Pilgrimages can provide a pattern of socially sanctioned behavior that serves as a context for new integration and

mastery of conflicts. They then provide a matrix in action for resolution of intrapsychic conflict, the act of pilgrimage facilitating the sublimatory processes leading to psychic change. These pilgrimages began as ambivalent acts of submission to parental imagoes which themselves had both rewarding ego-ideal and punitive-superego aspects. Despite resistances and often with what seemed to be counterphobic pressure, the pilgrims traveled to the sites, not of their own childhoods, but of their actual or idealized familial backgrounds. In the process of developing new solutions to their oedipal conflicts, personal growth was maintained within the context of traditional heritage.