Why Some Men Never Grow Up (Puer Aeternus Pt. 1)
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Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer GG podcast. I'm Dr. Alok Kanodja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Today, we are going to do a lecture on an incredibly fascinating concept called

called Puer Eternus. Okay, so this was something that Carl Jung originally developed.

And Puer means boy, like a male child, or Puella. So I know that I looked at the title of the stream today, and it was like, why some men never grow up. This actually is a lecture about men and women. But the concept is it's like colloquially known as Puer Aeternus, but it can be Puella Aeternus too. Puella means girl, like a female child, and Aeternus means eternal. So like...

Over 100 years ago, Carl Jung described this archetype of someone who remains an eternal child. And in my work as a clinician and psychiatrist, my route to this has been kind of interesting, and I just want to share that with you all. So I started out in—when I was training in residency—

I got really fascinated with people who have something called a failure to launch. So these are people with a lot of like potential do pretty well in like middle school, high school, something happens around the time that they go to university. Maybe they get a job, maybe they don't get a job. And so they sort of have this trajectory in life that just kind of like fails to launch in the way that they should. And then I sort of had this amazing mentor who, um,

You know, one time in supervision was kind of telling me like she's the one that shared the statement with me that like gifted kids are special needs kids. And I kind of got interested in that. I was one of these kids that was gifted growing up. And then like I really struggled a lot in my 20s and then kind of got my shit together in my 30s.

So I kind of started working with failure to launch people. Then I sort of got into gifted kids. And then once I started streaming on Twitch and, and actually before I started streaming on Twitch, I started working with a lot of gamers, right? So these were people who had a lot of potential, had a lot of IQ, but for some reason they failed to launch, were gifted, whatever. And so even to this day, our most successful upload on our YouTube channel is about how gifted kids are special needs, right?

I've messaged my mentor like 15 times over the last few years and asked her like, hey, do you want credit for this? Because this is like your idea and you taught me this. And she's like, no, you don't have to ever mention my name or anything like that. She's just like she's happy to, you know, not be credited. Yeah.

And then something interesting happened. I stumbled into Jungian psychology and I discovered this. I mean, I discovered like so Jung described this concept of Puer Aeternus, which is the eternal child. And as I read this concept, I realized, holy crap, this is gifted kids.

This is like a generation of people who are stuck in gaming and don't live up to their potential. This is failure to launch. So he sort of described this concept. And the reason that I'm talking about it as Puer Aeternus using Jung's architecture is because Jung did something that I had never seen anyone do before, which is he got to the root of

Of all of these problems, the psychological, the fundamental psychological block that prevents certain types of people from becoming what they should be.

And so I think Jung was really good at describing this internal psychological process. And then one of his colleagues, Marie-Louise von Franz, I don't know how to pronounce that, wrote a whole book about it. We're going to be showing all passages of the book. And it's eerie. When I was reading her book, it was eerie. This book was written, I think, over 100 years ago. But how it perfectly describes all of these things.

And the other thing that is really fascinating is that this archetype of someone who stays stuck in adolescence, right, never grows up, is made so much worse because their psychological vulnerabilities are being predated. Like technology is like the critical hit for this psychological vulnerability. Right.

So I think there's a reason why we're seeing a developmental stunting. And I think Jung is like the best at sort of capturing what's at the essence of that, right? So if we look at why gifted kids are special needs, there's like a thousand reasons. Failure to launch has a thousand reasons. We have all these like papers on psychology and neuroscience is this part of your brain, dopamine this and frontal executive dysfunction that and all this like shit. Like there's like a million reasons, right? But Jung is like, no, this is it. And that's what I want to share with you all today.

So the first thing that we're going to do is describe the characteristics of the pueriturnus. So the pueriturnus is, first of all, charming. Okay? So oftentimes these people are, they're kind of like childlike in a fun sort of way. Right? So they're like, they tend to be actually pretty charismatic. I think nowadays we don't really think of it as charisma because we have social anxiety. But I see a lot of these people being like the life of the group that they're in.

They tend to be the funny person in class. They tend to be like, you know, really like friendly on Discord. They tend to be like they play, but they don't necessarily play bards. But like I imagine they're kind of playing bards at a D&D table. So they're actually like quite charming and charismatic. The...

Other thing is that they're incredibly intelligent, quick-witted, kind of likable, right? So when people meet them for the first time, assuming the social anxiety gets out of the way, oftentimes people are initially impressed by the Puerra-Turners. They're like, wow, like this person's like – this person's really solid. Like they're really great.

And so the other characteristic of a Puerra-Turnus, which we've kind of already talked about, is that they have a lot of potential. So when people meet them, they're like, wow, this kid is so smart. This kid is kind of going places. Oftentimes they'll have bursts of creative energy. But then the cycle that they sort of fall into is that even though they're like they kind of come off as strong, they open like, you know, as soon as the race starts and they start running, they like do really well.

And inevitably, they falter. So like their ability to follow through, their ability to live up to expectations, their ability to deliver on expectations falls absolutely flat. Okay? And so this is what the Puerra-Turnus is. And I want to share with you all what this kind of looks like. Okay, so let's take a look at this, okay? So...

They generally do not like sports, which require patience and long training for the pueriternus in the negative sense of the word is usually very impatient by disposition so that such sports do not appeal to them. OK, so here's another feature. They do not like conventional situations. They ask deep questions and go straight for truth.

So on the contrary, he lives in a continual sleepy haze. 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, if you can penetrate it, you will find a lively fantasy life is being cherished within.

So this is what happens when you meet a pu-erh. Okay? So they're like, first of all, they hate small talk.

They're all about big ideas. They're all about grand things, right? So like, I want to be big. I want to think deep. I want to understand quantum mechanics. Like, I don't want to do this conventional life stuff. They tend to actually come across as brilliant or impressive when you first meet them, but they evoke a reaction in other people and oftentimes in themselves of like wanting to pour a bucket over your head.

You get frustrated with them so easily, right? Because they're like, they're big talkers, but they just don't show up in the way that, you know, you actually need to live up to things in life. So here's a couple of things. Does that kind of make sense? I'm going to just check in with chat real quick. I'm reading from the text, Mary Louise von Franz's text. Great question. Okay. Okay. There's one passage that...

So how does someone kind of get in this situation? And this is where I want to talk for a second about this cherished fantasy life. So the basic problem with a Puerra-Turnus is they have big dreams, right? They have big ideas. They're incredibly intelligent. They've got large goals. But any time they start to exist in life or try to live life, they are inevitably severely disappointed.

So anytime they imagine an experience, like the experience is great, but the reality of the experience is like drab and disappointing in comparison. So they may have ideas to create like a fantasy novel or like I'm going to write a TV show or I'm going to create a video game. I want to become a programmer. I have this great vision. And the moment that they start to engage in life and actually try to do it,

the version that they encounter in real life is like a shadow of it. And so then they sort of like they have this vision in their head, but the real life just doesn't line up. And Marie Louise von Franz even talks about this in terms of relationships. OK, so let's take a look at this. There is another typical form of this same disturbance. In this case,

The image of the mother, the image of the perfect woman who will give everything to a man and who is without any shortcomings is sought in every woman. He is looking for a mother goddess so that each time he is fascinated by a woman, he has later to discover that she is an ordinary human being. Once he has been intimate with her, the whole fascination vanishes and he turns away disappointed only to project the image anew onto one woman after another.

OK, so this is another kind of feature of this. I think not another. This encapsulates like the existence of a Puerra Ternus. They have sort of this idea of like a perfect version of things. Right. They don't they don't actually have a whole lot of experience, but they're caught up with like, OK, like like this is in my mind. There's like a perfect woman out there for me. And the moment that they start to engage with reality, reality is inevitably disappointing.

And so oftentimes what happens is like this happens in relationships. I think nowadays we see like other kind of permutations of this. So I think like pornography and incelism is also connected to Puera Turnus. So if you look at a lot of like incel forums or like red pill forums or things like that, they have this like vision.

of the perfect woman, someone who's hot, someone who's subservient, someone who's there for me, like not a real human being. They have a fantasy archetype of something. And then as they go looking for that fantasy archetype, they fail to find it over and over and over again. And so here's what the cycle of Puer Aeternus actually looks like. Okay. So this is where like

You know, people are saying they put women on a pedestal. I think so. This is why I kind of bring it up. I actually think that that is not correct. This is this is exactly what I think is important. So it is not that they put women on a pedestal. They put life on a pedestal. This is not just about women. This is, I think, the mistake. And this is where I think why why we sort of fail to fix this problem, because it's about way more than women. They put life on a pedestal.

