Psychological Perspectives

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Adonis An Ancient Peter Pan

Robert N. Segal

To cite this article: Robert N. Segal (1991) Adonis An Ancient Peter Pan, Psychological
Perspectives, 24:1, 124-132, DOI: 10.1080/00332929108408901

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Published online: 17 Jan 2008.

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ROBERT A . SEGAL

ADONIS
A n Ancient Peter Pan

T he story of Adonis is among the most famous of classical myths. The

two most important versions of the myth are those of Apollodorus
and Ovid. According to Apollodorus, Adonis’ mother, Smyrna, was
punished by Aphrodite, goddess of love, for her celibacy. Aphrodite planted
in Smyrna uncontrollable lust for her father, with whom Smyrna, in disguise,
had sex for 12 nights. When her father discovered who she truly was, he took
after her with his sword. As he was about to overtake her, she beseeched
the gods to make her invisible. Out of pity they transformed her into a myrrh
(Smyrna) tree. Smyrna had become pregnant from her father, and 10 months
later Adonis burst forth out of the tree.
Preternaturally beautiful, the infant attracted Aphrodite, who hid him
in a chest to keep him from other gods and entrusted the chest to Persephone.
When Persephone opened the chest, she, too, fell in love with Adonis and
refused to return him. Like Solomon, Zeus mediated the dispute and decreed
that Adonis should spend a third of the year with Aphrodite, a third in Hades
with Persephone, and a third alone. Adonis chose to spend his third with
Aphrodite as well. While hunting one day with her, he was gored to death
by a boar.
According to Ovid’s version of the myth, Adonis’ mother, here named
Myrrha, likewise was driven to commit incest, fled her horrified father and
was turned into a myrrh tree, from which emerged Adonis. Only once he
became a young man, however, did Aphrodite, now Venus, fall in love with
him. Still, the two similarly went hunting, and Adonis, disregarding her warn-
ing against pursuing dangerous game, proceeded to spear a boar. The boar,
able to remove the poorly thrust spear, charged Adonis and gored him fatally
in the groin. Hearing his dying groans, Venus rushed to him, but too late.
As a memorial, she sprinkled nectar on his blood, from which arose the flower
anemone. Like Adonis, it springs u p quickly but dies equally quickly, too
fragile to survive. Whatever the contemporary association of the name
‘Adonis” with strength and virility, the Adonis of mythology is weak and
effeminate.
 From a Jungian point of view, Adonis exemplifies the archetype of the
eternal child, or puer aeternus. Jung himself cites Adonis and the archetype
only in passing. Marie-Louise von Franz has written an authoritative book
on the Puer Aetemus,’ and James Hillman and others have compiled a collec-
tion of Puer Papers? Where von Franz, following Jung, stresses the negative
aspect of the puer personality, Hillman and his collaborators emphasize the
positive. While von Franz and Hillman mention the case of Adonis only briefly,
they would doubtless interpret it antithetically. von Franz would interpret the
myth as castigating of Adonis for his psychological immaturity, for his iden-
tification of himself with the puer archetype. Hillman would see the myth
as applauding Adonis for that same identification. For von Franz, the life of
a puer invariably ends tragically, if not pathetically, in premature death. For
Hillman, the life of a puer concludes triumphantly, in a refusal to compromise
126 Psychological Perspectives

with the everyday world. The myth itself incontestably seems to bemoan rather
than laud Adonis’ death. While myths of other pueri endorse the puer per-
sonality, it is hard to read the Adonis myth as doing so. Certainly ancient
Greeks would have abhorred Adonis -though on political, not psychological,
grounds. von Franz’s approach therefore makes better sense of this particular
manifestation of the personality type than Hillman’s.

THEPUERPERSONALITY
The puer archetype is an aspect of one’s personality that must be
acknowledged. The puer personality goes much further: he identifies himself
with the archetype, which thereby determines the whole of his personality.
The puer personality cannot resist the puer archetype because he remains
under the spell of the archetype of the Great Mother. Unable to liberate himself
from her and therefore from the unconscious, he never forges a strong, in-
dependent ego capable of resisting smothering mother figures. His surrender
to the puer archetype means his surrender to the Great Mother, to whom
he craves to revert?
This type is granted only a fleeting existence, because he is never
anything but an anticipation of something desired and hoped for.
This is so literally true that a certain type of ”mother’s son” ac-
tually exhibits all the characteristics of the flower-like, youthful god,
and even dies an early death. The reason is that he only lives on
and through the mother and can strike no roots in the world, so
that he finds himself in a state of permanent incest. (para. 392)
Biologically, a puer can range in age from late adolescence to middle
or even old age. Psychologically, however, he is an infant. Where for Freud
a person in the grip of an Oedipus complex has never managed to sever
himself from childhood, for Jung a puer has never been able to break with
infancy. An Oedipus complex assumes an independent ego striving to possess
the mother for itself. A puer personality spells a tenuous ego yearning to sur-
render itself to the mother. A puer seeks not domination but absorption; he
seeks reversion to the state of birth and, even more, to the fetal state.
For Freud, attachment to the mother at any stage means attachment to
one’s actual mother or mother substitute. For Jung, attachment to the mother
means attachment to the mother archetype, of which one’s actual mother or
mother figure is only a manifestation4:
My own view differs from that of other medico-psychological
theories principally in that I attribute to the personal mother only
a limited aetiological significance. That is to say, all those influences
which the [Freudian] literature describes as being exerted on the
 Adonis 127

