Societies That Think Depressed Teens Need Euthanasia Also Don’t Want Children to Grow Up

There's a Connection, said Jungian Psychoanalyst Marie-Louise von Franz

A collage of depressed Dutch teenage girls who have been euthanized by the state because they were going through the very normal of death-and-transformation at the end of every teenager’s life.

According to Marie-Louise von Franz, a Jungian psychoanalyst (1915-1998), teenagers aged 14-18 tend to suffer from high rates of suicidal ideation. She explains in her book about The Problem of the Puer Aeternus that teenagers are still being treated as children by their parents and by teachers, despite already being capable of adult efforts. This keeps such teens trapped, waiting for their child-self to die so that society will finally accept them as adults.

Now imagine misreading teenage depression—which is really a yearning for autonomy and recognition of their blossoming adulthood—and suggesting that some depressed teenagers ought to be euthanized instead of transitioned from child to adult? Logically, societies that think that chronically depressed teenagers ought to be ‘cured’ of their trauma with euthanasia also don’t really want children to grow up.