tantaman

The Invention of the Confessing Animal

Published 2025-12-17

tldr: confession makes the subject legible. A legible subject is a governable subject. Confession served the interest of power.

While spiritual traditions do provide truth, they are also co-opted by power.

Related posts:

Foucault on Pastoral Power and the Genealogy of Self-Knowledge

“The confession has spread its effects far and wide. It plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations, in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and in the most solemn rites... Western man has become a confessing animal.” — Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

“The pastorate is not just a technique of power. It is a whole type of power, with its own rationality, its own objectives, and the instruments to achieve them.” — Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population

Introduction: The Question of Why

The know thyself essays traced multiple psychologies of self-knowledge—Greek, Augustinian Christian, Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu, and others. We noted that the Augustinian confession model became dominant in the West, shaping not only religious practice but modern psychology, therapy, and everyday self-understanding. But we did not adequately explain why this particular model won.

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) provides the missing analysis. His genealogical investigations reveal that the confession model did not triumph because it was truer to human nature or more effective at producing genuine self-knowledge. It triumphed because it was useful for power—specifically, for a form of power that Foucault calls “pastoral power.”

This essay traces Foucault’s argument: how confession became a technology of governance, how pastoral power shaped Western subjectivity, how modern secular institutions inherited the confessional structure, and what alternative Foucault found in the Greek and Roman “care of the self.” Understanding this genealogy is essential for anyone who wants to know not just what our inherited psychology is, but whose interests it serves.

Part I: Genealogy as Method

Not Origins but Emergence

Foucault does not ask “what is the true nature of the self?” He asks: “How did we come to think of ourselves this way? What historical forces produced this form of subjectivity? What power relations does it serve?”

This is genealogy—a method Foucault adapted from Nietzsche. Genealogy does not seek origins (as if there were a pure beginning we could recover) but emergence (the contingent historical processes that produced what now seems natural):

“Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore an unbroken continuity... On the contrary, to follow the complex course of descent is to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is to identify the accidents, the minute deviations—or conversely, the complete reversals—the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us.”

— “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (1971), trans. Bouchard

Applied to confession: Foucault does not ask whether confession really accesses hidden truths about the self. He asks how the practice of confession emerged, what institutions promoted it, what forms of power it enabled, and how it spread from monastery to clinic to couch.

Power/Knowledge

Central to Foucault’s work is the concept of power/knowledge (pouvoir/savoir). Power and knowledge are not separate—power produces knowledge, and knowledge enables power:

“We should admit rather that power produces knowledge... that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.”

— Discipline and Punish (1975), trans. Sheridan

The confession is a perfect example. It produces “knowledge” about the self—desires, sins, hidden motives—while simultaneously subjecting the confessor to institutional power. The priest (or therapist, or teacher) who hears the confession gains power through knowledge; the one who confesses becomes legible, governable, subject to correction.

This does not mean confession is “merely” about power, or that confessors are cynical manipulators. The knowledge produced may be genuine in its own terms. But we cannot understand why this form of self-knowledge became dominant without understanding the power relations it serves.

Part II: The Invention of Pastoral Power

The Shepherd and the Flock

Foucault identifies a distinctive form of power that emerged in ancient Hebrew religion and was developed by Christianity: pastoral power. The metaphor is the shepherd and the flock:

“The shepherd’s power is not exercised over a territory but, by definition, over a flock, and more exactly, over the flock in its movement from one place to another. The shepherd’s power is essentially exercised over a multiplicity in movement.”

— Security, Territory, Population (1977-78), trans. Senellart

Unlike sovereign power (which rules a territory) or disciplinary power (which normalizes through institutions), pastoral power is individualized care. The shepherd knows each sheep, tends to each one’s needs, guides each one to salvation:

“This form of power is salvation-oriented (as opposed to political power). It is oblative (as opposed to the principle of sovereignty); it is individualizing (as opposed to legal power); it is coextensive and continuous with life; it is linked with a production of truth—the truth of the individual himself.”

— “The Subject and Power” (1982)

The pastor is responsible for each soul—not just the flock in aggregate but each individual. This requires knowledge of each individual: their sins, their temptations, their spiritual state. Confession becomes the mechanism for producing this knowledge.

The Christian Innovation

Foucault argues that Christianity transformed pastoral power by making it simultaneously totalizing and individualizing:

“This form of power cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of people’s minds, without exploring their souls, without making them reveal their innermost secrets. It implies a knowledge of the conscience and an ability to direct it.”

