DISSERTATIONS - 2013

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING OF THE RITE OF PASSAGE TO THE MALE GENDER: AN ANALYSIS ACCORDING TO JUNG AND JUNGIANS

Maria Solange Rabelo

Advisor: Prof. Dr. Luiz Durval de Faria.
Key words: Passage rituals, Man-contemporaneity, Male gender

Abstract: This dissertation is a literature revision and is constituted by an attempt of realizing a reflection over the topic: “The psychological meaning of the passage rituals to the male gender: an analysis according to Jung and junguian. The passage rituals, configured as an initiation, in ancient and tribal societies, enabled the boys to go through their second birth as they were secluded from the primary bond with their mothers. Through the eldest men of the tribe, they were inserted in their male identity, returning to the community to take over a social role in the culture they were inserted. Otherwise, in contemporary western societies, there are no more institutionalized rituals of the same size of the rituals from old and tribal communities. The rituals in which young men are initiated, characterized as pseudo-rituals, for instance, the Army and sports, present vestiges from the stages of the initiating process, differentiate from the traditional rituals, but still make it possible, many times, to the boy, get over the motherly figure. Nevertheless, the analytical process, can be found in the present, in the cities, as a possibility of initiation to the contemporary man to accomplish his katabasis, or, his descent. For some years now, western men have sought through men groups reevaluate and reflect over the crisis which the male is going through. However, in our era, it is ours the responsibility for our own choices. The nostalgia of the tribal institutions does not correspond to the western culture in which we are inserted, in which the collective gave way to the individual and, in this sense, the individuation is the process which belongs to the contemporary man, who desires to find his own self-knowledge. business or outside of it.