desperate times offered a certain flexibility in the rules of absolution.

Absolution is not the same as understanding.

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

Psychoanalysis is the confession without absolution.

...telling doesn't help me - it helps you. As Wilde says, It is the confession, not the priest, that gives absolution...

How can one absolve intelligent men for engaging in arrogant and demented folly?