Practice Of Confession Research Articles

Creating Confessional Colleges and Universities That Confess

Drawing upon the recent scholarly call to incorporate Christian practices into teaching, we contend that such practices should also be incorporated into the administration of Christian institutions. In particular, we explore the rationale for integrating the practice of Christian confession into the life of a university to address institutional sin. We then describe two types of confessional practice, ritual and situational, that perhaps should be grafted into the life of Christian educational institutions.

Notes on Individuation in Adorno and Foucault

The social construction of the individual is a central theme in critical social theory. Theodor W. Adorno and Michel Foucault address this theme throughout their work, offering important insights into individual identity and autonomy in the West. To the question 'Who are we?,' Adorno replies that we are the product of a capitalist society that forces virtually all things, people, processes, and activities into the homogenizing and levelling mould of exchange relations. By contrast, Foucault answers this question by pointing to power relations in institutions and the modern state, claiming that individuals have been shaped by the normalizing forces of disciplinary power and biopower. Yet, despite these distinct foci, Adorno and Foucault broadly agree that what we are as individuals, along with our understanding ourselves as individuals, have been affected by social forces of which we are often unaware and over which we exercise little or no control. To paraphrase Nietzsche, Adorno and Foucault reveal that we are largely unknown to ourselves.This paper will offer a long-overdue comparison of the social construction of the individual in Adorno and Foucault. Not only have few commentators ventured to compare their views on individuation,1 but none of the existing comparisons has been informed by the wealth of material on this process that can be found, among other places, in the lectures that Adorno gave at the University of Frankfurt during the fifties and sixties and Foucault's lectures at the College de France in the seventies and early eighties. The dearth of comparative accounts is especially glaring given the considerable influence that Adorno and Foucault continue to exercise on critical social theory, decades after their early deaths. In this paper, I hope to redress this lacuna by offering a more fully informed account of their views on individuation.For Adorno, individuation can be fully understood only with the aid of Freud- ian theory with its postulate of dynamic relations between ego, id, and superego. However, since Foucault often criticized psychoanalysis, this paper will begin with a brief comparison of Adorno's and Foucault's positions on Freud's theories of instinct and repression. Following this discussion, I shall compare Adorno's and Foucault's distinct views on domination, examining individuation as an effect of exchange relations in Adorno and of power relations in Foucault. This comparison will issue in a consideration of precisely what is being shaped into an individual in Adorno and Foucault. The final section of the paper will draw conclusions about the central features of individuation, while broaching the problem of whether power relations and exchange relations are now so powerful that resistance to them is effectively futile.ADORNO, FOUCAULT, FREUDAdorno was neither an orthodox Marxist nor an orthodox Freudian. Although he borrowed a great deal from psychoanalysis, which he defended against revisionists (including Karen Horney)2 and other critics, Adorno expressed serious reserva- tions about Freudian theory. He criticized Freud's conception of the ego when he argued that the ego was at one and the same time opposed to repression and the agent of repression, and added that Freud failed to distinguish adequately between repression and sublimation.3 In Minima Moralia, moreover, Adorno charged that Freud had demoted pleasure to a mere means to the end of preserving the species, while treating reason as a superstructure.4 Here he also suggested that Freud was a conservative thinker because he vacillated between denouncing the renunciation of instinct as repressive and applauding it as a beneficial form of sublimation.5Of course, Foucault too objected to aspects of Freudian theory. In fact, his crit- ics sometimes cast him as virulently anti-Freudian because he claimed that Freud's talking cure was rooted historically in the Christian practice of confession. In response to the strident reaction of some psychoanalysts to his genealogical account of their discipline, Foucault countered that, unlike physicists, who took no offence when Albert Einstein claimed that physics was rooted historically in demonology, psychoanalysts fulminated against his genealogy in order protect the scientific status of Freudian theory. …

Psychological Angst in James Joyce A portrait of an artistas a young man and D.H Lawrence Sons and lovers: a comparative exegesis

My paper aims at describing the psychological complexities and internal feud which cripples the protagonists of the two novel who cannot reconcile with antithetical pulls of love and lust, art and beauty, religion and aesthetics, ethics and hypocrisy, self and society, and ‘struggle to signify’. A psychoanalysis of the novels is the key aspect to explore the self in modernity, arguing that it represents the culmination of a tradition, which grew out of the confessional practices introduced by the church. Key terms such as ‘desire’, ‘id’, ‘ego’, ‘super ego’, ‘oedipal complex’, ‘schizo-analysis’, ‘subject’, ‘subjectivity’ and ‘unconscious’ acquaints the reader with the psychological angst and the fragmented nature of modernism. This comparative study attempts to evaluate the antithetical pulls of self versus society and dimensions of cultural and hegemonic values which cause psychological turmoil and an inner turbulence.

