---
slug: von-franz-divine-child-eb2f7a8f
title: "von Franz on Divine Child"
author: "Marie-Louise von Franz"
work: "Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood"
section: ""
year: "1970"
tradition: jungian-core
themes:
  - divine-child
fragment: |
  The child is always behind and ahead of us. Behind us, it is the infantile shadow which we leave behind, and infantility which must be sacrificed -that which always pulls us backwards into being infantile and dependent, being lazy, playful, escaping problems, responsibility and life. On the other hand, if the child appears ahead of us it means renewal, the possibility of eternal youth, of spontaneity and of new possibilities-the life flow towards the creative future. The great problem always is to make up one's mind in every situation whether there is now an infantile impulse which only pulls backwards, or an impulse which seems infantile to one's own consciousness but which really should be accepted and lived because it leads forward.
lead_in: ""
reflection: |
  Von Franz is naming a discrimination that almost no one actually makes. The pull backward and the pull forward announce themselves in identical phenomenological clothing — both feel like relief, both feel like escape from what currently presses. The lazy afternoon, the sudden desire to drop everything, the fantasy of starting over somewhere new: each of these can be either regression or genuine renewal, and the soul cannot tell them apart by feel alone. That is the hard center of what she is pointing at.
  
  The difficulty — not to name it too cleanly — is that the logic of not-suffering runs through both directions equally. The infantile pull backward promises that if one retreats far enough into helplessness, someone or something will take over; the impulse forward promises that if one moves toward the new, the weight of the present will dissolve. Both are bypass. But von Franz is not collapsing the distinction: she is insisting it exists and that the work is learning to read which is which in this moment, in this situation, without a formula. Consciousness cannot be borrowed for that reading. No general principle survives contact with the specific case. The discrimination is always local, always present-tense, and always costs something to make.
reflection_v0_3: |
  The sentence that carries everything here is the last one — and it is almost unbearably practical. Von Franz refuses to resolve the ambiguity into a rule. She doesn't say "follow the child" or "discipline the child"; she says the work is discernment, case by case, situation by situation. The image of the child appearing both behind and ahead is precise in a way that could easily be missed: it is not two different children, but the same figure, and which direction it faces depends entirely on where you are standing. What looks like spontaneity might be avoidance wearing a costume; what feels like irresponsibility might be the only honest movement available. The tradition Hillman would represent pushes back gently here — he would resist the binary, suspicious that "infantile" still smuggles in a developmental hierarchy. But von Franz isn't ranking — she's asking for attention. The question she leaves you with is the one you'll need this afternoon: is this the pull backward, or the opening forward?
parent_id: vonFranz_1970_Puer_Aeternus_A_Psychological_Study__par0009
source: oracle-v3-retrieve
generated: 2026-04-17
regenerated: 2026-04-18
prompt_version: v2.7
status: draft
---

Franz writes:

> The child is always behind and ahead of us. Behind us, it is the infantile shadow which we leave behind, and infantility which must be sacrificed -that which always pulls us backwards into being infantile and dependent, being lazy, playful, escaping problems, responsibility and life. On the other hand, if the child appears ahead of us it means renewal, the possibility of eternal youth, of spontaneity and of new possibilities-the life flow towards the creative future. The great problem always is to make up one's mind in every situation whether there is now an infantile impulse which only pulls backwards, or an impulse which seems infantile to one's own consciousness but which really should be accepted and lived because it leads forward.

— Marie-Louise von Franz

Von Franz is naming a discrimination that almost no one actually makes. The pull backward and the pull forward announce themselves in identical phenomenological clothing — both feel like relief, both feel like escape from what currently presses. The lazy afternoon, the sudden desire to drop everything, the fantasy of starting over somewhere new: each of these can be either regression or genuine renewal, and the soul cannot tell them apart by feel alone. That is the hard center of what she is pointing at.

The difficulty — not to name it too cleanly — is that the logic of not-suffering runs through both directions equally. The infantile pull backward promises that if one retreats far enough into helplessness, someone or something will take over; the impulse forward promises that if one moves toward the new, the weight of the present will dissolve. Both are bypass. But von Franz is not collapsing the distinction: she is insisting it exists and that the work is learning to read which is which in this moment, in this situation, without a formula. Consciousness cannot be borrowed for that reading. No general principle survives contact with the specific case. The discrimination is always local, always present-tense, and always costs something to make.

---

Marie-Louise von Franz · *Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood* · 1970