Transcription
And this is the whole problem of pueris, that if you are never willing to commit, if you never take the plunge, then you will never live life. You'll live, as Bane said, a provisional life, a halflife. There is always a problem. There's never the perfect job. There's always a sense of settling. You have to go into battle and kill or be killed. The problem is that y'all are sitting on the sidelines. Y'all are never committing 100%, and so your dream can never become a reality. Okay?
But the key thing here is if y'all are at the end of this lecture and you're saying, "What do I do?" It's the wrong question. The short answer is nothing. And an equally valid answer is everything. This is hands down the hardest lecture that I've ever given. Okay? So, it's going to be hard. It's going to be weird. It's not going to make a whole lot of sense. And if you listen to it, really listen to it, it could transform you. But if you listen to it in the wrong way, it won't touch you at all. Okay? So I want y'all to listen to my message, not my words.
So the problem of pueris is one of unrealized potential. The basic issue here is that puer aeternis, first of all, is an archetype, and we're going to go into what that means. Okay? But the basic issue is that we have within us a voice that is creative and excited. Okay? That is the voice of the inner child. We get hyped about things. So pueris literally means puer means is is the word for male child. There's also puella aeternis, female child, and aeternis means forever. So people who are stuck with this childlike view of the world, they cannot work hard. They cannot commit to things. The key problem is that it's a problem of like not being able to give up potential. That is why they cannot live up to their potential.
Any door that I walk through in life means that I am closing other doors. If I get married to this person, that means that I cannot get married to this person. If I choose to major in this in college, that means I can't major in that in college. So many of us are like, we're not, we're paralyzed with being able to move forward because there's this idea of like, "What if it doesn't work?" This is the problem to solve. We are a community of puer aeternis. We're a community of people who have potential and don't live up to it. We're a community of people who are gifted but don't turn it into something. I myself was a problem of pueris, and now I'm still a pueris. But there is a fundamental change that can happen where suddenly all of the potential that we start to have constellates.
So let's just characterize this a little bit. Okay, this is our quick recap. 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 is always a butt which prevents marriage or any kind of definitive commitment.
So pueris is a life of hair in the soup. Something just doesn't work. It's like, "Okay, but like, uh, I can't commit to it, right? I don't want to like lock in with this soup that has hair in it," which results in what H.G. Baines has 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. There's always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about.
Okay, so this is the problem of pueris, that like we're just sort of existing, right? So we we sort of live this life where we're like trying to keep our options open, and we can't lock into one thing because what if it is the wrong thing? And it's not, "What if it is the wrong thing?" It's worse than that because it is the wrong thing. There is always a problem. There's never the perfect job. There's always a sense of settling, but we don't want to settle. We want that thing that we know is out there. If we can just find it, it'll be perfect. So, we can't afford to settle. And so, we end up living what Baines calls as a provisional life.
Hey y'all, if all this puer aeternis stuff is resonating with you, definitely check out our resources page. This is a new thing that we're doing for really important topics. We're trying to build additional resources that are all free things like additional info, additional videos, kind of like a track of what to do next. So check out the link in the description below.
So provisional life is one where one is existing, but one is not like actually living life to the fullest. Okay. One thing dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything whatsoever. 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 may be impossible to slip out again. They generally do not like sports which require patience and long training. For pueris, in the negative sense of the word, is usually very impatient by disposition. So that such sports do not appeal to them. Right?
And then there's this story of like this person who learned all of these like yogic exercises and was able to train himself to sleep outdoors just because he didn't want to carry a pack. Right? So the puer will never or puella will never deign themselves to be ordinary. I would rather go through heroic growth and be exceptional in this way. But it's not true heroism. It is avoidance of the dreary, avoidance of doing things like other people. Like, "I'm not one of the plebs." For [ __ ] sake, I'm not always, I'm not one of the plebs. They do not like conventional situations. They ask deep questions and go straight, straight for truth. On the contrary, he lives in a continual sleepy daze. That too is a typical adolescent characteristic: the sleepy, undisciplined, long-legged youth who merely hangs around, his mind wandering indiscriminately, so that sometimes one feels inclined to pour a bucket of cold water over his head. The sleepy daze is only an outer aspect, however, and if you can penetrate it, you will find a lively fantasy life is being cherished within. They have great, great hopes and great, great dreams. Okay?
And they also evoke a response of like wanting to throttle them. Like, "Oh, I'm going to stop [ __ ] sitting around and doing nothing. You have all these dreams in your head. Let me take a bucket of cold water and throw it over your head." This response is not just triggered by external people. It's triggered by your own mind. So, you will feel this response to, "Why can't I just snap out of it, make a commitment, and just get up and grind every day?" This is the problem of puer.
Now Jung spoke of work as the solution. But the kind of work that is dreary, that is drab, right? The puer is very impatient. So like, we can get excited about things, but the moment that the excitement disappears, it's like, "Eh, I can't do it." So puer can work really hard, they are just not in control of their work. And this is what's so devastating about it is because we all know, right? We have this like fantasy of like, not fantasy, we have this reality of, there was 72 hours where I woke up, I felt great, I was hyped, I was engaged, I wanted the flow state, I got the flow state, I produced something that was truly brilliant, and then day four rolled around, day five rolled around, and then I didn't feel like doing it. And instead of forcing themselves to continue doing it when they don't feel like it, they search endlessly for the way to reignite that spark. I don't want to do the hard, hard work. I want to find the perfect optimization, yogic technique, supplement thing, brain hacking, biohacking, spirituality, wellness, health, whatever, perfect environment, productivity solution, reading a 100 productivity books summarized in a 10-minute YouTube video. So, I don't actually have to read the books. I bottled lightning for 72 hours. I don't want to generate electricity using a treadmill. I want to learn how to consistently bottle lightning. This is the problem of puer.
So today, what we're going to do, we're going to show y'all what the problem, what first of all what pueris is and what it isn't. Then we're going to go through a series of like patterns in the puer aeternis mind, and then hopefully we will understand what it really is. The problem is that you can do nothing about this. You can do nothing about this. No action will fix this. And the reason no action will fix this is because this does not exist at the level of action. This exists at a very deep psychological level. So work won't solve the problem. Work will actually be part of the problem. Okay? So like the the cure is work, but doing work doesn't work, even though it's the cure. That's the problem of puer. Pretty sure I'm a puerist, but doing hard work doesn't seem to have fixed me. Let's see if we can understand why. Let's go back like 150 years to what this lady said and see if a Reddit post from 11 days ago can be answered by a text that's like a 100 years old.