Confession from the Point of View of the Experience of the People Seeking Help: An Empirical Study about Confessional Practices in Finland and Hungary

The article presents confession practice from the point of view of the confessants. The practice and experiences of the confessants are presented based on two earlier research studies. The source material of both researches was based on letters written by the confessants themselves with the need of stress relief. As the collection and analysis of the material was conducted with a similar method, it is also possible to compare the findings of the two research studies. Based on letters from Finnish and Hungarian respondents, the authors look at several topics: expectations of the confessants, criteria of experiencing absolution, the relationship between confessant and confessor and the effect of confession on the spiritual life of the confessant.

Something from Nothing:

The relentless negations in these lines—denials of action, thought, being, and feeling—emphasize the narrator’s lack of productive intellectual or social influence and his emotional void. Yet “nothing” takes on an allegorical force as it “cometh or gooth” and as the narrator describes his “felyng in nothyng.” This allegory illogically suggests that the Dreamer finds something—a feeling—in nothing, a paradoxical notion that anticipates a deep

The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain by Patrick J. O'Banion (review)

Reviewed by: The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain by Patrick J. O'Banion Allyson M. Poska The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain. By Patrick J. O'Banion. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2012. Pp. xii, 233. $69.95. ISBN 978-0-8271-05899-3.) Recently, Spanish history has seen a movement away from the social/religious histories of the 1980s and 1990s, toward studies that focus on particular theological concepts and sacramental activity. In his new study of the sacrament of penance, Patrick O'Banion has tried to combine the old and the new. He both analyzes religious literature and attempts to present a portrait of actual Spaniards engaging with the sacrament in a variety of ways. O'Banion argues that rather than the reflection of a clerical/lay hierarchy, early modern confession was a constant negotiation between confessor and parishioner. In the first two chapters, O'Banion takes the reader through the basic aspects of the sacrament: how to become a confessor and how to confess. He provides an overview of the theological issues involved, as well as the expectations about the relationship between the confessor and the confessant. He then details the process of confession, including a discussion of the basic physical rituals of kneeling and crossing oneself. In chapter 3, O'Banion explores the Catholic Reformation's attempt to regulate Easter confession. Unexpectedly, parish confessions declined toward the end of the sixteenth century. He argues that it was not that laypeople ignored the confessional; rather, they evaded the surveillance of parish priests (and friends and neighbors) by confessing to other clergy. Indeed, in the next chapter, he analyzes how the bula de la cruzada, which allowed purchasers to choose their own confessors, gave Spaniards surprising agency in their confessional practices. O'Banion then examines the roles of class and gender on the confessional experience, followed by a look at how Spain's converso, morisco, and gypsy populations engaged with the sacrament. O'Banion's work reinforces the research on religious life in early-modern Spain that has clearly demonstrated that neither the pre- nor the post-Tridentine Church was effective at imposing a rigid orthodoxy on Spain's independent-minded populace; however, he missed some key opportunities to present a stronger argument. For instance, O'Banion tends to rely on speculation and rhetorical questions rather than archival research as he mulls over why people did or did not confess to their parish priests. A deeper interrogation of parish records, particularly episcopal visitations, might have provided him with more specific information about relationships between clergy and laity. There also is the nagging question of exactly who is the focus of the study. Although at points he acknowledges regional and urban/rural differences, his analysis nevertheless relies on a homogenized notion of a "Spaniard" that did not exist in the early-modern period. Current research has emphasized that the relationship between clergy and laity differed from one region to another and the authority of the Church was weaker in rural areas than in cities. Without a doubt, a parishioner in Barcelona interacted [End Page 567] with a more educated, skilled clergy than his or her counterpart in the outback of La Mancha, and those differences thwart attempts at the creation of a "Spanish" experience of confession. Indeed, based on that homogenization of religious experience and regional identity, O'Banion makes the circular assertion that the sacrament of confession played a role in the development of a Spanish identity. Despite these issues, The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain contributes to our understanding of belief and practice in early-modern Spain and will be of interest to historians of Spain and religious historians more broadly. Allyson M. Poska University of Mary Washington Copyright © 2013 The Catholic University of America Press

The Church of England in the Diocese of London: What does History have to Offer to the Present-Day Church?

