The Psychology of The Man-Child (Puer Aeternus)

The term puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy. Carl Jung used the term in the exploration of the psychology of eternal youth and creative child within every person.

It is an archetype, and like all archetypes, has both a positive and a negative side. It can bring the energy, beauty and creativity of childhood into adult life, or thwart self-realisation and doom us to both unrealistic adolescent fantasies and experiencing life as a prison.

The puer is the man-child who refuses to grow up, take responsibility, and face life’s challenges, he expects other people, typically his parents, to solve all his problems. He tries to go as high as possible away from reality, ending up like Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up, who lives in Neverland, a place where people cease to age and are eternally young. The puer aeternus is also known as the Peter Pan syndrome. This has become an increasingly common problem in our modern age.

Those who find themselves unable to commit to work, to form satisfactory relationships, to commit to the discipline of education, to carry the weight of responsibility, or who feel that their life has become meaningless, will find the integration of the archetype of eternal youth invaluable in their life.

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📚 Recommended Reading

▶ The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
▶ Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle With the Paradise of Childhood - Marie-Louise von Franz
▶ Now or Neverland: Peter Pan and the Myth of Eternal Youth : A Psychological Perspective on a Cultura - Ann Yeoman

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🎶 Music used

1. Smoother Move – Kevin MacLeod
2. Cryptic Sorrow – Kevin MacLeod
3. Mysterious Ambient Background Music – The Rake – CO.AG. Music
4. Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet – Kevin MacLeod
5. Midsommar – Scott Buckley
6. Promising Relationship – Kevin MacLeod
7. Relent – Kevin MacLeod
8. Evening Fall Harp – Kevin MacLeod
9. Charms – Train – Sergey Cheremisinov
10. Charms – Waves – Sergey Cheremisinov

Support the artists:

CO.AG Music

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

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📝 Sources

- Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood by Marie Louise von Franz
- Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung
- Now or Neverland: Peter Pan and the Myth of Eternal Youth by Ann Yeoman

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⌛ Timestamps

(0:00) Introduction
(2:36) Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood
(15:08) Senex and Puer
(16:55) The Role of Play in Jung’s Life
(19:24) The Puer Aeternus and The Little Prince
(26:16) Integration of Puer Aeternus

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#eternalyouth #psychology #carljung #pueraeternus #manchild

[Eternalised]

The puer lives in a cloud of fantasies rich with potential and unlived life. Though he possess great capacity, he struggle to find a way to realise it. What remains unrealised within him ultimately turns against him.

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[TheNightWatcher]

I think this is me. My therapist said something that’s stuck with me: “You’re so afraid of uncertainty that you subconsciously prefer to be certain of failure than to have a mere chance of success.”

[andrewsawdon]

As someone who dreams too much, this was a wake up call. I have a habit of daydreaming about my future success, but the steps between now and then are foggy. This also made me realize how toxic it is to always give the impression of how put-together my life is. Deep down I know I'm behind in life and that the only person I'm fooling is myself

[andrewh]

Man. My mother coddled me as a small child but she had an undiagnosed mental break of some kind after her divorce when I was in 2nd grade and became wildly abusive and just totally unhinged. There was no one to protect me from this person who used to be a maternal guardian angel who had suddenly turned into some kind of horrifying wraith. And I was a really good kid- I was uncommonly polite and smart for my age and never got in trouble. She quickly married another unhinged abuser and they moved me away from my family. I remember being around middle school age and very decisively thinking, “I am tired of being terrorized and harmed. I cannot endure this for a moment longer than I have to. When I grow up, all I want in the world is to be safe and comfortable.” I was considered a “gifted” kid and was usually way ahead of my peers in most areas. Now here I am, 36, and I’m struggling to keep a job I despise, alone and trying to manage suicidal depression that has haunted me since college. I’m no longer ahead of most of my peers- in adult life I am dragging far behind them, unable to afford to join them on excursions or return their generosity because of my chronic occupational underperformance. Only after 15 years of mental agony have I realized that the goal born out of my childhood abuse is inherently flawed- you cannot be completely comfortable while being completely safe and vice versa. They’re almost opposite concepts. Now I have to dig myself out of this trainwreck at an age where time has done away with much of my energy and enthusiasm. It’s more difficult than it had to be. In some ways, it’s fair to say I’ve burned half my life due to this refusal to deny that abused child of his well deserved comfort. If you are in your 20’s and you connect with this video at all, you must act now. Don’t wait until you’re alone and approaching middle age. Start taking steps, one at a time, toward liberating yourself. It’s not as scary as it seems.

[Kenny]

26, and I just had my car repossessed. I spent my days getting high and drinking, and now I’m facing homelessness. That is a huge wake up call. And this video is a huge wake up call. The future is uncertain, and certainly won’t be easy… but I must reap what I sew and make changes so that I can’t finally mature into the man I’m SUPPOSED to be.

[GabrielLopez-nksr]

This made me tear up just listening, because it described my current state so well. The day dreaming of a successful career only to never really put any work into getting there. The constant fear of failure, the putting off of day to day chores. Escaping through drugs, alcohol and video games. The frame of mind described it something I know all too well and everything I struggle with now. Im so disappointed by who I am, and this video helped me see it from such a different light. If you relate, lets take this as the wake up call it should be, lets change this one day at a time, I wish you all the best.

[MWorsa]

The difficult part is recognizing the problems yet feeling powerless to correct them.

[benzos]

I think the saddest part about life is that, children are looked at with potential, but adults look at each other as one thing, making any type of charitable interpretations of your words impossible. As a kid, you are what you feel so there’s nothing to hide. But adulthood is a big game of poker and no one trusts anybody to show hands. That’s what makes me sad about people. People say I’m very good at making friends… but it’s just me not hiding my poker hand.

