You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The lovely apparition of the puer aeternus is, alas, a form of illusion. In reality he is a parasite on the mother, a creature of her imagination, who only lives when rooted in the maternal body.
Jung saw the puer condition as one that is often found in young men, but which has to be outgrown if an individual is to mature. The rebellious Hillman poked fun at this notion, and used the term ‘adulteration’ (1997) to refer to maturation. Like Peter Pan in the novel by J.M. Barrie, he seemed to say: ‘Don't grow up. It's a trap’. He viewed the puer as an alternative to normal development, a perpetual childhood that would avoid the sterility of ‘normality’ and offer a way of remaining close to the imagination. But clinging to a childhood state is discouraged in most psychologies, and in most religions too. In the Judeo-Christian story, it is accepted that humanity suffers a Fall: the path of development—spiritual, religious, or psychological—assumes loss of innocence and separation from paradise.
Hillman's theory is a ‘dangerous method’ for those easily lured into the unconscious, believing the ego is not required. His psychology is not shaped by the ethics of integration but by the puer who finds the adult world boring and prefers to dwell in the wonderland of the unconscious. But to advocate the puer as a psychological style would never deliver eternal childhood, merely eternal puerility.
Hillman admitted that he was ‘possessed’ by the ‘mythic structure’ of the puer (Russell 2013, p. 592). Everything he wrote was an attempt to advocate a psychology of the puer, and to provide a defence of his style. This put him on a collision course with Jungian thought in general and Marie-Louise von Franz