On the Manchild Archetype and the Enneagram

I’m writing this because in my recent inner work a teacher told me that I have been embodying the archetype of the puer aeternus or “manchild” and I believe writing about the subject will help in pursuing my path towards individuation and “waking up.” I identify as genderfluid and non-binary, but I believe that the dynamic of the “manchild” is relevant to the development of my masculine side and general development of my psyche and so have written this accordingly.

The subject of the “manchild” is one of frequent popular discussion in recent years and has only become more prevalent after the release of Sabrina Carpenter’s hit song of the same name this year, in which she describes a codependent dynamic of her being frustrated with dating an endless series of “incompetent” men who haven’t grown up. The source of her self-aware frustration in the song is her own incapacity to commit to a relationship with a mature man and grow up herself, with her posture of “competence” relative to the men she dates only being a way to hide from her own immaturity relative to herself.

Sabrina Carpenter - Manchild

There has been a general tendency towards a cult of youth since the late 1960s and the radical cultural break made by the Baby Boomer generation with the past in a decisive move towards Enneagram Type 7 and a focus on pleasure, freedom, fantasy, youth, and gluttony, as noted by Sandra Maitri in her book Spiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram. We might say that while the idealistic Sexual 7 characteristics of the Hippie movement waned in the face of confrontation with suffering, the more pragmatic gluttony of the Self-Preservation characteristics of 7 continued well into the life of the Baby Boomer generation and gave birth to a long term paradigm of being “forever young” and a world saturated with entertainments, amusements, and novelties to distract from suffering.

This tendency has been accompanied by a “crisis of masculinity,” which we could possibly term a “crisis of the manchild.” While the tendency to childishness is evident across all gender expressions (as pervasive Millennial jokes about the struggles of “adulting” have demonstrated in recent decades), there is a particular problem that men are experiencing in maturation which has wide ranging consequences for all of society. We can locate the origins of this crisis in first the creation of the isolated nuclear family, which fragmented intergenerational and communal ties among men, and then the destruction of institutional and cultural patriarchy, which annihilated many social rites of passage from boyhood to manhood (whether or not more subtle forms of patriarchy continue to dominate western society is a matter worth considering, but there is little doubt that the strong default assumption of masculine dominance over society and family life has been greatly destabilized and dismantled in many countries around the world, especially in the West, and the male reactions to this change have often been chaotic and destructive). This created a discrepancy between men and women, because most women continue to face the rite of passage of pregnancy and motherhood (as a matter of course of the reproduction of the species), while nature imposes no such necessity on men, and society has largely stopped doing so. This is not a call for a return to patriarchy, it is a recognition that contemporary society has not built institutions to support the transition from boyhood to manhood, to replace those of institutionally patriarchal society. The result of this dynamic is that described in Sabrina Carpenter’s song, women mothering their “manchild” partners and blaming men’s mothers for their excessive dependency and immaturity because there is no other institution of adulthood around. As Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz writes, the characteristic of the puer aeternus is the “mother complex,” and this is consistent with Enneagram teachings that point to childishness and attachment to the mother being characteristic of the self-preservation instinct. We know that the social instinct is the instinct associated with the father, not the mother, and as von Franz writes, it is society that has traditionally done the work of pulling the boy away from the mother into adulthood: “You can say that normally very few young men have a strong enough individuality to pull away from the mother of their own accord; they do it via collectivity” (42). It is quite unreasonable and cruel to ask the mother to do this work herself, as the bond with the child is self-reinforcing in most healthy maternal relationships. The mother has to let go of the child, not kick them out of her own embrace.

