50321190-39264356-Von-Franz-Puer-Aeternus

me: I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a week.
The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles
from any human habitation. I was more isolated than a ship wrecked
sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Thus, you can imagine my
amazement, at sunrise, when I was awakened by an odd little voice. It
said:
"If you please—draw me a sheep!"
"What!"
Then he meets the little prince. Now I want to ask what you conclude
from this first part. It contains the whole problem in a nutshell.
Remark: We see a lack of interest in adults and more childhood
fantasies.
Yes. We see here that he has never really got into the world of the
adult. He speaks about its emptiness, its idiocy and its
meaninglessness. There is the talk about bridge and politics and
neckties, it is true, but that is the kind of adult world one rightly
rejects—it is persona emptiness. But he omits other aspects of adult
life as well. You see in the feeling-tone of this first part that he
means that the childhood life is the fantasy life, the artist's life,
and that is the true life and all the rest is empty persona running
after money, making a prestige impression on other people, having
lost one's true nature, so to speak. That is how he sees adult life,
for he has not found a bridge by which he could take over what we
would call the true life into adult life. That is the great problem,
I think, in a nutshell; namely, how can one pull out of this fantasy
life of youth and youthfulness without losing its value? How can one
grow up without losing the feeling of totality and the feeling of
creativeness and of being really alive, which one had in youth?
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One can be cynical about it and say that one cannot have the penny
and the cake—it has to be sacrificed—but from my experience I do not
think that this is quite right. It is justifiable not to want to give
up this other world. The question is, how can one grow up and not
lose it? The great problem is that you can drive people out of this
childhood paradise and fantasy life, in which they are in close
connection with their true inner self on an infantile level, but then
they are completely disillusioned and cynical.
I remember once that I had an analysand who was a typical puer
aeternus and wanted to become a writer, but he lived in a completely
fantasy world. He came over from the States with a friend, and the
two made up their minds that the friend should have a Freudian and he
a Jungian analysis and that after a year they would meet and compare
notes. They went to different countries and met as arranged, and the
young man who had had the Freudian analysis said that he was through
with his problem and was cured and was going home. Everything was all
right, and he understood his infantile attitude toward life; he had
given up his mother complex and other nonsense. My analysand asked
him what he was going to do, and the other said he did not know but
that he must earn some money and find a wife. My analysand said that
he was not cured at all; he still did not know where to go yet. He
knew that he would become a writer and had started on that course,
but he did not know where to settle, and so on. Then the one who had
had the Freudian analysis said, ''Well, it is strange; they have
driven out my devils, but with them they have also driven out my
angels!"
So you see that is the problem! One can drive away devils and angels
by saying that that is all infantile and part of the mother complex
and, by a completely reductive analysis, put everything down to the