One hundred years ago this month, the first performance was given of J.M.Barrie's play 'Peter Pan'. Subtitled 'A Fantasy in Five Acts', the iconic figure of Peter Pan - 'the boy who never grew up' - and his adventures in Never Land fired the imaginations of audiences in 1904, and do so to this day.
But why?
In 'Never Netherland', the child psychologist Oliver James tracks beneath the surface and asks a lot of questions: is Pan the archetypal spoilt male - narcissistic and refusing to confront reality? Why does he hate motherhood? Does Peter Pan merely represent happy youth, with his nemesis, the dreaded Captain Hook, being imbued with the often-unpleasant realities of being 'a grown up'? And what, indeed, does Hook's 'hook' represent?
There are so many ways of interpreting the play - so many levels at which it can be approached - that Oliver James needs help: what's the Freudian view? Where do the Jungians stand?
