Dancin' at the Zombie Zoo

by: Lisa Ranger

I am sorry to hear of Michael Jackson's too-young death. He was a great pop icon, whose music and early power and attitude left an indelible mark on the music industry (Police Focus on Medical Treatment in Jackson Death.)

But more than that, Mr. Jackson elicits a pathetic response when one thinks of the odd reclusive man he became, befriending chimps and children, ensconcing himself in his Neverland Ranch -- replete with amusement park rides and a petting zoo -- as he embarked on a quest of self-abnegation: to become a white woman, or at least, Diana Ross. But aside from the issue of wanting to eradicate his negroid features is the issue of his arrested psyche.

To me, Michael Jackson embodies the puer aeternus archetype, the perpetual child. Examples of this type of boy-man abound, yet there is little discussion of the phenomenon. While Jackson is an extreme and cartoonish example, let's discuss it in the general.

Following the 1983 publication of Dr. Dan Kiley's, The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up, the idea of perpetual boy-men as pathology has been largely relegated to the dustbin of pop psychology. (There is no mention of the phenomenon in the DSM Manual of Mental disorders [DSM-IV].) Kiley took his title from J. M. Barrie's classic 1904 play about Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up. Perhaps it is fitting that the King of Pop bring us back to the topic.

Carl Jung explained the archetype as experiencing a sort of dissatisfaction and yearning after an ever-receding dream life. A kind of Walter Mitty in limbo, for at least Mitty participated in life, albeit escaping into his reclusive flights of fancy. For the Peter Pan life is lived narcissistically, and "[t]he one thing dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything whatever" (Marie-Louise von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus.)

"Common symptoms of puer psychology are dreams of imprisonment and similar imagery: chains, bars, cages, entrapment, bondage. Life itself...is experienced as a prison" (Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts.)" The non-accountable, utterly self-involved male is accepted as a staple of modernity.

"Puer Aeternus is Latin for 'eternal boy', used in mythology to designate a child-god who is forever young; psychologically it refers to an older man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level . . . The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. He covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable" (Sharp).

I have known Peter Pans ranging in age from 20 to 65 and am fascinated by the apparent equanimity with which they live their isolated lifestyle. Modernity has allowed them to bring everything they need into their perimeter without undue engagement -- food, entertainment, communication, sometimes pornography. Some work, some live with family members, some are entities unto themselves.

I marvel at their seeming lack of compulsion to abide by any societal norms of fraternity and relationship. If not exactly celebrated, certainly they are well-tolerated by society, feted by the media in such programs as "Two and a Half Men."

Part of what has enabled the phenomena is womens' shifting mores. Murphy Brown ushered in the age of women raising children alone, or as part of a community which does not necessarily include the father of the child. Men are then allowed to play the field ad infinitum (or not) when they are not called upon to fulfill society's (restricting) expectations. Susan Faludi declared for the raw deal men have received post-feminism in her book, "Stiffed". This is certainly a problem for men via-a-vis women in a culture where the norms have been toppled and are being rearranged daily.

The advent of computers-as-companions via Game Boy, Play Station and Second Life have also facilitated their bowing out of society, as the Peter Pan may now escape into an ersatz world of his own making. Why men in particular fall prey to the phenomenon is a curiosity.

A sad coda to Michael Jackson's story is the question, "Why, for all of his celebrity and high-placed friends, did no one bring him to a place of some basic sanity." There will be revelations following his death, and some picture of the truth will coalesce. Too little, too late, in any event.

Back to the universal question: Do you know any Peter Pans? Are you yourself perhaps one? Whenceforth the phenomenon? Has it ever been thus? Your comments are welcome.

---