“It is not possible to live too long amid infantile surroundings, or in the bosom of the family, without endangering one’s psychic health. Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life and remaining forever in the morally poisonous atmosphere of infancy” (C.G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, CW5, par.461)
Anyone who has ever known an adult in their 30’s, 40’s or 50’s who hasn’t left their parental home can attest to the stagnation this results in. What is appropriate for growth for a child is terribly destructive for an adult. Kittens thrive on milk, but adult cats can’t tolerate it.
When I think of this scenario, I think of one of the 
Lord of the Rings movies where Frodo is wrapped up in a giant spider web by a huge and terrible spider. It LOOKED like a cocoon, but really, it was how the giant spider captured its prey. And once the prey was imprisoned in it, she would suck the juices out of them until they died, just a dry husk remaining.
The spider can be a symbol of the devouring mother. Not the real mother ‘out there’, although the actual mother can contribute to not letting an adult child get out in the world and fend for him or herself. But more often, the devouring mother is an intra-psychic phenomenon working within a person who has been unable to leave home.
The Lord of the Rings story sequence with the spider reveals a solution that I believe can be a true resolution of this challenge in the symbolic sense. By using the light of consciousness and a sword, a healthy masculine aspect that is both discerning and can cut the cords woven around one by the negative mother complex, the hero can free him or herself.
A person must LIVE. Live on their own, make their way, try and fail and try again. When one is an adult, sliding back into the comfortable hug of the family home with a cozy bed, food on the table, clothes cleaned and ironed, is both extremely seductive AND destructive.
The psyche does not forgive hiding out in the maternal cave and refusing to grow up. It tends to punish with any number of symptoms or neuroses. Anxiety, phobias, physical symptoms. And as Jung says, once these are at play, it is even harder to leave home. But it is possible to make one’s way out of the nest even once these symptoms have appeared to bar the way and apparently justify the need to remain at home. What does it take? Courage, therapeutic support, patience and faith.
This situation can happen in subtler ways, I think, by hiding in the comfortable. If I come home each night, settle down in front of the television, watch my shows, eat a bunch of food that helps me blot myself out, and just shut down, what life am I avoiding living? Is there something in me which is hungry to move out, try new things, take chances, and LIVE?
‘Fortune favours the bold’ (Latin proverb)
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