So this is what the cycle kind of looks like, okay? So I'm a person and I have a vision of life. And then what happens is I engage in life. And then inevitably, it's boring, grueling, disappointing, okay? So, and over here, you're filled with excitement potential. But the reality of it never really like lines up. And then you end up feeling dejected.

loss of motivation oftentimes what will happen here is that they will encounter some kind of obstacle so as you engage with it there's some sort of obstacle that comes up and so like you can um you can work really hard but like then something comes up i want to show you all let me see if i can find this

Thank you.

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 that Puerra-Turnus cannot manage and will use any kind of excuse to avoid. So they're capable of brilliance. They're capable

of hard work. They're capable of sweat and toil. But the moment that things become difficult or, and this is what's really interesting, the moment that things become boring, the moment that things become drab, then they lose their ability to work. And here's the other really wild thing. They can even do incredible things. Okay? Let me see if I can find this. I want to read y'all one other passage. Okay.

They generally do not like sports which require patience and long training. For the Puerra-Turnus, in the negative sense of the word, is usually a very impatient disposition so that such sports do not appeal to them. I know a young man, a classical example of Puerra-Turnus, who did a tremendous amount of mountaineering but so much hated carrying a rucksack.

that he preferred to train himself even to sleep in the rain or snow or wrap himself up in a silk raincoat and with a kind of yoga breathing was able to sleep out of doors. He also trained himself to go practically without food simply in order to not have to carry any weight.

In a way, he led a very heroic existence just in order to not be bound to go to a hut or carry a rucksack. The one thing he absolutely refuses is responsibility for anything or to carry the weight of a situation. So this is what happens in a Puera Aeternus. They're even capable of heroism, but what they can't do is ordinary. They can be magnificent heroes.

And even their ego thrives on the idea of fucking normies. When they go hiking and mountaineering, they have to carry rucksacks, pack their food, pitch a tent. I am not going to be a normie. I am going to be exceptional.

I'm going to train myself through yogic methods. I'm going to do all of this stuff. I'm going to like create this weird artificial hardship. I would rather be a heroic, like kind of idiot. Like you can just carry a bag, bro. Like you don't need to have this intense yogic breathing, but this is what their life is like. Their life is built on this fantasy.

And this is what's really confusing about it is that they can absolutely work incredibly hard. They can accomplish amazing things. And if you're a Puerra-Turnus, you know this, right? That's where everyone sees the potential coming from.

You know that you've done things that ordinary human beings cannot do. But the reason that you are stuck in life is because you cannot bring yourself to be ordinary. The only option that you've got is extraordinary. Make sense? So what a pueriternus fears more than anything else is the loss of potential.

So I kind of think about Puer Aeternus as... So this is kind of... Right? So, like, there's so much potential, right? Like, you're a gifted kid. You can accomplish anything that you want. You have this weird heroism within you, like, where, like, if you can find the right circumstances, then you can become this, like...

Demi-god tier being. You can become something like an Elon Musk, right? Because you're just as smart as them. You can become a billionaire and in the right circumstances, if you can bring yourself to your heroism, you can accomplish great things. But the problem is that anytime you try to engage in life, you don't engage in this fantasy. It doesn't turn out to be the dream that you had. It's just like drab existence.

And what really holds pueraterni back is actually this loss of potential. So I sort of think about pueraterni as a pluripotent stem cell. So this stem cell can be anything. It can be a neuron. It can be a cardiac muscle. It can be an astrocyte. It can be a liver cell. It can be like a beta cell in the pancreas. It can be anything. The problem for pueraternis is once you make a choice,

To differentiate, you lose the potential of everything else. So the moment that you make a commitment, this is the problem, making a commitment means sacrificing all of the potential. And this is something they cannot do, right? So like there's all kinds of language that I will hear about this. Like, oh, what should I major in? But if I major in this, if I date this person, if I major in this, then what if it's the wrong choice, right?

What if it doesn't work out? What if I don't like it? And they're so paralyzed by being trapped in the drab existence of reality, right? Like, oh my God, if I have to debase myself to become a pleb and make small talk in a water cooler, in a cubicle, as a sheeple.

I cannot tolerate that at all. So they're pathologically unable to make a commitment or make a sacrifice. And so what they end up doing is swimming around in a state of pluripotent stem cell, never making a commitment because they're terrified of closing off the doors of life.

They're terrified of losing options and being trapped. That is what they fear more than anything else. And if you are pathologically afraid of being trapped, you can never make a choice. So they sort of end up swimming around in this partial life, which I think this is a great example of this. Okay.

So which H.G. Baines described as the provisional life, that is the 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. The one thing dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything, whatever.

There is a terrific fear of being the singular human being that one is. There is always the fear of being caught in a situation from which it is impossible to slip out. Okay? Make sense? So what ends up happening is the pueriturnus ends up living something called a marginal life. It is not a real life. It is not a full life. It is waiting. It's like...

In the pre-gate area, I'm not going to board a plane, right? So like imagine you're sitting in an airport. There's a hundred gates that planes are sitting there that are going to a hundred destinations. But the problem for the Puerra-Turnus is the moment that I get on one plane, I'm flying to another destination. And that means that the other 99 possibilities are taken away from me. So they end up swimming around.

in the boarding area and never really committing to anything, never really accomplishing anything. And so they stay in this like transitional zone for a long time. What this practically looks like is they will have these bursts of interest and activity. Remember, they can work for 24 hours at a stretch. I'm going to become an entrepreneur. I'm going to make a video game. I'm going to write a TV show. I'm going to make a book. I'm going to do all these things. I'm going to learn the piano. And so they sort of have all of this like vim and vigor for a thing.

But then inevitably what happens is they have some kind of obstacle. Something gets in the way. And then they tend to give up. They leave it alone. They go back to their fantasy world, which include things like video games, social media, pornography, whatever. And then their desire to do something great happens again. And then they pick up their next project.

So what they end up living is like, you know, 10 steps down a hundred step road, like in 15 different directions. So they have all of these like half finished projects, things like that. And they can never like come to fruition on any given thing. And this is what a marginal life is. They end up sort of existing and continuing to exist with a lot of potential without ever actually sort of creating any kind of actualization.

And I love this phrase. So, you know, sometimes the way that psychoanalysts will describe this is something called a failure to constellate. So what does that mean? So a constellation is a collection of stars that forms a picture, right? So you've got like this star, this star, this star, and then we tie things together and then we end up with something that is greater than the individual stars, right?

But with a Puerra-Turnus, they never form a picture of their life. They never actually like create a synthesized life that carries value. It's just one random star over here, one random star over here, one random star over here. And it never like turns into a real full lived life. It becomes a marginal life or it stays a marginal life. Okay. Now there are a couple of other things that we need to talk about. So,

What do Puer Eterni really, really, really hate? So here's what the cycle of a Puer Eternus looks like, okay? So first thing is they have a fantasy life. They have a failure to commit. And the reason they have a failure to commit is because this cuts off possibilities, right? The problem with making a decision in life is that you lose the opportunity to make other decisions, right?

And so then what happens is they're kind of in this like perpetual loading zone, but life is moving along. And so since they can't commit to anything, this is what's really scary. This is what's really unfortunate in life. Even if you don't make commitments, life will show up at your doorstep and force you to choose. So then they are forced into a choice. So they get some job, right? Like you got to pay your bills somehow. So they kind of get like reluctantly thrust into

Through a particular door. But that's not a career. Right? They're not making a choice that I'm going to be this, do this for the rest of my life. In fact, they hate their job. Their job is beneath them. But they're forced into a choice. Then what they do is they half-ass it. Right? Because it's not this fantasy that like, I'm meant for more than like stacking boxes. This does not take advantage of my brilliance. So they end up kind of half-assing it.

So as they half-ass it, the next thing that happens is it is clearly less than their fantasy, right? It's like, this is like not the greatness that I lived for. And since it's less than their fantasy, they start to long for their fantasy.

So I end up being what I hate more than anything else, which is an ordinary human being. But in my mind, I have great, great, great dreams. So the more ordinary my life is, the more that I hate it. I'm certainly not going to commit to an ordinary life. That's a terrible idea. I'm going to long for a fantasy. And so since I'm longing for fantasy, but I don't know, I can't pick one. I can't go all in for something. There's no actual initiation.

of activity, right? And this sort of creates something like procrastination. They're not going to quit their job and actually move to Hollywood. And then what happens is they're in the perpetual loading zone. So they get stuck in this cycle where they're like, since I can't commit to anything because I'm terrified of the loss of possibilities, right? Because what if I commit to the wrong thing? And then the other problem is when I do try to make a commitment, why don't I commit? I can start things, but when I start things,

It's not what I thought, right? The actual like process of building a video game is fucking boring. Like making cool spells is really neat. Like coding things and fixing bugs and debugging is not neat. So there's this fundamental discrepancy that prevents them from like, anytime they try to move forward in life, they're disappointed.

