The influence of The Confessions reaches
well beyond philosophy. As a work of literature, it inaugurated
the modern genre of autobiography and influenced narrative technique
in the great novels that would appear in the following century.
Rousseau’s emphasis on the effects of childhood experiences on adulthood,
especially in relation to the development of sexuality, foreshadows
the revolutionary psychological work of Sigmund Freud. The
Confessions is also the work considered most responsible
for Rousseau’s frequent accreditation as the father of the romantic
movement, for the degree to which he emphasizes the importance of
subjective, individual, and sensory experience of the world.
