BEFORE FORGIVING

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'BEFORE FORGIVING

Cautionary Views of Forgiveness

in Psychotherapy

Edited by
Sharon Lamb
Jeffrie G. Murphy

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS

2002
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Jerome Neu, "To Understand AH Is to Forgive AllOr Is It?," copyright 2001 Jerome Neu.
Reprinted with permission of the author.

Jeffrie G. Murphy, "Forgiveness in Counseling: A Philosophical Perspective," copyright 1998

by Jeffrie G. Murphy. Reprinted with permission of Kluwer publishers.

Norman Care, "Forgiveness and Effective Agency," from Decent People, copyright 2000 by
Norman Care. Reprinted with permission of Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Before forgiving : cautionary views of forgiveness in psychotherapy /
edited by Sharon Lamb and Jeffrie G. Murphy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-514520-8
1. Forgiveness. I. Lamb, Sharon. II. Murphy, Jeffrie G.
BF637.F67 B44 2002
155.9'2dc21 2001036416

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
This book is dedicated to the memory of Norman S. Care, a
distinguished philosopher and a gifted and compassionate teacher
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Contents

Preface ix
Jeffrie G. Murphy
Acknowledgments xi
Contributors xiii
Introduction: Reasons to Be Cautious about the Use of
Forgiveness in Psychotherapy 3
Sharon Lamb
Part I. When Forgiving Doesn't Make Sense

1. To Understand All Is to Forgive AllOr Is It? 17

Jerome Neu
Part II. Forgiveness in theTherapy Hour
2. Forgiveness in Counseling:
A Philosophical Perspective 41
Jeffrie G. Murphy
3. Forgiveness in Practice: What Mental Health Counselors
Are Telling Us 54
Varda Konstam, Fern Marx, Jennifer Schurer, Nancy B.
Emerson Lombardo, and Anne K. Harrington
4. Forgiveness as Therapy 72
Norvin Richards
5. Forgiveness in Counseling:
Caution, Definition, and Application 88
Mona Gustafson Affinito
6. Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness in Psychotherapy 112
Margaret R. Holmgren
7. Forgoing Forgiveness 136
BillPuka
viii CONTENTS

Part III. Culture and Context in Forgiveness

8. Women, Abuse, and Forgiveness:
A Special Case 155
Sharon Lamb
9. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
Psychoanalytic and Cultural Perspectives
on Forgiveness 172
Janice Haaken
10. Forgiveness after Genocide?
Perspectives from Bosnian Youth 192
Joshua M. Thomas and Andrew Garrod
Part IV Perpetrators and Forgiveness
11. Forgiveness and Effective Agency 215
Norman S. Care
12. Earning Forgiveness:
The Story of a Perpetrator, Katherine Ann Power 232
Janet Landman
Index, 265
 Preface

A few years ago I (a philosopher) read with admiration psychologist Sharon

Lamb's book The Trouble with Blame: Victims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility.
In my view, her bookalthough deeply sensitive to the genuine hurts expe-
rienced by victimsalso advocated forcefully the case for victims responsibly
taking charge of their own lives in order to transcend their victimhood rather
than wallow in it. We live in a world, alas, where people are given strong in-
centivesoften ideologically motivatedto remain stuck in their victim-
hood and let it define them. I found Professor Lamb's advocacy of strength
and responsibility as an important corrective very persuasive.
Sensing a degree of intellectual and moral kinship with Professor Lamb, I
sent her a letter telling her how much I liked her book and enclosed a recent
essay of mine, "Forgiveness in Counseling: A Philosophical Perspective." In
that essay I expressed some skepticism about the current trend of forgiveness
counseling in psychotherapya trend revealed both in serious scholarly lit-
erature and in countless popular books in the self-help and recovery sections
of bookstores. In these books, we are generally bombarded on all sides with
the advice that the road to recovery and mental and moral health is paved
with forgivenessboth of others and of ourselves. Frequently these books
make a persuasive case that we sometimes can transcend our victimhood
through acts of forgiveness, but they often fail to show appreciation that for-
giveness can also sometimes be an act of weakness and insecuritya hasty
suppression of anger and resentment when that anger and resentment are
neither evil nor unhealthy but rather valuable testimony to our self-respect.
Although certainly not an enemy of forgiveness under the proper circum-
stances, I found much of this literature overly sentimental and enthusiastic in
its boosterism for forgiveness. In particular, I thought that much of it tended
to see only the good side of forgiveness and only the bad side of resentment
and getting even. The purpose of my essay was to resist forgiveness as a uni-
versal prescription; it stated the case against and showed the dangers of hasty
and uncritical forgivenessa haste that fails to appreciate that there is such a

