Therapy vs. Confession

The different roles of a psychotherapist and priest in our lives

The Baptism of Vajk by Gyula Benczúr

People nowadays are always talking about how therapy is the new priesthood. Therapists are just secular priests, therapeutic work is the same as confession, etc etc. While I can understand where people are coming from, I want to tease apart the major differences I’ve found as someone who has done both a lot of therapy, and been blessed with the sacrament of holy confession.

Goals of Therapy vs Confession

What people often think of when they think about this is the traditional stereotypical role of a priest: you go into a little Catholic box that’s dark and has a little wooden screen. You’ve probably seen it in movies or TV shows. You confess all your deepest, darkest sins, etc., etc.

But for most people who don’t do confession anymore (at least in America, where a lot of modern culture and media is produced) most people aren’t going to confession. Even most Christians don’t really do it, as far as I know. Confession isn’t a huge thing in Protestant circles, and most American Christians are still Protestant. So you have this weird situation where the sacrament of holy confession has fallen out of the public consciousness quite a bit.

Therapy, at first glance, seems kind of like confession: you go into a room. Traditionally in psychoanalysis you don’t look at the psychoanalyst, right? Now it’s more common to have a face-to-face chat. You go through all your deepest, darkest secrets. You tell the therapist, and the therapist tries to help you with those deep, dark secrets, like the priest would as well.

But there are some major differences right from the start. First of all, when it comes to the actual rite, there’s a big difference in how you approach your quote-unquote “confessing” in therapy versus confession.

To start with, in confession (as someone who’s done holy confession a number of times and been blessed with that) it’s really a beautiful sacrament. The goal is to confess your sins. You’re going in there saying, “Okay, Father, I have sinned. I have made mistakes. I have done things that I knew were wrong and bad, and this is what they are.” You go in confessing sins (things you’re admitting to the Father are bad) and you ask for forgiveness. You ask for absolution from God, from Christ, the Holy Trinity, etc.

That’s a pretty important distinction because going in and saying, “Hey, I have sinned, I have made mistakes, I have offended God, I have been immoral” (however you want to put it) and asking for absolution and forgiveness is very different from what you’re doing in therapy.

In therapy, the goal is to go to your therapist and say, “Hey, I have some problems. I have mental health problems, interpersonal problems, and I want you to help me fix them.” You’re working together with the therapist. They call it the therapeutic relationship or whatever. But as the client and the therapist, you’re collaborating to solve problems that come up in your mind, your relationships, your job, etc.

While they may seem similar on the surface, these are extremely different things. When you go to confession and tell a priest, “Hey, I’ve sinned,” typically the priest isn’t sitting there hashing out with you how to fix it. That might happen a little, sometimes before or after, but the sacrament of confession is mainly the priest listening, maybe clarifying if something’s a sin worthy of confession, offering a bit of guidance, mostly just letting you confess, and then praying the prayers of holy confession to absolve you of your sin.

As opposed to therapy, where you go deep into it. In therapy the moral category isn’t as central. A therapist might say, “Oh no, that was bad, you shouldn’t have done that,” or “this person shouldn’t have done this,” but usually they have a much more problem-solving approach to interpersonal and mental issues.

So again to emphasize: the overall purpose, the telos, of confession versus therapy is very, very different.

The goal of confession is to absolve you of your sins. Holy confession has that power. This gets tricky depending on how much you believe Christian doctrine, of course? But as someone who’s done a lot of psychotherapy and also holy confession, I can tell you that even just experientially, phenomenologically, it feels extremely different.

In holy confession, you confess your sins. You tearfully tell your spiritual father the things you’re ashamed of, he puts his stole over your head, prays for you, and asks for and receives forgiveness and absolution. It’s beautiful. It’s an incredible experience.

You feel it in your heart and gut: the release of pressure, shame, and guilt. It’s divine.

I’ll add the caveat that you probably have to believe in God for this to work fully. The ritual and religious aspects have psychological effects even if you don’t believe, but if you don’t believe in God, it’s not nearly as impactful. I’ve never done holy confession without believing, so your mileage may vary.

With a therapist, you can have deep emotional experiences too. I’ve had sessions where I’ve gone deep into grief over losing loved ones, deep into childhood traumas, cried for 30 to 40 minutes. It’s meaningful and important to go through that and reach those difficult emotions.

But at the end of the day, it’s not as powerful as holy confession, at least in the moment. Therapy tends to work over far longer time periods, and it’s more of a knowledge-based process of learning and applying mental techniques. It’s in a different ballpark entirely.

