page_title: Puer aeternus
section_title: Works concerning the puer aeternus
hierarchical_section_title: Puer aeternus / In Jungian psychology / Works concerning the puer aeternus
context_page_description: Puer aeternus in mythology is a child-god who is forever young. In psychology, it is an older person whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level, which is also known as Peter Pan syndrome. 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. He or she covets independence and freedom, opposes boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable.
context_section_description: Carl Jung wrote a paper on the puer aeternus, titled "The Psychology of the Child Archetype", contained in Part IV of The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works, Vol. 9i). The hero-child aspect and his relationship to the Great Mother is dealt with in chapters 4 and 5 of Part Two of Symbols of Transformation (CW, vol. 5).
  In his essay "Answer to Job" (also included in Psychology and Religion: West and East) Jung refers to the puer aeternus as a figure representing the future psychological development of human beings.
  That higher and 'complete' (teleios) man is begotten by the 'unknown' father and born from Wisdom, and it is he who, in the figure of the puer aeternus—'vultu mutabilis albus et ater'—represents our totality, which transcends consciousness. It was this boy into whom Faust had to change, abandoning his inflated onesidedness which saw the devil only outside. Christ's 'Except ye become as little children' prefigures this change, for in them the opposites lie close together; but what is meant is the boy who is born from the maturity of the adult man, and not the unconscious child we would like to remain."
  The Problem of the Puer Aeternus is a book based on a series of lectures that Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz gave at the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, during the Winter Semester, 1959–1960. In the first eight of twelve lectures, von Franz illustrates the theme of the puer aeternus by examining the story of The Little Prince from the book of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The remaining four lectures are devoted to a study of a German novel by Bruno Goetz, Das Reich ohne Raum ('The Kingdom Without Space'), first published in 1919. Of this novel von Franz says:
  It is interesting that it was written and published before the Nazi movement came into being in 1933, before Hitler was ruminating on his morbid ideas. Bruno Goetz certainly had a prophetic gift about what was coming, and ... his book anticipates the whole Nazi problem, throwing light upon it from the angle of the puer aeternus".
  Now or Neverland is a 1998 book written by Jungian analyst Ann Yeoman dealing with the puer aeternus in the form of Peter Pan, one of the most well-known examples of the concept in the modern era. The book is a psychological overview of the eternal boy archetype, from its ancient roots to contemporary experience, including a detailed interpretation of J. M. Barrie's popular 1904 play and 1911 novel.
  Mythologically, Peter Pan is linked to [...] the young god who dies and is reborn...as well as to Mercury/Hermes, psychopomp and messenger of the gods who moves freely between the divine and human realms, and, of course, to the great goat-god Pan [....] In early performances of Barrie's play, Peter Pan appeared on stage with both pipes and a live goat.  Such undisguised references to the chthonic, often lascivious and far from childlike goat-god were, not surprisingly, soon excised from both play and novel."
caption: Cover of 1915 edition of J.M. Barrie's 1911 novel Peter and Wendy
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