ix
x PREFACE

thing as evil in the world and that people who do evil may be, particularly if
unrepentant, legitimate objects of resentment rather than forgiveness by
those they have victimized. Forgiveness, in my view, is generally legitimate
only if directed toward the properly deserving (e.g., the repentant) and if it
can be bestowed in such a way that victim self-respect and respect for the
moral order can be maintained in the process. Cheap and hasty forgiveness,
what some have called "cheap grace," can only debase the real and valuable
articleas former president Clinton's tiresome perpetual babble about for-
giveness surely illustrates.
When Professor Lamb read my essay, she wrote back that she shared my
skepticism about the forgiveness movement in psychotherapy, and we began
a correspondence about this and other matters that soon developed into such
a warm relationship that Professor Lamb (now Sharon) became the first per-
son with whom I have developed a friendship totally through the Internet.
We still have never met in person.
At some point in our e-mail conversations, one of us (I cannot remember
who) suggested that it might be a good idea to put together a collection of es-
says expressing not opposition to forgiveness but some cautions about its
hasty and inappropriate usesparticularly in the context of psychological
counseling. Our thought was that forgiveness is not something to be jumped
into but rather to be adopted, if at all, only after some rational thinking
hence the title Before Forgiving. We thought that useful discussion of forgive-
ness must be interdisciplinary in nature and decided to bring together the
perspectives of our two disciplines: philosophy (with its careful conceptual
analysis and reflection on values) and psychology (with its understanding of
the human personality and clinical practice). Our plan was to tempt a mix of
both psychologists and philosophers to respond to some of the concerns I
had raised in my essay.
The present volume represents the fruits of that idea. It contains essays by
philosophers (selected for the most part by me) and psychologists (selected
for the most part by Sharon). Except for my essay and the essay by Norman
Care, all of the essays were written expressly for the present volume.
My goal (and, I believe, Sharon's also) for this collection is to enrich the
discussion of the topic of forgiveness by setting it in a broad context where
criticism as well as advocacy will be given a hearing. The purpose is not to re-
ject or oppose forgiveness but rather to explore some cautions about itin
short, to throw a bit of a wet blanket over trendy forgiveness boosterism. We
have all heard the cliche, "To err is human, to forgive divine," but we need to
hear S. J. Perelman's variation on this cliche as well: "To err is human, to for-
give supine." The truth is probably to be found somewhere between the two.

August 2001 Jeffrie G. Murphy

Tempe, Arizona
 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank several people for contributing to our thinking on

these issues: Ellen Canacakos, Anne Dalke, Jean Hampton, Ron Miller, Peter
Tumulty, the authors who contributed to this volume, and members of the
Association for Moral Education. Special thanks to Padraic Springuel, Tara
Arcury, Pauline Beaulieu, and Monica Kellow for help with the manuscript.

