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The Peter Pan syndrome: Was James M. Barrie anorexic?
Author(s) -
Fried Risto,
Vandereycken Walter
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
international journal of eating disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.785
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1098-108X
pISSN - 0276-3478
DOI - 10.1002/1098-108x(198905)8:3<369::aid-eat2260080312>3.0.co;2-v
Subject(s) - anorexia nervosa , metaphor , reflexive pronoun , theme (computing) , psychoanalysis , psychology , anorexia , parallelism (grammar) , eating disorders , philosophy , psychiatry , epistemology , medicine , theology , linguistics , computer science , operating system
Abstract Recently, anorexia nervosa has been referred to as the “Peter Pan syndrome,” a metaphor based on the theme of not growing up. Beside the fact that Peter Pan was a “boy who would not grow up,” another parallelism with anorexia nervosa may lie within the creator himself. We discuss the possibility that James M. Barrie, author of “Peter Pan,” might have been himself anorexic in childhood and adolescence.