And they're terrified if they move forward. Well, like, what if I end up in a life that's disappointing? I don't want that. I don't want to be trapped. They need escape more than anything else. They need freedom to have their fantasies become realities. And that's what they're terrified of. So now what we're going to do is go over a couple of, like, psychological steps that a puer-eternus tends to take. Okay? So we already talked about how nothing is ever good enough. Right? Right?

They have difficulty with commitments. They have difficulty saying goodbye to possibilities. There are a couple of other psychological things that they do. The first is they have this belief that in the perfect circumstances, my perfection will come out, right? That the road...

to living my dreams is not hard drab work for 10 or 15 years with a possibility that it never will happen. The right way to have my fantasy become a reality is to find the perfect circumstances. So if I can find the right job, if I can find the right friends, if I can find the right, if I can just find something that brings this 24 hours of manic hard work out,

Like I know I can do it in the right circumstances. So what they go doing is hunting for circumstances over and over and over again that will bring out their perfection. The second thing that they tend to do is blame their circumstances, right? So if bringing my brilliance out requires circumstances, the perfect set of circumstances, because I did it for a day and all the stars aligned and I was able to do it for a day, what they end up doing is blaming other people, right?

Because, oh, like the game was working great, but then like this person showed up and then I had to do all this extra work and like something else happened. There's a lot of blaming of circumstances. And here's the really crazy, the craziest thing that they blame as a circumstance is themselves.

They blame prior you. So this is what's really important. We may think that this is taking responsibility. It's not taking responsibility because if you took responsibility for your past mistakes, you would change now. You would actually correct them, but they don't correct their mistakes. What they do is blame prior them as a circumstance. Oh, if I had made the right choice back then, I wouldn't be in this situation, but that doesn't mean they make the right choice today.

Right. So this is what's really interesting is like there's this weird self blame without responsibility. So they blame prior them for creating the shitty life that I have today. Or they'll do things like I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but like, you know, they'll say like, oh, I like I never learned how my parents didn't teach me this. I missed the boat on that.

Right. So because so now if you think about it, oh, like I never had a girlfriend in high school, never kissed a girl in college, never had sex. Now I'm 25. Now I can't do any of that. Like I've missed the boat. So if you really think about it, they're not taking responsibility for their situation. They're blaming their circumstances for their inability to bring their fantasies to life. It's too late for them, which is the absolute absolution and the absolute absolution of responsibility. Does that make sense?

Because now it's too late. So like, I certainly don't need like normally when you're behind in life,

The way to catch up is through an excessive amount of drab, dreary-ass work. Boring shit after boring shit after boring shit, day after day, year after year. That's actually how you put together your life. But the thought of that is so terrifying, I would rather wear the safety blanket of it's impossible for me to fix my life. Classic Puerra-Turnus, okay?

So the next thing is that they tend to be fragile. They have an image of themselves that is fragile. So oftentimes one of the circumstances that they can't, the reason that they fail to succeed, and this is what's really scary as a psychiatrist, so I see this a lot, is they will point to some physical health or mental health thing that is the reason why they can't do something.

So, oh yeah, like my depression is so bad, I've been traumatized, I have an addiction, therefore I cannot. My stomach hurts, I have IBS, I've got this weird autoimmune disease, I've got chronic Lyme, and this is what's so hard about this. As a psychiatrist, I will be the first to say that any of those conditions can be debilitating. But they will use the condition which may be genuinely debilitating as an excuse for

So when I work with people in my office, one of the first things that I have to solve for them is just because you have a disadvantage, there is a lot of drab, dreary work. Like going to fucking Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three times a week, coming to therapy, like nothing.

You know, changing your social situation, deleting contacts from your phone, grinding, going to places that make you feel uncomfortable, but they don't want to do all of those little steps. They would rather just go to some psychedelic retreat and be cured, like, or just suffer and say it's unsolvable. The one thing they will never do is the hard work. So there's a certain fragility to them that they actually hold on to.

They prioritize. Okay? Next thing that happens is that they have a defensive arrogance. In addition, there is an arrogant attitude toward other people due to both an inferiority complex and false feelings of superiority. Such people also usually have great difficulty in finding the right kind of job for whatever they find is never quite right or quite what they wanted. There is always a hair in the soup.

The woman is also never quite the right woman. She is a nice girlfriend, but there's always a but which prevents marriage or any kind of definite commitment. And this is not just true of like romantic relationships. It's true of even a career. A hair in the soup is, I think, the perfect example of their experience in life. There's a whole bowl of soup that can actually be delicious, but there is a hair in it. I can't just take the hair out and keep eating.

I can't be grateful that at least I'm getting soup that's pretty tasty. The moment that I find the hair, it's gone. So they have this weird, like, defensive ego, right, where they need to be greater than other people. And this is where the rucksack story comes back, right? So this idea that, like, I would rather, rather than be a pleb and just carry around

a bag and have to like shop and pack and roll up the tent every day and unroll the tent every day rather than doing the dreary labor. I have this like idea of I'm going to learn a deep yogic breathing technique that allows me to transcend the bounds of ordinary humanity. I will be great or I will be nothing at all.

And the really scary thing is that since they long for this, like, exceptionalism, the world that we live in today gives us many, many opportunities for it that, like, didn't exist before. So now what we're seeing is Puerra Turnay get addicted to video games. Because I may be a noob and have some dead-end job, but I'm still terrified to go to college because what if I major in the wrong thing? Then four years from now, I've done all of this work.

This is what they're also terrified of doing a lot of work that doesn't pay out, pay off. The idea of wasting time is so terrifying to them that they never end up making a commitment and they end up wasting time again and again and again and again. Right. So they end up creating the life, which is exactly what they're terrified of. So they can't make commitments.

And now what's happened is we have things like video games, which allow us to have a if we have like, you know, if we have an inferiority complex and a paradoxical feeling of superiority, what am I going to do? I'm going to smurf in video games. I'm not going to actually do the grinding to get better. I'm going to stomp on noobs or they will do the grinding to get better.

I'll play this game over and over and over again and feel myself be exceptional, but I'm not going to fucking write a paper about theology in the 15th century. That is beneath me. It is for the plebs. So video games are a great escape. I think we're seeing this with pornography too, where there's this idealization of

Right. Like so like in pornography, we see all the pieces. We see fantasy. We see a life of fantasy. We see that the real world. Right. So like the biggest problem with incels is not that they're alone. It's that they want to date someone who's a 10 out of 10. They're not willing to date a one out of 10. Right. There are lots of people out there. There are lots of women out there who are lonely, but incels feel superior to them, even though they're alone.

So there's this weird, like paradoxical kind of thing where like, I feel superior to people even though I'm below them. And that's what we know is that narcissism is rooted in insecurity. So we're seeing that like technology is really activating and allowing the pueriternus complex to really propagate. And we have a whole generation of pueriterni. So now the question becomes, okay, if you're trapped in this cycle, how do you fix it?

Jung spoke of one cure, work. And having said that, he has hesitated for just a minute and thought, is it really as simple as that? Is that just the one cure? Can I put it that way? But work is the one disagreeable word which no Puerra-Turnus likes to hear. Okay? So how do you fix this problem? There's one central thing that prevents a Puerra-Turnus from actually paradoxically living up to their potential.

And that is that they are in unable to make sacrifices. They are unable to make commitments. Right. So the whole problem of being a pluripotent stem cell is the moment that I choose to major in something, something may not work out.

And so if you want to get out of this complex, you will notice that in your mind, if you're someone who's trapped in this complex, what you will notice is that you're always looking at the upside, always looking at the upside, always looking at the upside, never wanting to pay the downside, never wanting to pay the cost. And the one thing that you can never do is pay the cost without the game. So Puerra, Turneye want to see a guarantee.

of the value of their efforts before they ever begin. But the world doesn't work that way, which is why they struggle so much, right? So like I've met, I've worked with Puerra Turnay who are like, I'm happy to get a job at a company, but I don't want an entry-level position. I want a strategic position where my ideas will be respected. They want to start at the, they won't work at a job, but they will absolutely start a company.

Right. Because the other thing about starting a company and then even if the company requires them to make commitments, then the company will fall apart. But as long as they can do it as a side hustle, as long as it doesn't restrict their potential, they can do anything. And this is the problem with life. Building a life means giving up your potential.

Generally speaking, that's what we do. This is why things like commitment are so hard for them, even relationship commitment. They will absolutely exist in these like loading zone relationships that are filled of complacency. Like I happen to date this person. They're kind of like good enough for now. They're not really the love of my life. They don't actually propose. They don't want to have kids. They need some time to think about it. They're not sure they're ready yet. They're considering opening the relationship.

