Psychotherapy of masculinity: male initiations in different cultures

Masculinity and male initiations in different cultures is the topic of my report at the conference of positive psychotherapy.

How initiation men become in different cultures

At what point does a boy become a man? • Different cultures give very different answers to this question, but there is one thing in common among them. • This is necessarily a test, a ritual moment of mental and physiological suffering, through which yesterday’s child becomes a full member of society. • The transition to adulthood is accompanied by initiation (from the Latin “initiation” - “initiation”) • And if in our culture, the initiation of a man is usually limited to issuing a certificate at school, then among other nationalities, everything is much more interesting.

When, when? • To become an adult, you need to pass “exams”, where there are only two grades: “passed” and “failed.” Those who surrender become full members of the tribe. • Among the Ojibway Indians, a young man who “didn’t pass for a man” put on a woman’s dress, and his lot was the most menial work. • In some tribes, a person who failed was expelled, and among the Australian aborigines, the Varangoi considered such a person a child all his life. Until he had gray hair, he had to play with children, wear no clothes or jewelry, and meekly endure the kicks and abuse of any adult member of the tribe. Below I will give various traditions of the world associated with the initiation of men

Initiations of men in North and South America

Torture of North Dakota Indians

• Native Americans from the state of North Daktor annually organize a religious ceremony called Okipa, during which boys who have reached the age of fifteen are subjected to very unpleasant procedures. • They are hung on ropes, the skin is cut and wooden skewers are inserted. • The teenager must hang in limbo all day. • In this way, the Indians learn about fortitude and tolerance for pain, which subsequently greatly influences the man’s position in the tribe.

Hallucinogenic initiation of alcongins

• In the Alcongin tribe in North America. The young men were fed a mixture of plant origin, wysoccan, which was a powerful toxin and hallucinogen. • The main idea of the initiation rite was to deprive the boy of the memory of his childhood, thereby transferring him to the category of real men.

Ritual of the Matis tribe, Brazil

• consists of four extremely painful stages. At the first stage, the initiates inject poison into the eyes of the young: the Matis believe that this is how they improve their boys’ eyesight. • In the second and third stages, the boys are subjected to severe physical pain - repeatedly beaten and lashed. • In the final stage, the boys ingest a poison called campo, extracted from tree frogs. • Kampo is not a hallucinogen, although it can cause strange mental reactions. But there are plenty of physiological effects from it - vomiting, dizziness and uncontrolled bowel movements. • The Matis tribe firmly believes that kampo increases the stamina and strength of boys, turning them into real men and hunters.

Ant bite in the Kater-Mavi tribe

• The Cater-Mawe tribe in the Amazon deals with youthful maximalism in a very radical way. • The fact is that on the lands where the tribe lives there are dangerous and poisonous ants that can sting a person and cause nervous paralysis. • The initiation rite for the young men of the tribe consists precisely in enduring the pain of an ant bite without showing it. • Once a boy undergoes this rite, he is officially considered a full member of the tribe and a recognized hunter and authority.

Amazonian tribe of Sateremawe Indians

• The mitten that the young man must pull onto his hand is filled with bullet ants, whose venom is 20 times stronger than the sting of an ordinary wasp. I think you can now imagine the pain a teenager experiences when he undergoes this rite of passage. • For this purpose, adult members of the tribe collect bullet ants throughout the jungle for several weeks, which are then stored in a certain solution, where they hibernate, retaining their poison. • On a certain day, the men of the tribe gather around a common fire, and the boys pull a mitten with ants on their hands. Then they go to the fire where they dance. Many boys lose consciousness during the ritual, and their bodies shake in convulsions. The pain from an ant bite lasts for at least 24 hours. • But the most curious thing is that teenagers in ecstasy put on the mitten several times, trying to prove to their fellow tribesmen their courage and fearlessness.