On 21 February 1900 in St Paul’s Cathedral Bishop Mandell Creighton delivered his first, and what proved to be his last, visitation charge to the clergy of the diocese of London. He began by reflecting briefly on the particular challenges of his own position and of London itself, but quickly moved on to focus on current ecclesiastical controversies, especially the nature of holy communion and the practice of confession. Creighton had been a historian long before he became a bishop, and it was therefore natural that his response to contemporary issues should rapidly move into an insightful lecture on Reformation history. His analysis was both specific and general. For example, he pointed out that breakfast was not normally eaten in medieval and early modern societies and so congregations naturally came fasting to a late morning communion service. In changed social circumstances it would be inappropriate ‘to revive this custom as an absolute law’.

‘God bless America’. Prayer as a political ritual in the USA

The article is an attempt to analyze the relation between religion and politics in the American culture of last few decades. Liberals of western civilization very often look on the religion as an anachronism – something connected with a personal wishful thinking or with the prayers of monks closed in a congregation rather than with the modern political life. But the religion is an important component of the present‑day culture in America. A good example of this is the modern use of prayer as a form of political action. The research concentrates on two different forms of religious prayer – ‘the civil prayer’ and ‘the imprecatory prayer’. As we will see, these two forms of confessional practice differ in almost everything, but they share a common political context.

The Confessions of Walker Percy

The Confessions of Walker Percy John F. Desmond (bio) "I would meet you upon this honestly." "Gerontion," T. S. Eliot "I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves." Narrator, Notes from Underground Both in his personal life and in his writings, Walker Percy was deeply attracted to the idea and practice of confession. When he and his wife, Mary Bernice, converted to Catholicism in 1947, Percy told his friends and fellow converts Jidge Minyard and Sal Milazzo, "This is one of the main reasons I've become a Catholic."1 At the time, private sacramental confession was widely practiced in the Catholic Church the Percys were joining. The ritual of confessing one's sins to a priest, expressing repentance, and receiving penance and absolution would have been profoundly important to someone with Percy's tragic family past—his father's suicide, his mother's untimely death (and suspected suicide), his struggle with tuberculosis, and [End Page 126] his troubled search for his vocation and a meaningful life. Sacramental confession could be a help in his struggle to come to terms with the burden of that past. After his conversion and throughout his life as a Catholic, Percy made more than twenty retreats at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Manresa, Louisiana, during which all retreatants could avail themselves of sacramental confession.2 Percy's faith and his writings were strongly influenced by two prominent confessional works in the Catholic tradition: Pascal's Pensées and St. Augustine's Confessions. His first published novel, The Moviegoer, was based partly on the initial draft of Diary of the Last Romantic, the first chapter of which was titled "Confessions of a Moviegoer." That chapter eventually evolved into the novel, which is the "confession" of moviegoer Binx Bolling, a religious skeptic. In the novel, a crucial scene between Binx and his half-brother Lonnie Smith, a devout Catholic, centers on a discussion of Lonnie's recent confession, on his concern with the sin of envy, on overscrupulosity, and on absolution. In Percy's third novel, Love in the Ruins, a first-person novel like The Moviegoer, Dr. Tom More confesses his wayward life during a time "near the end of the world" when America is falling apart. At the end of the novel, with his career and dreams of medical fame in tatters, Dr. More goes to confession to Father Rinaldo Smith, receives absolution and penance, and celebrates his return to grace by attending Christmas Mass, receiving the Holy Eucharist, and enjoying a holiday barbecue. Percy's fourth novel, Lancelot, is a somber, chilling first-person confession spoken by murderer Lance Lamar to his friend Father John, a priest struggling with his vocation. In his monologue Lance undertakes a "search for sin" as an ironic way, he argues, to prove God's existence. Percy saw Lance's search as analogous to Augustine's search for God in his Confessions by understanding his own sin.3 As we shall see, Lance's complex search challenges the meaning of confession in modern culture and of the confessional mode in writing. Finally, in Percy's last novel, The Thanatos Syndrome, the disturbed priest Father Rinaldo Smith made a painful confession to [End Page 127] Dr. Tom More (set off in the text as "Father Smith's Confession") of his misanthropic view of humanity except for "children and the dying, who do not lie," and of his youthful infatuation with the Nazi Schutzstaffel and their romantic cult of war and death.4 It is useful to view Percy's concern with confession, both sacramental and secular, and with the confessional mode in writing in the light of his concern with the predicament of the modern self, that is, ordinary citizens living in a technological society. Two inter-related issues are especially relevant here. The first is Percy's belief that modern man has suffered a "loss of self," due to the dominance of scientism—the scientific perspective elevated into an all-consuming ideology—in the culture. Scientism has largely alienated...