— “The Subject and Power”

The Greek and Roman worlds had teachers, philosophers, doctors. But they did not have pastors in this sense—figures responsible for the salvation of each individual soul, requiring total knowledge of that soul’s interior.

The desert fathers we discussed earlier—Evagrius, Cassian—were developing the practical techniques of pastoral power: the examination of thoughts, the disclosure to an elder, the sorting of spirits. These techniques spread through Western monasticism and eventually, with Lateran IV (1215), became obligatory for all Christians.

Four Features of Pastoral Power

Foucault identifies four distinctive features:

1. It aims at salvation (in the next world). The ultimate goal is not earthly flourishing but eternal life. This gives the pastor leverage over the whole of life—everything becomes relevant to salvation.

2. It is prepared to sacrifice itself for the flock. Unlike sovereign power (which sacrifices subjects for the sovereign), pastoral power sacrifices itself for those it guides. This creates a moral economy of care that masks the power relation.

3. It attends to the community and to each individual. It is both totalizing (concerned with the whole flock) and individualizing (concerned with each sheep). This double structure allows it to scale while remaining personal.

4. It requires knowledge of souls. Pastoral power cannot function without knowledge of what each individual thinks, desires, and does in secret. Confession is the technology that produces this knowledge.

Part III: Confession as Technology

Producing the Truth of the Self

Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (1976) analyzes confession as a mechanism for producing truth about the self:

“The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship, for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile.”

— The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, trans. Hurley

Several features are crucial:

The speaker is the subject. In confession, you speak about yourself. This seems obvious, but it creates a peculiar loop: the “I” who speaks is also the “I” spoken about. This structure produces the “deep self” that confession claims merely to discover.

It unfolds within a power relationship. The confessor and the one who hears confession are not equals. One has the authority to require, judge, absolve. Even when the relationship seems gentle (the therapeutic alliance), the power asymmetry remains.

The authority intervenes. The confessor doesn’t just passively receive; they question, probe, redirect. They help you discover what you didn’t know you knew. The “hidden truth” is jointly produced, not simply extracted.

The Obligation to Confess

What makes confession distinctive is its obligatory character:

“The confession became one of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth. We have since become a singularly confessing society. The confession has spread its effects far and wide... Western man has become a confessing animal.”

— The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

Confession is not optional. The Fourth Lateran Council made it mandatory for salvation. Modern equivalents maintain the pressure: if you don’t tell your therapist everything, the therapy won’t work; if you don’t share in the support group, you’re in denial; if you don’t disclose to your partner, you’re not being authentic.

The obligation appears as liberation. You are “free” to speak your truth. But the freedom is structured: there is something you must discover, something you must say, and someone authorized to receive it. The subject is produced through the requirement to confess.

The Incitement to Discourse

Foucault argues that modern Western culture does not repress sexuality (or desire more generally) but incites discourse about it:

“What is peculiar to modern societies, in fact, is not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence, but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum, while exploiting it as the secret.”

— The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

The confession model requires that there be something hidden—a secret truth about yourself that must be brought to light. But the “secret” is produced by the very apparatus that claims to reveal it. You are told you have hidden desires; therefore you must search for them; therefore you find (or construct) them; therefore the model is confirmed.

This is not to say desires don’t exist. It is to say that the particular shape they take—as “hidden” truths that confession “reveals”—is an artifact of the confessional apparatus, not a natural fact about human psychology.

Part IV: From Church to Clinic

Secularization of Pastoral Power

Foucault’s crucial insight is that pastoral power did not disappear with secularization. It was transferred to new institutions:

“I don’t think that we should consider the ‘modern state’ as an entity which developed above individuals, ignoring what they are and even their very existence, but, on the contrary, as a very sophisticated structure, in which individuals can be integrated, under one condition: that this individuality would be shaped in a new form and submitted to a set of very specific patterns.”

— “The Subject and Power”

The modern state, medicine, psychology, education—all inherited the pastoral structure: individualized care, salvation (now health, normality, productivity), and the requirement to confess.

Psychiatry and psychology: The therapist occupies the confessor’s position. The patient must disclose everything—dreams, fantasies, childhood memories, sexual desires. The therapeutic alliance is pastoral care secularized.

“We have passed from a pleasure to be recounted and heard, centering on the heroic or marvelous narration of ‘trials’ of bravery or sainthood, to a literature ordered according to the infinite task of extracting from the depths of oneself, in between the words, a truth which the very form of the confession holds out like a shimmering mirage.”

— The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

Medicine: The patient must disclose symptoms, behaviors, history. The doctor holds authority to diagnose, prescribe, intervene. The medical confession produces the “patient” as a subject of medical knowledge.