xi
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 Contributors

Mona, Gustafson Affinito, Ph.D., L.P., emeritus professor of psychology at

Southern Connecticut State University, has given frequent workshops on
"forgiveness" and taught courses on morality in psychotherapy and on for-
giveness at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven. In 1995 she moved
from Connecticut to Minnesota, leaving behind an active seventeen-year pri-
vate psychotherapy practice. In Minnesota she has served as teaching and su-
pervising faculty at Eden Prairie Psychological Resources and is a member of
the faculty at the Alfred Adler Graduate School, while maintaining a small
private practice. She is the author of Helping with Forgiveness Decisions: A
Brief Guide for Counselors and When to Forgive.
The late Norman S. Care was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin College.
He was educated in music at Indiana University and in philosophy at the
University of Kansas, Yale University, and Oxford University. His areas of in-
terest in teaching and writing were moral theory, moral psychology, political
philosophy, environmental ethics, medical ethics, and aesthetics. He wrote
On Sharing Fate, coedited a number of collections, and published essays and
reviews in journals in philosophy, law, and education and in magazines of so-
cial comment. His most recent books are Living with One's Past: Personal Fates
and Moral Pain and Decent People, from which, with permission, his chapter
here has been excerpted.
Andrew Garrod is associate professor of education at Dartmouth College in
Hanover, New Hampshire, where he teaches courses in adolescence, moral
development, and educational psychology. His recent publications include
the coedited volumes Souls Looking Back: Life Stories of Growing Up Black;
Crossing Customs: International Students Write on U.S. College Life and Cul-
ture; and Learning Disabilities and Life Stories. His diverse work in the field of
education has focused recently on cross-cultural applicability of moral devel-
opment theory and on the use of personal narrative as a tool to explore issues
of development.

xii
xiv CONTRIBUTORS

Janice Haaken is professor of psychology at Portland State University and a

clinical psychologist in private practice. She has published widely in the areas
of gender and violence, psychoanalysis and feminism, and the psychology of
social movements. She is author of Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory, and the
Perils of Looking Back and coproducer of the video Diamonds, Guns, and
Race: Sierra Leone and the Women's Peace Movement.
Anne K. Harrington is president of Anne Harrington & Associates, Inc., a
consulting firm that specializes in aging and long-term care. She is the author
of more than 120 articles and 3 chapters on aging. Currently she is conduct-
ing research on forgiveness and dementia caregiving.
Margaret R. Holmgren received a B.A. in philosophy from Bryn Mawr Col-
lege and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. She is
currently an associate professor of philosophy at Iowa State University and
has been a visiting professor at Oberlin College and Wellesley College, as well
as a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Values and Social Policy at
the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has published articles in philoso-
phy of law, ethical theory, and biomedical ethics and is the author of two ar-
ticles on forgiveness, "Forgiveness and the Intrinsic Value of Persons" and
"Self-Forgiveness and Responsible Moral Agency."
Varda Konstam is professor of counseling and school psychology at the Uni-
versity of Massachusetts, Boston. She has published in the area of psycholog-
ical adaptation to chronic illness, marital interactions, and health-related
quality of life. She is an experienced clinician who has worked with adults,
couples, and families,
Sharon Lamb is associate professor of psychology at St. Michael's College in
Colchester, Vermont. For a long time she has been interested in moral issues
as well as abuse and victimization and has tried to combine these interests in
her work. Her first book, coedited with Jerome Kagan, is The Emergence of
Morality in Young Children. Her second book, The Trouble with Blame: Vic-
tims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility, was her first attempt to combine these
two interests. Her recent book, New Versions of Victims: Feminists Struggle
with the Concept, is a cultural critique of the idea of victim in the historical
present. The Secret Lives of Girls: What Good Girls Really Do was published in
March 2002. She is also a clinical psychologist who sees children and adults
in private practice in Shelburne, Vermont.
Janet Landman is associate professor of psychology at Babson College in
Wellesley, Massachusetts. She taught for over a decade at the University of
Michigan, where she earned her doctorate in psychology. She is author of Re-
gret: The Persistence of the Possible and numerous research articles and book
chapters. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Princeton Arts Review,
The Dickinson Review, Icarus, Northeast Corridor, Black River Review, and
other literary forums.
 CONTRIBUTORS XV

