The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 43, #3 Fall 2005

Film Essay
Finding Unconscious Conflict in Neverland

by Herbert H. Stein, M.D.

In the July, 2005 issue of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Leon Balter examines seven dreams from the literature and his own clinical work in which a patient describes either a dream within a dream or a work of art within a dream. Starting from Freud's formulation that the “dream within a dream” represents reality that the dreamer needs to deny by portraying it as a product of imagination, Balter convincingly comes to the conclusion that the “nested” dream or work of art represents in greater or lesser disguise a distressing reality that is being partially denied. A dream or work of art within a dream should alert us to an attempt to disguise a distressing inner or outer reality while also creating a question, uncertainty, about how we can know what is real.

What if we applied Balter's findings to a play within a film? The film I had in mind is Finding Neverland, a popular film about J.M. Barrie's creation of the play, Peter Pan. The “nested” play is, of course, Peter Pan, itself, a play well known to most of the audience. The film in which it is nested is certainly not a dream. It is probably more like a daydream, a somewhat fanciful account based on real events. Nevertheless, the psychoanalytic literature has likened the “dream within a dream” to the “play within a play” (see, for instance, Grinstein (1956)) and there is good reason to think that defenses used within dreaming can also be used in daydreams and in works of art that must find a balance amongst defense, wishes and reality.

One of Balter's findings is that the nested dream or work of art is “frequently associated with the problem of reality, … the problem of deciding what is real or true … .” (p. 695) Not only is the play, Peter Pan, about substituting fantasy for reality, the entire film appears to be concerned with the role of imagination in our lives. At one point in the film, Barrie explains to his skeptical producer how his character, Peter Pan, can remain forever young.

“He just believes it, Charles, he imagines life the way he wants it to be and he believes in it long enough and hard enough that it all appears before him.”

The film revolves around Barrie's attempt to convince a sad, serious boy, Peter Llewellyn Davies, of the value of using his imagination to brighten his life and deal with painful realities.

Barrie meets the Davies family in the park. The meeting itself begins around fantasy play, with the youngest brother, Michael, “imprisoned” under Barrie's bench by “the cruel Prince George”, his oldest brother. Although the other children are engaged in fantasy play, one son, Peter, refuses to accept what is not real. His mother explains that he has been like this since the recent death of their father.

Barrie takes up the challenge, putting on a show for the family with his Newfoundland, Porthos. He tells them that Porthos is a dancing bear. As he dances in the park with Porthos, the film imagines with him. We see Barrie dressed as a ringmaster, surrounded by clowns, dancing with a friendly bear. Film is a particularly good vehicle for blending fantasy and reality. When we sit in a theater and look up at the screen, we sacrifice some reality testing, as with a daydream, and temporarily accept what we see as real, even if in the play of our minds. When Peter is skeptical, Barrie tells him that he should not disappoint Porthos in his desire to be a bear. (There are two levels of fantasy, here, first that the dog is really a bear, the second that he wants to be a bear.) The audience is probably more easily seduced than Peter. After all, we wouldn't be in the theater without having contracted to imagine.

Through Barrie, the film encourages us to believe in the value and power of fantasy. In an early scene, little Michael is trying to get a kite into the air by running with it across a meadow, a prelude to the flying scenes in the play. After failed attempts, the other brothers don't think he's fast enough. Barrie pulls for the confidence that comes with belief. “It's not going to work if no one believes in him. Now this time I don't want a flea's bit of doubt. We must get that kite in the air.” As the kite soars, we are pleasantly acquainted with the power of imagination and belief, foreshadowing the famous scene in Peter Pan in which the children in the audience must demonstrate their belief in fairies lest Tinkerbell die.

There are many such anticipations of the play. As Barrie plays with the children and their mother, we share bits of his creative imagination: Barrie's dog, Porthos, barking at the boys as they jump on their beds will become the protective “Nana” of the play, the jumping itself leading Barrie to imagine the boys flying out through the window; games of cowboys and Indians and pirates will become the adventures in Neverland; and, the boys' strict grandmother pointing with the hook of some kind of utensil as she scolds them becomes Captain Hook.