Education: The student must demonstrate what they know and don’t know—a kind of confession of ignorance. The teacher judges, corrects, guides. Modern educational techniques (the exam, the assignment, the evaluation) are pastoral mechanisms.

Criminal justice: The confession remains central—not just for legal purposes but for the “rehabilitation” that justifies modern punishment. The prisoner who confesses is on the path to reform; the one who doesn’t is “in denial.”

Biopower and Governmentality

Foucault’s later work situates pastoral power within a broader analysis of biopower and governmentality.

Biopower is power over life itself—the management of populations, their health, reproduction, productivity:

“For the first time in history, no doubt, biological existence was reflected in political existence... Power would no longer be dealing simply with legal subjects over whom the ultimate dominion was death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would have to be applied at the level of life itself.”

— The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

Confession feeds biopower by producing knowledge about individuals that can be aggregated into population data. The psychiatric confession produces diagnostic categories; the medical confession produces epidemiological data; the educational confession produces metrics of achievement.

Governmentality is the art of governing—not just through law and force but through the management of conduct:

“Government is the conduct of conduct—governing means to structure the possible field of action of others.”

— “The Subject and Power”

Confession is a technique for governing at a distance. When you internalize the requirement to examine yourself, confess, and correct—you govern yourself. External surveillance becomes internal self-surveillance. Power operates not by forbidding but by producing: producing the subject who monitors, confesses, and improves.

Part V: The Greek Alternative

Care of the Self

In his late lectures and the final two volumes of The History of Sexuality, Foucault turned to Greek and Roman practices of self-cultivation—what he called epimeleia heautou, “care of the self.”

“The precept ‘to be concerned with oneself’ was, for the Greeks, one of the main principles of cities, one of the main rules for social and personal conduct and for the art of life.”

— “Technologies of the Self” (1982)

This was not the Christian examination of conscience. The Greeks practiced self-examination, but without the confessional structure:

“In the ancient world, taking care of oneself required a relationship with a master, a philosopher, or a friend who told you the truth. But there was no obligation to tell the truth about oneself, no confession. The practice was quite different.”

— Interview, 1983

The Stoic exagoreusis (examining your day, as Seneca describes) was not about hidden sin but about aligning action with principle. You asked: Did I act according to reason? Were my judgments correct? The goal was self-mastery, not absolution.

Three Differences

Foucault identifies three key differences between Greek care of the self and Christian confession:

1. The relationship to truth. In Greek practice, you learned truths from teachers and texts, then applied them to yourself. The truth came from outside and was tested against your life. In Christian practice, you extracted truth from inside yourself through confession. The truth was hidden within and needed to be drawn out.

“In Christianity, the ascetic seeks to discover what is hidden inside the self... There is a correlation between the obligation to tell the truth about oneself and prohibitions against certain acts.”

— Technologies of the Self

2. The role of the other. In Greek practice, the teacher helped you acquire knowledge and practice virtue. The relationship was pedagogical. In Christian practice, the confessor received your secrets and had authority over your salvation. The relationship was pastoral.

3. The goal. In Greek practice, the goal was self-mastery (enkrateia)—becoming sovereign over yourself. In Christian practice, the goal was purification—removing sin through confession and penance. Self-mastery aims at strength; purification aims at obedience.

Not Nostalgia

Foucault is not nostalgic for the Greeks. He is not saying we should return to ancient practices:

“I am not looking for an alternative; you can’t find the solution of a problem in the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other people.”

— Interview, 1983

The point is genealogical: to show that our current practices are not inevitable, that other forms of self-relation have existed, that the confession model has a history and could have been otherwise. This historical knowledge is itself a form of freedom.

Part VI: Resistance and Counter-Conduct

Where There Is Power, There Is Resistance

Foucault insists that power is not monolithic. Where there is power, there is resistance:

“Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.”

— The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

If confession is a technology of power, then refusing to confess—or confessing differently—can be a form of resistance. Foucault calls this “counter-conduct”: not revolutionary overthrow but local modification of the way one is governed.

“Counter-conduct: in the sense of struggle against the processes implemented for conducting others.”

— Security, Territory, Population

Historical examples include: mystical movements that claimed direct access to God (bypassing the priest), reform movements that rejected auricular confession, quietist practices of silence, and heretical groups that refused pastoral authority.

Contemporary Counter-Conduct

What might counter-conduct look like today?

