Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'passage' operates simultaneously as structural metaphor, phenomenological event, and developmental imperative. James Hollis furnishes the term's most concentrated analytical treatment, framing the Middle Passage as a collision between the acquired personality and the demands of the individuating Self — a death-and-rebirth transit that is not merely crisis but vocation. Hollis insists this passage must be traversed consciously; avoidance forecloses authentic selfhood. Janusz and Walkiewicz, drawing on van Gennep's rites-of-passage framework and Turner's liminality theory, systematize the term across the life course, identifying three governing processes — sequential preservation, liminality-as-deconstruction, and integrative reincorporation — that render passage structurally analogous across puberty, illness, bereavement, and therapeutic transformation. Eliade contributes a hierophanic dimension: gates, bridges, and narrow ways are not merely spatial metaphors but ontological thresholds through which profane existence is transfigured, echoing Matthew's 'strait gate' and initiatory imagery worldwide. Easwaran repositions 'passage' in a contemplative register — the scriptural passage as meditative vehicle through which the practitioner traverses inward terrain. Across these voices, a productive tension emerges between passage as imposed disruption and passage as disciplined practice, between the terror of psychological dissolution and the teleological promise of renewal. The term thus gathers liminality, individuation, initiation, and transformation into a single nodal concept of formidable hermeneutic scope.
In the library
12 passages
The transit of the Middle Passage occurs in the fearsome clash between the acquired personality and the demands of the Self... One is summoned, psychologically, to die unto the old self so that the new might be born. Such death and rebirth is not an end in itself; it is a passage.
Hollis defines the Middle Passage as a psychologically necessary death-and-rebirth transit between the persona-bound first adulthood and a more authentic, Self-directed existence.
Hollis, James, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, 1993thesis
This work shows the contribution of concept of rites of passage and theory of liminality to the understanding of transformations in the course of a person's life... the three fundamental processes that govern the attainment of transformation and transgression into a new phase of life.
Janusz and Walkiewicz argue that the rites-of-passage framework, integrated with liminality theory, discloses three structural-functional processes governing all major life-course transformations.
Janusz, Bernadetta; Walkiewicz, Maciej, The Rites of Passage Framework as a Matrix of Transgression Processes in the Life Course, 2018thesis
Therapeutic help itself in situations of crisis also refers to the cessation of previous ways of adaptation and existing in a state of maladaptation until help in creating new functioning mechanisms is forthcoming. Thus, therapeutic work in a crisis is referenced directly to the three-phase structure of the rite of passage.
The authors demonstrate that psychotherapeutic crisis intervention structurally replicates the three-phase rite-of-passage sequence, linking clinical practice to anthropological theory.
Janusz, Bernadetta; Walkiewicz, Maciej, The Rites of Passage Framework as a Matrix of Transgression Processes in the Life Course, 2018supporting
Out of this fated collision, this death-rebirth, new life emerges. One is invited to regain one's life, to live it more consciously, to wrest meaning from misery. Awakening to the Middle Passage occurs when one is radically stunned into consciousness.
Hollis argues that the Middle Passage is catalyzed by radical disruption — illness, loss, crisis — which ruptures the unconscious management of life and compels individuation.
Hollis, James, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, 1993supporting
'Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it'... the same imagery was still used when it became a question of expressing the difficulty of metaphysical knowledge and, in Christianity, of faith.
Eliade traces the narrow gate and bridge imagery across initiatory, funerary, and metaphysical traditions, arguing that passage symbolism universally encodes ontological threshold-crossing.
Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957supporting
Passing through the narrow Gate... even the most habitual gesture can signify a spiritual act. The road and walking can be transfigured into religious values, for every road can symbolize the 'road of life,' and any walk a 'pilgrimage,' a peregrination to the Center of the World.
Eliade argues that ordinary spatial passage is capable of hierophanic transfiguration, the mundane journey becoming a symbolic pilgrimage toward the sacred Center.
Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, 1957supporting
The realistic thinking of midlife has as its necessary goal the righting of a balance, the restoration of the person to a humble but dignified relationship to the universe... 'My life will never be the whole, only the parts.'
Hollis frames the cognitive shift attendant upon midlife passage as a deflation of youthful inflation toward a more humble, wisdom-grounded orientation to existence.
Hollis, James, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, 1993supporting
go slowly, in your mind, through one of the passages from the scriptures or the great mystics... Do not follow any association of ideas or try to think about the passage. If you are giving your attention to each word, the meaning cannot help sinking in.
Easwaran treats the scriptural passage as a meditative vehicle: slow, word-by-word traversal of sacred text becomes an interior passage that displaces discursive thought.
Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
Do not follow any association of ideas or try to think about the passage... When distractions come, do not resist them, but give more attention to the words of the passage. If your mind strays from the passage entirely, bring it back gently to the beginning and start again.
Easwaran elaborates the discipline of passage-meditation as a practice of return — the wandering mind is repeatedly guided back to the text's threshold, mirroring the initiatory pattern of departure and re-entry.
Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
from mourning so often blissful progress arises... would we be able, without them, to be? Is the legend of no avail, how in the lament about Linos daring first music once pierced through parched numbness.
Stein, via Rilke, suggests that grief and mourning constitute an interior passage through which creative and spiritual transformation become possible.
Stein, Murray, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998aside
Almost the entire day I went thus riding until I emerged from the forest of Broceliande. Out from the forest I passed into the open country... blessed was the road by which I had come thither.
Auerbach's analysis of Chrétien de Troyes illustrates how the knight's physical passage through forest into enchanted terrain functions as a literary encoding of moral and spiritual election.
Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953aside
To the right? That is a strange indication of locality when, as in this case, it is used absolutely... Hence it must here have an ethical signification. Apparently it is the 'right way' which Calogrenant discovered.
Auerbach reads the directional marker 'to the right' as ethically charged, indicating that the knight's passage is simultaneously a spatial journey and a moral-spiritual orientation.
Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953aside