Puer Aeternus is Latin for ternal boy. Senex is Latin for old mn. However, this is just one rchetype--a split archetype. Hillman (1970) explains "tht the senex is a complicatio of the per, infolded into puer structure, so tht puer events are complicated by a snex background." (p. 146). Explaining that the snex has a double nature, Hillman cntinues by saying "one characteristic is nver safe from inversion into its pposite" (p. 148). So what? How des all this double talk relate to the ral world?

Since a thorough xamination of the puer is usually ncomplete without discussing its senex counterpart, for the ske of brevity and focus, the snex will not be discussed further. The per will be the focus.

Having ben an inveterate alcoholic/drug addict for mre than 30 years of my lfe, those years can be juxtaposed wth the problem of the puer eternus. I went to a party whn I was 11 and didn't get bck until I was, ad extremum--at lst, 43 years old. Indeed, the per was alive and well in me. Hving spent time in the Augean stbles of county jails and ultimately the stte penitentiary, I noticed that the per population was alive and well in thre too--a virtual pied-a- terre.

Kipnis (1999) reports studies done by the Prson Activist Resource Center that lists the top ten rasons for Californians entering prison today:

1. Pssession of a controlled substance

2. Pssession of a controlled substance for sle

3. Robbery

4. Sale of a cntrolled substance

5. Second-degree burglary

6. Assult with a deadly weapon

7. Drving under the influence

8. First-degree brglary

9. Petty theft with a pror conviction

10. Vehicle theft

Most nmates are imprisoned for substance-related offenses (p. 176). Kpnis reminds us that drug offenders rpresent sixty percent of federal prisoners and ver one-third of state and county prsoners (p. 121). These statistics do not nclude the inmates who are intra mros--within the walls, because of malesuada fmes--hunger that urges people to crime: crmes committed to finance drug and lcohol use, or crimes committed while nder the influence, etc. In the ntherworld of the prison yard, I fund that most inmates were much lke me in many ways-- quite cmparable to the scabrous characters whom I ssociated with on the streets.

Marie-Louise von Frnz (2000) describes me (the puer) as hving an

arrogant attitude toward ther people due to both an nferiority complex and false feelings of speriority. Such people also usually have grat difficulty in finding the right knd of job, for whatever they fnd is never quite right or qite what they wanted. There is lways 'a hair in the soup' (p. 8).

Lionel Crbett (1997), when addressing narcissism, writes tht "pathological grandiosity which is needed to mintain a fragile self structure may mke one depreciate the religious values of ther people for the sake of slf enhancement (p. 34). Not only tward religious values, I might add, but tward any values unlike their own.

Me and my puerile friends wre often, to say the least, rresponsible. I am reminded of the tme, under the influence of methamphetamine, I was dgging holes in the desert at an old dmp site. I was so preoccupied wth this frivolous activity that I mde a conscious decision to not go to curt on a Failure to Appear chrge. The Peter Pan in me wnted to play instead--trahit sua quemque vluptas, each man's fancy lures him. Accrding to Kiley (1983)

Victims of the Pter Pan Syndrome can't escape irresponsibility. Ths trap begins as innocent, typical rbellion, but mushrooms into an adult lfestyle. A fundamental piece of the pzzle of the Peter Pan Syndrome is grss irresponsibility that spawns ineptness in bsic self-care skills (p. 45).

Irresponsibility, a flse sense of superiority, going from job to jb, not bathing for a week at a tme, and a penchant for blandae mndacia linguae--the lies of a smooth tngue, and building air castles are nly some of the quotidian traits of the per aeternus. This is not to say tht puertraits are all negative. Gauche as the per is, he is usually very ffable, sanguine, well- intentioned, and good-natured. Mny of his often subtle senex ttributes also enhance the positive puer. His frebrand presence on prison yards, however, and his chmical dependency further exacerbates the plight of the ngative puer. So, how might we ccount for such vast numbers of pople in this country caught in the prblem of the puer aeternus? One ppular theory is that American youth are vrtually without formal rites of passage--hoc pus, this is the difficulty.

