflect on his defensiveness, he gets even more nervous. The hostility starts to creep out. "Hey, I didn't know what I was saying. Just forget about it. Talk about something else, will ya?"
So I change the subject, for all the good it does me. No matter what topic I select, the young man "ices" me, using shrugs, one-word answers, and other negative responses to cool my inquisitiveness. He figures that if he is cold and noncommital, I'll give up my questioning and he can tell Mom that, yes, he went, and the doctor couldn't find any-thing wrong.
Most younger PPS victims are involuntary participants in psychotherapy. This being the case, the process is over before it begins. However, there are cases in which a per-sistent reflection on the young man's unrealistic attach-ment to his mother leads to a productive outcome. The progress is slow and tedious.
If a potential victim can be reached before the sex role conflict is fully manifested, the chances of constructive change are good. But once sexual inadequacy is repressed, narcissism and chauvinism follow so methodically that confrontation usually results in increased hostility and withdrawal.
If they are successful in resisting help, most victims even-tually leave home and get married. T h e magical dust of Never Never Land clings to their soul. They pretend to be happy with their wife and family. They tell themselves that they are satisfied with their job. They deny painful evi-dence that their bodies are growing more fragile. They have many friendships that are seen as lasting but in truth
THE PETER PAN SYNDROME: AN OVERVIEW 37 are shallow and fleeting. And, as they did as teenagers, they continue to party. For many of them, alcohol abuse is dis-missed as social drinking. Others pursue sexual affairs com-pulsively. Recklessness is excused as the need to unwind.
Despondency becomes a constant companion as loneliness grows into a vicious monster.
Preventing the Peter Pan Syndrome is relatively easy.
T h e earlier the potential victim is reached, the better. Once you understand the final picture of the Peter Pan Syn-drome, I'm certain you'll be moved to help in any way possible. For with all their rage, denial, and procrastina-tion, the lives of the PPS victims are filled with sadness.
There's no other word for it. It is indeed sad that these beautiful people start out as kids who fly away from reality and pretend to live in a perpetual state of youthful bliss. If they don't become dropouts, their Never Never Land turns into a stark, deserted wasteland. If permitted to stay there, they grow into adults whose Never Never Land turns into a prison from which escape is almost impossible.
In this prison they are ravaged by loneliness but pretend to have friends; they are trapped in self-doubt but pretend to be confident; they scream for happiness and pretend to be gay; worst of all, they are consumed by isolation and pretend they are loved.
I ask you not to believe their pretense. Like their fictional leader, the victims of the Peter Pan Syndrome are alone, terribly alone. As for their words—"I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things. No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun."—don't believe them. They are lying to themselves.