Puella Aeterna: Little Girl Lost

The puella can be described as a fascinating woman with a free and childlike vitality.  Her presence lights up a room as she performs for the adulation and praise of others.  She does not like being restrained, enslaved to rules or convention, or inhibited in any way, particularly by reality.  Her freshness, indomitable energy, and zest for the unusual embody perpetual youth and creativity.  Naive fantasies of youth and beauty and power lift her out of daily life, which she considers dreary and common.  In this self-constructed world, she flees from her shadows, which represent the descent to earth necessary for actualizing the creativity and life that can make her whole.  A shadow side of puella manifests in narcissism and difficulty in taking herself seriously because she identifies as a girl, not as a woman.  Out of touch with her own femininity, even though she may look the part, she does not find satisfaction in being a woman and does not feel solid within herself.

The paradox is that the puella is driven by desires to be seen, to excel, and to be loved but not to be known intimately.  Her fantasy is that one day she will become this ideal self that she cannot achieve now because she flees from reality.  There is always a "but" preventing development or commitment because each situation is for the short term, and relationships are with others of similar bent.  She becomes bored easily and feels trapped, unaware of her own lack of self-knowledge.  Thus, her potential withers before it can ripen, because she has preferred the fantasy of perpetual youth to the reality of painful development.

The sense of fraudulence as an adult creates tension and dissatisfaction.  She exudes brittle, crystalline quality and an aura of aloofness behind which she exists in her own untouchable domain.  She is vulnerable, a terrified child for whom physical existence is a trial because bodily sensations are denied or ignored in order to avoid feeling and to protect from anything that is not part of her carefully constructed world.  Because the puella feels undeserving of love, which can be painful, she avoids the possibility of that pain.  This avoidance results in a lack of engagement, a restlessness, depersonalization, and inability to inhabit the present.  It is no surprise that the puella type experiences an inner emptiness that adds to the craving for acceptance and adoration in order to fill that void.

Emotional arrest keeps her behind glass, removed from her existence and the world.  She sidesteps the dark aspects of the self, which are threatening to her fragile sense of identity.  But the shadow exerts itself in the puella woman; she looks a part and functions well according to others, but she feels nothing is meaningful, and without meaning the experiences are nothing.  To make sure that neither she nor anyone else discovers this, she feigns confidence and composure that might come across as exhibitionist and grandiose, self-centered, even mean-spirited, narrowly ambitious, and envious.  This facade can seem harsh for it conceals the lack of capacity for intimacy and reciprocity in relationships.  Without a favorable image of herself, she has little basis for understanding others.  She has trouble giving because she feels she has nothing worthwhile to give, and she is unable to take a step back and respond with flexibility to other people's behavior.

The puella needs love and attention, yet she engages in deception of herself and others by putting on a performance and acting "as if".  She feels unlovable and experiences shame , vulnerability , and fear-- all based on a conviction of not being good enough.  The lack of basic trust and security leaves her chasing an ideal, through cosmetics, body shaping and other compulsive and negative thoughts and behaviors.  This self-absorption, however is actually a defense against self-intimacy and self-reflection.  Preserved in a state of suspended animation, the puella is not present for the moments or the hours of her life. 

The puella character is not easy to pin down because the elusiveness becomes reinforced as part of her charm.  Because she lacks a capacity or desire for realistic self-reflection, her image is distorted by the inability to connect with her core.  A dark shadow envelopes her creativity and expressiveness so that they can go nowhere; thus while the shadow is seen as frightening and not herself, it also contains the parts she needs to gain self-fruition.The problem is that when the potentiality of the psyche is not used it becomes perverted.  Wrapped in self-denial, she cannot access her own natural gifts.  Needing approval from others drives her competitive nature, but she must not threaten or surpass them as she fears being hated or excluded.  Therefore, she diminishes herself by holding back in one way or another that perversely supports the cultural bias against women who are healthily competitive and strong.

The hallmark of the puella is that she provisionally by hiding  in the shadows of disconnection, self-loathing, and disavowal of self-expression.  Although she is self-absorbed, she needs others to reflect back to her and to witness her life.  She wastes time and never does the thing that is always in the future, when time is ripe.

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from
Little Girl Lost: Sylvia Plath and the Puella Aeterna
Susan E. Schwartz

The Alchemist

Wonka and Bucket

Eternal Youth

It is believed that archetype constellations exist in threes.  In the case of the perpetual adolescent we are going to assume the form of the Father (the Senex, or wise old man), the Mother, and the Son (puer, or youth).  Recognizing the constellation can mean the difference between being unconsciously under the power of an archetype and becoming more conscious of the reasons we are being drawn into the same pattern repeatedly, even when we are harmed in the process.  When we move to an awareness of the constellation, we are more likely to move through the process of individuation (Jung's term for personal development, which includes exploring the potential of the individual and one's connection to others) and gain some separation from a potentially dangerous pattern. 