Nancy B. Emerson Lombardo is senior research scientist at the Wellesley Col-

lege Center for Research on Women. She has extensive research and interven-
tion experience with persons with dementia, frail elders, and caregivers. She
developed a theoretical model on forgiveness as a mental health intervention
and has presented workshops with the coauthors for a variety of audiences.
Fern Marx is senior research scientist at the Wellesley College Center for Re-
search on Women. Over the past sixteen years her research on gender-related
issues has included participation as an author of the American Association of
University Women study "How Schools Shortchange Girls," as well as publi-
cations on effective social supports and programs to foster adolescents' and
young adults' self-esteem, self-efficacy, and social competence.
Jeffrie G. Murphy is Regents' Professor of Law and Philosophy at Arizona
State University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on moral
and legal philosophy, including Kant: The Philosophy of Right; Forgiveness and
Mercy (with Jean Hampton); and The Philosophy of Law: An Introduction to
Jurisprudence (with Jules Coleman). His third collection of essays, Character,
Liberty and Law: Kantian Essays in Theory and Practice, appeared in 1998. His
most recent writings on forgiveness and related topics are "Forgiveness, Rec-
onciliation, and Responding to Evil," Fordham Urban Law Journal; "Two
Cheers for Vindictiveness," Punishment and Society, "Moral Epistemology,
the Retributive Emotions, and "The 'Clumsy Moral Philosophy' of Jesus
Christ," in The Passions of Law, ed. Susan Bandes; "Repentance, Punishment
and Mercy," in Repentance, ed. Amitai Etzioni; and "Jean Hampton on Im-
morality, Self-Hatred, and Self-Forgiveness," Philosophical Studies.
Jerome Neu teaches philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Freud and the author of
Emotion, Thought, and Therapy and A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Mean-
ings of Emotions.
BillPuka is a psychologist and philosopher who teaches in the department of
cognitive science at Rensselaer Institute. He has published widely in the area
of ethics and public policy, psychological theory, and philosophy. Puka re-
ceived a Ph.D. from Harvard, working with John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and
Lawrence Kohlberg. He was the first "philosopher-in-residence" in the U.S.
Senate, working on the Senate Budget Committee as a legislative aide to Sen-
ator Gary Hart. He runs a character education program, "Be Your Own
Hero: Careers in Commitment," and a sister-city program in Umuluwe,
Nigeria. He has also consulted in managerial ethics for various corporations
and government agencies, including Western Electric Corporation and the
New York State Governor's Office.
Norvin Richards \s professor of philosophy and chairperson of the department
of philosophy at the University of Alabama. His recent publications include
Humility; "Forgiveness," in Ethics and reprinted in Ethics and Personality, ed.
xvi CONTRIBUTORS

John Deigh; "Innocence," in American Philosophical Quarterly; and "Crimi-

nal Children," in Law and Philosophy.
Jennifer Schurer was a research intern with Fern Marx at the Center for Re-
search on Women at Wellesley College when the analysis for chapter 3 was
undertaken. Ms. Schurer graduated from Wellesley College in May 2000
with honors in psychology and women's studies. She now works at a strategy
consulting firm in Boston and plans to commence graduate studies for an
M.S.W. and an M.P.A. in the fall of 2002.
Joshua M. Thomas is currently an intern chaplain for the Episcopal campus
ministry at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He graduated
summa cum laude from Dartmouth in 2000 with a B.A. in Russian area
studies. His honors thesis considers the role of Orthodox religious philoso-
phy in postcommunist Russia. He was a summer camp counselor for nine
years and an outdoor education instructor; his interests include the faith de-
velopment of adolescents and young adults as well as the role of religious or-
ganizations in work with at-risk youth and their communities.
BEFORE FORGIVING
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 Introduction: Reasons to Be
Cautious about the Use of
Forgiveness in Psychotherapy
Sharon Lamb

Forgiveness is in the airpublic figures making public apologies, movies de-

picting loving kindness offered to murderers, and psychotherapy programs
promoting forgiveness in individuals as well as in marital couples. It is a gift,
an offering, a blessing, a cleansing event. Professionally speaking, within the
field of psychology the literature on forgiveness has arisen with little criticism
and developed without the generally accepted process of hypothesis testing in
a neutral context. Rather than neutrality, there has been an almost wholesale
acceptance of forgiveness as a virtue and, because of this, little concern about
advocating forgiveness in psychotherapy.
Indeed, this trend is in line with other trends in psychology that have been
promoted by American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman
and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2000) on "positive psychology." In a recent ar-
ticle, the two define the field of "positive psychology at the subjective level" as
being about valued experiences such as "well-being, contentment, and satis-
faction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and hap-
piness (in the present)." ("Flow" is a term coined by Csikszentmihalyi to
describe the feeling of well-being a person derives from mindful engagement
in an activity he or she loves to do.) They go on to describe what positive psy-
chology means for the individual: "The capacity for love and vocation,
courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness,
originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom" (p. 5).
I believe forgiveness has become a popular notion among therapists today
(see chapter 10) because of this new "positive psychology," which is indeed an
extension of the three-decade long growth of cognitive-behavioral methods.
The step or stage process toward forgiveness, the encouragement of benevo-
lent attitudes, and the reframing of negative thoughts that are a part of many
forgiveness counseling goals today have their roots in the cognitive-behav-
ioral methods originated by Albert Ellis, Albert Bandura, Aaron Beck, and
Martin Seligman. These men all researched and advocated a form of therapy
that asked patients to change the way they think about their problems in

3
4 INTRODUCTION

order to change the way they feel and behave toward them. In a sense they
overthrew the humanistic psychology movement of Carl Rogers and Abra-
ham Maslow in the 1960s, which emphasized acceptance of feelings and self-
discovery, and replaced it with a more directive approach to therapy, with
homework assignments and sometimes even argumentative therapists whose
goal is to show clients the errors in their thinking. Although, like all thera-
pies, cognitive-behavioral therapy originated in the clinical setting, it aspires
to be a more scientifically based practice and positions itself in opposition to
"softer" (less scientifically based) practices like humanism and psychoanaly-
sis. Indeed, cognitive-behavioral theorists like Seligman and Csikszentmiha-
lyi (2000) frequently belittle humanistic psychology in particular, saying it
spawned a "myriad of self-help movements," a psychology of "victimology," a
legacy of "crystal healing, aromatherapy," and books that help one find one's
inner child.
Many forms of forgiveness therapy follow this cognitive-behavioral track
in psychology. Advocates believe that if one changes the way one thinks about
one's pain, one's perpetrator, and one's injury a person can forgive and that
this act, this change of heart, this new way of thinking about one's injuries
can bring about happiness and contentment. The belief is that a person has
the freedom to choose to forgive, to think differently, and to feel differently.
As in Beck's therapy for depression, Ellis's therapy for life's problems, or Selig-
man's optimism, through challenging old thinking patterns and old ways of
responding, a person can free him or herself from responding to the past.
While current practices of forgiveness in therapy follow this model, recent
forgiveness theorists and researchers have not ignored the philosophical his-
tory and the religious underpinnings of the concept of forgiveness. And there
is now an extensive literature in the field, the bulk of which is reviewed in
Worthington's Dimensions of Forgiveness, published in 1998, and in Forgive-
ness: Theory, Research, and Practice, a book of edited chapters by McCullough,
Pargament, and Thoresen published in 2000, as well as Enright and Fitzgib-
bons's most recent manual, Helping Clients Forgive. In spite of these extensive
reviews of the philosophical, religious, and scientific dimensions of forgive-
ness, few have challenged the idea that forgiveness is a virtue to be endorsed
and taught in a variety of circumstances. This volume is borne of two cur-
mudgeonly but different responses to this literature: one from a philosopher
concerned that psychologists were not taking seriously the philosophical
questions that arose in their promotion of forgiveness, and the other from a
feminist psychologist who saw problems specific to women as well as prob-
lems for psychologists whose goals ought to be the exploration, understand-
ing, and accepting of negative emotions as well as positive ones.
Jeffrie G. Murphy, from a philosopher's standpoint, has been long inter-
ested in issues of justice, retribution, forgiveness, and mercy, claiming, in dis-
agreement with Jean Hampton in their coauthored volume Forgiveness and
Mercy (1988), that in some situations forgiveness may be morally inappropri-
ate and mercy a questionable substitute for justice. In my book The Trouble
with Blame (1996), I took on the topic of forgiveness with regard to perpetra-
 INTRODUCTION 5

