Lecture: Two-Way Comm And The Present Time Problem (1954)

Now, there’s a thing called a confessional which was the basic psychotherapy that man had. The Catholic Church rather monopolized this, they, I don’t know if you know how a confessional is carried on or not but it’s a… I could go into this in considerable detail but won’t. But the priest sits in a little booth and he has a curtain drawn there and he is not visible to the communicant or the penitent or whatever they call him. And he’s not visible, and this person sort of whispers his various sins and so forth through a crack in the curtain or a little box. It’s a highly rigged affair. He’s sort of passing his troubles on to God, you see?

Well, they’re fond of telling you, they’re fond of telling you that this confessional is based on the fact that if you can get anybody to talk about his troubles, he will   get better and that’s why a confessional works. No, that isn’t why it works. It’s putting the blame on God is how it works. This is to say, “We’ll just pass our troubles over to God,” because again, it is not a two-way communication.¹

Notes