Deschooling Dialogues - On Initiation, Trauma and Ritual

Summary

Psychotherapist Francis Weller tells Alnoor Ladha that initiation and trauma both sever us from the world we knew, but trauma is “an uncontained encounter with death”, with no ritual or community to hold us. Individualism, he argues, has starved us of “primary satisfactions” – singing, sharing meals and grieving together – so “We either heal communally or we don’t.”

Rationale

Rituals are one way we say culture gets learned. Weller shows what a culture that lets them lapse teaches: to meet loss alone, so what could initiate us wounds instead.