[sandaluthuli]

Grow at whatever pace works for you. Just be sure you're actually growing. Good luck everyone, I hope things improve over time

[cooladam]

A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. - Hunter S. Thompson

[christianriosofficial]

You don’t find this video, it finds you. I nearly turned it off because of the feeling of almost overwhelming shame it evoked. I’ve got a lot of work to do.

[iamzafkiel]

The neglected childhood part hit like a truck. The most powerful aspect of childhood is the "eternally in the present" status of their perception of life. Bullying takes that state and forces the child to adopt a twisted and chronically pessimistic expectation on the future. Tomorrow is no more the gift-bearer inviting you to discovery, it's the torturer.

[ridwanosman]

“I'm 27 and I feel like I'm stuck in a phase of not wanting to take on adult responsibilities. I don't have a job, I'm not in a relationship, and I rely on my family for financial support while living at home. I don't really have clear goals or ambitions, and I often doubt myself”😔

[usel]

This was really important and painfully difficult for me to hear. I fit the man-child archetype perfectly and it explains literally everything that has been happening inside of me and around me for many years. Thank u so much for this video

[DialTransmition]

I was raised by an overprotective, abusive mother and it definitely turned me into a man child. I'm not very child like in my behaviour, but I grew up being afraid of the world, anything that was unusual, outside the norm and outside my home was scary and unknown, including other people so I grew up a recluse.
I'm 27 now and, I'm just starting to work out this anxiety I have been living with for so long, but it's a hard process with many ups and downs

[billyinc]

Dude just explained my existence. I think the only difference is that the reason I allowed the fear of engaging with the world to shut down my desire to go out into the world is because my father terrorized me as a child. So when I engage with something I fear in the world, I feel the level of fear I felt as a boy being screamed at and threatened by my father. I go around holding back an unbelievable amount of sadness and anger. I also have an extremely creative imagination and none of it has been manifested in the world.

[glitcharcing]

This made me cry. Extremely sad as I have two parents who are like this. The effects of observing this disease on them was terrible. My mom has not had a job for 30+ years and my dad quit every job he got within a year. No amount of homelessness for either of them taught them the lesson… which is, very sadly, the epitome of what being a puer/puella will do to you. They’re both preoccupied with their own versions of the adolescent dreams that they never left… a disappointed shell of an adult.

My mom was by far the worst, however. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence trying to convince my mom to do anything with her life, even a simple hobby. As insane as it sounds, she was consumed by watching Disney movies all day and drinking alcohol… In fact, I became homeless at the age of 11 because of her inability to pay rent and take responsibility for me. It was at that point that I started to learn about psychology and read all day. I taught myself everything I wanted to know and went to college at the age of 15, then a university at 18.

You would hope that me moving on and away would inspire her? No… nothing changed for the better. She had a mental breakdown… couldn’t take the fact that I wasn’t a child anymore. I paid her rent for her when I was 19 until she one day abandoned her entire apartment and my old cat (I made sure he was okay). I couldn’t reach my mom for months until I one day received a call from a mental hospital. She had traveled hundreds of miles to my town and gotten hospitalized. She pleaded for me to help her by letting her stay at my house. At that moment, I realized that she would be like this forever… sucking the life out of me. Devouring me. I told her that I couldn’t take her in but that I love her… and that was the last thing we ever said to each other. I later learned that that she left the hospital and became lost to homelessness… she has been a ghost for years. What a sad and terrible fate that is.

It takes a lot of power to not become a puer when subjected to that. In my childhood, I completely lost my personality due to the devouring mother. What makes me so fearful is that I do see an unhealthy part of myself in this archetype… and to a certain extent, I always will. The good news, however, is that I always knew a genuine passion is what saves me… When I was 11 and homeless, I pushed myself away from the person I knew mother was destined to be… and further into my passion of psychology, which stems from these experiences. I did the same years ago with that phone call I got from her. I knew both at those times and now that I have no choice but to sit with this reality… and continue to remind myself that these experiences will continue to fuel my love for, and therefore work in, psychology.

Thank you.

[Joseph_Hamilton]

So I’m 5:30 in, and my God. I am the embodiment of this. I am constantly afraid if committing to something out of fear of it either going wrong or not being what I want it to be. I lack self discipline to push through sticky areas of interest, and instead I quit and start something new. This is terrifying but at least I am not alone in this if there is an entire archetype of these characteristics.

[QualeQualeson]

I'd like to say to this comment section: Be wary of diagnosing yourself. Remind yourself that you're looking for patterns everywhere. Many archetypes will resonate with a lot of people without necessarily qualifying for conclusion, and there are many paths to some of the typical consequences mentioned in this video. If you're really struggling and you think you spot fitting labels, find a solid professional to make a proper analysis and get them confirmed or refuted. This is not necessarily an easy task as there's a lot of practitioners in the relevant fields who for various reasons are incapable or unwilling to help you in this way, but they _do_ exist. Just know what you want from them and define it clearly. Evade blurry long term therapy plans as well as medication.

[francisfrain]

Childhood trauma made me disconnect from the world around me and emerge myself in elaborate and rich fantasy world that gave me a degree of peace from a very early age. Disconnection from the world around me was my coping mechanism, just like engaging with it in an agressive and conflicting manner was my sister's.. In my adult years i seak comfort at all costs from the world around me but that comfort comes at a great person sacrifice. It has taken me years to realize this but the pain of facing the hardships of life in the near future is nothing compared to the pain of having to face them later on when you're left with no other options.