They're not willing to commit to a person because it closes off all of these other possibilities. But they can absolutely be in relationships. They can absolutely – they can work seven years at a job and get mildly promoted over that time, but they'll be damned if they make it their career. And if you look at your mind, you will see this thought process. You will see that with every decision that you are considering making –

You are terrified of the cost of the decision, of the closing off of possibilities. But the life that they crave is achieved precisely through that. The fantasy that they have of being an entrepreneur means giving up college, right? You want to be a college dropout. Like that's what, but when it comes time to drop out of college, you're unable to do it. Having a meaningful, healthy, and fulfilling relationship means

means settling. This word, I have to settle. And that's the one thing that they cannot do. So what we want to do is focus on the loss and be able to really think about, look at your psychology and look at this cycle of paralysis, of lack of commitment, followed by swimming around in the loading zone. And then the really terrifying thing is that like the doors start to close and

And then once the doors start to close, you go to this aspect of blaming. And the favorite person to blame is former you. And now it's not possible anymore. But if you kind of look at it, now that it's not possible, this excuses you from making a commitment. This excuses you from the drab, dreary work that you need to do to make up for the lost time. Because when you've fallen behind in life,

You don't make up for it by like discovering something magnificent by winning the lottery. You really make up for it by like grinding extra hard. But their fantasy tells them, no, there's some way. If I find the perfect circumstance, if I find the right business partners, if I find this like I can be a 32-year-old, I can be broke at 32 and be a billionaire at 35 if I find the right thing.

And so they, since they're unwilling to commit, since they're unwilling to do drab work, then suddenly they're 35 and they're exactly where they started. They haven't moved at all. And now the problem becomes worse. So now you need a more fantastical thing to save you. And this is the core of the psychological problem. This is what Jung really discovered.

is that they cannot make a commitment. They cannot make a sacrifice. They cannot pay a cost without a guarantee of a gain. And if you cannot do that, you will never move forward in life. So the most important thing to do if you're stuck in this cycle is focus on the cost, not the gain. Anytime they look at something, literally like I've worked with these people,

I am, we used to be one of these people. What they sort of look at is they look at the upside, what it could be. Their focus, their eyes are on the fantasy, not the reality, because the reality is drab. And when you get attracted by the fantasy and you encounter the reality, hold on, this is where I wanted to go, but this is what it is, uh-uh. Then you go back to square one. And at least you feel safe because you didn't invest too much. So what you've got to do is really look at the cost. Literally what I would tell you to do

is think about the loss of potential and try to get rid of as much potential as you can, because the potential is what is paralyzing you. It's what allows it doesn't. It's what traps you or makes it incapable for you to actually take a step forward, because the moment that you walk through one door, other doors close. And that's exactly what you need to do. Start sacrificing your potential in chunks.

The second thing that's really important for Puerra Turnay is to recognize that the real work is internal, that the struggles that you need to fight are internal, right? So growth is not about like getting promoted. It is about being able to grind. And this is where once again, that hero complex, this is why I mentioned the hero complex, because the hero complex can come in and hijack this. So you'll be attracted to some heroic versions of growth, right?

We see this with like the biohacking community where it's like, I want to buy. I don't want to just like eat generally healthy and exercise. I need to optimize. I need to biohack. I need to get more with less. Right. I don't want to do what normal people do. I want to figure out a really, really specific protocol that uses the latest and modern science to create a very special kind of health.

But just eating oatmeal, beans, brown rice, veggies, lean protein, like you can just eat fucking drab food that is healthy and exercise a moderate amount and do some yoga. And that will get you 95% of the way to maximal health.

There's like pretty overwhelming scientific evidence of that. If you need a supplement for fish oil or vitamin D because we spend the whole time indoors, like sure, some of that stuff is good. But we have these gigantic meta-analyses that basically say healthy diet, moderate exercise, healthy socialization, fish oil, vitamin D, and you're basically golden. That gets you 95% of the way there. Like we know this. It's been figured out. And everyone is enamored.

That there is something great, something magnificent, something fantastical. That if I cook things in the right way, if I arrange things in the right way, I will be able to be superhuman because I just don't want to be a pleb. And so you need to, first of all, think about closing off potential because that's what life is. Your potential doors are closing.

You have to make a choice or you don't have to make a choice. You can continue swimming around in the loading zone. And when you make that choice, you are right. You will be trapped. You will be trapped by that choice. It'll absolutely trap you. It will be drab. It will be dreary. It will be trapped. You will be trapped. You will pay a high price and you won't have anything to show for it. That's how you break out. That's the core of the complex. If you can shift this one thing, you will break free of it.

And the big irony is that once you break free of it, then you open the door to constellating your life. You open your door to no longer living a marginal existence. You open the door to actually building something that you can be proud of instead of having a heroic fantasy that is like still bypassing all of the drab, normal, plebby kind of stuff. Okay?

Oftentimes they struggle with small things too. So I'd say on a last practical note is focus on small things. And this is why I think that like, you know, Jordan Peterson, I think really likes Carl Jung and he talks about cleaning your room. And I think that's a really good thing. So oftentimes your life is built not out of like fantastical 24 hour spurts of movement.

but in like really practical small things that are done day in and day out, which feel drab. So you should try to make your life as drab, dreary, and trapped as possible with lopping off sections of potential. And if you do this, you will no longer be a pueriturnus. You will literally grow the fuck up. And what does it mean to be an adult? An adult means...

Fucking doing the laundry, doing the dishes, emptying the dishwasher, doing the dishes again. That's what my life is. Like literally, right? So people can look at someone like Dr. K and they can think, oh my God, like his life is great. And my life is great. Don't get me wrong. But the way that it got here, even I was doing dishes from 10 to 1045 yesterday because my kids are at home and they like make a mess. And then they love fucking parenting. It's like not exciting. It's not fun, but that's what life is. So let's open it up to questions.

Jesus, dude, you are not making a sale right now. Exactly. So I don't know exactly what that person meant, right? But this person's like, you're not selling it to me. You're damn right. That is the problem because it has to be so, it has to fit into this idea of fantasy, right?

What do you want me to tell you? Do you want me to tell you? Oh, my God. There's a secret technique. There's this one enzyme that you can buy right now for $69.95 that will alter your dopaminergic circuitry in a novel way. It's this new science kind of thing. And if you understand the science and if you do this, instead of being a degenerate fucking loser, you can be a billionaire entrepreneur. And it's this new secret thing that will allow you to, without any of the drab, dreary work,

We'll allow you to accomplish all of your dreams. That's what we see on the internet. Why do we have all of these fucking fake fitness, wellness, optimization, podcast, entrepreneur bros? Why do these people exist? Because we're a fucking society of puer eternae.

We're a whole generation of people who are living in our parents' basement. Like literally 50% of people under the age of 30 are still living at home for the first time in humanity. Well, not first time in humanity. Used to be normal for a long time. We're playing video games.

We have poor mental health. We're addicted to pornography. And we have all of these people selling us, literally. If you look at these alpha male people, they literally are selling you. It's just a picture of a dude surrounded by a lot of women in bikinis. And he sells you some course for you to enter the upper echelons of society. You can be everything that you claim to be in your head. All of your fantasies can come true.

And what do they do? How do they sell this shit? They sell this shit by shitting on normal people. They're like, fuck that. I ain't ever going to work in a UPS that is beneath me. I ain't ever going to date a girl who's less than a nine. I ain't ever. That's all beta shit. They're playing perfectly.

into this complex of fragile ego, inferiority, and superiority complex. They're playing y'all like fiddles, which is why they are huge, which is why video games are huge. Puer Eterni used to be a fraction of the population. It is quickly becoming a majority. And the really hilarious thing here is that they've even grappled onto red pill versus blue pill.

But they kind of flipped it around. I don't know if this makes sense. Taking the red pill is making the hard choice, right? It's like you can live in your life of comfort. You can stay in this world and be a bot in a simulation and not know the truth of things. But if you take the red pill, then you will feel the harshness of reality.

I don't know if this makes sense, though, when they idealize that that is actually the blue pill. It is the fantasy of being a hero instead of the reality of being a pleb. Making the hard choice is actually taking the blue pill.

And grinding away like all the normies in the simulation with the possibility of not achieving anything. But we have this hero complex where I'm going to take the red pill and I'm going to make the hard choices. You're not making the hard choices. You're avoiding the hard choices. And you're magnifying it with some hero complex in your head. Does that make sense? It's like so weird how the people who talk about the red pill are actually the most blue pilled.

