The Eternal Youth
Puer aeternus
The youth who will not be bound by time.
The Eternal Youth: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Ovid called the young god Iacchus puer aeternus, the eternal boy, and Jung took up the phrase for the figure of youth unbounded: spontaneity, inspiration, and flight, and with them the refusal to be held by the ordinary, by commitment, work, or age.
Marie-Louise von Franz, in her lectures on the puer, set out its two faces: the creative spirit, and the provisional life that never quite begins. Its images are flight, heights, and early death.
The Eternal Youth: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Icarus, Adonis, Attis, Tammuz, Peter Pan who would not grow up, and Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, whom von Franz read closely.
From the Sources
In Ovid's hymn to Bacchus the god is addressed as one whose youth is everlasting, 'a boy to all time', the most beautiful in heaven, with the features of a virgin when without his horns.
“For thine is youth everlasting; thou art a boy to all time, thou art beheld as the most beauteous of all in high heaven; thou hast the features of a virgin, when thou standest without thy horns.”
Ovid, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Vol. I, Books I-VII, Book IV, opening hymn to Bacchus. Literally translated with notes and explanations by Henry T. Riley, M.A.; with an introduction by Edward Brooks, Jr.; Copyright, 1899, by David McKay; Press of Sherman & Co., Philadelphia. The text, read in part
Jung writes that the dwarf form leads on to the figure of the divine boy, the puer eternus, such as the young Dionysus.
“The dwarf form leads to the figure of the divine boy, the puer eternus, the young Dionysus, Jupiter Anxurus, Tages, and so on.”
Dr. C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Part II, Chapter I, 'Aspects of the Libido'. Authorized translation, with introduction, by Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D.; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916. The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Symbols of Transformation, CW 5
- Marie-Louise von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus (lectures of 1959–60, published 1970)
- James Hillman, ed., Puer Papers (1979)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Children and the Young
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Eternal Youth.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/puer.
Nearby in the alphabet: The End of the World: Destruction, revelation, and what comes after. The Eternal Return: All things return, endlessly: the heaviest thought. Exaltatio: Raising the matter to its highest degree. The Eye: Sight, awareness, and the eye that watches.