that is rising inside her pride and joy. She pats him on the

head and goes downstairs to finish preparing dinner.

Dad's preoccupation with the evening news is inter-rupted by his wife's banging around the kitchen. He makes a feeble attempt to mend fences by offering to help. This only opens him to attack. His wife still isn't candid and straightforward about her feelings, but the harsh tone of her criticism isn't to be mistaken.

"Why do you give him money as if it grew on trees? You know he spends too much time with those computer games as it is." Without giving him much chance to respond, she continues, "If you spent a little more time with your son, maybe you'd know what he's feeling. Maybe you'd know what he needs. He doesn't need you to throw money at him. He needs you to love him, understand the tough times he's going through. Maybe you ought to quit playing so much golf and take time to help your son."

Dad's protestations fall on deaf ears. Somehow Dad knows that his wife isn't waiting for an answer. Her goal was to make him feel guilty. It works, to a point; the point being that Dad is getting so accustomed to marital tension that he doesn't pay much attention to his wife's complaints.

He's refining his skills of emotional numbness.

T h e turbulent mood carries over into dinner. T h e son is treated like a shuttlecock, whipped back and forth between two fierce competitors who flagrantly violate basic rules governing decency and discipline.

T h e son's table manners are atrocious. Instead of issuing a stern warning, Mom picks on him as if he were a meatless chicken bone. He complains about the food. Rather than engaging him in pleasant conversation, Dad makes a paltry effort to placate his wife by belittling his son's taste buds.

T h e son sulks, giving both parents an opportunity to berate him in unison about the fact that no one wants a sulker for a friend. It won't be long before the son will desperately try to prove them wrong.

THE PETER PAN SYNDROME

Since this scene occurs on a fairly regular basis, the son is getting used to it. He's not nearly so upset as you might expect. So it's not amazing to see him clear the table and hear him hum what sounds like a T o p Forty song. He's still not numb, but he's beginning to learn the benefits of anes-thetizing his feelings.

After an hour and a half of emotional flogging, the son is in remarkably good shape. He had better be. He must endure one last verbal arrow, unleashed from his dad's quiver. In some ways, it cuts deeper than the rest.

T h e wound comes at a time when the dad and son could share a peaceful moment. Although Dad's tone embodies warmth and sincerity, the son winces when he sees his dad approach. History has taught him that quiet moments with Dad end up being painful. " T r y to shape up, Son, and keep your mother off my back," Dad says. "I can't take much more of her bitching at me about you."

Hearing this cheap shot, you probably want to jump up and confr6nt Dad. But it wouldn't do any good. Not only would he deny any hidden meaning, but he would also be insulted at the slightest suggestion that anything he said could possibly have hurt his son. After all, he would pro-test, no father in his right mind would ever say or do anything to harm his child.

If you've listened carefully, you'll realize that no amount of emotional Novocain could protect this kid from feeling worthless. It would do no good for him to complain. Like Mom, Dad doesn't realize what he's doing. T h e only good news about his evening of shrouded verbal daggers is that it is over.

As you walk away from the house, look up to the son's bedroom and tune into the voices inside his head.

I hurt my mom because I'm like my dad, who can't stand to have me hurt Mom. Dad doesn't love us like his work because he doesn't have feelings. Mom can't understand me,

ANXIETY 73

and I make her pick on Dad. I'm supposed to protect her, but that means I have to use my feelings to do what Dad doesn't do. To protect my dad, I have to shape up and not be like him.

T h e c o v e r t messages do most of their d a m a g e as the boy tries to make sense out of the senseless. I m a g i n e the pain and t u r m o i l t h a t assault this boy's mind. T h e knot in his gut c o n d e m n s h i m as the culprit; the s c r e a m in his head points the finger of blame solely at him. M u s t he not illogi-cally reason that he is the o r i g i n a t o r of the pain in the people he loves most? By the t i m e he's ready to fall asleep, w h a t e v e r self-esteem he m a n a g e d to a c c r u e t h a t day is most assuredly destroyed.

C a n ' t y o u just see w h a t this boy would do if P e t e r P a n flew up to his w i n d o w and asked him to join h i m in N e v e r N e v e r L a n d ? H e ' d g r a b t h a t magical dust so fast it would make y o u r head spin. He w o u l d c o v e r his body w i t h spar-kles of everlasting gaiety, c o n v i n c e d t h a t in N e v e r N e v e r L a n d he would be free f r o m e v e r y t h i n g t h a t had to do with g r o w i n g up.