This brings us to the dimension of the puer aeternus that we can associate with Enneagram Type 9, which is seeking to remain forever within the womb, connected, comfortable, dependent, and asleep to the world living only in daydreams.  All 9s, and especially sexual 9s experience a powerful need for connection to feel whole in the world, and seek a womb-like maternal comfort in life. We see Von Franz struggle to specify the exact “type” of the puer aeternus in her book because most of her examples display characteristics of Type 7, while some others display characteristics of Type 9:

There is another type of puer who does not display the charm of eternal youth, nor does the archetype of the divine youth shine through him [7 characteristics]. On the contrary, he lives in a continual sleepy daze, and that too is a typical adolescent characteristic: the sleepy, undisciplined, long-legged youth who merely hangs around, his mind wandering indiscriminately, so that sometimes one feels inclined to pour a bucket of cold water over his head. The sleepy daze is only an outer aspect, however, and if you can penetrate it, you will find a lively fantasy life is being cherished within (3).

The common factors between the two types are their childishness, inconstancy, and resort to fantasy. It is notable that the countertype for both Type 9 and Type 7 is the social dominant, where the paternal influence goes against the tendency towards eternal childhood, comfort, and dependency. The 9 wishes to live in personality forever in the womb, and the 7 wishes to live forever in a “second womb” of ignorance of suffering and limitation established by their own mind. The struggles of these two types to “wake up” have become generalized to society in many ways (although the predominance of the sloth of Type 9 over life in general is perhaps constant given its universality) and is resulting in a society in which men to a large extent no longer inflict the (very real, it should be said) violence of the patriarch on women and children, but instead inflict the violence of the petulant child in a man’s body on them instead. It is only a relationship between equal and healthy partners that can really be a healthy foundation for society, and at the present moment the social basis for such relationships is clearly compromised.

MGMT - Electric Feel (Good example of the sx7 puer aeternus archetype)

Oasis - The Importance of Being Idle (Good example of the 9 puer aeternus archetype)

The Enneagram suggests to us that the cure for this situation can be found in sobriety and right action, and in the rehabilitation of the social instinct. Both Type 7 and Type 9 benefit from letting go of distractions, confronting boredom, doing the work, and finishing it, instead of losing themselves in the desire for freedom, novelty, variety, and comfort. In her book on the puer aeternus, Marie-Louise von Franz suggests that these are precisely the qualities necessary to overcome being dominated by the archetype:

…work is the one disagreeable word which no puer aeternus likes to hear, and Jung came to the conclusion that it was the right answer. My experience also has been that if a man pulls out of this kind of youthful neurosis, then it is through work. There are, however, some misunderstandings in this connection, for the puer aeternus can work, as can all primitives or people with a weak ego complex, when fascinated or in a state of great enthusiasm. Then he can work twenty-four hours at a stretch or even longer, until he breaks down, but what he cannot do is to work on a dreary, rainy, morning when work is boring and one has to kick oneself into it; that is the one thing the puer aeternus usually cannot manage and will use any kind of excuse to avoid. And an analysis of puer aeternus sooner or later always comes up against this problem, and [it] is only when the ego has become sufficiently strengthened that the problem can be overcome and there is the possibility of sticking to the work (4).

Von Franz’s dated bigotry against “primitives” aside, we see here exactly “the work” that 7s and many 9s (to some extent less so in the case of the ‘workaholic’ countertype) need to do to wake up. Indeed, she suggests that one reason motherhood helps with maturation out of overidentification with this archetype for women is that “It is a lot of work to have children—very regular work and boring sometimes” (11). 9s can go to 3 and set goals and accomplish, and 7s (after going to 5 to slow down and gain depth) can go to 1 and gain focus on their work. We have also seen that the role of the “social father” is necessary in the process of maturation, and that society needs to support maturation in general. Masculinity is not going away, the question today is, in what ways can the modern manchild might become an actual man?

I should note in conclusion that there are of course personalities for whom this is hardly the relevant problem, even in the flightiest of times. In the extreme case we might look at the duty bound social 6, whose life of miserable drudgery and toil needs to be renewed through a connection with the childish and imaginative characteristics of 9, or the overly rigid social 1, who needs to connect to more of the playfulness of 7. In both cases following the “arrow against” back in time is a source of renewal and possibility for the future. The Enneagram is perpetually in motion, and there is no better or worse place upon it, so the answers that must be sought will always be relative to where one is.