"A PUER PERSONALITY

SPELLS A TENUOUS EGO YEARNING TO
SURRENDER ITSELF TO THE MOTHER.. .
A PUER SEEKS NOT DOMINATION
BUT ABSORPTION. ' I

children do not come from the mother herself, but rather from
the archetype projected upon her, which gives her a mythological
background and invests her with authority and numinosity.
(para. 159)
Because an archetype expresses itself through symbols, those aspects of the
mother archetype known to the child are only those filtered through his ac-
tual mother or mother substitute. The archetype itself has both a positive and
a negative side. A mother who refuses to let her child mature restricts him
to the negative, devouring side, which beckons him to stay with her. A mother
who lets her child grow independent opens him to the positive, nurturing
side, which spurs him to resist the temptation to stay.
For both Jung and von Franz, the puer archetype can provide access
to the unconscious for a now independent ego. Approached properly, the
puer side of the personality evinces itself in moments of childlike playfulness,
imagination, and spontaneity- moments that complement the rationality and
sobriety of the ego. Taken to what Jung and von Franz deem excess, the puer
personality is childish and even infantile, comprising nothing but these
moments.
While the puer personality arises in infancy, its most dramatic manifesta-
tion occurs at adolescence. Indeed, a puer personality is often typed an "eter-
nal adolescent": impulsive, dreamy, irresponsible, and self-centered. He
dreams of doing great deeds but never does them. He makes great plans,
but they never materialize. He works hard only sporadically and when in-
terested. A puer avoids commitments, craves excitement, and seeks risks.
Scornful of the mundane, everyday world, he waxes spiritual and other-
worldly. Sexually, a puer is promiscuous, dreaming of a perfect mate but never
finding her. He refuses to become attached. He may be a Don Juan or, for
some Jungians, a homosexual.'
A puer remains an adolescent for life: "In general, the man who is iden-
tified with the archetype of the puer aeternus remains too long in adolescent
psychology; that is, all those characteristics that are normal in a youth of seven-
teen or eighteen are continued into later life''? Still, the puer personality is
128 Psychological Perspectives

"A PUER MAY BE

LARGE1 ' CONSCIOUS OF HIS CI 4RACTER,
RECOGNIZING THAT OTHER MALES EXPERIENCE
WOMEN DIFFERENTLY -AS POSSIBLE MATES."
HMN

infantile and at adolescence merely expresses its infantilism in adolescent form.

The eternal adolescent is really the eternal infant.
There is no inconsistency between the promiscuity of adolescence and
the reluctance to leave the mother at birth. A puer is promiscuous because
he cannot choose a mate, and he cannot choose a mate because he remains
attached to the mother. To say that a puer is attached to the mother is to say
that he knows the world through only the projection of her onto it. He
therefore really knows her rather than the world. He is promiscuous not
because he dares to defy the convention of marriage, but because he is
oblivious to it, Every female he encounters is either a manifestation of the
Great Mother -in which case she is to be embraced outright -or an unworthy
inferior to her-in which case she is to be peremptorily spurned.
A puer may be largely conscious of his character, recognizing that other
males experience women differently - as possible mates. He simply takes for
granted that only mystical union is appropriate for him. He is both aware and
proud of his unconventionality. Grand examples of more conscious pueri are
the 18th-century lady's man Casanova and the 20th-century occultist Aleister
Crowley.
A less conscious puer, by contrast, blithely assumes that everyone else
is like him. He considers himself wholly conventional. A spectacular exam-
ple is Elvis Presley, who lived his last 20 years as a recluse in a womb-like
infantile world in which all of his wishes were immediately satisfied, yet who
assumed that he was normal-in fact, all-American-in his umbilical attach-
ment to his mother. A less dramatic example might be any of the sons of Queen
Elizabeth, herself a quintessential manifestation of the Great Mother. Until
she either abdicates or dies, her sons remain children. Only Charles will likely
ever reign, leaving his brothers forever jobless. For years, Charles was mocked
as stupid, cloddish, and hapless; until Andrew married, he was a typical Don
Juan; rumors of homosexuality envelop the unmarried Edward. Their father,
a mere fellow prince, is no match for their regnant mother.
Just as a puer may be more or less conscious, so he may appear to be
more or less adjusted. Outwardly, he may be settled in a marriage and a job,
but they give him scant satisfaction. Or he may be unsettled even outwardly-
like Don Juan and the proverbial eternal student.
 Adonis 129

