“It is a fact that if an impulse from one or the other sphere comes up and is not lived out, then it goes back down and tends to develop anti-human qualities. What should have been a human impulse becomes a tiger-like impulse.”
“That is the great difficulty, for the sore spot has to come out, and has to be tortured; that is the only way by which it can mature. It is even more dangerous when the childish side is cut off. Repression does not solve the problem, for the repressed child continues to cry or be angry in the corner.”
“There is a strange attitude and feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being one is doing this or that, but whether it is a woman or a job, it is not yet what is really wanted, and there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about.”
“We are put into the dark in order to learn to see.”
Quotes on the Puer Aeternus (The Eternal Boy)
“He cannot endure the idea of being trapped by life — by the feminine, by time, by the body.”
“One of the main characteristics of the puer is his fear of being pinned down, his fear of being bound to reality, to woman, to time.”
“He wants to remain weightless and to float above life. He cannot bear the burden of incarnation.”
“There is something profoundly tragic in a man who tries to remain eternally young. He has no contact with his own depths.”
“What comes up from the unconscious in such cases is often overwhelming, irrational, instinctive — and it produces panic.”
“He tries to overcome the body by denying it, but it comes back in nightmares and obsessions.”