Since the change from childhood to maturity involves readjustments of such a fundamental kind as to constitute to some extent an entrance into a new phase of life, it is not surprising that the initiation ceremony has often in one or more of its aspects taken the form of a symbolic process of re-birth; the re-birth phantasy, as we have seen, being closely associated with the idea of moral or spiritual conversion or regeneration. The process of re-birth in these ceremonies may indeed on occasion be represented by something actually approaching an imitation of the act of birth, as in the case of the Kikuyu of British East Africa, who "have a curious custom which requires that every boy just before circumcision must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet, she pretends to go through all the labour pains and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed. He lives on milk for some days afterwards[72]." Elsewhere the novice is swallowed by a monster and again disgorged, thus simulating the return to the womb and the re-birth therefrom[73]. In still other cases a drama of death and resurrection is enacted by the novices or played before them[74]. Frequently an essential part of the process of initiation consists of a more or less prolonged period of seclusion about the time of puberty[75]; girls especially being often confined in small huts for weeks, months or in some cases years, at or before the time of their first menstruation[76]. [Sidenote: General and sexual objects in initiation] These initiatory rites would seem, like the womb and birth phantasies which we have already studied, to have in the main two principal objects in view; first, an introduction of the initiated into the rights and responsibilities belonging to an adult member of the community; secondly, an introduction into sexual life. As a means to the former end, the novice usually receives instruction in the laws, customs, religious beliefs and ceremonial practices of his tribe, or undergoes certain (often very severe) trials of capacity and endurance with a view to ascertaining his fitness to enter into the privileges of maturity. On the sexual side the novice receives permission to marry and generally to indulge his sexual tendencies (the process of initiation being often succeeded by a period of unusual licence), but at the same time is instructed in the numerous prohibitions and taboos as regards persons, circumstances and occasions which are usually placed upon such indulgence. [Sidenote: The abandonment of infantile tendencies on the part of the initiated]