The puer aeternis has to learn to carry on with work he does not like, not only with work where he is carried away by great enthusiasm, which is something that everybody can do. Primitive people who are said to be lazy can do that. For as soon as they are gripped by something, they work, even to the point of exhaustion. I would not evaluate that as work, but as being carried away by a festival of work. The work which is the cure for pueris is where he has to kick himself out of bed on a dreary morning again and again and take up a boring job through sheer willpower. Okay, but people say, "But he's working hard." Yes, but the reason he's working hard is he must have escaped to some other kind of work or he must have run away from some other kind of work. So this is the problem. Work is the answer. But work will never fix it. Because even when you do work, when you work really hard, you are not doing the hard work. You are running away from the hard work by doing easy work. Got it?
So like y'all see that and you know this, right? You would move mountains to avoid climbing a molehill. "I will develop my own theory of integrated physics that combines Newtonian mechanics with quantum mechanics." I would rather do that than study for Physics 101 and calculate friction of a pulley system. "I will be great and I will be grand and I will be sacrificial. I will work incredibly hard," but I never, I never going to do that. So when I say work is the answer, it's not the answer. It is the answer, and it's impossible to do.
So now the question becomes, okay, how do we do it? Like, what, what do we do? So we have to understand what an archetype is. So Jung was a psychoanalyst, and he came up with this idea, didn't really come up with it, popularized in the West, this idea of something called a collective unconscious. So he's like, we have our regular conscious awareness, we have our subconscious, and then there is this weird collective unconscious which connects us all. Okay, like there is some fundamental thing which is deep, and this thing is more primordial. It's not like so at the surface level of your conscious thoughts, thoughts are very crystallized, they're formed. Even at the subconscious level, there are personality constructs, things like borderline personality disorder. You can like, it's like a crystallized thing. Do you all get that? There's like there's trauma, and then if trauma coalesces in the right way, you will have BPD. If it coalesces in a different way, you will have narcissistic personality disorder. And then at the surface level of BPD, we will have even more crystallized thoughts: "This person is going to abandon me, no matter what." Okay?
So there's the super crystallized, directly observable level of consciousness, which is thoughts. Then there is a less crystallized, but still crystallized personality architecture, which is not directly observable. So if you look at the Five Factor Model, like you can't study your thoughts for five seconds, ten seconds, ten minutes and know what your Five Factor personality is. You can't do that. But if you do a deeper exploration, you can get it out. Does that make sense? And then even deeper than that, which is less crystallized but more primordial, are these archetypes. These are like general things that exist in the subconscious that we all share. So the puer archetype is like the child within us, the part of us that gets excited. Okay? And when it gets excited, it like longs for things. But the child within us also doesn't like hard work. So when when the puer attribute, which is deep, and we are all connected by it, right? And like if you guys want to know what we are all connected by, it looks like it looks like this. This is what it looks like. This is the archetype. Do you all get this? Like we are connected. We all feel it. We're like, "This is me. It's a lecture. It's not about you." Do y'all get that? This is a guy on the internet speaking. That's not you. That can't be you. It's words transmitted across fiber optic cables to pixels on a screen. This cannot technically be you, but it is.
If you look at Healthy Gamer, what is Healthy Gamer? It's a movement, right? This is why there's all this cult energy because we're not connected just through words. We're connected like on a deeper level. Y'all get that? Like, I know you. People will walk up to me and they will say, "Dr. K, you have changed my life." How is that possible? I've never [ __ ] met you. Think about it for a second. Right? But there is like a connection which we feel. We are transformed. People will come to me and they'll be, "You changed my life. I've transformed." You, wow, that's pretty cool, right? So this is the key thing about puer. You cannot do anything. You must be transformed. That's the only way it works. This psychology within you must shift. And if it shifts, all of these lack of follow-through things will start to constellate, and you will start to live a life, a full life, a complete life. The reason I know that is because I was a puer that was not constellated. Now I am a puer that is constellated.
Okay, so like let's be factual for a second. 2.5 GPA, graduated in five and a half semesters, no money, rejected from medical school. I'm 26 years old. I got [ __ ] I haven't done anything. I have all these great ideas today: married, influencer, author, doctor, Harvard, entrepreneur. What the [ __ ] Gamer, degenerate. Like, what the [ __ ] How is this change possible? The change is possible because the puer within me transformed into the healthy version. And then suddenly all of my creative impulses started manifesting in the world, right? So like I started [ __ ] doing [ __ ] when I got excited. And so I'll give you all like a literal example. I've been at VidCon in LA doing podcasts and stuff like that for the last week. I flew in on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, uh, about 27 hours ago, I got on a call with our content director. Content director says, "Hey, Dr. K, we're behind on videos. We need you to fill some [ __ ]." And I was like, "Content director, bro, I want to do a stream on puer aeternis tomorrow." And he's like, "Well, we have to do all this other [ __ ]." And I was like, "I want to do it tomorrow." There's a lot of stuff that the world demands of me. I feel inspired to do something. And so what I did is grind the [ __ ] yesterday, grind the [ __ ] this morning. I'm going to grind the [ __ ] tomorrow. I'm going to grind the [ __ ] on Sunday. I'm going to grind the [ __ ] on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I have a ton of work ahead of me. That is the price I have to pay in order to do what I want, to have my dreams become a reality. Do you all understand that? I'm not trying to like do this to flex. I'm just telling y'all that if you want to be a constellated puer, you have to pay a price.
