Medieval confession practices and the emergence of modern psychotherapy

Abstract

This article explores the relationship of developments in medieval confession practices to the emergence of modern selfhood and psychotherapy. While there is great contrast between medieval and modern self-concepts, the emergent focus upon the individual in late medieval confession practices served as fuel for the ideology of modernity. The cultural historian Anthony Low wrote that early confession practices viewed the severity of wrongs done in relation to their hindrance to the maintenance of the believing community. Later, however, the focus shifted from communal maintenance to maintenance of the direct relationship between the individual and the divine. There seems to have been a shift from an emphasis on confession as communal restoration to a more individualized focus on the regulation of “unruly” desires through discourse. This later emphasis upon regulating human impulses through discourse is related to the emergence of psychoanalysis and the “homeostasis” principle.

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