You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In certain religious ceremonies one can observe how society tends to institutionalize the major universal affect-arousing situations and, by linking them to suitable occasions, utilizes them for purposes of real social values (5), (8), (10). To the extent that these affect-arousing situations constitute a common and significant experience for members of a social group, a community of participants is formed. For such a group, mass participation in the observance of a ceremonial may serve both as a means of arousing and discharging those affects which are peculiarly linked to the particular event. All the members of the wedding, for example, experience to a greater or lesser degree their own emotional relationship to the momentous event of taking a mate for oneself. This is as true for those as yet unmarried as it is for those already married. Clinical psychoanalytic experience makes manifest the various forms of affect aroused in patients who attend such rites.1