In civilized societies, which we will call pro-European, the mechanism of initiation, this core of culture, is gradually eroded, reduced to class, confessional, professional forms, and in modern society it is preserved only in residual forms. European civilization, as a result of the powerful development of Christianity and Catholicism, is the cradle of anti-sacral tendencies. Most initiations are part of more ancient ones, closer to folk traditions and the way of life of civilizations. So, according to A.M. Firsova “should look for the main roots of counter-initiation in the West” in Catholic scholasticism and the Vatican. Due to the pronounced tendency to imitate the West in Russia, modern society is a society that has destroyed previous rituals and has not created anything in its place. It should be noted that, of course, there are certain age stages marked by a new social status: “you are going to school, you must behave like a big person”, “you are already 14-16-18, you must think about the future”, “you are already 25-30 -40, it’s time for you to have an apartment, a career, a family, children”...[4]. The individual in particular and society as a whole, subjected to counter-initiatory ceremonies or who have not undergone initiation at all, find themselves in conditions of a break with tradition, and as a result, a violation of their cultural identity. In our essay we will mainly address the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Having analyzed research on the issue of initiation, we can argue that initiations initially had as their goal not only the assignment of a new social status to the initiate, and, consequently, his integration with the group, but also the psychological restructuring necessary to obtain this status - a new social self-identification of the individual . Due to the assimilation of different cultures and ethnic groups, as well as a powerful course towards Europe and the West, in Russia there was a loss of previous forms of initiatory institutions that could involve a person in deep experiences that cause transformation. However, a number of such institutions can be identified: military service, higher education, and entry into the workforce. There is one more institution, sad as it may be, but quite common in Russia: prison [4]. In pre-revolutionary Russia, one of the main forms of male and female initiation was education in gymnasiums and lyceums away from the family at the age of about 14, precisely during the period when girls and boys began to transform into girls and boys. Today, studying at the institute begins at the age of 18-20, when society already perceives young people as full-fledged adults, but still students. Those. it is assumed that they have already undergone initiation into adulthood, and they can already lead a full adult life. The leading component here is permission to have sex. But in reality, before the institute, no one gave such initiation and permission. This is reminiscent of the first examination of girls by a gynecologist, where the question is asked: “Are you sexually active?” For a girl, this question can be perceived as a surrogate for initiation: “Society already allows me to be sexually active.” In this situation lies, in our opinion, the most important contradiction, which creates tension and is a consequence of many early marriages and “difficult” destinies. Society looks at schoolgirls as ready for adult life, but the family, of course, does not. At the institute, society (we do not include parents here) has no doubt that they are already adults, but parents only think: “This can happen.” After graduation, society no longer “thinks” about this at all, and parents wonder that now the child has a higher education and it’s time to have grandchildren, that their child is already an adult. Age and status indicate emerging adulthood, but there is no internal transformation into an adult. Since there was no official parental permission for sexual intercourse. The same is true with other “attributes of adulthood”: alcohol and smoking. In psychotherapeutic practice there is quiteOften you have to deal with a situation where smoking is a powerful unconscious symbol of adulthood and freedom. The answer to the question: “When can boys and girls do what adults do?” in the family, almost always remains unanswered. On the one hand, a vacuum arises, the so-called gaping “social void,” and on the other, perhaps the strongest of motives, the motive to be an adult. Any initiation, as is known, is structurally divided into three phases: 1) separation of the individual from the collective; 2) border period; 3) reincorporation into the team. According to many researchers, and we completely agree with this, a student and a young man drafted into the army go through these stages. Receiving a higher education can be an institution of initiation, but if a number of conditions are met: studying in another city or country, most of the hardships of life and education are lived and decided by the “adept” himself, and not by his parents. Today, if military service is a form of initiation, it is very “joyless” and in some extremes. In our opinion, it is the family, the parents, that can and should take on the role of the initiating organization. How and when to perform the initiation “rite” is decided by the parent himself, based on simple observation of his child, guided by the readiness of the “adept” himself. Readiness consists of a combination of two factors: physical maturity and the level of psychological maturity. These two components are very individual. A parent can perform the initiation rite with a simple conversation in which he expresses his readiness to accept that his son or daughter can have sexual intercourse. In reality, most parents are not only not ready, but tend to shift this function of permission to society or to keep silent altogether according to the principle “it will resolve on its own.” In our opinion, many problems of adolescence are erased if parents are capable of such dialogue with the child. Discourse on the problem of initiation certainly leads to the concept of infantilism, and personal immaturity gives rise to social immaturity. Having become a parent, an infantile personality has every chance to raise uninitiated boys and girls with an infantile personality structure. The initiation process has significant sex and, accordingly, gender differences. Thus, in modern society, it is customary to measure the criteria of adulthood more often by external standards than by internal content. Turned 18 - that means you're an adult; she works, is married, has given birth - that means she’s already quite an adult. However, de facto, it is increasingly being discovered that the presence of these social attributes does not really affect in any way whether the owner of the attributes feels like an adult woman and a mature personality - or, under all this social layer, continues to remain in the state of a little girl, poorly able to cope with the life tasks of adulthood . Which again seems to hint to us that in order for the transition from age to age, from status to status to actually take place, formal signs of “adulthood” are absolutely not enough. Psychological initiation is also necessary, an internal transition from one state and sense of self to another. In modern pro-European society, to which we include Russia, truly feminine qualities, such as tenderness, wisdom, fragility, the ability to give unconditional love and devotion, are valued among women and parents are noticeably lower. But it is in them that the true strength of a real woman lies. It turns out that as girls grow up, they become more and more susceptible to the stereotypes of modern society. Starting in kindergarten, they are forced to compete with boys academically; achieve your goals at any cost; rely only on yourself and your strengths in your future adult life. Such masculinization cannot lead a girl to transform into a woman, but leads to a surrogate initiation into an androgynous personality. For men, the onset of biological maturity is not as clearly marked as for women, so male initiations are cultural rather than biological transformations. In addition, young men often undergo initiation