“In the wake of Marcel Mauss and Charles Taylor, Sluhovsky tackles in his elegant and learned book the problem of the birth of the modern self, and makes a major contribution to our understanding of this problem. In his clear and erudite demonstration, he convincingly insists, against Foucault, that the answer lies in the joint study of beliefs and embodied practices. He makes it plain how Catholic elites of early modernity, such as the Jesuits, permitted the birth of a new subjectivity, and insists on the revolutionary potential of the new introspective techniques. Future studies of the early modern devotional techniques of self-analysis and their historical impact will now start from Sluhovsky’s book.”

Guy G. Stroumsa, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Oxford University

“Sluhovsky describes a revolution to which we have paid little or no attention—the refinement and proliferation of traditions of spiritual guidance in Catholic Europe in the early modern period.  Meticulously researched and studiously impartial, this book  delivers a salutary jolt to dominant narratives of  the emergence of the self in modern times from Max Weber to Michel Foucault. It adds an unexpectedly rich new strand to our understanding of the culture of the West.”

Peter Brown, Princeton University