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.
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.