Refusing to confess: Recognizing that the demand to “share,” “process,” or “disclose” is not neutral but serves particular interests. Silence, privacy, and opacity are not always pathological—they can be political.

Confessing otherwise: Using confessional forms for different purposes—as art, as solidarity, as witness rather than self-objectification.

Care of the self: Recovering practices of self-cultivation that do not require confessional disclosure—Stoic self-examination, contemplative practices, embodied disciplines.

Collective practices: Forms of self-understanding that are not individualized—understanding oneself through community, history, place, rather than through the interior.

The other psychologies we’ve examined—Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist, Indigenous—are themselves resources for counter-conduct. They offer alternative technologies of the self, alternative forms of self-relation, that do not require confession.

Part VII: Implications for Our Taxonomy

Power Behind the Positions

Foucault’s analysis does not simply add another position to our taxonomy. It explains why the taxonomy looks the way it does—why some positions became dominant while others were marginalized.

The Augustinian confession model did not win a fair competition of ideas. It won because it was institutionally useful:

The wisdom-tradition Christianity, the Greek care of the self, the Eastern emphasis on theosis—these were less useful for institutional power, so they were marginalized, declared heretical, or simply forgotten.

Similarly, when Buddhism, Daoism, or Indigenous practices enter the modern West, they are often translated into confessional terms. Mindfulness becomes a therapeutic technique for managing mental health; meditation becomes a practice of “getting in touch with your feelings.” The confessional structure is so deep that alternatives are assimilated to it.

The Stakes of the Taxonomy

Understanding Foucault’s analysis raises the stakes of our comparative project. It’s not just that there are different psychologies—it’s that the dominant psychology serves power, and alternatives threaten power.

Choosing a different psychology is not merely an intellectual preference. It is a political act. To practice care of the self rather than confession is to withdraw from a regime of power/knowledge. To understand oneself through relationship and place rather than through interior excavation is to resist individualization. To be silent where speech is demanded is to refuse legibility.

This does not mean confession is simply bad, or that all alternatives are good. Foucault is not a moralist. But he insists that we understand the power relations embedded in our practices of self-knowledge—and that we recognize our freedom to practice otherwise.

Part VIII: A Revised Understanding

Not “Which Is True?” but “What Does It Do?”

Foucault shifts the question. The previous essays asked (implicitly): Which psychology is true? Which best describes the human condition?

Foucault asks: What does each psychology do? What subjects does it produce? What power relations does it enable or disable? Whose interests does it serve?

These questions do not replace questions of truth—but they precede them. Before asking whether confession accesses hidden truths about the self, we must ask: What is the apparatus that produces both the “hidden truth” and the “self” that supposedly contains it? Before asking whether the kingdom is really within, we must ask: What institutions benefit from telling you to look inside?

The Confessing Animal and Its Alternatives

We have been, Foucault says, produced as “confessing animals”—subjects who believe we have hidden truths about ourselves, who feel obligated to extract and speak these truths, who submit to authorities who receive our confessions.

This is not human nature. It is a historical production, and it can be otherwise.

The alternatives we’ve explored—Greek rational audit, Buddhist observation without identification, Confucian ritual practice, Daoist non-effort, Hindu discrimination, Indigenous relationality, Eckhartian detachment, wisdom-tradition recognition of the divine spark—are not just different philosophies. They are different technologies of the self, different ways of being a subject, different possibilities for human existence.

Foucault does not tell us which to choose. He gives us the history that makes choice possible.

Conclusion: Freedom Through History

“My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism.”

— “On the Genealogy of Ethics” (1983)

Foucault’s genealogy of confession is not nihilism. It does not say that self-knowledge is impossible or that all practices are equally arbitrary. It says that our current practices are historical, contingent, and embedded in power relations—and that this knowledge is itself a form of freedom.

If confession is a technology of power, then we can evaluate it as such. We can ask: Does this serve liberation or domination? Does this produce subjects capable of freedom or subjects docile to governance? Does this open possibilities or close them?

And we can practice otherwise. Not by finding the “true” psychology that was there all along, but by experimenting with different technologies of the self, different ways of being a subject, different forms of self-relation.

The history of self-knowledge is not a history of discoveries about a fixed human nature. It is a history of inventions—of techniques, institutions, and practices that produce the very “selves” they claim to know. Understanding this history does not tell us who we really are. It tells us who we have been made to be—and opens the question of who we might become.

“Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are. We have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get rid of this kind of political ‘double bind,’ which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures.”

— “The Subject and Power”

Selected Sources

Foucault’s Works:

Secondary Literature:

On Pastoral Power Specifically: