This chapter seeks to answer the question of how transitions came to be understood as generally positive times. It explores different understandings of the concept of shock, arguing that perhaps the transition from a negative to a positive connotation of shock might provide the answer. The concept of shock has perhaps become most popular in the contemporary Central and Eastern European context through what was known as shock therapy. If the normalization process implies a particular kind of adjustment to shock, Carl Cassegard discusses a slightly different response to the shock of modernity through what he calls the process of naturalization. Faced with a brand new economic and political environment and a constantly changing self, Central and Eastern European societies entered into a different kind of shock, something that some sociologists described as a collective culture shock.