Now, people will ask me in these like interviews and [ __ ], right? "Dr. K, what's your secret to success? What do you think everyone should do?" And what I tell them is like, the one thing that really shocked me about becoming successful is how many good things I had to walk away from. So, I worked really hard, not to do this, but wound up as faculty at Harvard Medical School. It is a coveted thing. And I left to do this. I was well on my way, grinding really hard to achieve some sort of spiritual progress. Walked away. And if you guys go back and y'all have listened to my circle jerk answers, y'all will have heard me say this, that like life is a series of walking away from really good things. That is how you live fully. I didn't realize that that this is what I was doing at the time, right? But it's if you want to live life fully, you need to reduce your potential. Then like something weird happens where like the more doors you close, the more you get everything behind them. And it's like weird, but that's like that's true. Okay? Like, and I'm not saying this to like flex, or honestly, I'm just telling y'all this works. And we know, like, there's the other reason we know it works is because when we don't do this, it doesn't work. Because what happens is we don't want to close any doors. We don't want to close off any potential. And since we don't want to close any doors, and since we don't want to close off any potential, we end up like spinning in the waiting room of life. And then doors close on us anyway. And as doors start to close, as opportunities start to close because we never took the plunge, right? So potential starts to close, and then we feel more panicked. And then it becomes really important to make the right decision because now like, "Oh my god, I lost this opportunity, lost this opportunity, lost." I have three left. Which one do I pick? Which one do I pick? Which one do I pick? And so if you're an unconstellated puer, your life is a series of getting bumped around by ping pong balls. Or not, not ping-pong balls, a pinball machine. Imagine you're a pinball machine. You become a pinball in a pinball machine. And you're just getting smacked around like you're like, "If this thing happens, if this bumper, like, if I hit this button, then like," and you just have two buttons at the bottom of your pinball. That's all you know how to control. It's like, "If I can if I can hit, if everything lines up right, I can hit the button at the right time." This is the one thing I can do well, then I can like get some energy and I can control where I want to go. But there's this like thing in the middle that's like 10,000 points. And as try as you might to hit your two buttons, because that's what you've got, right? You've got like porn and you've got video games, and you're like, "It's so hard," and you know it's possible if everything lines up right and you use your two buttons, then you can get to the 10,000 points in the middle and you can win. But you don't want to work the hard way. You just keep on using these two buttons. Okay?
So what we're talking about is an archetype, and an archetype that has to come out in a healthy way. And when the archetype comes out in a healthy way, you will be transformed. Then the actions will flow. Then you will be able to do it. So let's talk a little bit about how to do that. Okay. So one of our students has evolved the idea that there is something like a defective self, that in certain people whose fate is very unfortunate, the symbol of the self appears defective, which would mean that such people have no chance in life because the nucleus of their psyche is incomplete and defective. So the whole process of individuation cannot develop from this kernel. Y'all have seen this, right? This is like, "I am screwed. There's nothing I can do. I'm fundamentally broken." Exists within our community. People have this attitude. I do not agree with this idea because I have never seen such symbols of a defective self without an accompanying defective attitude of the ego. That means that wherever you find such a defective self symbol, where it is ambiguous and incomplete and morbid, there is always at the same time an incomplete and morbid attitude of the ego. And therefore, it cannot be scientifically asserted that the cause of the whole thing lies in a defective self.
So here's what that kind of means. People are like, "Okay, like I'm a puer. How do I fix that?" You don't fix it. A lot of people believe that they're fundamentally broken in life and there's nothing that can be done to fix it because they've tried. But it's not that you are fundamentally broken. It is that the way that you relate, the part of you that shepherds and controls all of these archetypal energies, like puer, that is the thing that is busted. There's nothing wrong with puer. Puer is great. It is puer that is inappropriately managed that takes this beautiful force that then becomes destructive. Okay, so this is a great analogy. This is where the lecture becomes like hard, and it's only going to get harder. Okay, so try to follow, and if you don't follow, watch it again, and I'll try my best.
But on the other hand, it can just as well be said that if one eats all the wrong things or does not eat or eats irregularly, then it is not the stomach which is at fault. This defective self always goes with an ego which does not function properly either. If the ego is lazy, inflated, not conscientious, does not perform the duties of the ego complex, then it is clear that the self cannot appear positively either. What this kind of means is like, this is talking to this, this core conflict of like, so if I eat all the wrong things and eat at irregular times, and then I say my stomach is bad, right? My stomach is like a trash stomach. Is it the stomach that's at fault, or is it the irregular eating and the irregular diet that's at fault? The same analogy can be applied to puer. So some of us believe we are fundamentally broken, but are we fundamentally broken, or are we not fundamentally broken, but the way we are channeling or accessing that energy, that is flawed? Okay?
So let's kind of drive that point home a little bit. If the man were here today, he would certainly object and say, "No, it is the other way around. The ego cannot function because the self is defective." "I'm fundamentally broken. I'm not making the wrong choices. It's not that I'm choosing to eat the wrong things. Like my stomach is effed." "Really, bro?" Then we are confronted with the age-old philosophical problem of free will. Can I want the right thing? That is the problem which the proerist will generally put to you. He will say that he knows that everything goes wrong because he is lazy, but that he cannot want to be lazy. "I don't choose laziness, right? Laziness is a feature of me. Everything in my life is going wrong because I'm lazy. But that's not something that I choose. It's the way that I am. And all of those other people out there aren't lazy. That's why they're successful." That perhaps that is his neurosis, that he is unable to fight his laziness. And therefore, it is useless to treat him as a rascal for whom everything would go right if he were not so lazy. Okay?
So this language is a little bit weird, but it's like this core problem of like, "Other people are good, but I'm fundamentally lazy. That's why I can't do anything in life." This is the core problem of puer. So let's talk a little bit more technically now. So we have all these archetypes within us. These are like, you can think about them as like impulses, drives, fundamental drives, like the father, the mother, the caretaker, the protector, the trickster, the wise old person, within us, the child. All of these are archetypes, and we have this thing called the ego, which in in the Jungian sense and Freudian sense, psychoanalytic sense, also translates over to the Eastern sense pretty well. If your mind is not able to harness and channel that creative drive, it becomes a problem.
So let's talk about for a second how to fix it. Okay, so this thing is within us. But Jung says that there is no sickness in the collective unconscious. And so as the self is an archetype, it does not seem to me that there can be anything defective. So there's nothing wrong with puer. I think that if it appears defective, it is because of the wrong ego attitude. Objectively, in itself, it cannot be defective, which is why it cannot accept the idea of the defective self. If the ego is able to change, something else changes. If the ego attitude changes, then the symbols of the self become more positive. That is something we can experience again and again. If the person can achieve a certain amount of insight, then the whole unconscious constellation changes.
