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.

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