Puer Aeternus

The term puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy. It is mentioned for the first time in the Metamorphoses, written by the Roman poet Ovid. The child god Iacchus is praised in his role in the Eleusinian mysteries, initiations related to Greek goddesses, and the most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece. In later times, the child-god was identified with Bacchus, another name for Dionysus, and the god Eros. He is a god of life, death, and resurrection, the god of divine youth.

Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung rescued the mythological term of puer aeternus and used it in the exploration of the psychology of eternal youth and creative child within every person. When the subject is a female the Latin term is puella aeterna.

It is an archetype (a primordial structural element of the psyche), 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 eternal youth archetype is the first one we experience in life, and remains vital throughout our whole life. It is closely related to the mother archetype.

A puer or puella avoids individuation, and fights against his or her inner drive towards psychological wholeness. This stunts growth. While they have a great imagination, and rich inner life, they do not bring it into consciousness and thus do not progress in life, the potential remains hidden and unused, stored away in the depths of the unconscious.

In The Matrix, the main character Neo is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill. The blue pill allows him to remain content and comfortable in a simulated reality, it is the idea that ignorance is bliss. The red pill, on the other hand, allows him to confront the harsh truth of reality and to embark on the quest of self-realisation. The puer will often choose the blue pill.

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.

Such a person is missing a sense of identity which results in disquieting feelings of fragmentation and worthlessness. The puer compensates in his behaviour by pursuing the ecstatic “high” in drugs, alcohol, sex, sport, and daredevil escapade, that transcends the inner depression which threatens fragmentation, granting an illusion of selfhood, which underlies his restless search for that state of stability and harmony.

The person living provisionally is alienated from his own reality, spending his time ruminating on fantasies that go nowhere, and that achieve nothing.

In the ancient Greek fable, “The Astrologer who Fell into a Well”, Thales of Miletus, considered as the first philosopher, is said to have been so lost in thought that while gazing at the stars, he fell into a well. How should one have knowledge of the heavenly things above, if one knows not what is beneath one’s feet?

While the puer has a vivid imagination, he is not capable of transforming these insights into action, because he lives in an ethereal realm and misses the blood and guts of life on earth. As a result, the puer is not very successful in life.