So this is what makes this hard. Succeeding with puer is not about doing anything. It is about changing our relationship with our self. It is an internal change, and it happens at a deep level, at the level where the archetype meets the unconscious, or maybe where the archetype meets the conscious. This is why you can't do it. This is why, as we'll see, the puer archetype, if until you change this constellation, it will keep hijacking what you do. All of your attempts for improvement will not work. There is a fundamental stuckness that if you transform it, then suddenly all of this creative energy flows forward in a positive way.
So now the question becomes, how do we do that? So what I'm going to do now is go through a series of characterizations. So, the best strategy that I've got is to show y'all basically like how it works. So, I'm going to show you the way that the puer archetype functions in your mind. And if y'all want to conquer this thing, what you have to do is notice all of these drives, because it's really tricky. Okay? So, like imagine you're playing Street Fighter 6 or Tekken or whatever. There's a character called Puer, and you're fighting against this character. I'm going to show y'all the moveset that this character uses. It has this kind of throw, this kind of jump kick. It can counterattack in this way, but I can't fight it. You have to step into the ring. And if I show you what's coming, there's a chance that you will like be prepared, but then you have to hit the buttons. There is no way to get out of this without hitting the buttons. I can't do it for you. And nothing that I tell you will work. It must be a struggle of your own ego complex with this destructive puer archetype. Okay?
So the first thing that we're going to talk about is the gesture of impatience. So then something absolutely classic happens, namely the gesture of impatience. That is typical for puer aeternis. When he has to take something seriously, either in the inner or outer world, he makes a few poor attempts and then impatiently gives up. My experience that I, it does not matter if you analyze a man of this type, whether you force him to take the outer or inner world seriously. That is really unimportant, though perhaps it depends on the type. The important thing is that he should stick something out. That is why such people tell you suddenly that they have another plan, that this is not what they were looking for. They always, they always do it at the moment where things become difficult. It is the everlasting switching which is the dangerous thing, not what they do.
So here's the problem of puer. Y'all are looking for the right answer. There is no right answer. Anyone who tells you this is the right answer, myself included, will not work. The problem is not in the answer. It is in the way that you relate to the idea that there is an answer. As long as you believe that you're [ __ ] Because then what'll happen? It is the changing from one answer to the other. It doesn't matter which one you pick. Just don't change. That is the real answer. Right? So when I want to do this lecture of pueris, I don't get to can the other stuff that I have to do. I don't get to switch. I lop things off. Stick with something. Make a sacrifice. That is what you need to do. And then if you're not careful, the puer will be like, "How do I know which sacrifice to make?" It doesn't matter. What you need to learn is the ability to make a sacrifice. Okay?
So the second thing is that this idea that you are defective. You're not defective. So if you're fundamentally defective, there's nothing you can do. The way that you relate to your undeffected self is what makes you defective. You take your perfect self and you transmute it into something that is fundamentally broken. Because as long as it's fundamentally broken, then you've got an excuse. Then you don't have to do the hard work. The key thing about puer when it is in its destructive form is that it avoids hard work at all costs. So what you'll notice is there's this twisting and turning, just don't want to work hard. I just don't want to do something bad. And this is the real tragedy of it, is that you don't want to be bored. You don't want to do something bad. You don't want to stick something out. And in avoiding all of that stuff, you end up with like a dead-end job, or you end up with a career that pays your bills but isn't fulfilling. You don't ever take the plunge. You don't ever take a chance. You sort of like live in this limbo state where you're getting your needs met. When your distress becomes so high, you're moved to a temporary form of inaction. So, it's kind of like you're this volcano that's rumbling beneath the surface. And when some critical point happens, you'll erupt. You'll erupt even every day by slogging your ass to work, doing whatever dead-end [ __ ] you need to do that is spiritually bereft. And then you come home, and then you're like, "I can't do anything and I'm tired and I'm exhausted." And you never like, you never like quit, right? You never like take the plunge. You never leave your job and start your company. You don't leave your boyfriend or girlfriend because things are comfortable, and then you have to find how are you going to pay rent? You can't afford rent, so you might as well stay with this person even though the relationship feels dead inside.
And for those of you whose puer is hyperactive will say, "Is Dr. K just saying I should [ __ ] quit my job and break up with my girlfriend? He doesn't understand what my life is like." That's not what I'm saying. If you do anything that I tell you to do in today's lecture, it's not going to work. It's never going to work. Right? And notice what happens when your mind says that. Notice what happens. I'm telling you to take the plunge. Ain't going to do it. The way that you're not going to do it is by criticizing me. "This guy doesn't understand my life." "Oh, [ __ ] a. Puer is thrilled. Oh [ __ ] that was a close one. There's this guy on the internet that seems really smart that I've been following for years. Oh man, I really thought he was great, but the moment he told me to take the plunge, [ __ ] man, that was close. I almost listened to him and did the hard work." People are saying I'm lost and people are saying caught me. Yes. That's what's hard about this. This lecture is going to leave half of y'all behind, and I'm sorry. This is the best that I can do. And because I didn't give into my internal puer, I said, "I'm gonna do a shitty job at an important lecture instead of waiting to be able to do it right and perfectly." And it's going to leave half of y'all behind, which is fine. Sorry. And it's not because y'all are dumb. It's because I, I hope y'all can tell this is not my best, right? I'm piecing things together. I'm making mistakes in the lecture. This is like hard for me. Okay, y'all get that? Like, and it's fine. It's just like that's why y'all don't get it. It's not because you're dumb. It's because this is the first time I've tried to tie together so many things, and it's going to get harder. Like, we're just getting started. Okay. So, there is no defective self. Next move. Now, we're going to get into the throws. Okay.
The greatest difficulty we drag along with us from our childhood is the sack of illusions which we carry on our backs into adult life. The subtle problem consists in giving up certain illusions without becoming cynical. Just poor children who have grown up in the slums and had a terrible family and fate, or very rich children who had all the same miseries except lack of money, divorced parents, a bad atmosphere at home, and so on. That is where the feeling atmosphere has been neglected, which is so important for children. Such people grow often grow up quicker than others because at a very early stage they become very realistic, disillusioned, and self-contained and independent. If you analyze such people, you find that they have not worked out the problem of childish illusions, but have just cut it off, having simply assured themselves that their lack, their desire for love, and their ideals simply hammer them like a sack of stones carried on their back. So they must all be done away with.
