Jung coined the name puer (poo-air) aeternus or Eternal Boy after verses in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Depth psychology has traditionally dealt with the puer as a negative and destructive problem, namely the mother complex in a man. The effects of an overprotective and domineering mother and an absent or weak father help to create a mother complex. It can leave a man emotionally castrated and unable to form lasting relationships with women. Later writers like James Hillman established the puer in a somewhat broader cultural context. The puer syndrome has increasingly become the generally accepted life philosophy of America as an unconscious antidote to the lifeless and mechanistic world of negative Logos.

Unfortunately as our society has become more and more addicted to the Puer as an antidote to Negative Logos, a collective age regression has occurred. The subject of Death and dying is politically incorrect. Nursing homes are warehouses for the physically tormented.  Dr. Kevorkian has been locked away by the Christian Right.

Youth, appearance and image are everything. Immortality and eternal youth are worshiped as the godhead. High risk sexual behavior is part of this high flying, no consequences message for men as well as women. This message along with many others is part of the omnipresent corporate and mass media sales pitch attempting to divert yet another generation towards a consumer Neverland.

PUER AND THE MOTHER

The puer mother can be described as the classic case of the over possessive and often domineering female. In the 1963 movie, "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" Ethel Merman played the take charge 'bitch on wheels.' She was always ready to make her point-of-view known with a whack of her large purse on someone's head. Her wimpy, pill popping son-in-law, played by Milton Berle, (center character in left picture)  was always on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Her spaced out and fanatically devoted son, Sylvester played by comedian Dick Shawn nearly killed himself driving his car 90 MPH because he imagined his 'momma' was in trouble. But it did create some of the most notable car chase scenes in the history of cinema.  Philip Roth's classic novel "Portnoy's Complaint" centers around Alexander Portnoy, a New York lawyer who relates the details of his adolescent obsession with bathroom masturbation and his domination by his over-possessive and demanding Jewish mother, Sophie.  In rebellion against his parental background he has a wild affair with a shikse or gentile women nicknamed monkey. She is called monkey because of her physical dexterity in sexual positions.

PUER IN LITERATURE: PETER PAN

J. M. Barrie's 1911 classic novel Peter Pan did a lot to popularize the high flyer in the 20th century. One way to understand Peter Pan is through the polarized opposites. The Senex values of the Barrie's post Victorian age--logic, rationalism, conformity and Christian materialism are too one sided and extreme. Peter Pan the novel compensates this extreme viewpoint with another called Neverland, the world of play and passive imagination. Neverland is also the realm of pre-consciousness where ego development and individuation never come about.    

The Greek myth of Icarus tells us a lot about the puer archetype as well as his opposite, the Senex. Daedalus and Icarus, father and son escaped the Cretan labyrinth through an ingenious invention: wings created out of wax. Daedalus warned his son not to fly too near the sun. Oblivious to danger and having no sense of personal boundaries he disobeyed his father's warnings to fly The Middle Course--neither too low near the water nor too high near the fire of the sun. Flying too high his wax wings melted and he fell into the sea. His body was discovered and buried by Heracles, archetypal symbol for virility and adult masculinity. To fly a Middle Course means to stay in the balanced center of the archetype--beware of drowning the ego in an incestuous relationship with the terrible mother or to be scorched in the over masculinized fire of the terrible father.

The 1869 oil painting left is by Frederic Leighton and the ancient Roman bas-relief is from the Villa Albani in Rome. Both illustrate the theme of Daedalus preparing his son for his fateful flight.

Paul Ruben's puer alias is the innocent and loveable child character of Pee Wee Herman. That character has made him a children's favorite. The adult side has had encounters with the Senex represented as law enforcement. Ruben was Arrested at a Peep Show 7-21-91 for jerking off and recently investigated for child porn.