CHAPTER IX
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INITIATION
AND INITIATION RITES
The phantasies of return to the womb and of re-birth, The psychological significance of initiation with which we have just been concerned, are intimately connected with another phantasy which is met with surprisingly often in the investigation of dreams and other manifestations of the Unconscious—that of initiation. The idea of initiation corresponds to a wish that is very deeply rooted in the human mind. In the psycho-analytic study of individuals it is found perhaps most frequently in the shape of a desire for sexual initiation at the hands of the parents (or of obvious substitutes for these); such initiation constituting (in the mind of the phantasy maker) at once a removal of the prohibition which the parents had formerly laid upon all manifestations of sexuality and an invitation to penetrate those mysteries of sexual, reproductive and adult life generally, which they have hitherto jealously guarded for themselves.
It thus appears that in certain minds initiation is regarded as a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the powers and privileges of maturity in the sexual or in any other sphere of life. At the same time, however, the phantasy of initiation is often made the means of surreptitiously bringing about a satisfaction of the old, prohibited, and largely superseded desires of infancy. Thus there are frequently clear indications that it is not only initiation into sex life in general that is required, but initiation Initiation and Incest into the incestuous form of this life which was characteristic of the first object-love of the child. Indeed the very persistence of these infantile desires constitutes one of the principal motives of the initiation phantasy; it is just the fact that all the sexual trends are to an appreciable extent still tinged with the atmosphere of the repressed incestuous tendencies, which makes the removal of the inhibitions and prohibitions attaching to these tendencies to be felt as necessary, before sex life of any kind can be enjoyed with freedom. Thus a boy may dream of "initiation" at the hands of his father, because this signifies to him a removal of the prohibition imposed by his father on all sexual activity on the part of the boy—a prohibition imposed (as is readily recognised by the Unconscious) in virtue of the boy's original direction of his love towards the mother: without such sign of approval and change of attitude on the father's part[70], the boy may feel that the original prohibition is still too powerful to be overcome and that his sexual life will remain for ever under the ban of the strong inhibitions aroused by a sense of parental disapproval[71].
Similar considerations apply to the non-sexual aspects of life, in which at maturity the youth takes his place as an equal of the father, to whom he has hitherto looked up as a superior.
The important and far-reaching changes in general conduct Initiation ceremonies and, more particularly, in the attitude to be adopted toward the elder members of an individual's own family, on the attainment of full growth—involving as they do the overcoming of many habits and inhibitions formed during the long period of human infancy and childhood—are not of a kind to be accomplished without difficulty and conflict. With a view to diminishing this difficulty and to overcoming the conflict of motives which the accomplishment of these changes necessarily involves, there exists a well nigh universal tendency to endow the transition from childhood to maturity with something of a solemn or religious character, calculated at one and the same time to reinforce the motives proper to maturity and to impress the now full grown members of the community with the privileges and responsibilities of their new condition. This tendency has found definite and elaborate expression in the rites and ceremonies of initiation which are to be found in societies of every stage of culture and in every part of the world. These ceremonies are of very considerable interest and importance for our present purpose, for here, as so often elsewhere, the results obtained from the study of racial and social customs on the one hand and from the investigation of the unconscious mental tendencies of the individual on the other, serve very largely to amplify and corroborate one another, leading ultimately to a degree of certainty and precision which it would be difficult or impossible to attain by the pursuit of either discipline alone.
Since the change from childhood to maturity involves readjustments Initiation and re-birth of such a fundamental kind as to constitute to some extent an entrance into a new phase of life, it is not surprising that the initiation ceremony has often in one or more of its aspects taken the form of a symbolic process of re-birth; the re-birth phantasy, as we have seen, being closely associated with the idea of moral or spiritual conversion or regeneration. The process of re-birth in these ceremonies may indeed on occasion be represented by something actually approaching an imitation of the act of birth, as in the case of the Kikuyu of British East Africa, who "have a curious custom which requires that every boy just before circumcision must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet, she pretends to go through all the labour pains and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed. He lives on milk for some days afterwards[72]." Elsewhere the novice is swallowed by a monster and again disgorged, thus simulating the return to the womb and the re-birth therefrom[73]. In still other cases a drama of death and resurrection is enacted by the novices or played before them[74]. Frequently an essential part of the process of initiation consists of a more or less prolonged period of seclusion about the time of puberty[75]; girls especially being often confined in small huts for weeks, months or in some cases years, at or before the time of their first menstruation[76].
These initiatory rites would seem, like the womb and birth General and sexual objects in initiation phantasies which we have already studied, to have in the main two principal objects in view; first, an introduction of the initiated into the rights and responsibilities belonging to an adult member of the community; secondly, an introduction into sexual life.
As a means to the former end, the novice usually receives instruction in the laws, customs, religious beliefs and ceremonial practices of his tribe, or undergoes certain (often very severe) trials of capacity and endurance with a view to ascertaining his fitness to enter into the privileges of maturity.