So, here's another key thing. You can be rich, you can be broke, okay? Doesn't matter. So what a lot of people have is they have this sack of childish illusions. When we grow up, we have this idea of what the world is. Why are you unsatisfied with your life? Because you have an idea that there's something better out there. You see all these influencers, or you see all these people like tech bros, or whatever the [ __ ] doesn't matter. Like, I, I don't care. Like, whatever it is, right? Where did you get this is the problem? Where did you get the idea that life is better or could be better than what you were experiencing? This is the childish sack of illusions that we carry with us as we go through life. We constantly think, "Oh, like I'm unlucky. This could be better. This person is doing better. This person is doing better." So, this is what's so tricky about it is like we carry this idea that something could be better. But it is this idea that something could be better, which is based on a childlike fantastical impression, which prevents us from seeing what the world really is. So you can get all of the things that your childlike illusion wants. The path to them just involves a lot of hard work and a lot of uncertainty. A lot of closing off of potential, a lot of sacrifice. You can get it all. It's just not in the way that you want. And they hold on to this idea. And so in your mind, what this will look like is like, I had a client once who felt really smart, had a degree from a prestigious institution, and wanted to join companies, didn't have a great work history. At 33, he wanted to join companies at the executive level. He's like, "I'm badass. I'm amazing. I'm not going to work through some entry-level [ __ ]. I'm gonna go straight to the top because that's where I deserve to be." Doesn't want to slog. And it's the fact that they didn't want to slog that ended them up with a prestigious degree from Harvard Business School, 33, with a [ __ ] work history. Didn't want to slog. I want to jump straight to the top. Because you have this idea, you have this childish illusion that you can jump straight to the top. It's entitlement. That's a good word.
Now, here's the problem. So, if you analyze such people, you find that they have not worked out the problem. They've not worked out the problem of childish illusions, but have just cut it off, having assured themselves that their desire for love and their ideals simply hammer them like a sack of stones carried on their back. So they all must be done away with. This we see in our community as well. So there is a response to this. Okay. So step one is childish illusions. This is what I want to do. This is the way the world should be. I enter the world. The world doesn't look like that. So I give up. I'm impatient. All that kind of stuff. Maybe I think I'm fundamentally broken. Do you all see how like the path of puer is like climbing a mountain on a tightrope? Climbing to the top of a mountain, walking on a tightrope to the top of a mountain with a dozen different ways to fall off.
So, we've talked about two of the problems. Here's another one. So, one way that people respond if you have all these childish illusions about the way the world should be, it should be good, and I deserve this, and I'm entitled to this, and like all that kind of stuff, right? I'm not making a moral. Don't get caught up. This is another thing. Don't get caught up in whether that's true or not true or whatever the [ __ ] I don't care. I'm just using those as examples. This is what I'm talking about right now. If you want to ask me what I think the world should be like, that's a separate conversation. So then what happens is you realize, okay, the things that I want, what I want is not possible. You realize that your illusions are false. And then the puer does something really dangerous. They amputate them. They don't work through them. They're just like, "No, I don't want this." I become anti-work. I become anti-capitalism. Even though I want money, I lop it off. I'm an incel, an amputation of a part of you that wants something. This is your inner child. This is the part of you that has joy and awe and inspiration and excitement when you look at the world, but it gets transmuted into this illusory form. The drive is real. The archetype is real. You know that there's truth to it. Like, y'all know that. You know you can be great. But something along the way happens where the primordial unconscious, it filters through your personality structure, as it filters through your cognitive structure, turns out in a weird way, in a non-healthy way, in an unconstellated or unformed way, and then things don't work. And what is easy to do when I've got like a really, really good start and then I put it through whatever the strainer and I end up with something that is [ __ ] The strongest and easiest defensive reaction is to just chop the whole thing down, to give up. Not work through it, not find a way to work, to give up. Amputate your desire. And if y'all are puer aeternis, y'all have done this probably. You've taken something that you're really excited about, you've become cynical about it, and you've said, "This is never possible. This is [ __ ] This is not possible," and therefore I don't want it anymore. You get rid of your want and you lose a piece of yourself in the process. People are asking, "What's the alternative?" I'll show you, but it ain't pretty. Actually, I'm going to try to show you. I should say next pattern. This you guys. Okay. Now, we're going to talk about finishing moves. Y'all ready? Finish him.
However, all that he praises, he does not stand by, for he assimilates the whole thing intellectually and takes it back to his imaginary world. It is a trick which many puer aeternis form. The realization that they should adapt to reality is an intellectual idea to them, which they fulfill in fantasy but not in reality. The idea is executed only in reflection and on a philosophical level, but not on the level of action. It looks as though they have quite understood, as if they have the right attitude, as if they know what is important and right, but they don't do it. This whole thing, all of the answers that we're sharing with you will be colonized by the puer, and you'll turn it into a philosophical thing, right? You'll spend time on the internet arguing about right and wrong instead of serving the homeless in a soup kitchen. You will spend time posting things on the internet looking for answers. Grow up for what? This is beautiful. For what? Right? So, like this is staggering. I was glued, but why should I do it? Y'all get this. I'm not trying to like [ __ ] on this person, by the way. We'll, we'll get to community in a second, but this puer, like, you, you'll see the puer. The puer is like, it hit me, but why, why should I do it? So, this philosophical weird [ __ ] thing is like, if it lands and if you know it's true, the puer rises up within you. It's like, "No, I will not lose to this. I'm going to counter combo. I'm going to turn it into philosophy. I'm going to reflect. Why should I do this? Give me a reason. Give me an existential reason. I'm not going to [ __ ] me. Don't tell me to fill out resumes. Give me an existential reason for why I should." Even though it hits. So, the puer complex will intellectually claim whatever insight you do have. As transformation starts to happen, it'll be like, "No, I'm..." It does this really tricky reverse combo thing. And if y'all like pay attention to these posts, y'all will see these patterns. You'll see puer visible, right? "I was staggered. I was glued. Never in my 40 years have I felt so understood. Why not live in fantasy? Why bother being in a relationship if it's just meh? How is that better than staying alone?" There it is. Holy [ __ ] This is wild. Marie Louise von Franz, in like 1905 or whatever the [ __ ] when this was written, on page 43 of her text. I'm not reading you. She's reading you. She called it. And look at this. 138. Look at that. This ain't a small number of upvotes for our subreddit. I'm not trying to call this person out to say that they're bad. You guys get that? This is the pattern. Okay.
