Puer Aeternus

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Puer Aeternus is Latin for eternal boy and represents a personality associated with youth or immaturity.

1 Jungian analysis
2 Peter Pan syndrome
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Jungian analysis

In Jungian analytical psychology, examples of the puer archetype include the child, young boy or adolescent. The term can also be applicable to females in which case the Latin term is puella aeterna.

Analytical psychologists suggest that some of the signs of the expression of the puer archetype in a person's life can include immaturity, narcissism, and a desire to escape into fantasy or idealism in preference to remaining with the reality of a situation.

Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle With the Paradise of Childhood also known as The Problem of the Puer Aeternus is a book that Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz wrote about the puer aeternus, which includes such figures as Peter Pan and The Little Prince in the book of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Mozart, as portrayed in the movie Amadeus, demonstrates this archetype.

The antithetical archetype, or enantiodromic opposite, of the puer is the senex.

The puer aeternus is also represented on the Enneagram of personality types as the type Seven.

[edit] Peter Pan syndrome

Look up Peter Pan syndrome in
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Peter Pan syndrome is a pop-psychology term used to describe an adult who is socially immature. The term has been used informally by both laypeople and some psychology professionals in popular psychology since the 1983 publication of The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up, by Dr. Dan Kiley. (Kiley also wrote a companion book, The Wendy Dilemma, published in 1984.)

Peter Pan syndrome is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder.