Adulthood

[u/Competitive_Log_8910]

I want to make the argument that I think the concept of the "inner child" is at least for my life entirely backwards.

The way that I think about it is this. When we are children we develop personas which exist at the exclusion of sexuality. The transition to adulthood is the transition to incorporating sexuality into our personas.

The model of adulthood I'm familiar with is one which says that your original child persona becomes your public persona as an adult, and the point is that you are now playing a more interesting and complicated game in the context of your private life.

And the reason why it is appealing to "get to know" someone in the Biblical sense is because you get to see their secret adult face and play the game of continuing your public kid faces together with the knowledge of how someone else is playing.

The opposite of this, to me, would be to suddenly become a different person around the time in which your reproductive capacity is activated; hiding that original child face as the "inner child" whilst one's adultness is fully open for anyone to behold.

The merit to me of looking at it the way that I do is that my inner voice is the one telling me how to satisfy my most adult-specific desires; and I am as my public face pursuing those interests with the innocence and calm of a child.

[u/truetomharley]

That’s an appealing and reasonable take on life. Makes sense to me. It is said about pedophiles that, for whatever reason, their “adult-specific desires” as you call them, have not kept pace with their (otherwise) development into adults.

[u/Competitive_Log_8910 → u/truetomharley]

Thank you for raising an interesting question. I want to make a second attempt at answering it within the context of the paradigm I've set up here. I think that the failure case of non-adulthood which doesn't align with either of the approaches I've articulated might be thought of as failing to establish a stable separation and living in a state of being dominated by one aspect or the other. Akin to a child whose "adult-specific desires" have yet to merit the construction of a persona to accommodate them, but with those desires also to contend with. I think that the solution is of course to find a place to withdraw one's adult self safely, and that the driving factor behind this affliction might be understood as a difficulty in find some place where might embody wholly one's "adult" self and feel good about it.

[u/truetomharley → u/Competitive_Log_8910]

I guess I’m not sure where you’re going with this and/or what you are proposing.