Rites of Passage
Part of the rites of passage of growing up are what have been termed 'rites of separation from the asexual world...followed by rites of incorporation into the world of sexuality'. These may be formal or semi-formal - 'for some students, going to college is partly a sexual ritual, like the ceremonial dances of the whooping crane' - or take the form of a more private induction: 'formal and artificial...the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among Staffordshire figurs and papier-mâché trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare'.
Freud was particularly interested in Ethnological accounts of 'the "ceremonial" (purely formal, ritual, or official) coitus, which takes place' in connection with 'the taboo of virginity'.
Read more about this topic: Sexual Ritual
Famous quotes containing the words rites of, rites and/or passage:
“Th’ inferior priestess, at her altar’s side,
Trembling, begins the sacred rites of pride.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“If I be left behind,
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support
By his dear absence. Let me go with him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“So I was glad of the fog’s
Taking me to you
Undetermined summer thing eaten
Of grief and passage where you stay.
The wheel is ready to turn again.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)