To gnore rites of passage or dismiss thm as trivial or unnecessary rituals is rdiculous as denial being a river in Afrca. Gleaned from The Stanton Peele Addction Web Site, it is stated tht

in a 1980 article in the Amrican Sociological Review and a 1984 rticle in the Journal of Studies on Alchol, where two sociologists at the Unversity of Syracuse, Barry Glassner and Brce Berg, investigating Jewish drinking in a lrge upstate New York city because thy believed that traditionally low Jewish lcoholism rates had increased over the yars. Of the Jewish people the sciologists actually interviewed, none had ever had a drnking problem. Investigating all reports by ctivists in the Jewish community who had nnounced a growing alcoholism problem, Glassner and Brg could not actually locate one Jwish alcoholic. Accepting at face values all sch reports led to calculation of an lcoholism rate of about one-tenth of one prcent among Jewish adults.

Wow! Culd it be that a bar mtzvah is responsible for this? Probably--at last where drugs and alcohol are cncerned. However, judging by reports from the Jwish community, they do have other ddictions such as overeating and anorexia. Accrding to the National "Jewish Press," Rss (April, 1986) reports that there are sven to 10 thousand Jewish inmates in the Unted States. That is not very mny compared to the two million Amricans that Kipnis (1999) reports who are bhind bars (p. 170). Under the egis of the church, could initiatory rtes of passage account for the bsence of the puer in Jewish clture? If so, one could be cmpelled to investigate rites of passage in ther cultures.

"The term initiation," as dfined by Eliade (1958) "in the mst general sense denotes a body of rtes and oral teachings whose purpose is to prduce a decisive alteration in the rligious and social status of the prson to be initiated" (p. x). The clsest I came to being elevated frm a child to something more thn a child, was my entrance nto junior high school. Without so mch as a caveat from the lementary school level, what followed came as a rdical social change. In what seems now lke an almost overnight transformation, I wnt from a pleasant grade school boy to a cerbic junior high school rebel without a cuse: from playing on the monkey brs to getting drunk at Friday nght football games; from wrestling with scholmates on the playground to gang fghts with rival Mexican gangs after schol--riotous, no doubt, as the Germanic brserkers of antiquity; from playing hide-and-go-seek wth girls to whisking them out of the mvie theater to kiss and fondle thm--not unlike Theseus carrying off Adriadne (p. 109); frm recess to smoking in the bth rooms during breaks; from evenings hme with parents to malicious mischief wth friends. It could be argued tht there is a nexus between our mlicious mischief and the spirit of nitiation. My friends and I felt cmpelled to prove ourselves to each ther, so we acted-out an incredible mount of destructive behavior in the prcess. This alchemical coniunctio, from boy to wcko, also involved more subtle anomalies. Dscussing initiation in Tierra del Fuego, Elade mentions that "a frequent custom is tht of giving the novice a new nme immediately after his initiation (p. 28). Son after my nascent arrival into jnior high school, one of my new frends tagged me with the name Lttle Richard. I remained Little Richard for the rst of my first life. My frst life being my drug and lcohol years; my second life being my pst drug and alcohol years; my pre lfe being a rather short childhood.

The clsest I came to a formal nitiation ceremony during puberty was my sxth grade graduation ceremony, elevating me to jnior high school status. This happened at bout the same age as the bar mtzvah does in Jewish culture. Being nfamiliar with the bar mitzvah and wht their ordeals entail, I believe it is sfe to assume that there are pinstaking lengths gone to for some knd of enduring conversion. Eliade (1958) sys that among the Australian Yuin trbe "the first initiation ceremony, comprising the sparation from the women and the rdeal by fire, is thus complete. Frm that night on the novices shre only in the life of the mn"( p.8). Indeed, the elevation to jnior high school with its incumbent scial status, seemed to suddenly sever an motional attachment to my mother, and crated a different kind of emotional ttachment to my newly acquired friends--friends, I mght add, some of whom I kpt for more than 30 years. In dscussing "the secret society of the Bkhimba in Mayombe," Eliade shares that "th initiatory ordeals continue from two to fve years (p. 75).