Initiations of men in Europe

Initiation the Spartan way

• Anyone who watched “300 Spartans” knows that very stern men lived in Sparta. • But few people know that the teenagers of Sparta had one very interesting ritual. • A boy, having reached a certain age, received the right to commit his first murder. • Usually the first slave or wanderer they came across became the victim. • A child and an adult are completely different people, this is what the ideas of primitive tribes in the most distant corners of the earth agree on. And therefore it is believed that one person - a child - dies so that a new person - an adult - can be born

Initiations of men in Africa

Fight with a lion

• The Maasai tribe, which lives in what is now Kenya and Tanzania, has an elite class of warriors who are especially revered. • But in order to become one of these super-soldiers, the warrior had to be circumcised and also kill a lion with his own hands. • Now the law prohibits killing lions, so the Maasai have fewer real men.

Hamer tribe in Africa

• Every young man who has reached adulthood is required to undergo an initiation rite - to run four times along the backs of bulls standing in a row. • At the same time, he is necessarily naked, which symbolizes his desire to free himself from childhood and join adult life. • The main difficulty of completing the ritual is that the bulls never stand still, and no one is going to hold them. • The one who falls is not recognized as a real man and is obliged to train for another year. • And those who cope with the initiation move into the so-called “maza” category, which symbolizes his official recognition not only as an accomplished man, but also as a real hero.

Initiation in Congo

• The most important event in the Yaka ceremonial cycle is the young men's entry into adulthood. • To mark the end of the school period, new carved masks are made for the celebrations. • The beginning of mukhanda, which includes circumcision, is the most important part of the Yaka of life. • Circumcision and initiation, compulsory for all young men, are carried out in a remote place called mukhandamu-msitu. • Rituals are performed by the main secret societies: Ngoni and yiwilla.

Initiations of men in Asia, Australia and Oceania

Circumcision in the Philippines

• Statistics from 2011 showed that about 93% of Filipino men are circumcised. Interestingly, boys are not circumcised in infancy, but at around age 12, and Filipino teenagers can only be considered male if they are already circumcised. • And if this does not happen, society considers them cowards and weaklings. And in order to escape constant ridicule and bullying, Filipino boys themselves ask their parents to circumcise them. • In the traditional method, no anesthesia is used - instead, boys chew guava leaves as it is believed to reduce the pain of surgery. Instead of a knife, a piece of wood called subokan is used for this painful procedure. After circumcision of the foreskin, the penis is wrapped in white cloth.

Base jumping in the Vanuatu archipelago

• Every April, the men of the small South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu gather to put their young men to the ultimate test. • First they build a tower about 100 meters high. • Boys aged five and over climb the tower, tie a vine rope to their feet and jump down. The idea is to get as close to the ground as possible without dying and maintaining your presence of mind. • The mortality rate during the ritual is frightening, but despite this, this has been going on for fifteen centuries in a row.

Papua New Guinea - blood purification

• The Matausa tribe living in Papua New Guinea considers female blood unclean. The Matausa are convinced that their boys, in order to become real men, must be cleansed of the filth of their mothers. • The elder begins the ritual of purifying the blood by inserting reed tubes into the throats of the young initiates - they then vomit blood. The elders then insert tubes into their nostrils to expel bad blood and mucus from the body. • Finally, the elders make several cuts on the tongues of the young people using an arrow-like instrument. After a painful ceremony, young people become real men in the eyes of the community. • Not all members go through the ritual - you still have to prove that you are worthy. Men who have not completed the ritual are not considered adults and cannot enjoy the corresponding privileges - for example, they do not have the right to marry. In addition, they are considered weak members of the tribe, unable to fulfill their responsibilities as men.

• The Sambia tribe believes that boys must swallow semen - this is the only way they can become men. Sambia boys from seven to ten years old must please experienced warriors for years • According to the belief of the tribe, a man's seed is the source of life and the essence of masculinity. In addition, the Sambia believe that a boy is capable of becoming a father only if he first swallows the sperm of an adult. • However, we are not talking about homosexuality here - men who have gone through the ritual are not considered gay. When boys turn 15, they stop doing this and become seed donors themselves. • Once a man gets married, he is prohibited from further participating in the ceremony. The Sambia believe that female genitals make men's reproductive organs dirty and their sperm becomes "impure", so that it is no longer suitable for children who are about to become adults.

