Puer aeternus. Latin for "eternal child,"
used in mythology to
designate a child-god who is forever young;
psychologically it refers to
an older man whose emotional life has remained at an
adolescent level,
usually coupled with too great a dependence on the
mother.[The term
puella is used when referring to a woman, though one
might also speak of a
puer animus-or a puella anima.]
The puer
typically leads a
provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a
situation from
which it might not be possible to escape. His lot is
seldom what he really
wants and one day he will do something about it-but
not just yet. Plans
for the future slip away in fantasies of what will be,
what could be,
while no decisive action is taken to change. He covets
independence and
freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to
find any
restriction intolerable.
[The world] makes demands on the masculinity of a man, on his ardour, above all on his courage and resolution when it comes to throwing his whole being into the scales. For this he would need a faithless Eros, one capable of forgetting his mother and undergoing the pain of relinquishing the first love of his life.[The Syzygy: Anima and Animus,"CW9ii, par. 22.]
Common symptoms of puer psychology are dreams of
imprisonment and
similar imagery: chains, bars, cages, entrapment,
bondage. Life itself,
existential reality, is experienced as a prison. The
bars are unconscious
ties to the unfettered world of early life.
The
puer's shadow is
the senex (Latin for "old man"), associated with the
god
Apollo-disciplined, controlled, responsible, rational,
ordered.
Conversely, the shadow of the senex is the puer,
related to
Dionysus-unbounded instinct, disorder, intoxication,
whimsy.
Whoever lives out one pattern to the exclusion of
the other risks
constellating the opposite. Hence individuation quite
as often involves
the need for a well-controlled person to get closer to
the spontaneous,
instinctual life as it does the puer's need to grow
up.
jungian therapy jungian therapist new york carl jung therapy jungThe "eternal child" in man is an indescribable experience, an incongruity, a handicap, and a divine prerogative; an imponderable that determines the ultimate worth or worthlessness of a personality.[The Psychology of the Child Archetype,"CW9i, par. 300.]