To say that history repeats itself is to say that history is an expression of human nature.  I would add that the polarity is foundational to personal development.  In the simplest terms, puer is potential and senex is experience.  In terms of personal development, the key is to gain wisdom without losing potential.  At a broader societal level, puer is the element of chance and the embrace of change; senex is the accumulated wisdom of a culture as embodied in its institutions and laws.  In "the Birth of Tragedy", Nietzche described these forces as Apollonian and Dionysian.  As with all things Jungian, we are better to avoid becoming "one-sided" and seek a unity of opposites.

Thus, this archetype, when split from its constellation, deals more with arrested development than eternal youth.  We are drawn to the puer.  Why is the puer aeternus stalled in adolescence?  Marie-Louise von Franz, in her classic study of the puer aeternus as manifested in the Little Prince, argues that the male is a homosexual who is fixated on the mother.  We are all probably ready to move past this explanation, so I want to encourage readers to view the splitting of puer aeternus from a constellation with the senex and the mother-wife as traumatic, borne of violence.  As Greg Morgenson wrote, "Whenever a sacral form splits-- be it a theological dogma, a scientific theory, a politic of experience, or a social role-- it splits like an atom.  The imagination explodes.  Possibilities inflate the ego, and the puer flies."
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The early articles in this volume examine the puer archetype from the perspective of psychotherapy or mental health.  Anodea Judith's "Culture on the Couch" argues that the planet is facing enormous problems, such as global warming , that will require a mature response, yet Western Civilization has thus far reacted as if stagnated in adolescence.  She asks "What if Western Civilization were a client that came in for analysis?"  Her answer is a fascinating case study of W.C., the culture seeking therapy.  Susan Rowland's "Puer and Hellmouth" examines the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an example of popular culture with a "positive ensouled mission": to heal the split between the senex and the puer.  Rinda West ("Puer inNature") analysis two polarities of the puer as responses to the natural world: the slacker, whose utilitarian approach to nature expresses itself in cynicism and gratuitous violence (examined here in John Gardner's novel Grendel); and the purist, expressed in isolation from human culture in the name of protecting nature (analyzed here in Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man).  Dustin Eaton's "Grounding Icarus" discusses the urge to suicide in brilliant artists; he focuses on the life and death of Kurt Cobain, lead singer and songwriter for the rock band Nirvana.

The volume next moves into an analysis of developmental issues related to the puer archetype.  John A. Gosling's "Protracted Adolescence" argues that the American collective psyche is developmentally retarded, characterized by a "fear of Other".  Luke Hockley's "Shaken, Not Stirred" analyzes Agent 007 as our contemporary culture's Peter Pan and ties this image to British culture's "shadow of Empire and World War II consciousness."  Darrell Dobson's "A Crown Must Be Earned Every Day" is a self-analysis of the role of aesthetic experience in the formation of personal identity.  Keith Polette's "Senx and Puer in the Classroom" claims that the American educational system, despite claims to encourage maturation, prevents students from becoming adults.

Finally, the volume address the puer archetype as it impacts broader cultural issues.  sally Porterfield's "The Puer as American Hero" discusses our fascination with "celebrity" as a media substitute for authentic heroism.  Susan Schwartz's "Little Lost Girl" looks to Sylvia Plath's life as an example of the puella woman who wants "to excel and to be loved but not to be known intimately."  Marita Delaney's "Provincials in Time" examines midlife passage among puer-possessed Americans.  Chaz Gormley's "The Marriage of the Puer Aeternus and Trickster Archetypes" investigates early trauma as the prime indicator of the creation of the puer personality.  Craig Chalquist's "Insanity by the Numbers, Knowings from the Ground" ties our culture's obsession with quantitative research to a childish insistence on factism, which is ultimately a denial of our humanity.

The essays in this volume acknowledge that we are inspired by archetypes to make heroic sacrifices and that we are also driven by archetypes toward mass mindedness.  It is important, Jung would say, for us to be critical of all the forces that shape our lives, whether these forces be science or myth.  It is equally important for us to understand the trauma that affects our times.
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from
George H. Jenson's Introduction to "Perpetual Adolescence: Jungian Analyses of American Media, Literature, and Pop Culture";  State University of New York Press, 2009

Don't Come Knocking 1

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