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Example research essay topic: Peter Pan Psychological Disorder - 1,457 words

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Similar and Contrasting Psychological Disorders between Kate and Peter Pan The most perfect description of Peter Pens character is that earlier or later all children grow up and become adults except of Peter Pen. J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, writes: Peter is ever so old, but he is really always the same age, so that does not matter in the least (Barrie 20). The main character of Doris Lessing's novel The Summer Before the Dark on contrary, embodies the woman who is more successful in developing a sense of a more complete self (Scott, n.

p. ). In contrast to Peter Pan, Kate Brown undergoes psychological changes in order to realize her potential. The aim of the paper is to explore characters of Peter Pan in J. M.

Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Kate Brown in Doris Lessing's novel The Summer before the Dark in a psychoanalytical context, and compare and contrast characters based on psychological disorders they exhibit. Peter Pan is so popular in psychological literature that he is, actually, one of the rarest literature characters with his own disorder syndrome the Peter Pans syndrome. Peter Pan is described by J. M. Barrie as the boy who never grows up. Peter Pan always remains the same small boy with boyish and infantile manners.

The main symptoms of his psychological disorder are irresponsibility, anxiety, feeling of loneliness, narcissism and egoism. Classical features of Peter Pans behavior are as follows. First of all, he is a kind of emotional paralytic. His emotions are slowed down. His reactions are inadequate: discontent with somebody or something appears as fury and anger, joy as hysteria, disappointment as a compassion and pity for himself. Secondly, he is socially helpless.

He has no real friends because he never appreciates what is done for him and betrays friends easily. His actions are impulsive. He doesnt realize what is good and what is bad. Despite of people who surround him, he is lonely. What about Kate Brown? Kate Brown, the main character of Doris Lessing's novel The Summer Before the Dark, is a forty-five year old woman from London suburbs.

She appears in the novel as a woman on a road to frightening independence. The character of Kate Brown has both similarities and differences compared to the character of Peter Pan. The story of Kate Brown calls the subconscious, extrasensory, and mad realms as viable routes toward a wholeness that can no longer be sought on the terms of the ordinary, everyday world (Laviolette 10). In this relation Kate Brown reminds us Peter Pan with his desire to escape to the imaginary world. Is it really so? Peter Pan lives in Neverland with fairies, water-nymphs, pirates and Indians.

He likes adventures, and adores fighting with mortal dangers. Sometimes he looks death in the face because death is also a kind of adventure. He undergoes terrible trials and every time stands them with honor. Sometimes he visits our dull real world (for example, to listen to fairy tales, or to watch real people doing something). The childhood of Peter Pan is also described as something different from the childhood of all other Barrie's characters. Barrie writes that The difference between him and the other boys [... ] was that they knew it was make-believe, while to him make-believe and true were exactly the same thing.

This sometimes troubled them, as when they had to make-believe that they had had their dinners (Barrie 64). All Peters world is imaginary and unreal. Peter prefers escaping from reality, he is afraid to become an adult. The boy remains a child with childish feelings that will never become mature.

He doesnt know the meaning of love and devotedness. He loves his island and his friends in his own way but Peters love is egoistic and exacting. The Neverland that depicts his attitude to reality is clearly positioned here as unreal, to authenticate the fictional reality that frames it (Honeyman 117). In contrast to Peter Pan, Kate Brown manages to undergo all changes and to face real life with dignity and with no fear. Psychologically Peter Pan is a child who doesnt want to grow up, whereas Kate Brown has to grow up emotionally and psychologically. Peter Pans behavior is a certain type of psychological disorder, the pathology of character and personality that can lead to very serious consequences.

The man surrounds himself with friends, with whom he feels comfortable in psychological relation. By other words, he feels as if he got stuck in the childhood and refuses to become an adult. Peter Pan doesnt acknowledge the conditionality of the real world and allows himself to be a boy despite of his age. What concerns responsibility, Kate Brown is more fortunate in developing more self-assured character and returns to her family responsibilities with a heightened sense of self-knowledge and identity (Scott n. p. ).

Peter Pan, in contrast to her, has an ostrich-like behavior. He tries not to notice problems because he hopes they will be solved of their own accord. He never notices his own mistakes. Nobody can force him to apologize for something.

He is very inventive in laying the blame on somebody else. What concerns the attitude to parents and adults, he has dual feelings. Irritation mixes with feeling of guilt because he wants to get free of the influence of adults. In relation to adults he experiences tenseness with elements of sarcasm and subsequent bursts of tenderness. He often fails to find a contact with grown-ups. Kate Brown realizes her demand in self-absorption and self-reliance.

As well as Peter Pan she never looses her individuality but manages to become brighter individuality than Peter Pan, who remains an egoistic child. Kate tries to understand who she really is; she feels as for some time now she had been 'trying on' ideas like so many dresses off a rack. She was letting words and phrases as worn as nursery rhymes slide around her tongue: for towards the crucial experiences custom allots certain attitudes, and they are pretty stereotyped (Scott n. p. ). The woman gradually comes to conclusion that she needs to have personal definition of self instead of always adapting herself to meet her family's needs and neglecting her own (Scott n. p. ).

It seems that Peter Pan has the same driving motives, because he also wants to be an independent personality. However, his alienation and escape into unreal world witnesses rather of his helpless than of his understanding who he is. Kate Brown understands that society doesnt treat women properly. She understands that society imbue women with false expectations and feeds off women once they reach maturity (Scott n.

p. ). Kate has to find the balance between her demands and needs and those of the collective. When he finds the balance, she finally comes closer to her archetypal image of the self (Scott n. p. ). From the very childhood she had to fight for qualities that had not been even in her vocabulary.

Patience. Self-discipline. Self-control. Self-abnegation. Chastity. Adaptability to others this above all.

This always (Scott n. p. ). No wonder that constant pressure made her to search for escape. Unlike Peter Pan, her struggle with social pressure lead to self-realization. The old fairy tale about Peter Pan unwillingly focuses attention on one important moment. Real children, although they are cute, beautiful, nice and sweet, they are irresponsible, light-minded, thoughtless and heartless by their nature.

They are not capable of selflessness or even of elementary self-discipline. These children can mature only with help of adults who will gradually teach them how to carry the burden of adult life. In case adults are not able to help children, these children will remain so-called Peter Pans. What will it mean for them? It means that such Peter Pan will not be able to cope with difficulties of adult life. People surrounding him will always feel difficulties because of his chronic irresponsibility, inactivity, mythological conscience, and stubborn unwillingness to face the truth.

Peter Pans will always hurt people who love them. They will always demand love and attention, but easily will not care a straw about people. Works Cited: Barrie, J. M. , and Arthur Rackham.

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920. Questia. 9 Dec. 2006 < web >. Honeyman, Susan E. "Childhood Bound: In Gardens, Maps, and Pictures. " Mosaic (Winnipeg) 34. 2 (2001): 117. Questia. 9 Dec. 2006 < web >. Laviolette, C. (1996).

The Tyranny of Coherence. Graduate Program in Communications McGill University, Montreal. Scott, L. (Autumn 1998). Lessing's Early and transitional Novels: The Beginnings of a Sense of Selfhood. Deep south, 4 (1). 9 Dec. 2006 < web >.


Free research essays on topics related to: psychological disorder, j m, n p, main character, peter pan

Research essay sample on Peter Pan Psychological Disorder

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