Customer Reviews

Now or Neverland: Peter Pan and the Myth of Eternal Youth : A Psychological Perspective on a Cultural Icon (Studies in Jungian Psychology, 82)

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I've just finished reading Ann Yeoman's stunning Jungian book, <I>Now or Neverland</I> Inner City Books, 1998, ISBN 0-919123-83-X. 191 pp.) I'm going to read it again quite soon, as it is so packed with new information and living ideas a single reading can't do it justice. I picked it up because I'm interested in the Divine Child and the Puer Aeternus archetypes, which I believe are very closely related, and I thought Peter Pan might have something to say on the matter. He does, but it's backward -- he is a strangely subversive and disruptive figure, refusing to settle into any one role -- hovering at the window of Barrie's England (its stuffy ideals still very much a part of our own social history and psyche), but equally uncomfortable in the Neverland to which he always escapes, no matter how much he crows and manipulates an enthralled Wendy, her brothers and the Lost Boys and the rest of Neverland. He is, this Peter Pan, an enigmatic, often dark figure, related to gods like Mercurius, Pan, Dionysus, and an astonishing lot of others (Icarus, Prometheus, Lucifer and Narcissus are mentioned, I think quite correctly).

I shall certainly never read PETER PAN the same way again -- forget Mary Martin or that Disney fraud. Forget Robin Williams too.

I wanted to read this book because Ann Yeoman is combining a career at New College, University of Toronto, where she is Dean of Students with teaching Jung and literature courses and a small practice as a Jungian analyst. What I hadn't expected was her brilliant concluding chapter, in which she compares Neverland and the Internet. She is certainly the first Jungian analyst I've found who is addressing the kinds of problems that have been concerning me for the past five years. So we may find out something about Peter Pan's dilemma from cyberspace -- I have certainly met lost boys (and lost girls) floating around, scarcely remembering where home is, and heard more than one ticking crocodile. There's more to come from this Peter Pan -- we have not heard the last word from him or from Ann Yeoman.

From the concluding chapter - "Peter Pan provides a metaphor for the unknown new - rootless consciousness is the dis-ease of contemporary society as it faces an uncertain future. The radical uncertainty of our future finds its own metaphor in our rapidly evolving electronic technology. In many ways, the elusive promise embodied in Peter Pan is the promise also of cyberspace. The new electronic era invites us to enter an indeterminate virtual realm where, it seems, everything and anything is possible, where we may create ourselves as we desire, where freedom and creativity know no bounds. Yet the very metaphors we use to describe this virtual zone are ambiguous. Netscape, Web, Internet, Windows, Paths -- images of boundless potential, but also metaphors for entrapment and delusion. On the one hand, Internet users access a seemingly unlimited network of information; on the other, the value and structure of that same information must be questioned, if one is not to run the risk of having one's mind made up for one, as an unwitting adherent of, to quote Derrick de Kerckhove, a 'collective, techno-cultural morality' which generates an 'average and averaging psychology.' Who are we when flying in the Neverland of cyberspace?" (pp. 175-6)

Sir James Barrie (who gave us both play and novel) and his creation Peter Pan are both a bit uncanny, unsettling. What message do they bring us today, as we fly toward the sill of the new Millennium?

In "Now or Neverland," Ann Yeoman invites her readers to explore the complex world of the archetype of the eternal boy (puer aeternus) through her lively psychological analysis of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Yeoman's book is an outstanding example of interdisciplinary scholarship. She intelligently integrates the work done in such seemingly diverse fields as Mythological Studies (Eliade, Campbell, Kerenyi), Literary Criticism (Frye, Calvino, Armitt), and Analytical Psychology (Jung, Hillman, von Franz). Her use of literature, both poetry (Coleridge, Auden, Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley) and fiction (Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Melville), to illuminate various dimensions of puer psychology is outstanding and speaks highly of her as a literary scholar. Her cultural contextualization of Peter Pan in history (Edwardian England, the current Information Revolution, the British public school system) presents a provocative analysis of the collective psychology of the times. Finally, her reinterpretation and elaboration of earlier (1970s) studies of puer psychology and psychopathology by analytical (Jungian) psychologists, makes her one of the foremost authorities on the psychology of what popular culture has called the "Peter Pan Syndrome". There is little doubt that Now or Neverland will become a classic and take its place alongside Hillman's "Puer Papers" and von Franz's "The Problem of Puer Aeternus."

Peter Pan was always a childhood favorite of mine. Now, having read Ann Yeoman's "Now and Neverland. Peter Pan on the Myth of Eternal Youth", I will approach the story and its characters with a new and, dare I say it, "grown-up" (sorry Peter) perspective.

Ms. Yeoman's writing style is clear and a pleasure to read. She presents unique and interesting insight into the hero, Peter Pan in an easy to follow manner and hence facilitates an "deeper" understanding of the myth and how it relates to us all.

I highly recommend it!

According to my therapist I have an issue with the "puer eternus" archetype.

I decided to acquaint myself with my puer. I found Ann Yeoman's book to be rather too terse, scholarly, academic and specialist for my purposes. I think one would have to be very familiar with Jungian analysis to really be able to derive something useful from the book. I am simply too unfamiliar with the concepts and the vocabulary and as such have found it to be a frustrating struggle.

I am waiting for Marie-Louise Von Franz' work on the same topic which I expect will be much more accessible based on the sample chapters I have been able to read of Miss Von Franz' other books.

I am sure this is a good book, but think about who you are and what you need before ordering it.

Only a female could write a book like this, and an academic one at that. The usual disaproval of fantasy, imagination, youthful outlook on life, etc. I feel sorry for her kids if she has any, especially the male ones. No doubt they had to hear about the fakery of Disney, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny. Anti-fun and anti-life in general. A real snoozefest.

Actually, it is the first issue that I have to say with satisfaction. This work is extremely considered as one of the best case study of one literature should be rendered. Though, it is too much with mythology and those explanatory stuffs contained at the first part which I didn't recognize if it works with the whole system of this book. However, the most fascinating part is still living inside the psychological approach to Peter Pan and how it was organized by its ambiguous characterization. Crucially, that's the chapter that you couldn't have missed.