But to its credit, the film does not remain one-sided about fantasy and reality. Peter is seduced momentarily into the world of fantasy. With Barrie's encouragement, he has written a play that he and his brothers act out for Barrie, “Uncle Jim” now, and their mother. However, as the play proceeds, Peter's mother develops a terrible coughing spell and has to go to her room. A frightened and angry Peter begins to destroy the props for his play. He tells Barrie that he was lied to about his father's illness, bitter that he had accepted his mother's promises that they would go fishing with their father in a couple of weeks just hours before his death. To him, there is little distinction between a fantasy and a lie. For him, make-believe is an adult trick.

As Sylvia Davies' condition worsens and she refuses to see a doctor, the film pushes us further into conflict between the need to deny and the need to know the truth. Like Peter, Barrie wants to know the truth about her illness. He has grown close to her as well as the boys, an attraction that helps to destroy his own marriage. He shows his greatest humanity in dealing with Sylvia Davies' developing illness, trying to get her medical help and rushing to her bedside during the opening night of his play.

Barrie's childhood sheds light on his fears of losing this new, attentive “mother.” Barrie has told Sylvia Davies about his particular insight into childhood reactions to death and loss:
“It seems to me that Peter is trying to grow up too fast. I imagine he thinks that grownups don't hurt as deeply as children do when they lose someone. I lost my elder brother, David, when I was just Peter's age. It almost destroyed my mother.”

“James, I'm so sorry. Your poor mother. I can't imagine losing a child.”

“She didn't get out of bed for months, wouldn't eat. I tried everything to make her happy, but she only wanted David, so one day I dressed myself in David's clothing and I went to her.”

“It must have frightened her to death.”

“I think it was the first time she ever actually looked at me. And that was the end of the boy, James. I used to say to myself he'd gone to Neverland.”

“Where?”

“Neverland. It's a wonderful place. I've not spoken about this before to anyone. Ever.”

“What's it like, Neverland?”

“One day I'll take you there.”

As Mrs. Davies becomes too ill to go to the theater to see Barrie's play, he arranges a performance in her home. We see the opening of the play and then move forward to the scene in which Tinkerbell has taken poison to prevent Peter from taking it. Peter Pan tells the audience that if they say they believe in fairies, Tinkerbell will live. The family sits in stunned silence. Peter urges them to clap to save Tinkerbell. It is the heretofore serious and reality bound grandmother, Sylvia's mother, who begins the clapping. As they all clap to save Tinkerbell, the backdrop is removed revealing a garden filled with the creatures of Neverland. Sylvia gets up to see it more closely, at first aided then leaving her family behind as she enters into Neverland alone, experiencing a beautiful and painless death as she enters into the world of fantasy that she had so much wanted to see.

At this moment, the film has blended fantasy and reality in order to save us the pain of Sylvia Davies' death. (We are not told, but historically Sylvia Llewellyn Davies died of lung cancer.) We move directly from her walk into Neverland to her funeral. Peter maintains some of his hard headed reality, but at the film's conclusion, Barrie, who has now agreed to be a co-guardian of the children along with their grandmother, consoles him as they sit on the park bench, telling him that she will always be present in his mind, both acknowledging death and denying it.

It is in this context, a story about fantasy vs. reality and particularly about using imagination to deny the painful reality of death, that we may now look at the play within a film.

Balter outlines three “empirical generalizations” about a dream or work of art nested in a dream. “(1) Those dreams attempt to deny a painful reality in some way depicted in the nested element”; “(2) They present an antithetical view of that reality (both denying and affirming)”; “(3) They are consistently associated with the problem of reality (the problem of deciding what is real or true.” (p. 695)
We can already see some of these elements in the film, itself, which certainly raises questions about reality, and, in fact appears to both deny and affirm the reality of death.

