Subj : PSYCHOANALYSIS
To   : Frank Masingill
From : Bob Eyer
Date : Mon Oct 23 2000 08:24 pm

BE:
-Therefore it is essential to genuine psychoanalytic therapy
-that the patient knows absolutely nothing about the analyst's
-beliefs, attitudes or feelings.
-
-The problem with religious confessionals is that the "patient"
-DOES know what the priest wants to hear.  And that is what he
-tells him.  The task of releasing pent-up psychic energy
-causing mental blocks, neuroses, etc, is thus short-circuited
-and defeated.
-
-This may be a way of achieving some kind of salvation; but it
-is not a way of mending diseases of the mind.

>Having never experienced the religious confessional OR the
>expensive process of psychiatric sessions, I must assume that you
>have made an extensive comparative study of both and, therefore,
>read your conclusions of the study with great interest.  Did you
>REALLY just make up stuff and tell the priest what you thought he
>should hear?  Surely this is not just drawn from the stories and
>jokes priests tell each other for amusement and out of a sense of
>boredom?  I DO suspect that in the evangelistic denominations
>there are "professional confessors." I know for a fact that there
>are people who, like Martin Luther, are so concerned with whether
>or not they're really "saved" that they go down for
>"re-confession" over and over again.

I've never personally experienced confession to a priest (I've
never been a Catholic, and never have experienced any kind of
religious observance in my upbringing or adult life).  But I have
undergone two years of psychoanalytic therapy when I was in the
last two years of high school.  I can speak from some personal
experience about the benefits of Freudian therapy, and about what
Freudian therapy is all about.

My remarks about the psychological disadvantages of religious
confession (as compared with Freudian therapy) are based in part
on knowledge of a very simple fact about the confession process:
No one seeks confession who does not already know what are the
attitudes of the Church supporting confession toward good and
evil.

This simple fact is bound to undermine the psychological
effectiveness of confession, since the parishioner necessarily
approaches the priest for confession, for the purpose of achieving
salvation.  He therefore must tell those stories which fit in with
that goal--according to the ideology of the Church on matters of
good and evil.

This is not the goal of releasing the psychic potential energy of
the unconscious, and therefore cannot play the role of
alleviating mental blocks, neuroses, and so on.

Bob

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