Overview
The concept of a confession is much deeper than just sharing a secret with someone, which is how we commonly speak of it.
Etymology and History
The New Testament was originally written in Ancient Greek, where the term “homologeo” was used in the place of “confession”. “Homo” means “same” and “logos” means “word”, so from “same words” we actually arrive at the idea of agreeing by saying the same things.
When the Romans were translating this to Latin, they use the word “confiteri”, with “con”/“com” meaning “together” and “fateri” meaning “to acknowledge.” So, the verb “confiteri” meant roughly “to acknowledge together”, and the noun “confessio” meant something like “total acknowledgement.” St. Augustine wrote his “Confessions” in the 4th century right as arguments about translations were happening. He uses it to mean both acknowledging the sins of his past and declaring his love and faith in God.
In Old French, the word “confession” adopted a more specific meaning under the Catholic Church as part of a sacrament to disclose one’s sins to a priest. It’s at this point that we can see how the concept of confession has implications for the way institutions assert control. The schism between Catholicism and Protestantism led the Catholic Church to alter the nature of confessions as a method of tightening control by preserving stricter, more distinct identity of what Catholicism required against Protestantism. The confessional booth was invented by Charles Borromeo to incorporate anonymity and isolation into the act.
By the 16th century, “confession” replaced terms in Old English like “andetnes” (acknowledgment) and was adopted by legal systems to mean a formal admission of legal guilt. European monarchies had begun surveilling their citizens’ participation in church confessions, sometimes requiring written “Confessions of Faith” to be signed. To avoid attending a church confession or signing a written confession would raise suspicions that you could be politically rebellious or traitorous. Criminal statutes inherited this value on confessions, so Eurocentric judicial systems placed a lot of value on being able to get a criminal to issue a confession as the gold standard for evidence or proof. This confession of guilt was literal; the criminals were expected to explain the psychology that drove their actions, not just the mechanisms through which they broke a law.
Those like Michel Foucault argue that in the 19th century, Western institutions secularized confession while preserving its structure as a tool to extract repressed desires and pathologize them. Confessing a “sin” to a priest in a confessional booth was replaced with confessing “perversions” and “sickness” to a professional in a clinical setting. The priest saves your soul from sins, the professional saves your mind-body from symptoms.
As much credit as Freud gets for emphasizing the importance of subconscious processes in psychology, Foucault argues the opposite: psychoanalysis introduced a scientific dimension to a culture obsessed with self-surveillance to inspect oneself for deviations that lead to damnation. Rather than being sexually repressed because we couldn’t confess our desires, we become even more repressed by the incitement to confess these desires in spaces where institutions can monitor and regulate it while also engaging in a public discourse that shapes cultural norms. It’s arguably even more controlling than the confessional, where you at least have the agency in identifying sins as discrete actions connected to higher principles. Within the premises of psychoanalysis is the notion that your subconscious or unconscious mind has the truth that your conscious thoughts are hiding, and you must seek a credentialed analyst to construct truth out of their interpretations or inferences about your mind.
The most recent evolution of confession emerged in the post-WWII mass media space that feuled the growth of the attention economy. Daytime television as a business model is effectively the turning of confessions into content for consumption. In fact, generating attention from confessions actually meant someone’s social capital increases from performing a successful confession. Consider Oprah. The studio assumes the role of a sacred space that was once occupied by a church or temple. Oprah is the recognizable spiritual leader who guides an audience seated in rows resembling pews. Guests coming to confess state the trauma they experienced (or caused), display their true inner feelings as a result of reflection, and then are absolved when Oprah and the crowd cheer for their growth. It’s not even a joke to say that Oprah occupies the same space in many people’s lives as a high priestess would. She herself has referred to her own platform as a “ministry,” and her personal background involved Southern Baptist traditions alongside New Age spiritual philosophy.
Fast forward to 2026, and we see AI-boosted algorithmic analysis and delivery of confession as content to be measured for engagement costs and return-on-investment.
Interpretations
Confessional Technologies
“Confessional technologies” is a term coined by Michel Foucault.
Commentary
Bojack and Ben Affleck
I’m sympathetic to Ben Affleck as a celebrity whose struggles with alcoholism made him a poster boy he didn’t ask to be. My analysis of The Way Back is built on the premise of the movie being a form of confession for him in a format he’s most familiar and expressive with as an actor. It’s not a very remarkable movie if taken at face value, but seeing it as Affleck working through his history with drinking and recovery, as well as the impacts it had on his career and relationships, elevates it quite a bit.
Bojack Horseman is not a show I’m actually very interested in unpacking. While I’m very partial to media criticism and Southern California, I don’t think the show says too much about mental health or addiction that isn’t readily available at face value. There are some slices of it that are helpful to pull out in the context of other discussions, and this is one of those instances. In the first season, Bojack is looking to inject fresh life into his career by publishing a book, though his lack of work ethic and chronic substance use leads to him relying on a ghost writer, Diane. Contrary to his expectations of a glowing PR piece, she writes a deeply flawed portrayal of him through his trauma and bad decisions. Contrary to making him look bad, it’s met with great acclaim by the public who feel a sense of vindication themselves from seeing him as more relatable through his flaws.
The contrast between Ben Affleck, whose project inspires catharsis, and Bojack, whose project still leaves him dissatisfied as to the question of whether he can be a good person, is noteworthy. Confession can still have the catharsis that promotes real healing for an individual, but it can just as easily be a form of trying to raise social capital from a history of developing a portfolio with toxic assets.
Wouldn’t I be a hypocrite if I said managing this site wasn’t doing the same for me?