It is a trickier business analyzing a film than analyzing a dream since we are not working with the associations of a single dreamer /analysand but with the diverse associations of millions of potential viewers, almost all of whom know something about the story of Peter Pan and many of whom have seen the play in some form, bringing to it their own specific recollections. (In fact, one of the interesting complications in this case that adds to the ambivalence about reality suggested by Balter is that most viewers have seen the play and recognize it as part of their reality.) To simplify the problem, I will focus on the parts of the play presented in the film.

We first see portions of the play on its opening night amidst an associative context in which Sylvia Davies falls ill while preparing to go to the opening, sending Peter in her stead. With this more morbid backdrop we view the pleasant early scenes in which the dog, Nana, gets the children's beds ready and the scenes in which Peter teaches the children to fly. Barrie has cleverly kept seats open for a group of children from an orphanage (an indirect reminder of parental death) to liven the audience with their response to the playfulness of the presentation, creating a pleasing scene.

We see a little of these opening scenes again when Barrie has the play put on in Mrs. Davies' home, but are quickly moved forward to a scene in which Wendy asks Peter if he knows fairies.

Peter: “Yes. But they're nearly all dead now.”

He explains that fairies come from a baby's first laugh, so there should be one for every child. However, “Children know such a lot now. Soon, they don't believe in fairies; and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies', there's a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.”

I have added the italics to show the force with which these last words are spoken. We move directly to a scene in which Peter is awakened by Tinkerbell, who tells him that the pirates have captured Wendy and the boys. He prepares to rescue them and reaches for his medicine . Tinkerbell speaks through the jingling of bells, so we only get Peter's part of the dialogue.

Peter: “Poisoned? Who could have poisoned it? Why Tink, you've drunk my medicine. It was poisoned. And you drank it to save my life. Tink, are you dying? Her light is growing faint. If it goes out, that means she's dead. Her voice is so low; I can scarcely hear what she's saying. She says that she thinks she could get well again, if children believed in fairies. Do you believe in fairies? Say quick if you believe! If you believe, clap your hands.”

On the surface, this nested segment of the play continues the theme of death and the use of fantasy, “belief”, to deny it. Seemingly inevitable death can be averted through belief, through a clapping of hands. But there is a difference. In most of the film, death is impersonal, the result of some unknown force of nature. Here, death is caused by someone—the medicine has been poisoned—and it can be prevented. (Interestingly, I had originally thought that it was Tinkerbell, herself, who had poisoned the medicine because of her jealousy over Peter's relationship with Wendy, but found on reading a version of the play that it was Hook who had poisoned it.) We can prevent death by a clap of the hands, and we can cause it as well by not believing. “Every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies', there's a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.” In a subtle way, this segment has added the element of murder.

This puts a new light on what we are told of Barrie's childhood experience. Like Tinkerbell, who takes Peter's poison, Barrie has sacrificed himself, metaphorically giving his life to restore his brother for his mother.

“I dressed myself in David's clothing and I went to her. … And that was the end of the boy, James.”

But the self sacrifice becomes a defensive undoing when contrasted with the murder hinted at in “falls down dead.” It brings us back to Balter's observation that the nested elements “attempt to deny a painful reality”, pointing us to a muted expression and denial of murderous rage. This brings us back to Barrie's brief description of his childhood trauma.

“I lost my elder brother, David, when I was just Peter's age. It almost destroyed my mother. She didn't get out of bed for months, wouldn't eat. I tried everything to make her happy, but she only wanted David … .”

Peter's story about the death of fairies is a perfect concretization of magical thinking. It gives us a vehicle for believing that we can kill with our thoughts. In fact, it suggests that we can kill with merely the absence of a thought. It offers no escape for a guilty, jealous child who resents the favored brother who has taken all his mother's love even in death. By making it all about fairies, the scene distracts us from sibling rivalry. The scene in which Tinkerbell drinks the poison and is saved by the children in the audience denies the guilty rage through undoing.