Next thing that I think is one of the trickiest problems in the specific neurotic constellation that the puer aeternis tends to grasp at everything which would be the right thing to do and then to draw it back into his fantasy theory world. He cannot cross this very simple border from fantasy to action. It is also the dangerous curve in the analysis of such people. For unless the analyst constantly watches this problem like an alert fox, the analysis will progress marvelously. The puer aeternis will understand everything. Will integrate the shadow and the devil's watchdog behind it. It is all a sham. The whole integration takes place up in the sky and not on earth, not in reality. So that it comes down to having to play the governess and ask what time he gets up in the morning, how many hours have been worked in the day, and so on. It is a very tedious job, but that is what it boils down to, because otherwise the fantastic self-deception occurs, which can very easily catch the analyst.
So this is like, even as the analyst, if you're in an analytical relationship with a puer aeternis, they will eat what you're serving with a big ass spoon. They'll be like, "Oh man, this is so great. I feel so seen. I feel so heard. I feel so rocked. I feel so whatever. I feel heard. Dr. K is great. I made a breakthrough. Everything's awesome. Like, oh my god, this is amazing. I can't wait for part two." But I'm not doing anything. I'm never doing anything. I can't wait for part two. Part two is going to...
be great. I'll do something after part two. So, they can even do all of the work. But y'all, y'all have been saying, I've been catching you from day not day one, but you know, I've been catching you a lot. And that's why because if I don't catch you, it'll slip past. Then you have to start catching yourself. Once you start catching yourself, the transformation has the space to happen. Okay. All right. We got one more. So we also have a very mature community, right? The puer very often has this mature detached attitude toward life, which is normal for old people, but which he acquires prematurely. The idea that life is not everything, that the other side is valid too, and that life is part of the whole existence.
I have met many people with a similar difficulty constellation who do that. They live only on condition, which means that they secretly, that secretly they constantly flirt with the idea of suicide at every step of their lives. They think that they will try something or other, and that if it does not work, they will kill themselves. The puer aeternus always keeps his revolver in his pocket and constantly plays with the idea of getting out of life if things get too hard. The disadvantage of this is that he is never quite committed to the situation as a whole human being. There is a constant Jesuitical mental reservation. "I will go into this, but if I, but I reserve my right as a human being to kill myself if I can't stand it anymore. I shall go through the whole experience to the bitter end. If it becomes too unsufferable, for if it does, I shall walk out of it." And therefore, the person does not become whole. If one cuts off the wholeness of the experience, one cuts oneself into bits and remains split because of transformation. Oh, because transformation can only take place if one gives oneself completely to the situation.
So this is what I've seen. Like, so I've worked with a lot of gifted kids, worked with a lot of degenerate gamers, worked with all these like kind of people, like all these poos, and suicide is the ultimate escape, escape hatch. If things get too hard, I can always peace out. So I had a patient once who kept a noose in their basement, and the thing was, they didn't want to die. They wanted to live. But the noose was a source of comfort. It was a source of safety that if, if I do want to, if this gets too hard for me, I've got an out. It is the suicide is the ultimate, and not just suicide itself, the capacity for suicide. You are telling the world, "I have one final trump card that will allow me to escape any commitment." The world can demand whatever commitments it wants of me. I don't have to fully commit to them. So we see suicidality, not necessarily suicide, but the, and this is like kind of how we know, like if suicide for you is like the ultimate relief, right? It's not like escaping the pain right now, which is often times what it is when it's acute. And if y'all are feeling that, in both cases, you should see a mental health professional. In the case of acute suicidality, you all should really seek emergency services. I, I mean that. But suicidality for the puer looks a little bit different. It's like your parachute if things get too hard. It's your ultimate escape. And this is the whole problem of the puer is that if you leave yourself an escape hatch, if you are never willing to commit, if you never take the plunge, then you will never live life. You'll live, as Bane said, a provisional life, a half-life. Three. Y'all get me?
Okay. Now comes the hard part. These are the patterns of the puer. So what do we do about it? "Anyone else pissed at Dr. K's socioeconomic views?" This post was sparked by the most recent HG YouTube video, "Why You Feel So Drained," yet my resentment towards the issue has been building up for a while now. To start off, I'm a four-plus year HG fan, and I love Dr. K's work. While my tone may be sharp, nothing in this post is intended to be intended as a personal attack or a devaluation of HG's massive contribution to the mental health space. In HG's most recent video, Dr. K roasts a 20-something girl on TikTok for not being able to hack it on a 24K salary and 1660 monthly rent. The premise is that the younger generations were spoiled by the boomer economy and that life was not meant to be easy and effortless as we were led to believe. The solution is basically to have your blood work done to rule out somatic issues. Use your cell phone less and then do a little bit more work every day, whether you feel like it or not. Kaizen, baby, let's go. Dr. Dr. K then pads this tough love with some anecdote of his Indian grandmother running out of flour, blah, blah, blah. How dare he complain about 40-hour work weeks and having to do chores on the weekend in Europe and America. What Dr. K fails to disclose is the fact that he himself grew up in enormous socioeconomic privilege and never had to personally face any real hardship regarding money and survival. As such, his tough love comes across as acrimonious and uncompassionate.
Okay, so this person goes on to say, you know, all the privilege that I had. Okay. Could she be more optimized? For sure. However, some of us aren't running from laziness. We're running on fumes. And before you preach hard work and hustle from a tower of generational wealth, try asking what it feels like to build a life with no net, no map, and no rest. Okay. Dr. K's advice comes across as tonedeaf. And look at this. 368. This is huge. A lot of people resonate with this. So, I want y'all to pay attention to what's happening here. Okay. I'm not saying this person is right or wrong. Now, what we're going to do is read this.
