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Man has sensed intuitively, practiced continuously, and given institutional form and sanction to the social psychological process of degradation as a mechanism of role change.1 This essay will assemble diverse instances of transition from one role to another in which the mechanism can be seen at work in order to illuminate its functional importance from several perspectives. Our data will be organized under the following broad groupings: (a) rites of passage signifying change in age-graded status; (b) initiatory rites involving the acquisition of a new social status in fraternal groups; (c) religious rites requiring a change in the state of grace or condition of moral cleanliness of communicants; (d) changes heralding entrance into an important vocational status and role; (e) political-ideological conversion from deviant or prodigal status back to orthodoxy; and (f) psycho-therapeutic changes which entail drastic revision of the patient's subjectively defined roles, images, and self-concepts. There is a certain amount of overlap between these phenomenal groupings, but both the similarities and the differences will be analytically explored in the discussion.
The concept, rites of passage or transition, refers to the ceremonial commemoration of an individual's movement from one important status to another, from one societally significant milestone of life to the next. The sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church are sometimes offered as a contemporary illustration of the rites of passage. Among many tribal societies, such rites, especially those concerned with puberty and entrance into the adult estate are either preceded by or climaxed with degrading and debasing treatment of the initiates.2 At the same time that the youths are being “instructed”
they are also being herded about, intellectually manipulated, physically mutilated, emotionally traumatized, and otherwise abused. “Thus, death and resurrection are recurrent themes of stepped-up puberty rites. Death means t