Against Initiation
Stop looking for the sacred father. He's as broken as you are.
One refrain I often hear from men seeking therapy — and certainly from male clinicians talking about such men — is the demand for, and the importance of, an initiation. I loathe this notion and am taking it to task, not just because its a pernicious and short-sighted idea, but far worse: the search for an initiation, and the myth that it can be provided, have a counterproductive effect, in which the desire for growth is actually inhibited rather than facilitated. The very powers that keep one stuck in repetition are perfectly upheld.
So, what do I mean by initiation? In the pseudo-Jungian speak of Southern California where I practice, initiation refers to the notion that a boys need to undergo coming-of-age rituals at the hands of older men, in order to be ushered into adulthood. And by adulthood, they usually mean membership in the symbolic order — the web of language, customs, laws, and norms that constitute society, community, and identity.
The straw man logic goes something like this: A young man had a terrible father or none at all. He grows up acting out as a lost child — smoking weed, addicted to video games, avoiding work and/or relationships — in a vain attempt to reject the inevitable demands of reality. The narrative suggests he needs a father, or a symbolic father-institution, to initiate him into proper manhood.
Why do I have a problem with this picture? Well, not because I believe fathers are irrelevant. Quite the opposite! But I question the concept of initiation in this case, and here’s why.
First, is it that this young man is "uninitiated"? Or is it that he has already been initiated — into something that doesn’t function smoothly, that fails him at the level of desire?
From the first time a child receives cash for a birthday, earns an allowance, buys something from their lemonade stand profits, or tells their parents what career they want to have when they grow up, the process of initiation is well underway. We are initiated, not into some sacred order of adulthood, but into capitalism. We become properly initiated consumers, identifying with the things we purchase and becoming caught in an endless imperative to enjoy.
As Slavoj Žižek puts it: "In contemporary capitalism, we are all already cynics: we know very well how things are, but still we do them as if we did not." Even the young man lost in weed and video games participates: maybe by leaning on his codependent parents who rack up debt, he furthers the endless cycle of capitalist masters collecting their dues. "You must enjoy!" goes the command. If you feel lack, if you feel sadness, if you feel anything less than fulfilled, you must be a failure. Perhaps you should fork over a few grand for that weekend men’s workshop.
Thus, the fantasy of initiation covers over the reality that we have already been initiated — and initiated into a broken world.
When I went back to school to become a therapist, I had a vague, romanticized notion of the Oedipus complex as a kind of initiatory experience. Somehow, it seemed, it was supposed to mark the transition from the comfortable, maternal world of childhood to the competent, autonomous world of adulthood. Surely, if I struggled in life, it meant something had gone wrong with this "Oedipal process.”
Was it that as a child, mom wanted me to be her everything??? Or that dad's world seemed too structured and bounded, excluding vital parts of my desire??? Was I guilty for wanting what fell outside of my father's frame? You can hear in these questions the seeds of the initiatory fantasy: the idea that some new father-figure — therapist, mentor, entrepreneurial life coach, psychedelic shamanic ritual— could come along and “re-parent” me, patching over the original gap.
But what might this fantasy actually serve?
Lacan gives us a radically different reading of the Oedipus complex. For him, the complex isn't about achieving ideal manhood. It is the process through which one becomes a desiring subject. Actually, it’s the process through which one gets subjectivity itself. Through the encounter with the mother's desire (and the impossibility of fully satisfying it), and through the symbolic intervention of the father (the "Name-of-the-Father"), we are inscribed into the symbolic order, into language, into the namable, structured world of others. In other words, the Oedipus complex installs not wholeness, but lack. Not mastery, but division — but a division that fuels our desire and gives us a compass for the quest.
As Freud hints: "Even the ego is not master in its own house." (The Ego and the Id, SE XIX, p. 53.) The subject formed through the Oedipal process is always caught between unconscious drives and the internalized demands of the superego — never fully unified.
From this perspective, those clamoring for an initiation have, in fact, the opposite problem: they are already overly initiated. They have identified too much with the law, internalized too many prohibitions, and built elaborate rituals to defer their own desire indefinitely. In Lacanian terms, they are Obsessional neurotics. Most men. They do not lack the Law; they are drowning in it. The desire for initiation is thus not the desire to enter adulthood but the desire to defer living altogether, to wait for a final permission slip that will never come.
Of course, there are subjects for whom this structure does not hold in the same way. In cases of psychosis, where the paternal function has not been properly inscribed — where, in Lacanian terms, the "Name-of-the-Father" has been foreclosed — the subject may indeed struggle to find a stable place within the symbolic order, within the world. Here, the work is different: it is about helping to construct a symbolic framework that can hold the subject’s experience together, often through creative or idiosyncratic solutions.
Let’s push this fantasy to its limit. You who long to be initiated — what is it you actually want?
I would wager you have already had initiatory experiences. Afterward, you gained something, perhaps a new capacity, but there was always something leftover — a nagging incompleteness that sent you back searching again. Because what you fundamentally seek is not adulthood, mastery, or manhood. You seek the boundlessness of the mother's desire to become accessible again — to find a place without guilt, without prohibition, without shame. In short: you seek permission.
But no one will give you permission. Because — and here is the real knife in the heart — your mentors, your initiators, your guides, your therapists, your analysts, suffer from the same structural lack.
To grow, you must act without permission. You must assume the risk of your desire.
Yes, relationships, commitments, sacrifices are real. But they must be negotiated as an adult — not as a child asking for permission to play.
There is no sacred father to anoint you. The map you seek does not exist, so enjoy your freedom if you dare.