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In 1909 was published Arnold van Gennep's Les Rites de Passage in which he claimed that certain formal elements of ritual—especially the sequence, the structure, of the rite—were conditioned by the fact that the rite emphasizes a change or transition of some kind. If we analyze these rites into their elements we find that there is always a rite de séparation followed by a period de marge (transition) and a rite d'agrégation. There is a marked tendency for the ritual to proliferate; a rite like a marriage ceremony, which in itself is in a sense a marginal rite between adolescence and manhood, will develop a séparation and a marge and an agrégation rite of its own.1 Van Gennep's theory has met with no opposition; indeed, in these days when so many anthropologists protest against the classical evolutionary and comparative type of anthropology, transition rites are much in fashion.2
It is my purpose to present the comparative method, and to prove that it is far from a negligible approach in understanding the psychology of mankind. I know very well that in taking rites out of their context, as I propose to do, I am neglecting certain factors, but after all there can be no knowledge without the process of abstraction. I believe that there is something common in ritual sequence wherever it occurs, but that the common elements which reappear in all kinds of human communities are not dependent on any specific features of the societies in question but on the eternally unchanged fundamental aspects of the human psyche.