They're living in a world of fantasy. And like, do you guys think it's like, like, this is wild. I want y'all to think about this. Okay. Mary Louise von Franz wrote this book. Let me just see. Okay. This is interesting. So she was alive from 1915 to 1998. This is the third edition was published in 2000. I don't know when she wrote the original book. Okay. But this was like, this is a concept from like the 1950s. And like, when we look at things like red pill psychology, like,

She's talking about this. Like there's a typical form of the same disturbance. In this case, the image of a mother, the image of the perfect woman who will give everything to a man who is without any shortcomings is sought in every woman so that each time he is fascinated by a woman, he has to later discover that she's an ordinary human being. Right? And people say like, oh, they don't treat women as humans or whatever. Sure. But it goes deeper than that. This is the fantasy. They're living the whole red pill ideology is an ideology of fantasy.

And I'm not trying to like shit on these people. I'm just saying like, like, think about this, y'all. This book was like, this concept was conceived 70 years ago. And it's so perfectly fits what is going on in the minds of some of these men today. Because heaven forbid, I lock myself in to dating a woman who will have the horrible crime, who will commit the horrible crime of getting older. And if she has kids...

Oh my God, there's going to be bodily changes. So instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to spin plates. I'm going to pass on my gene pool. And we're talking about dudes, but Puella Eternae are just as bad. The most psychologically fucked up patients I've had in my office are not Puella Eternae. They are the children of Puella Eternae. A Puella Aternus is...

A female pueriternus, right? So remains a child. So these are people who have fantasies of motherhood, but bail. They're people who get pregnant. And then after they have kids, they don't want to change diapers. They're out partying. They don't want to wipe up vomit. They're fucking absent mothers.

They want to reclaim their youth. They're getting plastic surgery and become influencer moms and use their children. They don't want to do the work of motherhood, but they will absolutely live the fantasy of motherhood. And I'm going to show it to the whole world and the world will love me for it. I will be this hero, hero in complex. Look at me. I'm a woman who's just trying so hard in the world and the world is against me and it's never my fault. And oh my God, like I just can't wipe up shit.

But instead, what I'm going to do is coach my three-year-old for four hours to say something really profound. I'll record them, and then I will upload it to the internet. And then everyone will see how much of an awesome mother I am.

Moms who didn't do the dishes, didn't cook for their kids, were terrified of the changes, the natural physiological changes that happen in their body once they have kids. And to try to counter those changes will seek validation from other sources outside of the home and fucking abandon their kids. Toella, Turneye are just as bad.

Right. So this is not like a I didn't like the title of this stream, which I didn't make, but it is Puer. The book is literally Puer. So it's the male version. But Puella Eterni are just as bad. Right. Typical narc mom. So this is what I'm kind of saying is like so we can use these terms like narc narcissist. But what I like about this concept of Puer Eternus and Puella Eternus is it gives us a specific insight into a specific thing that needs to change.

Be willing to be trapped. Be willing to be drab. Be willing to be ordinary. To radically accept the dreariness of your life. And that is the requirement of escape. But you all need to be careful. Because if you're not careful, you will heroize that.

And if you heroize it, if you say like, oh, I'm going to be great by accepting the dizziness of my life, that's the Puerra-Turnus complex hijacking it and you'll do it for a week. Then you'll realize, oh, the heroic journey of the drab is really fucking boring. And then you'll just start playing video games and jerking off. Let's find a way to help these mothers not just hate on them. This is getting so negative. Fair enough. But I've been pretty negative towards the dudes all along.

So like this is and this is maybe a mistake that I'm making where like I'm not trying to say that these people are bad. In fact, like I've devoted a significant portion of my life, including this lecture. This is not me shitting on those people. I mean, I'm shitting on them, but not to make them feel bad.

This is to recognize what your psychological complexes are. And if you're a Puella Aeternus, like other examples of Puella Aeterni are like people who are afraid of commitment, right? You're dating someone. You're like, you think there's something better out there. No one is ever good enough. Like all that kind of stuff is there. It's not men, women, both. The reason I'm sharing this stuff is not to make these people feel bad. It's if you identify with this, there is a way out.

There's an incredible frustration and negativity with yourself if you are a Puer Aeternus or a Puella Aeternus. And it's buried deep. And if you're not careful, the fantasy will continue to blame other people, right? But you've got to accept responsibility. And by responsibility, what I mean is you have to close doors. Like the concept of like, what if this person isn't right for me and being unwilling to commit, you still have to commit, right?

Right. A committed relationship is not about selecting the right person. It is about you and this. It's about you being a wrong person in this other person being a wrong person. Both of y'all are wrong. You're not the right person taking two wrong people who are committed to making something work and then fucking doing the work of making it work.

And the biggest problem, the biggest problem with dating apps right now is they have sold us a subconscious idea that the right person is out there for you. The only reason you're alone is because you haven't found the right person. So you know what we're going to do? We're going to give you access to the Internet.

Oh, and once we give you to the access to the internet, we will tell you all these features about all these people. And then if you can find the right person, then you will be happy. And you know what we're going to do? It's been hard for you to find the right person. Oh my God, my bad. You know what I forgot when I was telling you I could find you the right person? I forgot

A height filter. So let me let you filter by height. And if you can filter by height, then, oh, then you can find the right, oh shit, my bad. You can find the right person if I let you filter by height. The reason dating apps don't work very well is because they sell you a fundamentally broken premise, which is that the reason you're alone is because you can't find the right person.

The reason that you're alone is you don't know how to healthily function in a relationship. And the more that you think that a successful relationship is about finding the right person instead of becoming the right person, it's a flawed premise. If we literally look at the research around how a successful relationship is made, it's

It is not about partner selection. It is about what you do once you have a partner. Y'all get that? Like, it's so simple, right? Like, having a successful career is not about picking the right job. It's about the shit that you do when you show up at work. And this is why some people are fundamentally more successful, because you can stick them in many jobs, but their work ethic is right.

And this is why some people are very successful in many relationships. And we have data that these people exist. Scary thing is that secure attachment style means that you will be successful. You will be more successful on average in any relationship compared to an avoidant attachment style or anxious attachment style. Is that fair? No. But is it true? Yes. It's about what you bring to the relationship, not the person that you select.

And since we're all becoming more narcissistic, we hate this idea, right? Like if you're single at the age of 35, the most terrifying thought is that you are responsible. I'm not saying that things aren't hard. Things are genuinely very difficult. We've got a video coming out about that soon, hopefully. But there's all kinds of changes that happened during the pandemic that have made relationships like we're all fighting an uphill battle.

But it's like really scary, right? So like we don't, like we liked, so this is what's so tricky about that. Things are objectively probably the hardest they've ever been in terms of finding a relationship.

Like literally, the hardest they've ever been. That's being reflected by things like declining birth rates, all this kind of stuff, right? The number of people who are single is like skyrocketing. Loneliness is skyrocketing. So when we look at these global trends, you can't blame an individual. There is something going on that's affecting everybody. It's hard for everybody. And at the same time,

Just because things are hard for everyone doesn't mean that there is not something that you can do. And the more responsibility that you take for your situation, the better off you will be. Because even though everything is getting harder, there are still plenty of people who are finding and building successful relationships. It's so interesting how it subconsciously enters my language.

Finding successful relationships. That's the problem. You build a successful relationship, but you don't find one. It's built. And so what we're seeing is that even though on average everything is getting harder, there are still some people who are figuring out how to connect to other human beings. But the problem is that if a dating app emphasizes personal responsibility, they will not have users.

Because that doesn't fit into this like narcissistic growth that is happening across the board of society, right? If I was designing a dating app, it would start with 12 weeks of coaching. That's how it would start. The first thing I would do if you want to, like if we started an AG dating app, step number one is, are you fucking worth dating? And if not,

let's analyze why. Let's analyze your attachment style. Let's analyze your narcissistic tendencies. Let's analyze like simple things like do you leave the toilet seat up or down? Do you do dishes? Are you fucking, do you chew with your mouth open? Like, do you spend time on your cell phone when you're with other human beings? Let's turn you into someone who is worth dating. And then, fucking A, you can have your pick of the litter, right?

It'd be like, like matches. What do you mean matches? We're going to work on you first. And then what there's, there's going to be like a tier where you have to graduate from basic fucking shit. And then once you graduate from basic fucking shit, then you get entered into a pool of other people who have graduated from basic fucking shit. And so instead of like, this is what's so bad about dating apps, right? It's like, if you've got one bad Apple, right?

They ruin one relationship really quickly and they're back on the market. And then they ruin the next relationship and they ruin the next relationship and they ruin the next relationship. One bad person in a dating pool can make so many people bitter so quickly.

Like they have such a toxic effect because now that you've had this shitty dude and then another shitty dude who's like incapable, like you have two guys who are incapable of relationships, they're making the rounds, making the rounds. And now all the women that they date are bitter and turned off of men because they've encountered two assholes. An asshole moves way further and way faster and encounters way more people in a dating pool than a decent human being. Y'all get that?

