James Barrie's “M'Connachie”—His “Writing Half”

There is an abundance of material by and about Sir James Matthew Barrie available and inviting psychoanalytic study. He wrote an extraordinary book, Margaret Ogilvy, about himself and his mother; there are his almost shockingly autobiographical novels, such as A Window in Thrums, Sentimental Tommy, Tommy and Grizel, The Little Minister, When a Man's Single, The Little White Bird; countless personal reminiscences appear in his speeches and in The Greenwood Hat, a collection of articles he wrote as a journalist; a great number of his letters have been collected and published; there are his notebooks from which excerpts have been published, especially by his biographers Mackail and Dunbar, including two dream specimens and Barrie's notes in reaction to one of them; we have a number of good biographies by Hammerton, Mackail, and Dunbar; there is the revealing Portrait of Barrie by Lady Cynthia Asquith, his private secretary for almost twenty years; there have been a few psychoanalytic studies, those of Karpe and Skinner being especially interesting.

It is clear from reading accounts of Barrie and his works that he was beset throughout his life by obsessions, compulsions, phobias, depressions. His obsessions focused on his mother, mothers in general, children, and himself. He had strong compulsions and phobias—compulsive writing, voyeurism (see The Little White Bird), exhibitionism (his writings, speeches, games), extreme intrusiveness, possessiveness, and dependency. He had a rat phobia, a strong aversion to being photographed, and, in many ways, he was a recluse. He had a writing paralysis, childhood amnesia (according to his own accounts) and claimed amnesia for some of his own writing (Peter Pan, ignorance of the Left Hand Author). He was subject to deep depressions, severe insomnia, great shame and guilt. He had intolerable headaches, and recurrent bronchitis. He was severely addicted to tobacco and once developed a dangerous liking for heroin. Still, withal, he beca