Mythology of Adolescence

The Mythology of Adolescence

Adolescence is a journey. It has always been the path from childhood to adulthood, and at a deeper level, the gateway to manhood and womanhood. Adolescence is a process of personal and developmental growth, and for tens of thousands of years adults have sculpted and created clear paths for adolescents to navigate.

Modern culture has all but eliminated these time tested approaches, leaving current teens to navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence without a map or guidance. Universally, almost every traditional culture came upon the same dynamics for working their adolescents; mostly the deliveries differed. It’s critical to remember that they did this for a reason: millennia of trial and error led almost all cultures, often isolated from other cultures and communities, to come to the same conclusion that adolescents need to be guided forward in a clear and specific way.

They did this through initiation practices, enduring and surviving rites of passage, using the Hero’s Journey that mythology expert Joseph Campbell synthesized out for us. Campbell broke down this elaborate system into three phases: Separation, Initiation, and Return. While Initiation, Rites of Passage, and the Hero's Journey seem to be synonymous, and they are certainly interrelated, they each have a distinct flavor to them.

On the path to adulthood, Initiation is the process of the trip, the need to move up and forward. It is the understanding that growth is up there, further ahead on the path. If an initiate’s challenge is to cross a great river, that would be his or her Rite of Passage, the challenge they would need to overcome. Challenge is the key ingredient in rites of passage, and risk is the key to growth. The vessel they would take to cross this river would be the Hero’s Journey, the actual sequence of developmental changes they go through along the way.

Adolescence can be viewed in another mythological way, that of the labyrinth. Most people do not realize there is a distinct difference between a labyrinth and a maze. A maze is built to be confusing to the participant. Blind alleys and blocked paths confuse and confound the traveler, making this journey difficult and frustrating. Conversely, a labyrinth is a single guided path, allowing a clear direction to the center and back out again. Without the confusion and frustration of a maze, labyrinths offer a more subtle, internally focused trip where one learns from the quietness within.

Modern culture has created a scenario where adolescents are expected to get through the maze on their own. The maze is what happens when we look at adolescence as “a phase to get through.” The maze creates anger and lots of failure along the way, often leading the traveler nowhere at all. Getting stuck is common, which often leads to quitting.

The universal structure of initiations and rites of passage were built on the principle of the labyrinth: to create a clear and simple path to adulthood without all the negativity, difficulty, and arbitrariness of the maze. This simple path was created, supported and mentored by those who had walked it previously. The labyrinth represents a trail followed by countless others before, marked clearly for future generations to follow. Like the rock cairns left on a hazy trail by the person who walked there prior, these trails were monitored and maintained for all to use. Many, or most of the ‘guides’ were the elders, giving back and passing on their knowledge. Sadly, elder mentors have become almost extinct in this day of forced retirement, moving to warmer climates, and in the breakdown of extended families.

Thus, today’s teens meander an unmarked trail, the rock cairn aids discarded and ignored. They plow ever forward, stumbling into the blocked passages and closed pathways, looking for signs or clues to the correct direction but not finding them. There is no clear criteria for them to follow or emulate, and they often become lost or take the wrong path.

Adolescence has an often negative image in modern society, although this has not always been the case. Historically, modern adolescent behavior is the exception rather than the rule. There’s a reason so many independent and isolated communities all came across the same dynamics for helping their adolescents through this difficult coming of age period: it worked. Traditional, indigenous cultures did not have the luxury or resources for pursuing and embracing approaches that did not work in their favor. The universality of these approaches worldwide and historically is a clear indication of how well they worked and the necessity of providing them.

We, the former travelers of adolescence, are required by love, history, and experience to create clearer paths for our youth, to provide maps for them to follow, and to remodel our mazes into labyrinths. One of the great crimes in modern times has been to steal these practices from our youth, to prohibit them from pursuing the path all adults should have walked by forcing them into the maze, and taking away the responsibility and rewards of walking the labyrinth laid out before them. The second greatest crime has been in holding this irresponsibility and lack of guidance against them.

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Last Updated April 12, 2003