ABSTRACT
Transition rituals are important for helping people move from one important role to a different important role. In initiation rituals, biogenetic structuralists observe not only that vivid imagery is universal, but that such imagery is often alternated with conceptual material, shifting back and forth between the abstract concepts of a cosmology and the vivid imagery of it. Biogenetic structuralists argue that the holistic, connective right brain is activated in such rituals and likely puts participants into a receptive state. Religious scholar ke Hultkrantz discusses the obviously decentering aspect of Native American initiation rituals, which normally include intense visionary experiences either spontaneous or solicited. Anti-ritual self-inventions are not satisfying because they are disconnected from the collective element that is, disconnected from the surrounding culture and disconnected from our universal human nature. Clinically, the lack of ritualism is difficult to address because social roles require social settings to recognize, ritualize, and reinforce them.