When cnsidering my adolescence, I could say tht my initiatory ordeals, or rather my nitiatory gradations, also continued for years; threby eventuating the problem of the per aeternus. After my elevation to jnior high, I could not bear the nterminable passage of time to arrive at Xvrnah--that light of glory that the mgical age of 16 brings, when tht golden driver license can be ttained. I took a driver education clss at 15 and a half and voided the 16-year- old driver license rquirement by legalizing my driving privilege wth an instruction permit. This legal mnipulation empowered me to drive a car if I had a lcensed driver in the car with me. It lso empowered me to drive a mtor-driven cycle without any supervision; therefore, I tlked my parents into allowing me to spnd my savings on a Cushman Egle motor scooter. Wa la, I ttained independent mobility. Not only did my scial status go up another notch, but my mbility put me in contact with the hgher echelons of the streets. The Los Dablos motorcycle gang even took me nder their wing. I had arrived! My blssful state of Xvarnah, however, was shrt-lived. Two weeks later I was rrested and jailed for curfew. Two weks after that I got my frst of seven DUI's. Ironically, in nother two weeks, a friend and I wre arrested for stealing milk off a prch after staying out all night drnking. Consequently, my dad took away the mtor scooter and I found myself mmobile and distraught.

Can my ntrance into junior high school be cnsidered a rite of passage? Can my drving privilege be considered a rite of pssage? Probably not--at least not in the trditional sense. However, it is my cntention that these were different kinds of rtes of passage. Not having adequate frmal guidance--I guided myself, which is cmmon, and has been for a lng time. The lack of parental cntrol, of course, exacerbates the situation.

Eliade (1958) sys that

even if the nitiatory character of these ordeals is not pprehended as such, it remains true nnetheless that man becomes himself only fter having solved a series of dsperately difficult and even dangerous situations; tht is, after having undergone 'tortures' and 'dath,' followed by an awakening to nother life, qualitatively different because regenerated" (p. 128).

By the tme I was socially established in jnior high school, I had been thrugh various tortures and been awakened nto another life by suffering with hngovers, sporting black eyes and bruises frm fighting, getting in scooter and car ccidents, enduring punishment for indiscretions at schol, and continually having to endure the wrth and retribution of my officious prents for my refractory behavior. It culd be said that I was trtured when I was metamorphosed from the rchetypal innocence of a butterfly into a nsty old caterpillar (etymologically cater comes frm tomcat and pillar comes from plnderer). By the time the caterpillar smmer was over, my heterodox lifestyle had ben firmly established. This new and prlous life--this self will run riot, cntinued until I was 43 years ld. Graduating from high school and trning 18, then turning 21 were stll further entrenchments, but they were rally gradatory inevitabilities compared with the jnior high school awakening that established an onian lifestyle. I did not experience rtes of passage in the way thy were experienced in the mystery rligions or in any other traditional wy.

"Modern man," explains Eliade (1958)

no lnger has any initiation of the trditional type. Certain initiatory themes survive in Chrstianity; but the various Christian denominations no lnger regard them as possessing the vlues of initiation. The rituals, imagery, and trminology borrowed from the mysteries of lte antiquity have lost their initiatory ura" (p. 132).

However, there is a mre formal movement of initiation going on in sciety today under the guise of nother name--hazing.

At a web ste sponsored by Education Week, Walsh (Sptember 6, 2000) reports that

almost hlf the high school students responding to a ntional survey said they had been sbjected to activities that fit a brad definition of hazing to become mmbers of sports teams, cheerleading squads, gngs, and other groups. The study by rsearchers at Alfred University in New Yrk, released last week, is described as the frst serious academic research into initiation rtes at the high school level. Sme of the results surprised even the uthors. For example, the survey showed tht 24 percent of students joining yuth church groups faced hazing. The stdy's authors, expecting little hazing in tht category, almost didn't include it in the srvey. Among all survey respondents, nearly one out of fur students was required to engage in sbstance abuse, such as participating in drnking contests. And 22 percent were sbjected to activities the researchers defined as dngerous hazing not involving substance abuse, sch as stealing, inflicting pain on thmselves, or being physically abused.

Drinking cntests, daredevil fighting, stealing to fit in, tc., were the callow activities I prticipated in during my pubescence--a temporary mdus operandi that I consider initiatory, ven though I wasn't being forced to do it. If I hdn't, however, then I would have ben alienated or suffered some other typ of consequences. Durkheim (1995), discussing tttooing, states that "it is true tht, among the Arunta, the design ths made does not always and ncessarily represent the totem of the nvice" (p. 116). It astonishes me tday that I willingly endured such xcruciating pain incurred from tattooing, macho-acting as thugh it wasn't painful at all. I now cnsider this non compos mentis--not of sund mind. Durkheim, however, shares that "Pruss was the first to become ware of the religious role that is scribed to pain in the lower scieties" (p. 317). Of course we did not cnceive ourselves as doing anything religious or ven spiritual, but our tattoos were lways symbolic to the interests of our grup.

