The Seba library treats Van Gennep in 8 passages, across 3 authors (including Victor Turner, Victor Witter Turner, Janusz, Bernadetta; Walkiewicz, Maciej, Eliade, Mircea).
Van Gennep, the father of formal processual analysis, used two sets of terms to describe the three phases of passage from one culturally defined state or status to another.
Turner canonizes van Gennep as the originator of processual ritual analysis and systematically unpacks his dual terminological framework of separation/margin/reaggregation and preliminal/liminal/postliminal.
, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966thesis
It remained Turner’s task, based on van Gennep’s recognition of the structural similarities of rites of elevation, initiation, healing, incorporation, and transience, to show how this system operated as a way of marking life process.
The foreword positions Turner’s entire project as an extension of van Gennep’s recognition of structural similarities across ritual types, grounded now in specific ethnographic data rather than superorganic generalization.
, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966thesis
He extended the analytic framework of Arnold van Gennep, in which ritual progression consisted of the three-part move: separation from the everyday flow of activities, involving a passage through a threshold state or limen into a ritual world removed from everyday notions of time and space.
Turner’s theoretical contribution is framed as an extension of van Gennep’s three-part ritual progression, with special critical weight placed on the liminal mimetic phase.
, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966thesis
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.
Janusz and Walkiewicz apply van Gennep’s rites of passage framework as the organizing matrix for understanding transgression and transformation across the life course in developmental and clinical contexts.
, The Rites of Passage Framework as a Matrix of Transgression Processes in the Life Course, 2018supporting
Therapeutic work in a crisis is referenced directly to the three-phase structure of the rite of passage that enables to see how functional dimensions are interconnected with structural transformations.
Van Gennep’s three-phase structure is applied directly to clinical crisis intervention, identifying therapeutic work with the sequential logic of separation, liminality, and reintegration.
, The Rites of Passage Framework as a Matrix of Transgression Processes in the Life Course, 2018supporting
Remaining ‘frozen’ in a particular phase of the life cycle that does not correspond to socio-cultural norms leads to the emergence of psychopathological symptoms.
Drawing on the rites of passage model, the authors argue that inability to progress through sequential life phases — a dysfunction of van Gennep’s schema — produces psychopathology.
, The Rites of Passage Framework as a Matrix of Transgression Processes in the Life Course, 2018supporting
A. van Gennep, Mythes et légendes d’Australie, nos. 32, 49; cf. also no. 44.
Eliade cites van Gennep’s ethnographic work on Australian myths as a documentary source for shamanic initiation and the celestial symbolism of rock crystals among medicine men.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951aside
Ignorance and lack of awareness, illustrated in the ritual symbolism of nakedness or wandering, have a protective function in situations of turbulent change and transformation of human life.
The paper invokes liminal symbolism — nakedness, wandering — traceable to van Gennep’s schema to explain protective psychological functions during radical life transitions.
, The Rites of Passage Framework as a Matrix of Transgression Processes in the Life Course, 2018aside