Peter Pan And The Mind Of J M Barrie

Author : James Matthew Barrie
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781790688760
Total Pages : 76 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (887 download)

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Download or read book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens written by James Matthew Barrie and published by . This book was released on 2018-12-03 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys, interacting with fairies, pirates, mermaids, Native Americans, and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside Neverland.............................................................In a fascinating study of J M Barrie's classic works for children, Dr Rosalind Ridley (Newnham College) reveals that the creator of Peter Pan, and a panoply of other characters, had a deep understanding of the science of cognition - and was decades ahead of his time in identifying key stages of child development.... the child who lives in the heart of the adult; memories that we carry with us throughout our life but do not themselves age; dreams that disobey logic; the private world inside our head and those moments of exceptional experience that we rarely talk about.Rosalind Ridley (writing about Peter Pan)In Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, J M Barrie describes a moment when a young girl, seeking to comfort a tearful Peter, gives him her handkerchief. But he doesn't know what to do with it. Barrie writes: "... so she showed him, that is to say she wiped her eyes, and then gave it back to him, saying 'Now you do it,' but instead of wiping his own eyes he wiped hers, and she thought it would be best to pretend that this is what she had meant".With this touching little scene, J M Barrie neatly demonstrates that he had observed, and understood, something that psychologists call intentionality - a feature of 'theory of mind'. The ability to understand that one's own knowledge, beliefs and feelings might not be the same as someone else's is one of the keys to understanding the complexity of human relationships - and is something that most children learn at the age of three or four.In illustrating this fundamental stage of child development through the interaction of two children, one with a solid grasp of other minds and the other without, Barrie was remarkably prescient. The Peter Pan books were written at the turn of the 20th century and the term 'theory of mind' was not used until the late 1970s. In 1985 psychologists showed that failure to employ theory of mind is an important symptom of autism, its related condition Asperger's Syndrome and various other psychiatric conditions.In Peter Pan and the Mind of J M Barrie: An Exploration of Cognition and Consciousness, neuroscientist Dr Rosalind Ridley unpacks the magic and oddity of the tales that have captivated audiences for generations. In doing so through the lens of her own expertise, she reveals that Barrie had an almost uncanny grasp of human cognitive development four to eight decades before psychologists began to work on similar questions about the way we develop thinking and reasoning skills. Ridley has a distinguished career in neuroscience research with the University of Cambridge and Medical Research Council. Her work has focused on the brain mechanisms underlying cognitive processes such as learning, memory and problem solving. Since childhood Ridley has been an avid reader of literature and poetry - and a collector of books.Rereading Barrie's books for children she began to realise the extent to which Barrie had grasped many of the topics that she has spent her working life researching in order to come up with new treatments for dementia and to gain a better understanding of neurological conditions such as stroke which cause cognitive impairments.In Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens Barrie describes for readers how the story comes from an inner.