"Through the transference, they begin to hope that perhaps they might trust or love again." I got to pause for a second. We got to talk about transference. So, in psychotherapy, there's this concept of transference. And what happens when you're sitting with your therapist is that your therapist is supposed to stay neutral. And the reason that they stay neutral is if they stay neutral, they kind of create a vacuum, right? So, normally when two human beings interact with each other, you're responding to my signals and I'm responding to your signals. "You're an idiot." "No, you're an idiot." "You're stupider." "No, you're stupider." Now, if one person is neutral, what comes out of the other person? Right? So, if I, if I'm like hitting the tennis ball across the net, you're hitting it back, and you're responding to what I'm giving. The responses go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So, these analysts, Freudian, Jungian, whatever, discover there's this really cool thing that happens, which is that if you're neutral, the person starts projecting onto you. So if you give them nothing, something from them will come out and will be placed upon you. Right? So if there's like neutrality, it's kind of like nature abhors a vacuum. If you just, if you as a human being sit with another human being and you are a vacuum, you'll pull stuff out of them. So this is what happens with transference. This is why we use it. And that's where the real money is. The stuff that really bothers people, like the deep stuff in there, can only come out when you are a vacuum.
So let's read a little bit about the puer. "Through the transference, they begin to hope that they might trust or love again. But you can be sure that the love which first comes up is completely childish. And the analysis very often knows what will happen, and that it will just mean disappointment again and be of no use." Preaching does no more good than it would to a small furious child who just does not listen. How can one meet this tremendous problem? If one shelves it as something hampering in life, as a source of illusion and trouble, then one is no longer spontaneous but disillusioned and grown up in a wrong way. But if one lives it as just impossible and reality hits one over the head, that is a problem. What the problem of the puer is, is when you're working with a puer, they will eventually evoke a transference towards you, and that transference is where the healing happens in an analysis. So they start to project onto you, and it is in that projection that the healing happens. But when that projection happens, there is a huge step. So here's the step. First, step number one is, "I'm hopeless because I've tried and nothing works." Step number two is, "The analyst shows up, and the analyst is great, and the analyst has all of the answers." Step number three is, "The, is a disillusionment in the analyst. This guy can't help me after all. This guy is false. This guy doesn't get it. This guy kind of does this sort of stuff." This is the steps of, of transference. This is why this is important. No hope. Hope in someone else. Disillusionment with self. The fourth step. Can y'all guess what the fourth step is? This perfect person cannot help me. What is the next step, y'all? Why does this have to happen? What does this pave the way for? Very good. Self-help.
So, y'all may say, "Oh my god, Dr. K is such a [ __ ]. He's calling this person out." Right? And it's got 368 up votes. Let's read the top response. "Did we watch different videos? I just watched last night and he spent half the time harping on how unfair the situation is and emphasizing that no solution is good, but framing his advice as the lesser of two evils. At no point does he roast her or suggest that what is happening is how things should be. It's also important to understand he isn't giving her advice specifically because he doesn't know her full situation. He's using her question to give more generally applicable advice. I honestly thought it was a bit overdone and that obviously the audience would understand he's giving you something you can control, but reading this post I understand why he did it." This is why I call this transference. Not because I'm right and they're wrong. I don't even remember what the, the video is about, to be honest. Do you all see what is happening here?
So for a puer to come out of it, they must move through these phases. You're hopeless. You get your faith in me. I give you solutions. You reject them. You reject them for a thousand different reasons. They get co-opted by your intellectual structure. You philosophically reject them. You decide that you're going to do it with vim and vigor for all of 72 hours and you give up due to impatience. Or you say, "This guy doesn't get it." And this is why it is hard. This is why psychotherapy has evolved in the way that it has. Because therapists can't give advice. It's never going to work. I could give y'all advice until I'm blue in the face. Whatever advice I give, I can guarantee you that someone will post and say, "This doesn't work for this reason." And then someone, and I'll say, "Okay, then do this." And they'll say, "This doesn't work for this reason." I can't give advice. It doesn't work. What must happen is transference. And this is what gets really weird. I think transference is starting to happen parasoially. So, this is where things go completely off the rails. I'm going to just share what I think is going on.
So, the first is there is a collective unconscious, which is pueris. I feel it. You feel that we have some connection. I think the way that transference transforms someone is via some weird collective unconscious kind of [ __ ] thing. I don't know. Like, this is really weird. What is the mechanism of transformation when two human beings connect? So as I make this content on the internet, there are two ways to receive it. MindHive is right. Right? So like, I know it sounds crazy. This is MindHive. Like it goes on and on and on, 12 days, like, like a hundred posts or some [ __ ]. Not a hundred, like maybe 40, 50. We are connected across this weird collective unconscious bridge. And something is going on where if y'all want to lose faith in me, that is good. You must lose faith in me. And when you lose faith in me, the only thing I implore you is that you find it in yourself. You look at all of these patterns that we've talked about, and you sit with yourself. You struggle with yourself. It is not about doing anything. It is about looking at the way that your mental construct is. Recognizing that you have greatness within you which needs to be birthed. But grappling with the terrible fear that in order to birth that greatness, you have to risk that it will die 100%. You have to go into battle and kill or be killed. The problem is that y'all are sitting on the sidelines. Y'all are never committing 100%, and so your dream can never become a reality. And if you are never giving it your 100%, you will continue to live a provisional life. I can get you this far, but I cannot transform you. The advice that I give will not work. It will never work. This is the limit of what I can do. The rest you have to do on your own. And there is no way that I can find some perfect solution that will give you the benefit without the risk. You guys can try to optimize, philosophize, efficiency, whatever the [ __ ] like, whatever the [ __ ] y'all want to do, but until you learn to pay the price, nothing will work. And this is happening within our community. The amount of people who have lost faith in me in the last year is astronomical. Astrology video, socioeconomic views, and like, this is the crazy thing. This is not what I said. This is what I said. And I'm not blaming that person. This is important to understand. Like, don't get your ego caught up in this, cuz mine isn't. I don't feel bad or good or whatever. I don't feel like I won or lost or whatever. I take this feedback seriously, by the way. And I do like change it, make changes and incorporate it and things like that. I try to adjust my tone. Not on this lecture. Subsequent [ __ ] that gets uploaded to YouTube, sure, I'll be more sensitive. So, we're like growing here. We're going through these phases of disillusionment with Dr. K, which is a good thing. I've tried really hard for y'all to not put me on a pedestal, but I'm getting pulled along with the transference just like y'all are. And when I say I'm an ordinary person, I really do believe that. I think the only difference, if even there is one, is just where I am on my journey. I've managed my puer in a way that like it just shows up sometimes now, but it's not like I don't have my struggles or anything like that.
