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JM Barrie's brother was the mother's favorite. So when the brother drowned, the mother sank into melancholia forever. JM tried getting attention from her by doing things like dressing in his dead brothers clothes, etc. Mom would be all happy on seeing him, but as soon as she realized it was just JM, and not the brother come back to life, she would be terribly disappointed and say something like "Oh, it's just you, how sad." The whole thing stressed out JM Barrie so much that he never grew up, not even physically.

So it seems really creepy to me that he wrote a children's book in which the characters would never grow up...didn't they live in "Never Never Land?"

Learned this from my daughter who learned it in college, there is some name for the affliction. We could hardly believe it, but a quick net search confirmed it.