IN A series of articles on some of the correlates of initiation ceremonies, Whiting and his students have presented a completely new approach to these customs (Whiting, Kluckhohn, and Anthony 1958; Burton and Whiting 1961; Whiting 1962). Their work marks a radical departure from the interpretation first published in 1909 by Van Gennep, who saw initiation rites as marking three steps in the individual's formal removal from one social status to another: separation from the first status, transition to the new one, and incorporation into the new status (1960:65-115). Van Gennep also established for puberty ceremonies physiological puberty and 'social puberty' are essentially different and only rarely converge (1960:65). So thoroughly were Van Gennep's formulations integrated into anthropological thought their explicit use without reference to their author became customary in the discipline. The radical departure represented by the work of Whiting and his students is from Van Gennep's Durkheimian functionalism to a set of modified psychoanalytic hypotheses. Apparently in sympathy with the Freudian notion cultural institutional is best understood in terms of conflict between the individual and his society, Whiting and his students have attempted to ascertain the extent to which initiation ceremonies may be related to unconscious conflicts in masculine identity as these conflicts stem from the mother-son relationship during the first year of life. Specifically, they assume insofar as male initiation rites are designed to curb disruptive emotions it is those emotions arising from a male youth's conflict as to his sex identity and his consequent need to prove himself a man by exhibiting aggressive and antisocial behavior (Whiting 1962:392). This assumption was an elaboration on an earlier premise boys tend to be initiated at puberty in those societies in which they are particularly hostile toward their fathers and dependent upon their mothers (Whiting, Kluckhohn, and Anthony 1958:361). Such hostility and dependency arise under certain insitutional conditions. We assume, write Whiting, Kluckhohn, and Anthony (1958:361), that a long and exclusive relationship between mother and son provides the conditions which should lead to an exceptionally strong dependence on the mother. Also, we assume if the father terminates this relationship and replaces his son, there should be strong envy and hostility engendered in the boy which, although held in