Excerpts from Marie-Louise von Franz’s book “The Problem of the Puer Aeternus“ describing working with personal ego-defences out of the perspective of the psychologist:
„Again and again one sees that every time the childish spot is touched, people begin to cry“
„For years people hide their childish spot in analysis, not out of dishonesty or because they repress it, but when in the end it comes out they say that they knew they would start to cry, so what was the good of mentioning it, because crying would end every conversation. Because they know this, they shelve the problem all the time, but that way it does not develop.“
„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 could be expressed even more simply by saying that if someone is infantile then he will suffer from terrific emotional moods—ups and downs—being constantly hurt, and that is right, because as long as one is childish there is only one cure, that of suffering. When one has suffered long enough, one develops; there is no way around this problem. The childish nucleus is inevitably tortured.“
„Repression does not solve the problem, for the repressed child continues to cry or be angry in the corner. So it must not be split off. One should keep close to it and not lose contact with it for that would be losing contact with one’s genuine personality. But one cannot let it out either. In my experience, it has simply to be tortured and suffer on and on until suddenly it grows up.“
„But if he pretends to be reasonable and represses his childish feelings, then there is no development. So it is even better to expose one’s childishness so that it may be tortured than to be too reasonable and hide it away, because then it only gets stuck. It is better to behave like a child and be hit over the head by one’s surroundings and those people with whom one is in touch all the time, because then one suffers and the prima materia slowly transforms.“
– Marie Louise von Franz
