The main reason to be wary of the puer eternus is that it serves as an escape from the complications of adult life rather than the discovery of some core inner being. Like an inverted Russian matrioshka doll, open up the inner child and you'll find an inner adult nestled inside. Whereas adults make children believe that they, the adults, are adults, children for their part let adults believe that they, the children, are children. Of these two strategies the second is the subtler, for while adults believe that they are adults, children do not believe that they are children. They are children, but they do not believe it.
Childhood haunts the adult universe as a subtle and deadly presence.
The child nevertheless repudiates the adult all the while moving within him with all the grace of those who have no will of their own. Bart Simpson play acts the innocent child when it suits him, but he's usually a step ahead of Homer's vain attempts to make of him the sweet cherub promoted in adult mass media. With this refutation of the myth of innocence, we are forced to confront a less sentimental image of childhood. In this pre-rational world, parts do not yet make up a whole. This is the world perhaps best understood within the primitive logic articulated by child psychoanalysts such as Melanie Klein.