tors of sexual abuse, battering, and rape and made pleas for a judicial system
that created better spaces for repentance, apology, and reparation in the lives
of wrongdoers. Making no claims for victims and forgiveness, I argued that
victims needed to look realistically at their perpetrators' as well as their own re-
sponsibility and refrain from either taking too much blame on themselves or
forgiving their perpetrators too easily in an effort to get psychological relief.
Our interest in psychotherapy arose for several reasons. Over the past two
decades, psychologists have no longer been content to philosophically argue
points about forgiveness but have begun to advocate its use in psychotherapy.
Along with the hope that forgiveness will have psychotherapeutic benefits
have come scientific studies showing the benefits of forgiveness to the mental
and physical well-being of people, books giving pragmatic advice about how
to do forgiveness therapy, and articles showing steps and stages that lead to
forgiveness.
I have been a psychotherapist for over 20 years, working with children,
couples, families, and adults with various problems, but also, in particular,
those who have experienced abuse and victimization. I have also worked in
both the psychoanalytic as well as the humanistic traditions and thus in tra-
ditions that generally do not sort emotions into categories of good and bad,
nor encourage any particular feeling or set of feelings for a client to cultivate.
Although McCullough, Pargament, and Thoresen (2000) point out that
Freud says nothing about forgiveness, he does, however, say quite a bit about
guilt and aggressive feelings and the repression of each. Psychoanalytic clini-
cians welcome negative feelings into the therapy hour for exploration and in-
sight, perceiving repression of guilt and aggression (as well as sexual feelings)
at the heart of mental illness. The humanistic tradition welcomes negativity
as well and holds out the expectation that in psychotherapy as well as in a
client's life, all emotions are acceptable. Anger and vengeance are equally as
important as joy and generosity, and the therapist refuses to direct a client to-
ward a certain moral end. As Carl Rogers might have said, "How could I pos-
sibly judge for you what would be best for you to do?"
Murphy's interest in psychotherapy is less direct. Instead, he has worked
primarily with those in the legal system to understand the place of moral
emotions such as forgiveness, remorse, mercy, and vindictiveness in our laws
and judicial system. I first came to admire his writings because of the practi-
cal examples he included to show how these ideas deeply influence the way
we live our lives. A recent example of this is his essay "Two Cheers for Vin-
dictiveness" (2000).
In looking at the literature that currently abounds on the practice of and
hopes for forgiveness therapy, we found what seemed to us to be a surfeit of
stage and step theories about how to forgive, with supporting theory that pri-
marily was used to advocate for forgiveness therapy. Enthusiasm was so great
that many theorists overlook or plow past some of the trickier aspects of the
theory, never demonstrating exactly in what way, for example, vindictive emo-
tions are morally wrong. Although many of these theorists claim that they
fully deal with objections to the advocating of forgiveness in psychotherapy,
6 INTRODUCTION

