Standing in the Doorway: Liminality and Psychoanalysis

To be in a liminal space, physically, emotionally, or metaphorically means to be on the precipice of something new but not quite there yet. Until recently, the word liminal was mostly confined to academia. Its roots are in Latin, from “līmen,” meaning “threshold” or “doorstep.” In anthropology, it’s used to describe the middle part of a ritual or rite of passage. Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (2019)1 first wrote about the concept of liminality when he developed the idea of the rites of passage. He defined them as sequential: preliminal rites (or rites of separation), liminal rites (or transition rites), and postliminal rites (or rites of incorporation). This transition theory argued that changes in people’s life stages follow such a pattern. Many of these changes look like they are endings—and they are to some degree–but they are really lines in the sand. British anthropologist Victor Turner’s 1967 book chapter Betwixt and Between2 describes the liminal phase of ritual as a departure from the ordinary rules of time, space, and social hierarchy, where people can experiment with their identity. The word has gone on to mean a time or place of transition, usually with eerie, nostalgic, or surreal connotations. Since the start of the pandemic, a niche genre of photography has grown in popularity called “liminal spaces.” It has captured the eeriness and isolation of pandemic life as a time or place of transition, a period marked by uncertainty.

The liminal is between two worlds—on the very edge of what it means to be human—where everything is stripped away from you; where you transcend this life, and experience something beyond it.

Liminal space makes us uncomfortable but