Mental health nursing and the problematic of supervision as a confessional act

Mental health nurses frequently draw on self-disclosure practices within their working relationships. These 'confessional' acts can in turn be predicated on traditional assumptions of moral authority exercised by more senior colleagues. More broadly, attention has been drawn to the increasing significance of 'technologies of the self' inside neo-liberal regimes of governance. Through various forms of self-disclosure people are obliged 'to speak the truth about themselves'. By publically declaring themselves as 'fit for purpose' nurses are required to be reflexive, self-monitoring individuals, capable of constructing their own identities and biographies, and guided by expert knowledges. In this way, risk becomes a form of governance, as the individuals continually find themselves balancing risks and opportunities. Foucault's insights into the importance of 'care of the self' and 'surveillance of the self' to systems of social order and governance, such as mental health services, are significant in identifying nursing as a potential form of confessional practice. 'Reflective practice' and 'clinical supervision' are therefore 'technologies', functioning as 'modes of surveillance', and as 'confessional practices'. So 'clinical supervision' may be understood as part of a process of 'governance' that does not necessarily empower nurses, but can act to guide, correct and modify ways in which they conduct themselves.

Historical Memory and Expanding Social Networks of Mennonite Mission School Women, Mara Region, Tanzania, 1938 to the Present

Because of their structural position as boundary crossers in virilocal marriages, women in the Mara Region of Tanzania have used historical memory to construct social networks across ethnic boundaries for their own and their community's security. During the colonial era these networks were severely restricted, leading to increasingly difficult lives for women. One group of women who found creative ways to reconstruct these far-reaching networks was church women who went to mission boarding schools. Girls left their homes and made connections to a new family in the church that supported them as they moved into new interethnic communities. They began telling their own life histories in the form of the spiritual testimony, shaped by the practice of confession in the East African Revival beginning in 1942. These narratives of resistance to traditional practices like female circumcision inspired others and created a sense of individual agency. Although these stories seem to represent a rejection, even demonisation, of the past, they carry on work entrusted to these women by their grandmothers, of using storytelling, even within a new narrative genre and in a radically new context, to make connections and build community across ethnic boundaries.

Practices of Confession, Intercession, and Forgiveness in 1 John 1.9; 5.16

1 John 1.9 and 5.16 reflect practices of public confession of sins, intercession, and mediation of God's forgiveness. Divine forgiveness and belonging to the community were integrated in the Johannine community to the extent that one equalled the other. Therefore, these practices had important group-dynamic functions for the Johannine community. First, public confession functioned as a costly signal that deterred less committed group members but was meaningful to committed group members. Second, the practice of intercession induced role taking, allowing the offended party both to empathize with the offender and to restore his or her dignity and honour.

SARAH BECKWITH. Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness.

Although Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness refuses to make any outright claim to ‘Shakespeare’s religious identity’ (p. 11), and while it politely avoids arguments that have focused on this issue in recent years, the case put forward here nevertheless aligns Shakespeare uncompromisingly with the practices and beliefs of medieval Catholicism, at least when it comes to confession and penance. Given that the English Reformation instituted a ‘revolution’ in confessional practices, Sarah Beckwith asserts, then ‘Shakespeare's late, post-tragic plays’ (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest) can be seen as exploring ‘the vulnerabilities, exposures, and commitments of forgiving and being forgiven in new forms of theater charged with finding pathways and possibilities of forgiveness in the absence of auricular confession and priestly absolution’ (pp. 1–2). The personal and communal force of medieval confession and penance, dismantled by the Reformation with untold cultural losses, Beckwith argues, finds continuity in Shakespeare's drama precisely because it has the power to reconstitute ‘community’ through its recognition ‘of both the depth and the fragility of human bonds’ (p. 5). Reading the plays of Shakespeare through a Catholic language of forgiveness and the kind of ‘speech acts so transformed in the English Reformation’ is Beckwith's purpose. A Shakespearean ‘sacramental theater’ that ‘evolves new ways of making manifest the presence and possibility of grace and forgiveness’ (p. 132) is what this study seeks to champion.