these views are rarely given their due. There is no authored or edited book that
incorporates naysayers or questioners in a serious way. In Enright's most recent
manual (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000), each naysayer is given short shrift: his
or her work is discussed in a paragraph, and then dismissed as wrong.
That is why we saw the need for a volume such as ours, where together
naysayers and proponents take seriously the issue of whether forgiveness
should be advocated ln psychotherapy; the problems of unilateral forgiveness;
and concomitant issues.
Some of the problems existing in this literature are discussed later; some
are developed further in the chapters to come. One initial problem with this
literature is that there is no consensus with regard to defining forgiveness
(McCullough, Pargament, & Thoresen, 2000); some authors advocate for-
giveness only after a perpetrator has made amends and others advocate for-
giveness no matter what the response from the perpetrator. In addition, there
is little justification for the stage theories that abound. A third problem in the
literature occurs in discussions of examples of unilateral forgiveness, forgive-
ness that expects nothing from the perpetrator of the wrongdoing. Here au-
thors tend to consider only the benefits to the forgiver and rarely the possible
losses he or she might experience. The literature on forgiveness is rife with as-
sumptions about negative emotions that remain unexplored and assump-
tions about the applicability of forgiveness goals to all kinds of people, to all
groups, no matter how wounded or harmed. Finally, alternative practices
have rarely been examined alongside forgiveness therapy, and other religious
beliefs and cultural practices are either ignored or given a nod without serious
attempt to incorporate them into a more universal view of forgiveness prac-
tice. We expand slightly on each of these and more in this introduction before
introducing the individual chapters in this volume.

Definitions

There is no consensus in the definition of forgiveness, although many theo-

rists agree on what forgiveness is not. Those who advocate unilateral forgive-
ness try to make it clear that forgiveness is not "condoning" or "excusing" or
"forgetting" or "denying" (Enright & Coyle, 1998). Baumeister, Exline, and
Sommer (1998), however, have shown that in actual practice, forgiveness ex-
pressed often fails to communicate to an offender this essential promise, that
he or she is not excused or the behavior is not condoned. Enright, Freedman,
and Rique (1998) define forgiveness as a "willingness to abandon one's right
to resentment, negative judgment and indifferent behavior toward one who
unjustly hurt us, while fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, gen-
erosity, and even love towards him or her" (pp. 4647). Exline and Baumeis-
ter (2000) call it a canceling of a debt by the person who has been wronged or
injured. Patton (1985) writes that forgiveness is not doing something, but
discovering something, "that I am more like those who have hurt me than
different from them" (p. 16). Others embrace the religious aspect more fully
 INTRODUCTION 7

in their definition. For Pargament and Rye (1998), it is a method of religious

coping and a religious pursuit. For McCullough, Worthington, and Rachal
(1997), the essence of forgiveness is a change in one's motivation toward the
offending person.
The central problem with definitions of forgiveness is not so much
whether one theorist calls it the canceling of a debt and another a gift, but
that these terms differ in their implications and are not always compatible.
Although theorists may claim that forgiveness does not absolve or excuse the
wrongdoer, their definitions can imply that it does. A gift, it could be argued,
offers a modicum of absolution. If one cancels a debt, the other need not pay
back the wronged person in terms of making reparations. Definitions also
differ in terms of whether they portray forgiveness as other-focused or self-
focused. If the purpose of forgiveness is the benefit to the self, a gift, as it
were, that one gives oneself, is the good it does another a fortunate byprod-
uct? These problems are addressed in the chapters that follow.

Stage Theories and Twelve-Step Programs

Many forgiveness theorists agree that there is no easy path to forgiveness and
warn against "pseudo-forgiveness," or forgiveness that comes too easily. Per-
haps this is why there is an abundance of stage theories implying a longer,
step-by-step process. Stage theories became popular in the 1970s as cogni-
tive-developmental theorists built newer interpersonal theories onto Piaget's
stages of intellectual development in children and adolescents. Kohlberg is
perhaps the most famous of these stage theorists. Others include Robert
Kegan, Robert Selman, and Carol Gilligan, all of whom showed a natural
progression from one stage to the next, tying socioemotional changes to in-
tellectual changes through scoring hypothetical and real-life discussions of
moral and social issues. During the emergence of such stage theories, it was
generally accepted that proof of the existence of developmental stages relied
on several assumptions: that the stages follow one another in a standard pro-
gression and that people move through them one at a time in a similar fash-
ion; that people do not go back to earlier stages once they develop or progress
to a higher stage; and that people generally function at their highest level of
development.
The stage theories that abound in forgiveness research and counseling
generally do not follow these requirements for developmental stages. Instead
they use the terminology of stage theories without reference to or an under-
standing of the methods and qualifications that developmental psychologists
have in mind when they develop stage theories. In the heyday of cognitive-
developmental stage theories, researchers needed to defend stage progression
as the natural way in which development progressed. They would do this
through systematic interviews of children and adults of different ages over
time (longitudinal methodology). Forgiveness theorists put their stages to-
gether using clinical observation (Enright & Coyle, 1998), neither defending
8 INTRODUCTION