Kaningara tribe from Papua New Guinea

• Teenagers live in seclusion in the House of the Spirit for two months. After this period of isolation, they prepare for an initiation ceremony that recognizes their transition to manhood. • During the ritual, the person's skin is cut with bamboo fragments. • The resulting serrations resemble crocodile skin. The people of this tribe believe that crocodiles are the creators of people. • The marks on the body symbolize the teeth marks of a crocodile that ate the boy and left behind an adult man.

Unambal tribe, Australia

• The elders of the tribe make incisions in the skin of the boys on their buttocks, chests, arms and shoulders, and sand is poured into them to prevent the wounds from healing. Afterwards there should be scars on the body. • To turn a young man into a real man, he is circumcised, and then the urethra of the penis is cut and this procedure is regularly repeated throughout his life, as a result of which the penis becomes “forked.” • After completing the ritual, newly-minted mature men leave the tribe for some time and live separately, but upon their return they are expected to be honored and respected by their fellow tribesmen - the ritual completes their formation as full members of society. • It must be said that the men of the tribe were lucky that they were not born, for example, on the island of Ponape, part of the Caroline archipelago - the men there not only cut the tip of their penis, but also deprive them of one testicle.

Mircea Eliade lists the following stages of initiations

• separation of the neophyte from his mother,..• a more dramatic theme involving circumcision, trials, torture, that is, symbolic death followed by resurrection,.. • a scenario in which the idea of death is replaced by the idea of a new conception and a new birth,.. • a scheme, the main element of which is an individual retreat into the thicket of the forest and the search for a Protector Spirit; • a scenario of heroic initiations, which focuses on victory achieved through magical means (transformation into a wild beast, “rage”, etc. " • food and other bodily deprivations-tests (notches on the body, use of psychotropic plants, etc.) • change of name, • prohibitions on speech contacts with mother and fellow tribesmen, meaning symbolic death, • climbing trees, in some cases - upside down, symbolizing the ascent to Heaven, contact with the Supreme Beings who created the world, etc.

.Research in depth psychology and mythology (K.G. Jung, M. Eliade, S. Grof) show that the experience of “death - rebirth”, “transition” is an archetypal process, i.e. manifestation of the mechanisms of the unconscious (“collective unconscious” according to C. G. Jung). • This means that the “ritual of passage”, initiation corresponds to the dynamics of archetypal processes (and is its expression) in a given period of personality development.. • They will spontaneously manifest themselves during adolescence in one form or another: escape/leaving home, independence, risk, independence, desire to test/test oneself, assertion of oneself in a new capacity, assertion of oneself in a group of one’s own kind, destruction of parental stereotypes and attachments to parents, encountering chaos and the desire to go through it, sexuality, testing oneself with pain, searching for an example, imitation of a hero, exploits, etc.

The danger of lack of initiation

• Initiation themes are evident in the lives of modern teenagers - even in cultures where the institution of initiation no longer exists. • These are teenage groups, with their cruel rules and rituals, sexual promiscuity, tattoos and testing oneself through pain, worship of pop and sports idols, “heroism”, “feats”, rebellion against parental authorities, interests with themes of death and chaos (specific styles of rock music, cinema) etc. • Search for solutions in chaotic, destructive forms • These are surrogates for initiation or pseudo-initiation. • Our culture, lacking meaningful initiation rituals, lacks the psycho-socio-spiritual tools to support the individual going through the process of personal change.

“Belated teenager”

• In psychotherapy, the term “parentectomy” has recently appeared to denote the procedure for liberation from parental bonds, attitudes, and a belated teenager. • A “belated teenager” in this case can be a person of quite advanced age who has never been able to become a psychologically or personally adult, “stuck” in infantile dependence on parents or significant others. • Obviously, he never went through his “initiation of growing up”, did not die as a child and was not born as an adult in his own right. • Such an individual needs psychological help.

Possible therapeutic solutions.
• Work according to the Vasilets method “The Secret of Sacred Marriage” • “Vision Quest”, developed back in 1973 by Thomas Penkson (USA). • Group initiations of masculinity and femininity.

As you understand, this text was copied from my presentation, there are not a lot of details. If you are interested in the topic of masculinity, I invite you to therapy.