Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

100 The Puer/Puella Syndrome
In the picture on the card, the Fool, like a hobo, carries a sack
tied to a stick. They leave you, these men, but they never said they
were staying, never said they were committed, or purposeful—or responsible,
even. All they want is to have a good time. And what’s
wrong with that? Nothing, except you begin to wonder how interested
you are in just having a good time. . . .
The joy of being with these men is the giddy return, through
them, to a child’s world, where there are no clocks and no claims on
your time, no clothes to be kept clean, and no consequences to be
considered. Days and nights are filled with the silliness, the spontaneity,
the conspiratorial privacy, and all the breathless secret pleasures
of life in a tree house. . . .
They don’t always come home, and they won’t even apologize
for it. They won’t help around the house because they like it all
messed up. They won’t work very hard because they don’t want to
get trapped by success. And they won’t work at the relationship because
it’s not supposed to be work, it’s supposed to be fun. If you
don’t want to play with them, they don’t mind. But that isn’t going
to stop them from playing.
Somehow, they make you feel very old, these men. They turn you
into their mother. 99
Of course, not every woman finds such men “wildly attractive,”
much less irresistible. Why not? Well, following the natural “law”
that we see in others traits of our own of which we are unconscious
(the essence of projection), women who fall for puers are themselves
quite likely to be puellas. And, as it happens, vice versa.
The typical puer shirks responsibility for his actions, and understandably
so, since what he does is not within his conscious control.
He is at the mercy of his unconscious, and is especially vulnerable
to his instinctive drives. He is prone to do what “feels right.” However,
he is so alienated from his true feelings that what feels right
one minute often feels wrong the next. Hence, for instance, he may
find himself in erotic situations that cause him a good deal of distress
the next day—or indeed that night, in his dreams.
99 Marsha Norman, The Fortune Teller, pp. 116f.