"Traditional initiation is a carefully controlled, artificially induced experience of shame. To stand exposed before peers and elders, admitting to one's ignorance and need for instruction, to willingly submit to painful and humiliating ordeals at the hands of others, is to face shame and learn from it. A man constrained by fears that any action on his part will shamefully reveal his less than adequate masculinity is an uninitiated man. So too is the shameless man who recognizes no limits to his grandiose display of potency. In initiation one learns, often in the most painful way, to respect shame without being overwhelmed by it. Shame becomes a guide rather than an enemy.
No matter what process we may revive or invent to guide them, modern initiates can never be finished products with their manhood and place in society securely established to the degree we imagine occurs in more traditional cultures. Initiation into a culture as complex as ours is of necessity an ongoing, lifelong process... Failure, and the shame which accompanied it, (is) ...a vital part of the process. "
Extract from: "From Wildman to King: Another Look at Male Myth and Initiation" written by Jim Moyers, a Jungian psychologist. The whole article can be found [here]