The more we grow up, the more we become wise: the adage is not the reflection of reality. Advancing biological age does not always guarantee maturity. Some adults will remain immature for life when children develop mature behavior early on. The specialists in the question distinguish two types of immaturity: intellectual immaturity and psycho-affective immaturity, also called “infantilism” until the beginning of the XNUMXth century. Being a child all your life is also called Peter Pan syndrome.

To recognize immaturity, it is necessary to have an element of comparison with the behavior of a person said on the contrary “mature”. But how does maturity translate? Difficult to quantify, it is an appreciation that often does not result from an objective look.

Peter Blos, psychoanalyst, has focused his research on the passage from adolescence to adulthood and the question of acquiring this state of maturity. According to his findings, he defined maturity as:

• the ability to control oneself;
• to control impulses and instincts;
• the ability to assume and resolve internal conflicts with moderate anxiety and to overcome them;
• the ability to establish a relationship with others within a group while maintaining critical capacity.

Maturity therefore corresponds to the capacities identified at each age of the human being. For a young 5-year-old child, being mature means leaving your blanket at home to go to school, for example. For an 11-year-old boy, it will be being able to not get carried away in a fight at school. And for a teenager, it is considered that he can do his homework without one of his parents intervening to indicate to him that it is the time.

You can be immature all your life. The immaturity of an adult may be limited to particular areas: some may have normal professional behavior but infantile emotional behavior.

In fact, some men consider their wives as a second mother, others have not gone beyond the oedipal complex: they fall into emotional and sexual fusion.

Affective immaturity is defined by Peter Blos as: “a delay in the development of affective relationships, with a tendency to dependence and suggestibility evoking infantile affectivity, contrasting in adults with the level of development of intellectual functions. . “

Intellectual or judgmental immaturity is a more or less serious lack of critical sense and moral awareness of the fundamental values ​​that any choice requires. In fact, the person is unable to make a free and responsible choice.

Affective immaturity and intellectual immaturity are closely linked because the affective sphere is in constant interaction with the intellectual sphere.

People with maturity issues shy away from getting involved. They postpone the deadlines of their choice. However, they can wake up at 35 or 40 to get out of childhood: have a child, get married to settle down and stop sexual wandering.

The different signs

Immaturity is not a pathology but several symptoms or behaviors can alert those around you:

• exaggerated fixation on parental images;
• need for protection: tenderness is a sign of the need to be protected;
• emotional dependence;
• limitation of self-interest;
• rather particular egoism with stubbornness, narcissism;
• inability to overcome conflicts;
• intolerance of frustrations;
• Sexual immaturity, impotence, frigidity are not uncommon: they have not entered into a dynamic of exchange. We can also note certain sexual deviations or perversions (pedophilia, etc.);
• act childish: they want to get everything they want straight away like children;
• impulsiveness: no control of emotions and immediate thoughts come out violently;
• refusal of commitment: living in the moment, immediacy, the register of permanent novelty.

In an emotionally immature person, one can notice that TV actors and show business stars are more important than everyday people. The artificial universe of the small screen or the computer replaces reality.

The intensive and indiscriminate use of computer games, the Internet and computers allow these people to cut themselves off from the real to enter the virtual, which becomes their new universe, without the constraints and the obligation to adopt the codes of maturity that reality demands.

Intellectual immaturity or immaturity of judgment essentially results in a lack of critical sense or moral conscience to be able to make a choice of life. The person is unable to make a responsible choice for himself or for others.

Intellectual immaturity is considered to be mental retardation which can be profound, medium or mild.

Make the diagnosis

Making a diagnosis and defining a patient’s immaturity is therefore a difficult operation due to the multiplicity of causes and symptoms.

It is essential for family physicians to request an in-depth psychiatric expertise. The psychiatrist will thus be able to specify whether:

• the patient’s lack of progress is of traumatic origin and was slowed down or altered by an external event during his early childhood or adolescence;
• or if this immaturity results from a deficiency of intellectual faculties, which may be due to a disease, or to a genetic defect.

In both of these cases, when the intellectual disability is established, the person is unable to exercise a good judgment that will commit him to a lifetime. It must therefore be quickly taken care of either in a dedicated structure or by the family.