I’ve had some relationships that felt sort of priest/therapist like… which then did indeed turn out to be manipulative-at-me. i.e. Alice “confesses” something me to about how they are manipulating or hurting others. But, over time, I realized they were also manipulating/hurting me (in smaller ways), and that I because I was a shared part of the social fabric I was somewhat complicit in their harming others.
Two things that seem noteworthy about priests/therapists is
they are (I hope?) trained in skills for dealing with manipulative people
they are somewhat separated in the social fabric. (Therapists go out of their way to not be friends with you or know your social circle AFAICT. Priests I think are part of the social fabric but sort of specialized)
Re: Skills/training: I’ve gotten some experience dealing with manipulative people now, which (maybe?) helps me hold my own against them (although mostly it means that I have less tolerance for dealing with them or making space for them in my life). It’d have been nice if I got those skills without having to go through the corresponding experiences, Much of the time I expect people don’t have that luxury, but helping people gain the skill seems like part of the ideal.
I agree that reduces the risk considerably. I think there are cases where the benefits of some amount of privacy-even-when-you’re-maybe-harming-people between friends are worth the risks (but the exact amounts of benefit, risk, and secrecy are up for debate in any given case, and by default I won’t agree to keep secrets that leave me impotent as people are harmed).
Things I’ve found helpful with the trade-off:
Having confidentiality only extend to people in the same social network, so the secret-keeping friend can get a sanity check without imperilling the one sharing the secret.
Confidentiality only extends to things they tell you under confessional. It doesn’t inhibit you from sharing things you noticed on your own or repeating things other people said, even if they point to the same conclusion as the secret.
I’ll note that while the latter is sane, it leads to potential issues with Parallel Construction, which I would expect a bad actor to almost certainly engage in.
It’s plausible that literal priests and therapists have useful knowledge about this that you could find out by googling and talking to acquaintances, respectively.
Civil law largely takes its lead from the Catholic church by carving out an exception so Catholic priests aren’t forced to constantly refuse to testify and find themselves in contempt of court.
However the exception is not complete. In various localities there are carve outs for mandatory reporting about things like child abuse. Catholic priests are supposed to keep the secret anyway and go to jail for violating the law if they refuse to testify.
Other religions are less strict. For example, in my experience with Zen, dokusan (“going alone to the teacher”, i.e. a private conversation between teacher a student about practice) is legally protected the same way confession is. Within our tradition there’s a more standard assumption of privacy with a somewhat reasonable expectation that things might be shared among other teachers via your teacher asking for advice or reporting dangerous things to authorities, but it’s not absolute like in Catholicism.
However it’s very easy to break the confidentiality rules of confession-like situations. In particular, my understanding is that if a person ever talks about what is discussed in there at all to anyone else, they forfeit the right to confidentiality all together under the law and the priest/etc. can be compelled to testify (civilly, anyway; Catholic priests are still not supposed to, as I understand it, and can be excommunicated if they do).
In the end the choice the Catholic church makes is an absolute one based on being able to grant a religious sacrament. Others make somewhat less absolute guarantees of confidentiality that nonetheless are enough to enable someone to speak openly in ways that they wouldn’t without such protection, but not in such an absolute way that reasonable harm cannot be avoided, as in the Catholic situation.
When I imagine a situation with a priest, I imagine that there’s exactly one priest and common knowledge of who it is. Which seems like it changes things a bit.
“Whoa, why are you telling me this? Why not go to the priest?”
No ability to share small amounts of detail with one priest, different small amounts with another priest. Or to test the waters with one and see how they’re likely to react to the more damaging stuff.
What about the victims here? (Acknowledging that that word might not be entirely appropriate.) I feel like some of what protects people is the thought “I don’t like what person did to me but it’s not worth ruining their life over”. But you can tell a priest about that kind of thing, and if everyone tells the same priest… I dunno, but I like of feel like the priest does something?
