Peter Pan is one of the most misunderstood and mysti- fied works of children’s literature. Presented as the story of the child who does not want to grow up, it reveals the tendency to label children’s behaviours and formulate ‘adult-saving’ theories: the Oedipal, Telemachus or Peter Pan complexes.
But who is Peter Pan? We can find an answer just ope- ning the book: «If you or I or Wendy had been there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling’s kiss». Peter Pan’s face is the kiss that Mrs. Darling holds in the right-hand corner of her mouth: the kiss that does not reach Wendy, nor her desire, nor her body. The same kiss that, in the form of a button, is going to save her life.
This is the hermeneutic background from which the Gestalt interpretation of Peter Pan arises: from clinical theory to child psychotherapy, from semantic critique to educational thinking.