Social Roles of Therapist vs Priest

Another important aspect of the distinction here is the different relationship you have with your therapist versus your priest. This gets confused a little in the modern era too. We’re not as tied into our church parishes as we used to be as Christians. I’m going to speak specifically here to priests of the Orthodox/Catholic and other high church groups.

As a client working with a therapist, it’s clear that you’re going to a professional you don’t have a personal connection with, who is “objective” about your situation, and who is using a rationalized set of techniques to help with your problems.

When you confess to a priest, that priest is your spiritual father (whom you literally call ‘father), and at least in the ideal parish situation, he’s someone who knows you well, who has seen you through difficulties and triumphs, and is a crucial part of your church community. You have a connection with him, and not just you: your loved ones, your spouse, your children, your parents, your friends and fellow parishioners, they all have a connection with this man too.

Therapy is by its nature very atomized, very individualistic: it’s you and a therapist talking about your problems. When you’re confessing to a priest, of course the seal of confession means he’ll never (or at least should never) discuss your sins with anyone else. (In my experience it doesn’t happen as much as people think. It’s very rare for priests to break the seal in Orthodox and Catholic churches.)

But you’re still telling your shameful secrets the leader of your community, a spiritual father who has relationships with you and the people around you. You’re inviting him to hear your deepest, darkest problems, sins, mistakes.

On the other hand, a therapist is never (or at least traditionally should never be) integrated into your community. There are many warnings for therapists in training about doing separate therapy with both a person and their spouse or children, for instance. There’s couples therapy and family therapy, but therapy cannot (and I don’t think should) replace the entire parish community. It can’t.

Perspective of a Therapist vs a Priest

So that’s how these two roles are different your perspective as a client or parishioner. But also, from the perspective of the therapist and the priest, the actual person doing the job has a distinct focus depending on the role.

For the priest, holy confession is a very important sacrament and a key part of their role, but it’s still a small part. The priest’s main job is to run the parish as an administrator, preach, pray the liturgy, lead the divine services, however many times a day or week.

So for a priest, hearing people’s deepest, darkest secrets and shames is something they do, and it’s very important. Holy confession is an incredibly beautiful sacrament, vital for healing, but it doesn’t happen every day for most priests, and it’s not what they spend most of their time on. Most of their time goes to leading the parish, the congregation, running the church.

Whereas for a therapist, probably 20 to 40 hours a week they’re hearing people’s shames, difficulties, and problems. So the therapist’s role is much more focused on that deep-dark-secret thing.

Ironically, I think that gives them a very different psychology. Priests in holy confession aren’t as focused on digging into every detail. “Oh, you feel this shame because of this childhood thing” or “maybe if you focus on it this way you won’t feel the shame.” The goal is to hear sins and absolve them.

For the therapist, the goal is to lean (ideally scientifically) into your inner neuroses, emotional issues, and solve them, or at least help you get back to functioning.

That gets to maybe the core distinction: a therapist’s job is to solve your problems and help you become a quote-unquote “functioning” person. The role of the priest in confession is to absolve you of your sins, via divine grace.

A therapist tends to see someone as a problem to be solved, in order to get them functional. A priest sees everyone as equally sinful, only ‘improving’ by the grace of God.

The Deeper Divide between Religion & Secular Technique

The lines between the emotional/mental/therapeutic world and the spiritual/religious world are notoriously blurry. There’s overlap and confusion.

If you talk to genuinely religious people who take faith seriously (and I think this holds for Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.), they feel a real difference between psychotherapy and religious rites, rituals, and practices.

We could talk endlessly about why: whether there’s actual grace, or it’s psychological/ritualistic artifacts of our minds. But experientially, as the person actually going through them, you can tell that these two rituals are worlds apart.

I’m not sure why or how exactly, that’s a whole series of blog posts in itself.

Overall it’s easy to look at things with surface similarities and call them the same. We love to do it in the flattened modern world. But ultimately when it comes to therapy and confession, it’s just not true.

The purposes of the role, the experience of working with them, and the overall social context between a therapist and a priest have discrete, and crucial characteristics.

To be clear, both therapy and confession can be helpful and salutary. In general I’d pick holy confession if I had to choose one, but it’s a tight race for me.

Either way, I hope you come away from this article understanding a bit more about the differences, especially if you’ve never gotten the chance to confess your sings.

If you have objections, questions, or your own thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below.