New Ideas Expressed in Old Words: The Regula Donati on Female Monastic Life and Monastic Spirituality

This article provides a detailed analysis of the Regula Donati, a seventh-century rule for nuns which was influenced by the Columbanian (or “Hiberno-Frankish”) monastic movement. The rule combines elements of the Regula Benedicti, Caesarius's Regula ad virgines and the Rules ascribed to Columbanus. I show that a close comparison of the original texts with Donatus's “revision” provides a wealth of information about everyday life in early medieval monasteries (e.g., the role of writing and literacy, manual labor, and clothing) and also reveals fundamental shifts in spirituality and monastic theology, particularly a shift from concepts of discipline based on obedience, humility, prohibition, punishment, and enclosure towards a system that is based on knowledge, control, permission, and the practice of confession and penance. The text of the Regula Donati has traditionally been dismissed as a mere compilation of older monastic rules, yet Donatus succeeds in producing an entirely new and innovative monastic program through conscious omissions, rearrangement of his material, and subtle shifts in terminology.

Contributions of Commentaries on the Minor Prophets to the Formation of Distinctive Lutheran and Reformed Confessional Identities

The essay explores the question of the evidence of distinct Lutheran and Reformed confessional practices of exegesis particularly concerning interpretations of Old Testament prophecy. It begins by outlining differences in Martin Luther and John Calvin’s practices of christological exegesis and vision of sacred history in their interpretations of the Minor Prophets. Next, it traces the evolution of these differences in a set of figures from the next generation of Lutheran and Reformed exegetes in order to discern whether consistent patterns emerge to indicate ways in which biblical interpretation shaped confessional identity. Through a survey of commentaries on the Minor Prophets by a set of next generation Lutherans (Philip Melanchthon, Aegidius Hunnius, Lucas Osiander, and Nicolas Selnecker) and next generation Reformed (David Pareus, Lambert Daneau, Johannes Drusius, and Johannes Piscator) the author provides a picture of how biblical interpretation did indeed play a significant role in the formation and expression of confessional identity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Pastoral techniques in the modern Danish educational system

In recent years, therapeutic techniques have played an increasingly significant role in Danish educational thinking. One way in which this therapeutic thinking discloses itself is in the ever‐growing use of educational‐therapeutic games as part of the educational practice. Inspired by Foucault, we argue that educational‐therapeutic games can be understood as a kind of confessional practice that introduces a pastoral power relationship between pupils and teachers. This paper offers an empirically based analysis of one of the frequently used therapeutic‐educational games in Denmark, called ‘The Good Chair’. In general, the technique of ‘The Good Chair’ establishes a type of interaction that is characterized by a sense of togetherness, intimacy, and an instrumentality‐problem orientation. The structure and regulation of the game cast the child as a psychological being by uncovering the child’s true inner nature.

Adultery, idolatry and the theatricality of false piety in Shakespearean scenes of devotion

This study examines Shakespeare's portrayal of devotional practice in Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and Hamlet. The scenes I selected are concerned with the associations between adulterous sexuality, idolatrous religion and perfidious theatricality found in such wide-ranging religious works as official homilies, devotional handbooks, controversialist and anti-theatrical tracts. In engaging with these discourses, Shakespeare seeks to distinguish between the inner truth of the mind and the performance of religious affect, idolatrous and adulterous in its reliance on the outward show of holiness, on visually seductive ornaments and gestures. Shakespeare's portrayal of false piety reveals a commitment to the epistemology of the moderate reformed church. Yet its ultimate commitment, I believe, lies elsewhere. There is a peculiar anti-theatrical sentiment in his suspicion towards the theatrically-inflected religious spectacle, and I argue that this anti-theatricalism serves the interests of the theatrical profession. In representing “the harlotte a false Church” as fundamentally theatrical, Shakespeare's plays ultimately do not seek to locate that false church within the spectrum of confessional practices negotiated in the public sphere of his day. They seek to dissociate theatre from religion.

