There is an increasing appearance in modern society of the eternal boy—the adult male who has not fully grasped his manhood, but is trapped in boyhood.

In King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette use the term “Boy psychology” to describe the eternal boy. They write:

What happens to a society if the ritual processes by which these (gender) identities are formed become discredited? In the case of men, there are many who have had no initiation into manhood or who had pseudo-initiations which failed to evoke the needed transition into adulthood. We get the dominance of Boy psychology. Boy psychology is everywhere around us, and its marks are easy to see. Among them are abusive and violent acting-out behaviors against others, both men and women; passivity and weakness, the inability to act effectively and creatively in one’s own life and to engender life and creativity in others (both men and women); and, often, an oscillation between the two— abuse/weakness, abuse/weakness.

This widespread expression of the eternal boy by immature men who have not been appropriately guided into manhood threatens the social fabric of society.