The Odyssey Experience

The following human activities might seem to have little in common: mythical journeys, pilgrimage, tourism, rituals of initiation, conversion, academic sabbaticals, psychoanalysis, honeymoons, boot camp, ceremonies dealing with birth and death, “UFO religions,” brainwashing, fraternity initiations, and being a Rhodes Scholar. According to Neil Smelser in The Odyssey Experience: Physical, Social, Psychological, and Spiritual Journeys, however, they are all examples of “the odyssey experience.” With this term, he encompasses a huge variety of endeavors that involve disengagement from a previous life, a transitory experience of involvement with fellow participants in an ordeal, and a regeneration or transition to another social status. Scholars of religion will recognize a parallel to Victor Turner's theory of pilgrimage and the earlier (1909) theory of rites of passage proposed by Arnold Van Gennep. Smelser acknowledges his debt to these scholars and extends the three-phase model to many other social processes, all of which involve destructuring, a liminal period, and restructuring. Smelser, now retired, was a distinguished professor of sociology at Berkeley who has written about economic life, psychoanalysis, and terrorism; this is his first foray into the study of religion. The results are interesting, although for most scholars of religion probably somewhat disappointing.

Aesthetics · Liminality · Pilgrimage · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Religious Tourism and Spaces