The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of the 'Confessing Animal' (review)

Reviewed by: The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of the 'Confessing Animal' Elizabeth A. Castelli (bio) Chloë Taylor . The Culture of Confession from Augustine to Foucault: A Genealogy of the 'Confessing Animal' Routledge 2009. 298. US$111.00 Critics frequently observe that contemporary culture in the West is a confessional culture peculiarly devoted to the translation of the 'personal' [End Page 366] and the 'private' into the public frame. Variously diagnosed as (among other things) a post-Freudian symptom, a decadent solipsism, or an amplified effect of our hyper-mediatized age, the character and consequence of the post-modern confessional has been debated, a continuum with emancipatory truth-telling at one end, disciplinary coercion and subjectivation at the other. Into this fray enters The Culture of Confession, a revision of Chloë Taylor's 2006 dissertation in philosophy at the University of Toronto, which emphasizes the double-edged character of confession - 'the interconnectedness and inseparability of discipline and self-care' (9), as Taylor puts it in Foucauldian terms in her introduction - and proposes aesthetic/artistic alternatives, modes of resistance to the disciplinary regime of confession. The book is divided into five chapters: 'Confession from Antiquity to the Counter-Reformation,' 'Confession and Modern Subjectivity,' 'Psychoanalysis,' 'Confessing the Other,' and 'Alternatives to Confession.' Foucault is Taylor's primary interlocutor since, although she offers a critical supplement to his theorization of the history of the confessional, Foucault's genealogical method, his archive, and his oeuvre are central to the framing and the content of this book. Taylor's archive also extends beyond Foucault's, including readings ranging from Augustine's Confessions (a work Foucault curiously did not engage in his work on confession), Rousseau's Confessions (and readings of it by Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida), Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, the films of Ingmar Bergman (mentioned suggestively twice in passing), Annie Ernaux's painfully exhibitionist memoirs, Freudian case studies (notably the case of Anna O.), autobiographical literary criticism, and (surprisingly but instructively) the paintings of Artemesia Gentileschi. In all of these readings, Taylor challenges the view that confession is the product of some essential human impulse and emphasizes the double nature of confession, at once self-revelatory and self-confining. Taylor's project is staged primarily as a debate with Foucault, and she offers any number of insights on this front that are indeed salutary. Unfortunately, she takes Foucault's engagement with pre-modern sources more or less at face value, her addition of Augustine to the picture notwithstanding. She therefore repeats some of Foucault's numerous faux pas vis-à-vis ancient, especially early Christian, and medieval sources. Among the most notable are his idiosyncratic readings of the Greek terms exomologēsis and exagoreusis, whereby he retrojects medieval and early modern practices back into the late ancient frame and misapprehends the early Christian notion of 'confession' as 'testimony to one's identity as a Christian' (rather than as 'public recitation of one's sins'). Throughout the chapter on pre-modernity, Taylor has been dependent on Foucault and a small number of secondary sources, with limited [End Page 367] evidence that she has fully engaged with the primary sources she references. This is disappointing, since the late ancient and medieval archives contain rich material for a genealogical study of confession, an archive that still awaits careful mining precisely for the evidence of critical difference that would serve Taylor's overall project so well. Taylor seems to be on firmer ground in her later chapters, and her efforts to locate aesthetic and philosophical alternatives to the disciplinary coercion of confessional practice are ones with which many contemporary readers will feel considerable sympathy. One does not need to be fully persuaded by every reading of every text in this section - I found the interpretations of I, Pierre Rivière and Herculine Barbin in chapter 5, as examples of counter-confessional resistance, less compelling - to appreciate the critical move Taylor is trying to make to escape the sense that il n'y a pas de hors-confessionnal. Raising the question of sexual difference in this chapter - from the artistic production of Artemisia Gentileschi to the psychoanalytic case of Anna O. to the...

Idiocy and Madness in Princely European Families

Idiocy and Madness in Princely European Families

Bless Me Reader for I Have Sinned: Physicians and Confessional Writing

From the poetry of William Carlos Williams, the novels of Walker Percy, and the short stories of Anton Chekov to the contemporary essays of Atul Gawande, physicians' contributions to literary genres have been significant. This article explores the specific form of confessional writing offered by physicians during the past half century, writing that often exposes medical error or negative feelings towards patients. A history of confessional practices as a legal tool, as religious practice, and as literary genre is offered, followed by analyses of selected confessional writings by physicians, many of them found in clinical journals such as Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Lancet. The authors of the narratives described here are engaged in several or all elements of the confessional sequence, which may offer them some resolution through the exposure and acknowledgment of their shared humanity with their patients and their expression of regret for any harm done.