Puer-Senex

Puer-Senex is the technical formulation of the archetypal polarity Hillman articulates across the essays collected in [[hillman-senex-and-puer|Senex and Puer]] (CW 3 of the Uniform Edition): the structural bond between the puer aeternus — the eternal youth, figure of inspiration and vertical flight — and the senex — the old man, figure of form, law, duration, and gravity. Against the reading that treats puer and senex as separate figures, Hillman’s decisive move is to read them as two faces of a single archetypal configuration.

The psychological consequence of this reading is considerable. When puer and senex are split — when inspiration is pursued without form and form is maintained without inspiration — each becomes pathological in its isolated form: the puer as groundless flight, the senex as rigid repetition. The therapeutic task is not the correction of one pole by the other but the recognition of their constitutive relation, so that puer inspiration and senex form can operate together within a single psychological life. The alchemical figure is sol et luna held together; the political figure is the wise old king bearing the youthful fire. See puer-aeternus and senex-saturn.

Relationships

• puer-aeternus
• senex-saturn
• hillman-senex-and-puer