Confession and HIV Test Counseling

The following links are articles and chapters related to my dissertation project, Sacraments of Surveillance: Ethnography of an HIV Test Clinic (Abstract, PDF 4K), that was conducted at the Berkeley Free Clinic and the UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program from 1995-1999.

• The Confession Box: This electronic experiment in channeling safer sex contrition away from the test site yielded some very interesting confessions.
  
  
• Interrogation and Confession in Risk Assessment
  
  Short Article published in June, 1997 Focus Supplement on HIV Test Counseling, published by the UCSF AIDS Health Project.
  
  
• Surveillance and Client-Centered Counseling (Chapter 3, PDF 137K, 58 pages)
  
  This chapter describes how the Califonria HIV testing report form (HIV 3, 4) is incompatible with client-centered counseling.
  
  
• Confession, Sexuality, and HIV Testing (Chapter 5, PDF 139K, 46 pages)
  
  This chapter places HIV testing in a broader historical and cultural context of sacramental and juridical rituals that police subjectivity and desire by interpreting sexual behavior.
  
  
• Confession and Silence during the Moral Inventory (Chapter 6, PDF 107K 40 pages)
  
  This chapter examines the sociolinguistic functions of confessions in three HIV test counseling sessions and concludes with practical suggestions.