A puer may be an actual person like Elvis or a symbol such as Goethe's

character, Werther. Indeed, famous historical pueri eventually become symbols
themselves. A historical puer is biologically an adult, but a symbolic one need
not be. In fact, symbolic pueri exemplify the eternally young life that actual
puer personalities yearn to emulate. Best known, of course, are Peter Pan and
the Little Prince.
The opposite of a puer is a hero. He succeeds where a puer fails. In
the first half of life an ego is heroic in managing to liberate itself from the
unconscious and establish itself in society. A hero secures a fulfilling mate
and job. A puer fails to do either. In the second half of life a now indepen-
dent ego is heroic in managing to break with society and return to the un-
conscious, without thereby falling back into it. Where a hero in the first half
of life establishes himself in the conventions of society, a hero in the second
half defies those conventions. But a hero is consciously defiant. A puer is
only unconsciously so. Where a hero risks everything for whatever he has
committed himself to, a puer has committed himself to nothing and so risks
nothing. Because a puer never establishes an independent ego, he never faces
the possible loss of it. A real hero is like the mythological figure Daedalus;
a puer, like his reckless son, Icarus. Because a puer is a failed hero in the
first half of life, he has no second half.

ADONISAS A PUER PERSONALITY

Adonis is a paradigmatic puer because he never marries, never works,
and dies young. He simply never grows up. He must initially fight even to
be born. His mother, transformed into a tree, is reluctant to let him out, She
may be overjoyed at his conception, but she wants to hoard him. She is like
Ouranos and Cronus in the Theogony, though possessiveness rather than fear
impels her. In Ovid's version, Adonis himself has to secure an exit.
Adonis' mother has herself proved unable to break away from her father,
the only male who ever stirs her. Just as a puer cannot break free of his
attachment to his mother, so a puella, of which Adonis' mother is a blatant
instance, cannot break free of her attachment to her father. Even if her in-
cestuous desire results from a curse, the curse is punishment for her indif-
ference to other men, for which a prior attachment to her father may be the
latent cause. In any event her desire is not really for intercourse with her actual
father but, as the female counterpart to a puer, for absorption in the father
archetype. She, too, has never severed herself from the unconscious and
therefore, has never matured. Not coincidentally, she is incapable of raising
Adonis, whom others must raise instead. Because she is a puella, she treats
her son the way she herself has sought to be treated: as an eternal infant.
130 Psychological Perspectives

In Apollodorus’ version, no sooner does Adonis emerge from the tree

than Aphrodite thrusts him back into a chest, thereby undoing the birth that
had proved so arduous. She tells no one, for she wants Adonis all to herself.
Upon opening the chest, Persephone similarly falls in love with Adonis and
refuses to return him. Each goddess, just like his mother, wants to possess
him exclusively. Because Adonis readily cedes his free third of the year to
Aphrodite, he is never outside the custody of these mother figures.
Adonis is unable to resist the goddesses not because they arouse him
sexually, but because he does not even recognize them. He encounters them
not as beautiful women but as his mother, with whom he wants not inter-
course but absorption. Between him and the goddesses there exists the primor-
dial state of mystical oneness that the philosopher Lucien Levy-Briihl calls
participation mystique.
Adonis is the most severe kind of puer. Since he never marries, never
has children, never works, and dies young, he is clearly an outward puer.
Since he has no idea of the difference between his life and anyone else’s, he
is an unconscious puer as well. He lives in a fog.

ADONISAS A GREEK PUER PERSONALITY

Adonis is not only an instance of the puer archetype but also a distinc-
tively Greek instance. Even as a mythical rather than historical figure, Adonis
would have served ancient Greeks as a model-albeit of a negative rather
than positive kind. Certainly Adonis need not actually have lived to have
exemplified a pattern of behavior that would have repelled Athenians -though
on political, not psychological, grounds. It is Jungian psychology which
translates political states into projections of psychological ones.
Athenians would have considered Adonis the embodiment of a politi-
cal type because of their association of citizenship with gender, birth, family,
and hunting. First, only males could become citizens. Women had no more
political power than foreigners or slaves. Second, only males born to citizens
could become citizens. If one’s father was not a citizen, one could not become
a citizen. Third, citizenship was linked ideologically to family. Hence the
historian Herodotus catalogs the violations of familial mores by Persian poten-
tates to demonstrate their fitness for tyranny. He notes, for example, that King
Cambyses married two of his sisters, murdered one of them, murdered his
brother as well, and died childless-all evidence of his unsuitability for
democracy. For Herodotus, it is telling politically that King Xerxes of Persia,
having failed to seduce his brother’s wife, arranged a marriage between his
son and his brother’s daughter, whom he then managed to seduce instead;
offered his brother his own daughter in marriage; and then had him and his
sons killed!
 Adonis 131