T h i s is a g r i m scene. W h i l e a child usually isn't blasted w i t h all these messages in o n e evening, the P P S victim will hear t h e m over the c o u r s e of a week or t w o . B u t hearing the c o v e r t messages is actually the lesser of t w o evils. M u c h w o r s e is the fact that he won't hear a refutation. N e i t h e r M o m n o r D a d will c o m e to h i m later on and say, " S o r r y about the pressure, Son. I was w r o n g . It's not y o u r problem. So y o u take c a r e to behave yourself and M o m [Dad] and I will solve o u r p r o b l e m s . "

E x c e p t for magical incantations, there's no relief from a sense of doom. T h e son knows t h a t s o m e t h i n g is drastically w r o n g . H i s tiny voice of c o m m o n sense suggests that his p a r e n t s m i g h t be w r o n g , but his loyalty and naturally self-c e n t e r e d attitude self-c o m b i n e to point the finger of blame at himself. He's forced to c o n c l u d e t h a t he is w r o n g .

THE PETER PAN SYNDROME

With this I'm not OK attitude, several developments occur in the boy's mind. As his self-blaming goes up, his self-confidence goes down. A nagging sensation of sadness creeps into silences, and he avoids being alone. He makes illogical conclusions about his ability to hurt and/or pro-tect his parents. This becomes part of an irrational power trip wherein the boy believes he has the power to save his parents from emotional grief. He condemns himself when he fails to do so.

These mental events mushroom into a cloud of despair.

He makes a very damaging generality about the nature of his soul. While he recognizes that his parents love him, he postulates that he is unable to love them in return. Some-where inside of him he sees a demon that makes him an unloving person.

This negative self-image becomes a self-fulfilling proph-ecy. Because he views himself as unloving, he doesn't ex-pect himself to be polite and considerate. His inner voice says, "It won't do me any good to try to behave myself, because I'm not a nice person."

It will be years before the PPS victim is capable of realiz-ing the vicious circle created by his negative self-image. At the mid-teen stage of the affliction, the boy is only aware of the need to escape from the emotional pain. It is within the context of avoidance that the mother and father hang-up takes shape.

The victim's relationship with his parents never matures beyond this point. His flight to Never Never Land results in a stagnation of emotional maturity. Many victims spend the rest of their lives trying to get close to Dad without feeling panic, to pull away from Mom without feeling guilty. At every turn they are haunted by their belief that they have the power to save their parents from pain. This power simply does not exist.

The PPS victim eventually has trouble with male author-ity figures. He places impossible demands on male teachers,

ANXIETY 75 employers, professors, and coaches, among others. He pushes himself beyond all reasonable limits in an effort to please these people. In return, he expects them to grant him a special status, which he interprets as a symbolic kinship with his dad. In the process, he hopes to garner absolution for his failure to please his father. This father hang-up contaminates the victim's relationships with male author-ity figures and, in most cases, causes even more distance to develop.

T h e victim's mother hang-up will eventually express it-self when he gets close to a woman. His way of loving a woman is to make her a mommy surrogate. He will require that the woman in his life behave in a certain pattern. If she deviates from his expectations (the biggest one being that she must always approve of what he says and does), he will have a temper tantrum or, worse, engage in some type of abusiveness. By absolutely pleasing this mommy surrogate, the victim hopes that he will finally learn how to be a loving person.

Because of his resilience and the fluidity of his teenage life, much of this inner turmoil won't surface for several years. T h e deterioration and stagnation are developing without the young man being aware of it. There are, how-ever, two major indicators of this crushing anxiety and negative self-image.

One thing you might see a mid-teen PPS victim do is pick on someone who is close to him. If there is a younger sister in the family, she will take the brunt of his emotional nastiness. Once upon a time, the boy idolized her. He fed her when she was a baby and wanted to look at her all the time. Now he picks on her mercilessly. He teases her. His envy and jealousy lead to vicious remarks. This is not a normal brother-sister rivalry. Rather, the criticism is unre-lenting, often driving the sister to tears. She will say to her mom, "Do something about him. I don't like to hate my brother."

76 THE PETER PAN SYNDROME

You might also see this mid-teen anxiety manifest itself in a sudden drop in grades. Somewhere at the end of junior high or the beginning of high school, the boy's school per-formance falls apart. Teachers say he is bright but doesn't do the work. They call him lazy. Evaluations label him as an underachiever. His concentration slips. In some cases he takes on the role of the class clown. No amount of studying, pushing, disciplining, or threatening seems to make a diff-erence. T h e boy truly doesn't care.