So this trans, this is not something you can do. It is a transformation that must happen on the psychological level. The war that you need to fight is not in action. It is not just "do it." It is like when there is an impulse within you to not want to do it, to do it. And you have to be careful because if you amputate off your desires, you're going to end up cynical, which happens a lot too with poos. They end up with like the cynical view, right? So I'm going to just share this. I feel like I could be 100 times more productive if someone else just took over my life decisions and just ordered me around like a robot. Right? That's what a puer wants. It's the problem of puer in a nutshell. "I just can't get myself to do anything." Well, like, how do you get yourself to do something? You fight internally. You recognize what these moves are. Right? That's totally what you want. No, it isn't. People say that's what I want. "I wish people would order me around." When you get ordered around at your job, how do you feel about it? Not great. When I order you around, how do you feel about it? Not great. That's the problem. The puer lives in the paradox of "I want this thing," and when I get it, "Right, so people are talking about executive dysfunction. Someone made a post about ADHD and puer." So this is important to understand. Archetype is at the subconscious level. Above that is personality. Above that is thoughts, genetics. And ADHD, they're like kind of above that. Archetype is way more primordial, right? So if we look at like the layer of who you are, you're an individual. You're part of a family. You're part of a guild. You're whatever. These are at different like levels of zooming in or zooming out of your identity. So, is there a correlation between ADHD and puer aeternus? Probably. I would say undoubtedly in my opinion. But they're not like one and the same. They're like different, they're like different kinds of stuff, right? If I, if I say like, there's a jersey and there's a team. Are the two things connected? Yes. But they're not, they're like at different levels of stuff, right? And there were other people who were criticizing my archetypal stuff. And fair enough, like that stuff is fair. I didn't go into the archetype stuff because now I am because now y'all need to understand what this is. So puer doesn't cause ADHD. So, so this is the key thing.
So now we're going to open things up for questions. Okay. But the key thing here is, if y'all are at the end of this, this lecture, and you're saying, "What do I do?" It's the wrong question. The short answer is nothing. And an equally valid answer is everything. To conquer puer, to purify puer, is what I would call it. You must understand things at the psychological level. See that tension. See that struggle and move against it. Notice the thousand ways that it moves you towards inaction. It'll find a thousand tricks, and if you meet those, it'll find a thousand more. The beautiful thing is that if you start acting in contrary to it, it will purify on its own. Take the plunge. Things may not be okay. But what choice do you have? The choice you have is to sit around and idle for the rest of your life. Right? So this is where someone's saying, "So do the opposite." No, that won't work either. Nothing you do will work because if you say, "Okay, I'm just supposed to do the opposite." Practically, that can work. But if you're not careful, puer will hijack that as well. So it'll, it's so tricky. It'll select things where the opposite, this goes back to this thing. You'll remember when I pointed out that they'll do work, but they'll do a work to escape work. That's what's so tricky about it. So you have to struggle internally. Fight it on the level of psychology. Recognize that you have this voice within you that is trying to come out, and it's, it's scared. It has this childlike perception of what the world is. So what I would do is take an attitude of, "Let me figure this out. Let me try and really give it my full forth effort," because if I run an experiment and I cut it off halfway, I don't actually have any good data. Huge problem with poos. They think they have data, but what they have is a series of aborted experiments.
Okay. What's the absolute first step? Question one. The absolute first step is watching this video again. Just watch it again. And this is what I mean. So like, the reason this lecture is hard, and when I say like this stuff, like this is, this is the beginning of the end for the people who get it, right? We're going to move on to step four, which is, you don't need me anymore. Once this transformation happens, you don't need me. That's the point. That's why we showed up, right? Then I'm going to go on to doing things that I enjoy in life. So the absolute first step is to try to listen to my message, not my words. And for those of you who don't know how to do that, which I imagine is a lot of people, that's exactly the problem, right? So you have to learn how to listen instead of do. Don't do, listen. And if you're not hearing it, that's okay. There's a fundamental quality of listening. And we get so externally oriented, like literally our orientation, the way that we're facing is outside of ourselves, that we forget how to listen. So, so if I tell you to do something, you can do it, but then puer will hijack you. It'll hijack you. If you're in the doing phase, what you need to be doing is looking at puer. Don't let it hijack you. But don't let it is not something you can do. It is not an action you can take. It is like a direction that you're facing. So what I would literally do is watch this again and listen. And this is what's hard is I have to convey a message at the level that will resonate with the collective unconscious. I'm not talking, I'm, there's words up here, but then there's like a message that I'm transmitting via the collective unconscious. And I know that sounds [ __ ] weird. It's happening though. So that's what you all need to listen for. The other thing that y'all can do, right? So for those of y'all that are not going to watch it again and you want a [ __ ] answer, here's a [ __ ] answer. Pay attention to the patterns, right? We laid out the patterns of puer because it's not the first step. So, I guess the first step is watching. Watch, watch, watch, watch, watch yourself. I've given you the patterns. That's the most I can give you, right? I can show you the move set. It's kind of like asking like, okay, now that I know the move set of this character in Street Fighter 6, what's the first button I push? Do you guys see how that's an absurd question? You don't always want to start with low kick or upper kick or jump kick or whatever. There's no right or wrong answer there. The orientation needs to change. The first step depends on what version of puer is active within you. So I suppose then you could say the first step is observation. But that too is like tricky to do. Okay. And by the way, this is also the limit of what I can do. This is the most that I can do. I'm trying some weird collective unconscious transmission. Hey y'all, hope you enjoyed today's video. We talk about a bunch of topics like this on the channel, so be sure to subscribe for more. If you're already subscribed, GG, and we'll see you in chat. [Music]