There's this really weird selection bias going on. And it's not just like male assholes. There's also there's a really interesting study that shows that 50% of women on dating apps use the apps for psychological needs outside of finding partners, validation, shitting on other people, feeling superior, all this kind of stuff. Literally 50% of the women on dating apps, according to this one study. So take that with a grain of salt.

are not even using it to find a partner, right? And if you guys have been on dating apps, you know, ha ha ha, you're so great. Hey, follow me on Instagram. Hey, check out my OnlyFans. They're using it for needs outside of dating. And then if you encounter, and those people too are like spreading it around pretty quickly, right? They're moving pretty quickly. They're getting around. And so if you're a dude on the app, like you encounter like for every like one decent human being you run into, you encounter a bucket of these people. And so you got to filter all those people out.

This dating app would never work because people are lazy. I mean, it would work if people did it. Like, it would absolutely work, right? Like, we'd, like, do an analysis of what your shortcomings are as a human being and how to turn yourself into a desirable partner.

And like, how do I know it would work? Because I know this is going to sound crazy when I do that shit and my profession does that shit in our offices. Something shocking happens. People who are chronically single end up in relationships. Holy crap. When you do psychotherapy for reactive attachment disorder.

When you treat someone with BPD, who one of the diagnostic features is a history of unstable and tumultuous relationships. When you treat these people in the right way, they end up in stable relationships. Don't worry about finding your partner. Worry about becoming a partner. And this is what's really cool is like when you get two human beings who are focused on becoming the right partner, that's when you turn into a beautiful relationship. That's what finding a good relationship is like.

Oh, there's one other thing I want to tell you all about Puerra Turn-I. Let me post links to, let's do questions. So there's one other fantasy that Puerra Turn-I have, and that is that there is an abrupt force that will enter your life and force you to grow or die.

So when I work with Puerra, Turnai, they have this like idea of like, man, if war showed up, like if there was a zombie apocalypse, like I would love that. What I want more than anything else in life is a zombie apocalypse. Why? Because if I die, I fucking die. Like, so be it. I don't care. Either I'm going to be something or I'm going to be dead. They long for this. They long to be tested. They long to be swept up by their circumstances. And either they die or they become heroes.

They long to be isekai-ed, baby. Let's go. There's a whole genre that taps into Puerra Ternas, right? What is the archetype of isekai? Ordinary kid, drab, boring, not exceptional, victim of bullying, not one of the popular kids, right? And gets swept up, oh my God, with this perfect circumstance that allows them to

To become this exceptional person. But holy shit, in order to become that exceptional person, you literally need a whole fictional world. That's the circumstance that it's going to take to bring out your perfection. So this is what's kind of cool about Jung, right? So Jung talked about archetypes. And he's like, this stuff is deep within all of us. Deep within all of us.

And I think that's why isekai is a genre of anime. And I think that's why, like, it's a genre of an art form, but of a particular art form. Because Pueru and Turnai are attracted to anime, right? Because it's a bit fantastical to begin with. And of the fantasy forms of art, it's not like we're looking at Van Gogh's Starry Night or poetry. It's like, it's anime.

And then in anime, there's a subset. So anime is a fantasy world. And in the fantasy world, there's an exponential fantasy world. Y'all see that? Like it's wild. This is how deep the archetype runs. And I don't think that the makers of isekai anime are necessarily Pueru Turnai, but I imagine they probably are. Greater chance, let's say. But they're tapping into something that all of us human beings crave. And we're all Pueru Turnai. We all have this.

There's also something really interesting while questions are populating about there's another thing that can happen to pueriturnei, which is that you can actually kill it. So the pueriturnei is like the child within you. And sometimes we get so engrossed by that child, we get so frustrated that we start to demonize it.

And then we become sigma grind set with no joy in life. It's about work, work, work, grind, grind, grind, never rest, never calm down, never have joy. So it's the opposite pendulum of puer eternus. And they'll actually kill the puer. This creates a problem because the puer eternus, the child within us, is not a bad thing, right? We need a balance of connection with the inner child.

But one way that people get out of it is by swinging the pendulum too far. So we're thinking, by the way, about doing a follow-up lecture on Puerh and Aeternus and a lot of these more detailed things. I'm going to show you all just a quick example of like a more detailed thing. I think it's beyond the scope of this lecture. But yeah, so like for example, there's a segment on like creativity in Puerh Aeternus.

So like creativeness presupposed a tremendous capacity for being genuine, for letting go, for being spontaneous. For if one cannot be spontaneous, one cannot really be creative. And therefore most artists and other creative people have a normal and genuine tendency to playfulness. So there's this like whole idea of like when we, what we are terrified of is like just becoming a number.

So Puer Aeterni are afraid of becoming a number and not being a real, fully-fleshed human being. So there's all kinds of other issues around Puer Aeternus. Let me see if I can find this. Yeah, so there's a dual nature of a Puer Aeternus, which is a crippled genius that we don't want to give up.

So there's other things like this, like the archetype of crippled genius, the archetype of creativity and being a Puer Aeternus, losing yourself, the fear of becoming just a number or just a pleb. So there's all these other manifestations that don't apply to every Puer Aeternus, but they're like different versions of it. I guess you could say that there's the Puer Aeternus class, and then there's a lot of dynamics and subclasses.

And depending on which subclass of Puerra Aeternus you are, that predisposes you to certain challenges. And there are certain things that you have to do, depending on your subclass, to overcome those challenges. So are you a crippled genius? It's a slightly different archetype with a slightly different psychological root. Okay? So we're thinking about doing a part two. And that'll actually just depend on, you know, whether people like that or not. Okay, let me just see. Let's look at questions.

Question number one, if someone is stuck in the Puerra-Turnus state because society offers no meaningful rites of passage or stable adult roles, is it really their fault? So I think this is a really great question in its classic Puerra-Turnus. Does society offer no meaningful rites of passage for people anymore? Is every rite of passage gone? Are there rites of passage that are not meaningful?

We have empty rites of passage. What separates an empty rite of passage from a meaningful rite of passage? How do you define what a rite of passage by society is? Right? So this is exactly the kind of thinking that I'm talking about. Now, if you were to ask me, do I believe that society offers fewer meaningful rites of passage than existed 50 years ago? I would say absolutely.

There is a huge part of the Puer Aeternus literature which goes to initiation. This is something that is absolutely on the decline. So this person is not wrong in their thinking. Bunch of literature. So if we look at how does a child become a man? How does a child become a woman? There are rites of passage. There's this concept of initiation. And we are absolutely a society that is losing initiation.

Initiation used to be graduating from school, but now we go back to school, right? It used to be you would graduate and education is over, but now people go back to grad school. So when does education really end? When are you done with it? You're never done with it. And now what's happening is we reject rites of passage. We consider them patriarchal.

So like all of these societies, like the Freemasons and things like that, that have all these rituals of growth and change, those don't really happen anymore. Some cultures preserve them. Bar mitzvahs, quinceañeras. But those are like most cultures don't have these, and the cultures that do have them have to work really hard to preserve them. So we are absolutely losing rites of passage. We are losing initiation.

Even in the spiritual traditions, initiation used to be a huge part of spiritual traditions. And the reason, there was a lot of really important reasons for that. But along with the abuse of gurus came the loss of initiation. And when we lost initiation in meditation, we lost something really, really, really big. Those of y'all that have been in our community may have found a tiny fragment of what was lost.

So the person's general point is spot on. And the language speaks of a pueriturnus. Because once again, I'm not at fault, right? That's the implication of the, I don't know, the person is not talking about themselves. But if I hear that question from a pueriturnus, it's society's fault. Is it really our fault? I don't think it's your fault. It's your responsibility. You are still faced with this situation of growing, developing, growing.

And we used to have all kinds of structures that are absolutely being decayed. Hell, in India, we used to have arranged marriage. We still do, right? So there's a lot that is changing in society, which is why we have, and those societal forces are real, which is why the number of pueraturni in the world today is growing at an astronomical rate. So you're spot on that things are way harder. Is it your fault? I think it's the wrong question.

I think the better question is, what are you going to do about it? The pueriturnus loves to assign blame and find reasons. What they gravitate away from, what they're repulsed by, is dreary action. Action in spite of bad circumstances. Unless they can convert it into a hero complex. Does that make sense? Great question. I didn't mean to shit on you, by the way. I really thought it was a great question. Please help me understand. I just need to force myself to do boring stuff.

Sort of. So, beautiful question. Forcing yourself is not going to be possible. What you need to do is recognize why you have to force yourself to do boring stuff in the first place. Why can't you do boring stuff? Do you all understand? That is the problem with Puer Aeternus. When you try to do boring stuff, you will encounter a set of thoughts. Is this worth it?

