• in traditional societies … growing up was a matter of survival … the transition from the naiveté and dependency of childhood to adult sensibilities that sacrifice comfort and sloth in service to the common interest
• psychodynamics ancestors rites of passage

six stages of ancestral passage to adulthood

• varied in form, intensity, duration, and cultural accoutrements, but essentially they were comparable around the world:

1. departure from home, … not with a polite request, but suddenly and decisively
2. a ceremony of death, ranging from being buried in the earth, to immersion, to an effacement of one’s known referents
3. a ceremony of rebirth because an emergent being, a differentiated psychology, was dawning
4. they were given the teachings, in three categories:

• the archetypal stories of the creation, of the gods, of the tribal history;
• the general roles and polity of adulthood in that culture;
• the specific tools of hunting, fishing, child-bearing, and agriculture unique to that tribe.

1. an ordeal of some kind, often involving isolation … one learn to cope with fear and find internal resources
2. after prolonged separation, there was the return to the community as a separated adult

• in this way did young people transition from the naiveté, dependency, and avoidances of childhood to the expectations of adulthood