The Man Child, the Overbearing Mother and the Absent Father (Part II)

In the first article of the “Man Child” series, the problem of the puer aeternus – the man who struggles to mature beyond an adolescent level of psychological development – was introduced. As earlier explained, one of the main factors contributing to this psychic stunting is a physically or emotionally absent father and an overbearing mother who overwhelms the child’s life to compensate for the lack of a father. Children in this situation often develop a mother complex whereby they fail to achieve the independence and strong ego development to guide them into and through adulthood. Carl Jung explained that the plight of the puer’s is such that “…his initiative as well as his staying power are crippled by the secret memory that the world and happiness [as the gift from the mother]. The fragment of the world which he, like every man, must encounter again and again is never quite the right one, since it does not fall into his lap, does not meet him halfway, but remains resistant, has to be conquered, and submits only to force. It makes demands on the masculinity of a man, on his ardour, above all on his courage and resolution when it comes to throwing his whole being on the scales.” (Carl Jung, Aion)

The existence of the mother complex limits the capacity of the “man child” to cross the border from imagination to action. Although he may genuinely wish to make something of his life, he is stuck in the world of his imagination and is unable to sow the seeds of his own fate. His overbearing mother ensured that any frustration felt was immediately satisfied, and his absent or weak father provided him with no role model to learn how to persist in the face of doubt and pain. He never underwent any initiation into manhood, and, therefore, was never taught the important lesson that there is no transformation without suffering, and no true joy without responsibility and commitment. As a result of a deficient upbringing, the puer lacks the capacity to deal with the stubbornness of reality, and so he tends to retreat from the real world and finds solace in the fantasies of his mind.

In retreating into his fantasies, the puer’s attention becomes fixated on possibilities, and his life consists of jumping from one prospect to the next. He engages in what Marie Louis von Franz calls “everlasting switching” - he inwardly toys with the thousand possibilities of life but never settles upon one long enough to achieve success. His noncommittal approach to life is intellectualized with a belief in “time” – “one day” a more ideal life will fall into his lap. He lacks sufficient awareness of the fact that for many people “one day” simply never comes.

The puer’s everlasting switching and belief in “time” is only a superficial manifestation of a much deeper problem – real life is not worth the effort. The puer’s overbearing mother ensured his childhood experience was too “Edenic” – he lacked the hard-knocks and frustrations the growing youth needs to adapt himself to the “just so story of earthly reality” (Von Franz). The puer uses his idyllic memories of childhood and the mother as the standards by which he judges the worth of existence, and so, inevitably, he finds himself afflicted with a compulsive fixation on flaws. He always seems to have an excuse as to why the situation in front of him, be it a career or a relationship, is never quite the right one. The puer’s mother complex has turned him into an idealist who is ill-adapted to the real world and waiting to suckle from mother’s breast. This fixation with the ideal disconnects him from the reality of being and of grounding in real life.

“There is a childish state of constant dissatisfaction with [himself] and the whole of reality…It is like a wet blanket over everything.” (Marie-Louis von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus)

The puer’s way of life is a recipe for despair. “…a growing youth” writes Jung, “who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure.” (Carl Jung, The Stages of Life). The puer’s work is in becoming conscious of the nullity of his ways and in finding a higher form of existence – a journey not for the faint-hearted! On this journey, the puer must find a way to shed his childish illusions and to learn to accept reality as it is – the good, the bad, and the ugly. He must come to the painful realization and acceptance that there is no gold to be found. He must grow out of his role as the child and assume the role of the hero. For the hero, unlike the child, is one who boldly ventures into the depths of the unknown, facing his deepest fears to become the agent of his own fate; otherwise, he risks living a life with no purpose or meaning. Jung explains:

“…in the morning of life the son tears himself loose from the mother, from the domestic hearth, to rise through battle to his destined heights…If he is to live, he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the past in order to rise to his own heights….The natural course of life demands that the young person should sacrifice his childhood and his childish dependence on the physical parents, lest he remain caught body and soul in the bonds of unconscious incest.” (Carl Jung, The Dual Mother)

How can the puer overcome his complex and lead a more balanced and relational life? Check in next week for the last of the puer series!