There is a fantasy in my mind that will arise that will make this work less worth it. Oh, if I do it later, I can do it more efficiently. This thought will arise. If I do this work, I'll be locked in or trapped. Therefore, you don't do it. If you do this work, it does not live up to a fantasy. Your mind will literally generate a fantasy, create a discrepancy. And in the discrepancy of your fantasy and the reality,

The motivation will disappear. That is what needs to be fixed. You don't need to just do the work. If you just do the work, that may or may not work. I think it'll actually probably not work sustainably. What you need to do is understand why it is hard for you to do boring work in the first place. The more that you tunnel down into these three psychological mechanisms, the more you will be free of the complex.

So ask yourself, if I do this work, where will I end up? What will I give up? What will I give up that will not be worth it? You will be held back by the possibility of regret so bad that you will never act. And then you will then regret your inaction and you will blame your past self.

And then once again, you won't start the boring work today because your mind will be focused on the fantasy of what could have been. And then if you try to do something now, it will not live up to the fantasy of what could have been if you had started when you were supposed to. You guys see, it just keeps going over and over and over again. Oh my God, like I can't believe I'm going back to school at the age of 26 because if I had started when I was 22, imagine how far I could be. And then you'll fucking drop out at 26.

The value of the concept, anyone can show up and just tell you, do boring things. The reason I'm sharing this with y'all is so that you understand what is happening in your mind. You will understand why it's hard to do boring things. And then my hope is that that will give you some degree of power over yourself because that is what the Puerra-Turnus lacks. They're a crippled genius.

The genius is there, but they can't get it. They're an Olympic runner without legs. But the crippling is in your mind. It is the way that you conceive things. It is the inability to close doors in your life. It is the recognition that fantasy and reality have such a large gap that literally the motivational circuits in your brain have an expected value.

And when reality does not live up to the expected value generated by your brain, it crashes your motivation. So there's absolutely like all kinds of neuroscience crap that we talk about all the time. That's what I love about Jung. You don't need to know all that stuff. You just need to understand this one psychological concept. And if you recognize these patterns in your mind and do not let them win, this is the key thing. Whatever it tells you to do, don't do that. So it is not just to do boring stuff.

Because if you do that, if you try to do that, it won't work because your mind will trick you in other ways. It has six elements of attack. It can use fire attacks. It can use ice attacks. It can use water attacks, earth attacks, light attacks, and dark attacks. If you just recognize, if you're like, just work, just do boring things, that's just a fire attack. It'll use other things. It'll give you a hero complex. It'll make comparisons. It'll create fantasies.

It'll tell you that, oh, if you like do it, if you get better at it, it'll be more efficient. So you do not have to exert this effort. You don't need to just do boring things. You need to do boring things. You need to do wasteful things, things that your mind tells you, oh, you can do it more efficiently or this will be a waste of time. You need to do things that will lop off parts of your potential. You need to do things that close doors in your life. That is the most important thing.

How does Puera-Turnus come to fruition? Is it hereditary? What a great question. I think it may have some hereditary nature, but generally speaking, I do not think of it as hereditary. I think this is why we sort of think about like, so I think if you're treated as a gifted kid, that I think is like a really, really strong risk factor for developing Puera-Turnus complex.

That's not necessarily hereditary. So what component of IQ is hereditary? But I think it is the way that you were introduced to the world, what you were allowed to get away with. So I think your upbringing matters probably more than your hereditary nature. But what I wouldn't be surprised of is if there are, you know, people with shared upbringing, but there may be some things like a predisposition for narcissism, a low level of conscientiousness.

So there may be some aspects that are hereditary. But I generally speaking, when I've worked with these people, there's like a certain psychological upbringing and emphasis on fantasy. And the problem with Puer Aeternus is that their fantasies work for a while. Like they do live fantastical lives. They are able to be heroic when they're young. They are geniuses. But in becoming that genius, they don't develop the skill of hard work.

And since they don't develop the skill of hard work, then they're trapped because they run away from boring stuff. They run away from hard work. And I think the other reason that it's growing is this isn't hereditary, but it's societally. I think technology plays into this complex incredibly powerfully.

How does one get better at accepting making sacrifices? Even for small choices, sometimes I get so stuck in this loop of making a choice that is so exhausting. Absolutely. So this is the hard thing, right? Making a sacrifice is hard. So what I would say is like, you have to look at the sacrifice from multiple angles. So making a sacrifice is about paying a cost. It's about giving something up. And so what you really have to ask yourself is,

is why am I such a miser with my resources? Like once you understand why you feel like your resources cannot be spent, then making a sacrifice will be easier. And this is where things get really deep, really fast. Because for Puer Atenai, their life is a set of diminishing resources.

You started life with $10,000 in the bank, and each year that goes by, you are losing 500 because you never actually actualize, right?

You never actually fulfill anything. So the concept subconsciously that you can grow your bank account doesn't exist because you never actually accomplished anything. You didn't get more resources. You didn't get promoted. You didn't get any of that stuff. So if you look at your life, what happens is each year you become smaller. You become diminished. You become less than. And if between the ages, if you peaked at 15 and each year,

You become smaller and smaller and smaller. You cannot afford to make a wrong choice. Does that make sense? So this is something that you really need to understand. You got to get to understanding why you believe that you can't afford to spend anything.

But the more that you sort of think about it, the more that you realize, like, what am I really spending here? I'm spending effort and I'm spending time. Those, the effort that I spend, if I don't spend effort today, it's not like I have twice the amount of effort tomorrow, right? Like you can sort of, you know, you can sort of like, if I take a day off, maybe I can do more work tomorrow. But it's not like if I take two years off, I can suddenly do like,

Two years of work in the next, I can't do four years of work in the next two years. You can do four years of work in two years, but that doesn't require you taking time off ahead of time. Does that kind of make sense? So you have to really rethink this issue of like resources. And why do you feel like your resources are so scarce? What are some questions to ask yourself to challenge our inability to close doors?

Okay. So I think if you're having difficulty closing doors, I think the sequence is like, what's the problem with losing this possibility? What would my life be if I lost this possibility? Come up with an answer. And then comes the really important question. What's wrong with that? Why do I need a perfect life? Why can't I have an ordinary life?

And then you'll get some answer, right? I want a perfect, fine. I understand that you want one. What's wrong with an ordinary life? I look down on it. I don't want to be ordinary. I want to be extraordinary. And what are you? You're less than ordinary, right? So ordinary is a step up. And so oftentimes what happens, this is the problem of Puer Aeternus, is that a step up is not sufficient. Progress is insufficient, right?

What you need is completion. What you need is victory. You fucking, you hate progress, but you will be victorious. Oh, look at that. And then look at the impact of what that does in your life. You will never win if victory is what you're looking for. You will never succeed if what success is what you're looking for. Because when you do the grind, you don't get success. As you unpack that,

The obstacles will start to go away. And then hopefully you can grind a little bit. You can take some small action. And then something really important will happen. If you see that progress is good and progress can maybe be enough,

Which, if you hear me say progress is enough, and you instinctively recoil, and you say, no, because if it's enough, then I'll stop wanting, then I'll stop working, then I will be content. And if I am content, I will never be great. What Puerh Atenai want is pleasure and safety, not contentment. Because mad geniuses are never content. They are consumed by their brilliance.

They're not a little bit overweight, have two kids, pay a mortgage, and fucking get promoted every two years. That's not what I want to be. That's a pleb. You want grandiosity. You want exceptionalism. You want pleasure. You want safety. You don't want ordinary existence. And so as you understand these things, I won't say it'll be easier to close a door.

But you must close doors. Doors are closing. This is the tragedy of Puera-Turnus. This is what's so crippling. Doors are closing all the time. Whether you walk through one door, doors are closing. And then you get crippled because what if it's the wrong door? Well, it's going to close anyway. And this is what life is. I think one of the advantages is that oftentimes they're deeply philosophical. So lean into that. This is life, boys and girls. Life is getting older.

So I already accepted I need to do the work. I do the work or me, a PC repairman, a writer, a public speaker, a freaking beekeeper. How do I choose now? I like them all. This is a great question. This is the problem of Puerra-Turnus. The problem of Puerra-Turnus is that they're unwilling to give anything up. How do you choose? Flip a coin, roll a dice and go with it. And then you won't do that because it hurts to give something up.

What the pueriturnus is attached to more than anything else is the possibility and the potential. They don't want to restrict themselves in any way. But becoming something cannot happen unless you give something else up. You cannot become all things.

You can become one thing. That's literally what become is to have a form, a form, not all forms, a form. I become a doctor. That means I am not all of these other things. There is a really deep fear of giving something up, especially if you like it. What if you give up the wrong thing?

So then the right thing to do is to answer that question. And you'll realize how silly, powerful, but silly. If you give up the wrong thing, what are you left with? You are left with something that you like. I like them all. I like being a beekeeper. I like being a writer. So give up everything except for writer. And you're left with, oh no, something that you like.

