Someone opened another thread on this topic, a while ago, and the main idea of PPS seemed to involve middle-aged, adult children still living with their parents, mainly because they were failures at their careers, if any, and couldn’t financially afford to move out. There was also a seasoning of obsessive devotion to such pastimes as Star Trek, Anime, and D&D.
Now I thought PPS was more accurately applied to men who might be financially independent and successful, but still
cleave to some motivations or tastes that might be considered juvenile, like the accumulation of expensive “toys” in the spirit of that slogan, “He who dies with the most toys wins”. Or perhaps PPS could be used to describe
those guys who are edging into their forties but don’t want to trade their bluejeans for Dockers. There are THOUSANDS of us here in L.A., and I proudly consider myself 100% guilty of belonging to this group. Though this being L.A. it’s not exactly like things are real clear-cut.
I first recall hearing the term in relation to some pop psychology book from the early eighties. I believe that the basic idea had to do with emotional immaturity. As you said, a man with PPS might be financially successful, but relates to other people, specifically women, in a childish, egocentric way. The analogy being the way Peter Pan expects Wendy to be his mommy–taking care of all the tedious parts of maintaining a relationship and unconditionally forgive any transgressions.
The term isn’t an official one in clinical or counselling psychology, and I think it has been co-opted by others in several ways.
Try the self-help section of your local bookstore. She’ll be the one thumbing through “Women Who Love Men Who Need to Get Over Themselves” or something similar.
In referring to dockers and jeans I wasn’t talking about the type of job where one actually needs to wear jeans, but to
other jobs where company policy is that you shouldn’t, but you wear them anyway because no one seems to care. Along with this I also was referring to social and leisure time situations generally, where many of us really prefer to dress just about exactly as we did in our college years.
But hey, if we’re going to discuss sartorial issues, maybe I should open a separate thread for that.
The pop psychologist you are looking for is Dan Kiley, who coined the term in “Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up.”. He exploited the flip side of the analogy in another book, “The Wendy Dilemma: When Women Stop Mothering Their Men.”.
Since it isn’t an officially accepted clinical term, it may be rather flexible in its application. But wearing jeans hardly qualifies, IMO. I’m sure javaman put “toys” in quotes to make it clear he was talking about guys who devote much of their efforts to accumulating and being absorbed with non-essential material goods in general, be it Harley Davidsons, fishing boats or home theatre systems. That doesn’t qualify either, IMO. I would suggest that if you have found some sort of way to function within adult society without being “mothered”, the syndrome doesn’t apply, even if you simply hold down a job in order to indulge yourself and avoid any “real” relationships.
In my experience, “Peter Pan Syndrome” is a term of derision applied by middle-aged adults who have lost their youthful sense of fun and adventure to middle-aged adults who have not. There is almost always a hint of envy in those who use the term disparagingly.
A search it too easy:
"Most people over their life span move through certain ‘phases’, these periods moving to the next as age progresses. Taking a broad approach, these stages would fall into the categories of infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and finally, old age (Peterson, 1989).
In the evolutionary scheme, each phase brings about an opportunity for growth. For each gain, however, there is a loss.
The Peter Pan Syndrome is a term used to describe individuals who become ‘stuck’ or simply unwilling to move on from the childhood/adolescent phase, refusing to give up the benefits that this period brings.
An individual must choose to be an adult and work on it. The difference between child and adult is a matter of self-possession and taking responsibility. To the dismay of the child, becoming an adult means the development of many qualities that they consider to be undesirable - commitment, accountability, involvement, (to name a few) - undesirable because these qualities would involve the surrender of their childhood freedom."