If we go back to the “surrounding” film, we see only muted elements of hostility. Sylvia Davies mother is stern with her daughter's family and resentful of the capricious intruder, “Uncle Jim.” She is at one point made the model for Captain Hook. She is protective of her family, fearful for her daughter's reputation and trying to put order into a potentially chaotic household. She is the closest thing we can find to the villain in the piece, but she is not an element of destruction. She eventually comes to terms with Barrie at the end of the film.
We can find a more direct expression of rage in Barrie's wife. She feels excluded from her husband's world. She admires his creativity, but cannot share in it. She wants a mature, adult husband. When she loses him altogether to the Davies family, she is somewhat in the position of young James Barrie, forced to watch her husband's love turned elsewhere. She turns her rage and frustration into infidelity; but her ultimate cinematic fate is that she conveniently exits, leaving Barrie to the Davies.

Any harm that Barrie does is of the inadvertent variety. He has no ill will towards his wife. His anger rises when he finds her with another man in passionate conversation about politics, but at least on the surface he considers his own “infidelity” with Sylvia Davies and her family innocent. When his friend Arthur Conan Doyle tells him that people are talking about how he spends more time with Mrs. Davies than his wife, Barrie tells him they are just friends, something which the film appears to confirm. When Sylvia's mother confronts him with ruining her daughter's reputation by spending so much time with her, he says that he has wished “only the best for this family.”

Once we learn about Barrie's childhood trauma, we cannot wonder that he would want to be a member of such a loving, caring family. The Davies boys must deal with the double tragedy of the death of first their father and then their mother; but they stay together, supportive of one another. We see them playing together, with only playful evidence of of boyish aggressiveness in games of cowboys and Indians and pirates. The other boys willingly join in to act out Peter's short play for their mother and “Uncle Jim.”

We can recognize only muted derivatives of sibling rivalry. While playing on the set for Peter Pan, two of the boys fight over a pulley rope that is suspending George in the air, causing him to fall to the stage floor, breaking his arm. There is a more direct acknowledgement of sibling rivalry at the beginning of the film, presented in a playful way, before we know anything of Barrie's history.
Barrie is sitting on a park bench, when a little boy, Michael Davies, complains that he is standing on his sleeve. Michael tells him that he has been imprisoned under Barrie's bench by the “cruel Prince George” who has “tortured many men”. When George comes over to apologize for Michael, Barrie asks, “What precisely is Michael's crime?”

“He is my younger brother.”

“Ah, fair enough. Sorry lad, cannot free you.”

When George introduces his brothers, he says that Michael is only five, and Michael adds, “And I'm imprisoned for it.”
Despite the painful maternal loss, this is a feel good movie about a loving family that is adopted by and adopts a childlike, innocent creative genius, leading to an iconic children's story in which boys and girls can fly and evil resides only in mean pirates and ultimately in the belly of a crocodile. It is a pleasant daydream that disguises and denies the unwanted reality of jealousy, hatred and sibling rivalry.
There is one brief moment in which we are almost wakened from the daydream and then quickly reassured. At the cricket field, Conan Doyle warns Barrie about what people are saying about his relationship with Mrs. Davies. After Barrie tells him they're just friends, Conan Doyle continues:

“There have also been questions about how you spend your time with those boys and why.”

Barrie is shocked: “That's outrageous. How can anyone think such a thing? They're children, they're innocent children.”

There is no evidence, apparently, that Barrie was a pedophile. Nevertheless, in 2005, a film called “Finding Neverland” about an adult man, a celebrity, who likes to play with little children at the least makes this denial necessary. It is also in keeping with film's need to deny such hostile or harmful intentions. The defensive structure of this film is designed to emphasize the “innocence” of children, as well as the innocence of those who give them attention. Perhaps we are relieved to enter into such an innocent world, a “Neverland”, for a couple of hours. Finding Neverland is a fantasy that allows us on the surface to play with the denial of death, but more subtly creates a world of a loving family protected from rivalrous hatred, animosities and guilt that are only hinted at by the play within a film.

Balter, Leon (2005) Nested ideation and the problem of reality: dreams and works of art in dreams. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 74:3.
Grinstein, Alexander (1956) The dramatic device: a play within a play. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 4:1.