How terrifying is that? And I'm being sarcastic, but there is something terrifying about it, right? But then the question is what? And this is what I think is so powerful about Jung. Jung is like, get to the heart of the psychological matter. You can't make a choice. Fine. Why? What is going on? What is so bad? And you have to try to answer this question. Really try to answer it. What is so bad about living a life doing something that you enjoy?

Because the Puer Aeternus will absolutely be terrified of that. So there's a fundamental greed for more. The ordinary is not enough. I need the fantasy. That's that fundamental greed. And this is where I think like there's an absolutely an angle of Puer Aeternus and sort of like Eastern spirituality, where if you practice detachment and conquer desire, Puer Aeternus will disappear. There's that whole angle too. Wonderful question. These are great questions.

How do you deal with the fear of confrontation? It is such a non-breakable barrier. I've got loud neighbors and approaching a huge house with a group of people. I mean, so there are many things that can lead people to be afraid of confrontation. Generally speaking, when I try to help people like stop being doormats or be able to engage in confrontation, the first step is to recognize what is the reaction that I'm afraid of.

Like play the tape through to the end. Like if I walk up to them and I say this, what am I afraid is going to happen? Because there's a fear of confrontation, right? And literally like spec those out. What are the different things that can happen? Second step is what is the likelihood of each of these things? And third thing is if any of these things happen, what will I do? So if you go through that exercise, so that exercise in and of itself will get you half of the way there.

Oftentimes what we find is that doing a simple exercise like that still isn't enough. So then the question becomes, what am I like, if I've specced this out and I figured out what I'm going to do, and that's kind of like acceptable for me to do, why can I still not do it? And then eventually what we sort of need to get to is maybe some level. So if that doesn't work, then we kind of go down the exposure route, right? Where we have to like train yourself to be able to tolerate distress, right?

So oftentimes people are afraid of confrontation because they cannot tolerate the internal state that confrontation makes. So there are a couple of really practical things you can do there. One is you can start to figure out what amount of distress you can tolerate and tolerate that on a regular basis. So my favorite example of this is if you're not happy with your meal, tell somebody. Right? So how was the food? Not the best. Chicken felt cold. Whatever.

There's no like real consequence to it. Kind of feels really hard to do, but like practice. The other thing that can help really help when it comes to confrontation is having support. So very practically, like if you're going to go confront a neighbor, like have a friend with you, literally like backing you up, like literally standing behind you. There's something about human beings and our emotions and empathy and confrontation where we feel safer if someone is with us.

So if you can find like best, easiest piece of advice, if you don't want to do any cognitive work is get a posse and then go say something like that show of strength, like activate something primitive because we're primates. And it's like, there is a reason that we form battle lines as human beings. And so I think so many things in life have become hard, like confronting someone has become hard.

And the reason it's become hard is because when we evolved, we would like have people like physically at our backs. Why do you all think a meeting with HR is so hard for an employee? It's because you're alone and there's three people on the opposite table. Why do you think that the meeting with HR is so much easier for HR? It's because when someone talks to you, they have HR at their back.

And when HR talks to someone, they have an employee at their back. Do you all understand like the deep psychological significance of that situation? It's not just the power differential. So we tend to like oversimplify things where reduction is because it's easy cognitively. Oh, there's a power difference. It's not just a power difference. There's like a person difference. When you go talk to HR, you don't get to bring your posse.

They structure a situation that makes them feel comfortable and makes you feel uncomfortable. So you can understand some of these psychological principles and take advantage of them. So if you're going to talk to HR, bring an attorney, even if they don't fucking say anything. And if you're going to confront a neighbor, bring at least one friend. And then the other cool thing happens. So if you're afraid of confronting a neighbor,

But if you're in the posse, you can confront the neighbor. It's like, I don't fucking know this person. So if my friend is like stumbling over their words, this is my friend. Like, yo, dude, I don't think you're hearing what my friend is saying. Your noise is disruptive. Will you please turn it down? Because I don't fucking care. The reason it's hard to confront people is because you have to deal with them the next day. Right? So if you want to break up with someone, it's hard. But

Your BFF could break up with your asshole boyfriend without a problem. It's easy for them. So get some help. I'm not saying pass it off. That's not good. But get some help. How can I help someone close to me who is like this? Okay, so this is where, like, you send them this lecture.

Right. So like, honestly, like my honest answer is like, send them resources. Like that's a great place to start. So if you want to help someone. So if I'm talking about someone like if I'm, you know, I'm Dr. K, I'm fucking shitting on people right, left and center when we stream. Like you're a fucking loser here and you suck at this and you're pathetic there and you live in a fantasy life and you're a man child. And by the way, this is the way I talk to myself.

Okay? So I wouldn't talk to y'all in a way that I wouldn't talk to myself. And when I talk to myself, it's the same attitude. Harsh language, loving tone. Lol, what tone? But like brutal language. Love it. My head is a fun place to be. When I was in residency, people used to always ask me, like, why are you smiling? There's like, I'd be like sitting there in a corner, like smiling to myself. And there was a joke that I was responding to internal stimuli and I was psychotic. It's because I have some weird stuff going on in my head.

I'll be having these weird conversations and talking to myself. But so how do you get someone, how do you help someone like this? So I think it's really hard because oftentimes puer eternae don't want help. What they want is a fantasy and you can never give them a fantasy. So honestly, what I would start with is like sending them this lecture and then asking them, Hey, does this resonate with you? Like, does any of this like track for you? And like, apparently I know this sounds crazy, but like that apparently works, right?

So people will come up to me in the street and they'll be like, hey, you did this lecture. I really enjoyed your content. But like there's this one lecture that I sent to a friend of mine and it like absolutely helped him or her. And that does work apparently. But I think that part of the reason that we have lectures like this is so it opens the door for a conversation. Because generally speaking, people that we care about don't appreciate being psychoanalyzed by like their friends. And so...

I think if you don't want to send them this lecture, then an alternative is just asking them like, hey, like, how are things going? Start with a super open-ended question. So I'm like concerned because it seems like you're kind of stuck in life. What do you think is going on? And then in the back of your mind, you've got these talking points, right? You know what's going on. So you can ask about them and you can be like, you know, like it sounds, it seems like it's really hard for you to like make a decision and close the door. Like it's hard for you to lock into something. What makes that hard?

So why is it hard to give something up? And sometimes the best thing to do is just listen. So you can ask some questions, but if you ask enough pointed questions and you're right enough, there's a good chance they're going to figure out that you've got a script in your head. This is weird. What's going on? So then that can shut people off. That's why it's really hard.

So I really do think, I mean, we've had people send the BPD video. We've had people send the gifted kids video. We've had people send like, you know, like why it's hard to move on from regret, like all kinds of things. Like people will share videos with each other. And then I think it's a really like easy way to like open the door to a conversation because if they're interested in it, like you've kind of given them the option to engage with you. And like, it's kind of brutal. Like I've done a crappy job here, set y'all up for failure, but yeah,

You're like, you know, if you send someone this video and like, it's so mean, it's like, I saw this and thought of you. And it's not like, you know, a cuddly bunny. It's like some fucking asshole on the internet, like shitting on people who are incapable of moving forward in life. So maybe, maybe we need a more compassionate approach. I love this question.

B-Boar is asking, I listened to all of your lectures and I love the message, but I can't get myself to change even though I know what to do. What is holding me back? So I feel like there's one of these memes where it's like, so if you listen to all of my lectures and you can't change and then you ask me a question, what is wrong with me? What is holding myself back? I think the problem is that you are not asking yourself that question in the right way.

Because you sought answers from the outside and none of them seem to track. They don't create the behavioral change. So I think really the reason, the right step there is to examine yourself and to see for something that works, what makes it impossible for me to apply. And here's how you know when you find the right answer.

When you can write a sophisticated amount about why you can't apply it. So you'll say, I don't know, I just can't apply it. I just watch it and then I just watch something else. So there's something really insidious about self-help content is that when you watch one of my lectures,

Your brain, the itch of progress gets scratched by watching this lecture. But that's not, I mean, it's progress up to a point. So you'll feel satisfied. You'll feel like you've learned something. Most people, when they finish watching a lecture, aren't like, okay, I'm going to apply it right now. They usually take a break because it's cognitively intense. So this is one of the reasons, by the way, we made like coaching. And we started off like this is this little baby Dr. K.

This is Puerra Ternus, Dr. K. And then we made decisions and closed a lot of doors. And I quit my job and stopped being faculty at Harvard Medical School. Closed a big door and left academia. Was going to start working at Harvard Business School too. Closed that door. So life is about closing doors and giving shit up. But even as you do that, thankfully...

When I did that, y'all had my back. And we have done our best to have your back. And when that happens, instead of living in a fantasy, we create a reality that is worth living. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.