SPOILER ALERT: YOU CAN SUCK IT, plus Mormon Doctrine recited from memory | dooce ®: “‘We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are FIRST faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, SECOND repentance, THIRD baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, FOURTH laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.’

That’s right. LAYING ON OF HANDS. It doesn’t get much truer than that. As a former President of Early Morning Seminary and Earner of the Young Women’s Medallion and as Someone Who Repented of Her First Kiss,…”

There’s an indication here of a key aspect of pastoral power and that is the revelation of all of a person’s truth – an important part of repentance and something that is performed in Rousseau’s Confessions – and we see Armstrong claiming to repent of her first kiss, a classic instance of revealing the tiniest truth and the shaping of an individual through the confession.

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold | dooce ®: “I think that’s the thing I’ve realized lately through all the reading I’ve been doing, that I didn’t have a choice. I was forced at birth into a life full of guilt and repression, a life of thinking that my eternal salvation was at risk with every thought and desire in my heart. I lived 22 years in constant fear.”

This post gets to the heart of the individualising influence of pastoral power. The care for the individuals soul in this life and the next and the creation of an individuality borne out of a personal confession that both creates and shapes the individual. As Foucault attests, the power of pastoral care is the way the individual is shaped and submitted to “a set of very specific patterns.” In Armstrong’s case these patters are those developed and dictated by the Mormon church.