SLSL(Intro): Forever Young

[Keith McMullen]

"On the negative side, however, both forms of the movement (Beats and
hippies) placed too much emphasis on youth, including the eternal variety."
(Intro, p.9)

"Puer aeternus is the name of a god of antiquity. The words themselves come
from Ovid's Metamorphoses and are there applied to the child-god in the
Eleusinian mysteries. Ovid speaks of the child-god Iacchus, addressing him
as: puer aeternus .... In later times, the child-god was identified with
Dionysus and the god Eros. He is the divine youth who is born in the night
... He is a god of vegetation and resurrection, the god of divine youth,
corresponding to such oriental gods as Tammuz, Attis, and Adonis. The title
puer aeternus therefore means eternal youth."

from:

Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle witb the Paradise
of Childbood, by Marie-Louise von Franz. (Orig. ride: The Problem of the
Puer Aeternus. New York: Spring Publications for the Analytical Psychology
Club of New York, 1970p) (Seminar Series, 2) Santa Monica: Sigo Press, ed.2
1981 + p (293, incl. 1 p. bibl., 11 illus.).

Consisting of twelve lectures given at the Jung Institute of Zurich during
1959-60, this work by von Franz shows how the adolescent psychology of the
puer aeternus (literally, "eternal boy") persists into adulthood. Analyzing
Bruno Goetz's novel The Kingdom Without Space (1919) and Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince (1942), a child's fable for adults, she
also deals with the psychological and cultural issue of the contemporary man
who is identified with the archetype of the puer aeternus and remains too
long in adolescent psychology. This disturbance typically is coupled with
too great a dependence on the mother, often leading to the neurosis of the
"provisional life."

A much better source is:

Puer Papers, edited by James Hillman. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1979p
(246, incl. 8-p. index, end-chapter ref. notes).

Citing it as an evocation, rather than an explanation of the puer (youth),
Hillman characterizes this collection of nine essays as a psychological
book, not a "psychology" book, meant for artist, analyst, and scholar alike.
Divided into three parts (archetypal phenomenology; puer pathologies; puer
in myths and literature), the two essays in the first part (on senex and
puer, and the soul/spirit distinction as the basis for the differences
between psychotherapy and spiritual discipline) and two in the second part
(puer wounds and the scar of Ulysses, and notes on opportunism) are
contributed by Hillman. The other two, on puer pathologies, are written by
Henry A. Murray (on the American Icarus) and by Randolph Severson
(reflections on the psychology of skin disease). Under myths and literature
are essays on Artemis and the puer (by Tom Moore); the puer figure in
Melville (by James Baird); and on Finnegans Wake (by Thomas Cowan).
_______________________________________

And:

The Myth of the Eternal Child in Sixties America
By Harold Schechter
http://www.queens.edu/depts/english/myth_of_the_eternal_child.htm

Puer Eternus: The Pastoral of Youth
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/Publications/YouthAge/Chap1.html