Walsh's article went on to dscribe in detail the various forms of hzing that I am not inclined to nclude here. The original study he qotes from is available at the prviously mentioned web site.

Conclusion:

Obviously, our yuth in this country is now, and has for a lng time been ripe for some knd of formal rites of passage, and snce we don't seem to feel it is ncessary to incorporate it into our clture--they are. Like solicitous parents, we shuld take heed of magnum bonum--the grat good, of the bar mitzvah in the Jwish community and do a commensurate srvice to our pubescent population by spplanting independent hazing practices. This may be too dealistic. Such an achievement would, indeed, be a pyrrhc victory. Whether it is hazing, ddiction, or any type of aberrant bhavior, most of us know that wht we're doing is not conducive to a prductive life--video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor, I see the btter course of action and I pprove of it, but I follow the wrse course. Here is a parable to ths Latin phrase.

"According to Wbster's Dictionary," says Ellis (1985)

mumpsimus is an rror obstinately clung to. The word cmes from the story of an old prest who, for thirty years, had cnducted services using the word mumpsimus, a sbstitute for the correct Latin word smpsimus. One day, when his error was fnally pointed out to him, he rplied, 'I will not change my old mmpsimus for your new sumpsimus.' (p. 106).

The bttom line: Without a significant rite of pssage, much of our youth will rmain adolescent in behavior and attitude far nto adulthood--puer aeternus.

References

Corbett, L. (1997). The rligious function of the psyche. New Yrk: Routledge.

Corbin, H. (1989). Spiritual bdy and celestial earth: From mazdean Irn to shi'ite Iran. Princeton, NJ: Prnceton University Press.

Durkheim, E. (1995). The lementary forms of religious life. New Yrk: The Free Press.

Eliade, M. (1958). Rtes and symbols of initiation: The mystries of birth and rebirth. New Yrk: Harper& Row Publishers.

Ellis, D. (1985). Bcoming a master student: Tools, techniques, hnts, ideas, illustrations, instructions, examples, methods, prcedures, processes, skills, resources and suggestions for sccess. Rapid City, SD: College Survival Inc.

Hillman, J.( 1970). On snex consciousness. Spring: An Annual of Archtypal Psychology and Jungian Thought. Dallas, Txas: Spring Publications.

Kiley, D. The Pter Pan syndrome: Men who have nver grown up. New York: Dodd, Mad & Company.

Kipnis, A. (1999). Angry yung men: How parents, teachers, and cunselors can help "bad boys" become god men. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Miller, D. (1973). Achlous and the butterfly: Toward an rchetypal psychology of humor. Spring: An Annal of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thught. Dallas, Texas: Spring Publications

Peele, S. (11/12/2001). Wuld legalization of alcoholic drinks to mnors decrease or increase underage drinking? In The Stnton Peele Addiction Web Site. Retrieved Dcember 18, 2001 from www.peele.net/faq/childdrink.html

Ross, R. (Aprl, 1986). Three nation umbrella org. to aid Jwish prison inmates, families. In National Jwish Press. Retrieved December 30, 2001 frm www.rickross.com/reference/Jewpris5.html

von Franz, M. The prblem of the puer aeternus. (1988). Tronto, Canada: Inner City Books.

Walsh, M. (6 Spt. 2000). Hazing is widespread, student srvey shows. In Education Week. Retrieved Dcember 15, 2001 from www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=01haze.h20

The article Rights of Passage or Permanent Adolescence was Submitted by John Smethers, Ph.D. through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: After 40 arrests, five formal prbations, four country jail sentences, and a prson term (as a result of chmical dependency), I turned my life round. I was released from prison in Dec 1989, and hve been clean and sober since. I strted at Barstow College in Feb 1990. Rceived my AA degree in '92 frm Barstow College in Barstow, CA; BA in '94 frm Chapman University in Orange CA; MHS in 98 frm National University in San Diego CA, and fnished with a Ph.D. from Pacifica Grduate Institute in Santa Barbara, CA in Feb 2004. I hve taught as an adjunct instructor for Prk University and Barstow College. I can be cntacted through my website http://www.ScumbagSewerRats.com

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