I’ve had some relationships that felt sort of priest/therapist like… which then did indeed turn out to be manipulative-at-me. i.e. Alice “confesses” something me to about how they are manipulating or hurting others. But, over time, I realized they were also manipulating/hurting me (in smaller ways), and that I because I was a shared part of the social fabric I was somewhat complicit in their harming others.
Two things that seem noteworthy about priests/therapists is
they are (I hope?) trained in skills for dealing with manipulative people
they are somewhat separated in the social fabric. (Therapists go out of their way to not be friends with you or know your social circle AFAICT. Priests I think are part of the social fabric but sort of specialized)
Re: Skills/training: I’ve gotten some experience dealing with manipulative people now, which (maybe?) helps me hold my own against them (although mostly it means that I have less tolerance for dealing with them or making space for them in my life). It’d have been nice if I got those skills without having to go through the corresponding experiences, Much of the time I expect people don’t have that luxury, but helping people gain the skill seems like part of the ideal.
I agree that reduces the risk considerably. I think there are cases where the benefits of some amount of privacy-even-when-you’re-maybe-harming-people between friends are worth the risks (but the exact amounts of benefit, risk, and secrecy are up for debate in any given case, and by default I won’t agree to keep secrets that leave me impotent as people are harmed).
Things I’ve found helpful with the trade-off:
Having confidentiality only extend to people in the same social network, so the secret-keeping friend can get a sanity check without imperilling the one sharing the secret.
Confidentiality only extends to things they tell you under confessional. It doesn’t inhibit you from sharing things you noticed on your own or repeating things other people said, even if they point to the same conclusion as the secret.
I’ll note that while the latter is sane, it leads to potential issues with Parallel Construction, which I would expect a bad actor to almost certainly engage in.
It’s plausible that literal priests and therapists have useful knowledge about this that you could find out by googling and talking to acquaintances, respectively.
I don’t know how it works for therapists, but I know a bit about the priest situation.
Catholics take the relationship pretty seriously. Priests are supposed to give up their own life rather than violate the confidentiality of confession.
Civil law largely takes its lead from the Catholic church by carving out an exception so Catholic priests aren’t forced to constantly refuse to testify and find themselves in contempt of court.
However the exception is not complete. In various localities there are carve outs for mandatory reporting about things like child abuse. Catholic priests are supposed to keep the secret anyway and go to jail for violating the law if they refuse to testify.
Other religions are less strict. For example, in my experience with Zen, dokusan (“going alone to the teacher”, i.e. a private conversation between teacher a student about practice) is legally protected the same way confession is. Within our tradition there’s a more standard assumption of privacy with a somewhat reasonable expectation that things might be shared among other teachers via your teacher asking for advice or reporting dangerous things to authorities, but it’s not absolute like in Catholicism.
However it’s very easy to break the confidentiality rules of confession-like situations. In particular, my understanding is that if a person ever talks about what is discussed in there at all to anyone else, they forfeit the right to confidentiality all together under the law and the priest/etc. can be compelled to testify (civilly, anyway; Catholic priests are still not supposed to, as I understand it, and can be excommunicated if they do).
In the end the choice the Catholic church makes is an absolute one based on being able to grant a religious sacrament. Others make somewhat less absolute guarantees of confidentiality that nonetheless are enough to enable someone to speak openly in ways that they wouldn’t without such protection, but not in such an absolute way that reasonable harm cannot be avoided, as in the Catholic situation.
When I imagine a situation with a priest, I imagine that there’s exactly one priest and common knowledge of who it is. Which seems like it changes things a bit.
“Whoa, why are you telling me this? Why not go to the priest?”
No ability to share small amounts of detail with one priest, different small amounts with another priest. Or to test the waters with one and see how they’re likely to react to the more damaging stuff.
What about the victims here? (Acknowledging that that word might not be entirely appropriate.) I feel like some of what protects people is the thought “I don’t like what person did to me but it’s not worth ruining their life over”. But you can tell a priest about that kind of thing, and if everyone tells the same priest… I dunno, but I like of feel like the priest does something?