On confession and psychoanalysis

The late Lord Kenneth Clark understood the usefulness of the confession in the Catholic church. Lord Kenneth spoke about confession in his magisterial television series "Civilisation":

"A historian can´t help observing how the need for confession has returned, even - or especially - in the land of the pilgrim fathers. The difference is that instead of confession being followed by a simple comforting rubric which has behind it the weight of divine authority, the modern confessor must grope his way into the labyrinth of the psyche, with all its false turnings and dissolving perspectives - a noble aim, but a terrifying responsibility. No wonder that the psychoanalysts have the highest suicide rate of any vocation. And perhaps after all the old procedure had someting to recommend to it; because as a rule it is the act of confession that matters, not the attempted cure."

Very true, as so much else that Lord Kenneth says in this, the greatest of all television series.