The Modern (Bathroom Stall) Confession

Foucault argued (I think in the History of Sexuality--don't ask me which volume off the top of my head) that the medieval Catholic confessional is the predecessor to the psychologist's analysis (I think he was thinking mostly of psychoanalysis of a Freudian bent), but, perhaps, it is also the predecessor of the advice column and even the bathroom graffito confessional in a post-Reformation, Protestant, predominantly Anglophone context (outside of Foucault's France):

For since the British Isles went Protestant
A church confession is too high for most.
But still confession is a human want,
So Englishmen must make theirs now by post
And authors hear them over breakfast toast.
For, failing them, there's nothing but the wall
Of public lavatories on which to scrawl.
(W.H. Auden, "Letter to Lord Byron")

I am beginning to find many of Auden's lines (especially in this particular poem) rather strained, but I like this particular stanza. It just stands out. It is witty, relevant, funny, and relatable. And the lines all work together (other stanzas in this poem have unrelated lines that seem to be there merely to fill out the rhyme scheme). What a thought: restroom graffiti as confessions.

On the Soul

From an unusual source for a discussion on the soul (or, at least, for me/this site):

This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint. This real, non-corporal soul is not a substance; it is the element in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the machinery by which the power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power. On this reality-reference, various concepts have been constructed and domains of analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivity, personality, consciousness, etc.; on it have been built scientific techniques and discourses, and the moral claims of humanism. But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technical invention, has been substituted for teh soul, the illusion of theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the master that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body. (Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; trans. Alan Sheridan)