Fourth, citizenship was linked symbolically to hunting. Classicist Pierre

Vidal-Naquet suggests that hunting was a key part of the two-year military
stint which, according to Aristotle (Constitution of Athens, ch. 42), Athenian
youths were required to undergo before attaining citizenship. Not yet citizens,
the youths hunted individually, in the mountains, at night, and armed with
only nets-thereby relying on trickery to capture their prey. Citizens, by con-
trast, hunted in a group, on the plain, during the day, and armed with
spears- thus relying on courage and skill to kill their prey?
Adonis could scarcely be less qualified for Athenian citizenship. He is
dominated by women, not men; he is illegitimate, which cancels out any
citizenship of his father; he is the offspring of incest and his father tries to
kill his mother. He is neither born into a family nor sires one. He dies young,
unmarried, and childless. Like the tyrants, he is incapable of settled family life.
Furthermore, Adonis fails conspicuously at hunting. He becomes the
hunted instead of the hunter. In fact, he has no conception of hunting. He
ignores Aphrodite’s warning not because he valiantly dismisses ordinary cau-
tion, but because he does not grasp the danger. In Ovid’s version Venus tells
him that the dangerous animals respect neither youth nor beauty, but he is
deaf to her pleas. He assumes that all animals are either tame or easy prey.
Indeed, he experiences mystical oneness, participation mystique, with them and
with the rest of the world. One can scarcely imagine his defeating an animal
or human foe even by trickery, let alone by courage or skill. Adonis is thus
not just an adolescent, but an infant. The rite of passage he fails is not the
one that Athenian youths pass, but a far earlier rite. Once again, his infan-
tilism takes adolescent form, but it is infantilism rather than adolescence. His
failure as a hunter bespeaks his failure as a citizen.
Finally, Adonis would never qualify for citizenship because Athenian
citizens ruled as well as voted. Not only was Athens a direct democracy, with
citizens making every domestic, foreign, financial, judicial, and religious
decision, but all officeholders (except the Board of Generals) were chosen by
lot on a rotating basis rather than by election. Citizens were expected to be
mature enough to make all state decisions and to carry them out. There was
no civil service or professional army. Sophocles was once sent to lead a naval
expedition! The prospect of Adonis debating and implementing policy is
incongruous.
Because Adonis is psychologically infantile, he is politically infantile.
He is suited for precisely that form of government that involves no responsi-
bility: tyranny, Because he has been dominated by females, he is fit exactly
for a tyranny of women: matriarchy. Nothing could veer farther from the Athe-
nian ideal.
132 Psychological Perspectives

UP TODAY
GROWING
Jungian psychology is often caricatured as solipsistic: the external world,
it is said, neither affects the development of the psyche nor is affected by it.
The myth of Adonis, interpreted as a case of a puer personality, evinces the
opposite. On the one hand, Adonis becomes a puer personality because he
is cut off from the external world. Smothering mother figures keep him from
developing an ego strong enough to cope with the world or even to recognize
it. They also keep him from work and marriage -the institutions that would
anchor him to the social and the physical worlds. On the other hand, Adonis‘
puer personality keeps him from adjusting to the external world. He can cope
with neither the natural world nor the social one. He is a helpless infant in
both. For ancient Greeks, the prime message of the myth would have been
political: Adonis would have epitomized the character of a subject rather than
a citizen. For Jungians, the myth has a psychological message as well: Adonis’
political character is shaped by his psychological character.

FURTHER
READING

1. Puer Aeternus. (1981) (2nd Ed.) Marie-Louise von Franz. Santa Monica, CA:
Sigo Press.
2. Puer Papers. (1979). James Hillman et al. Irving, Texas: Spring Publications.
3. Symbols of Transformation. Vol. 5. The Collected Works of C. G. lung. (1967) (2nd
Ed.) Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Bollingen Series XX. Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press.
4. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9, Part 1. The Collected Works
of C. G. lung. (1968) (2nd Ed.) Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Bollingen Series
XX. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
5. “The Black Hunter and the Origin of the Athenian Ephebeia.”(l981). I? Vidal-
Naquet. In R. L. Gordon (Ed.), Myth, Religion, and Society (pp. 147- 162). Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robert A . Segal, Ph.D., is Professor of Religious Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the
author ofme Poimandres as Myth: ScholarlyTheory and Gnostic Meaning (Mouton de Gruyter),
Joseph Campbell: An Introduction (rev. ed. New American Library), and Religion and the Social
Sciences: Essays on the Confrontation (Scholars Press).