stage progression as necessary or even the best way to go through this process
of forgiving.

Unilateral Forgiveness

Another issue that is rarely developed in the forgiveness literature is what is

lost when a victim unilaterally forgives rather than "works for" forgiveness in a
way Molly Andrews (2000) most recently described as "negotiated forgive-
ness." The assumption made is that unilateral forgiveness is the greater virtue
because it does not depend on another's apology or remorse. She cites Enright
as saying that forgiveness is an "internal release" and "a self-healing strategy"
and argues that although forgiving in itself may be a virtue, these motives are
not moral ones. She claims that the forgiver and the forgiven need each other
for justice to be enacted and that to require remorse from a perpetrator is not
to confuse justice and forgiveness but show their interdependence. In her
view, an injustice can be committed through unilateral forgiveness.
On a more individual level, when a person attempts to rid themselves of
all vindictive feelings, Murphy (2000) points out that they may also be let-
ting go of self-respect, self-defense, and allegiance to a moral order. He argues
that the passion for revenge is not necessarily a human evil. Forgiveness theo-
rists have not properly addressed that point.
To take this point a bit further, forgiveness theorists have been unwilling
to seriously consider the positive effects of negative emotions. They begin
from a standpoint that emotions such as resentment, vengefulness, and anger
are bad because they make people feel bad. While forgiveness therapy as out-
lined by Enright and Fitzgibbons (2000) is specifically designed to "treat
anger," we are not so sure why anger must be treated and why it is bad for a
person. Carol Tavris (1982) has splendidly pointed out that anger often
seems wrong to us when a person in an inferior position feels the emotion
and right when a superior expresses it. If anger is a problem to be treated, why
is it not listed in the DSM-IV, the manual of psychiatric disorders, and why
is it not seen as a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, a disorder most
likely to develop in individuals who have been deeply injured?

Alternatives to Forgiveness and the Scientific Method

Perhaps because forgiveness writing over the past two decades has primarily
been theoretical, authors have not addressed the issue of whether different
acts or goals of counseling other than forgiveness might better achieve their
ends. This criticism of the literature seems particularly important at this mo-
ment in time when results from research funded by the Templeton Founda-
tion are about to be brought into the public conversation on forgiveness.
Unlike other granting agencies that support scientific research under a pre-
sumption that such research will be objective, the Templeton Foundation,
 INTRODUCTION 9

which is dedicated to the "reintegration of faith into modern life" (John Tem-
pleton Foundation, 2001), challenged social scientists to design research that
will prove the usefulness of forgiveness, a challenge that is reminiscent of
drug companies who do research on the effectiveness of their own products.
We are more likely to trust the findings of independent scientists, not those
paid by the drug companies, to show us which drugs are safe and effective.
We assume that a disinterest in the outcome will guarantee a more objective
investigation. While the effort to examine some of these therapeutic pro-
grams from a more scientific viewpoint is a worthy effortconsidering that
McCullough, Worthington, and Rachal (1997, p. 5) have called the forgive-
ness literature "a literature of theories without data"it is unclear that data
approached from this biased perspective will be of use.
Philosophers might argue that the scientific approach to studying forgive-
ness counseling is of no use at all anyway. If we are interested in whether uni-
lateral forgiveness is moral and more virtuous than, say, a more negotiated
forgiveness, science cannot answer this question. If we are interested in
whether forgiveness counseling makes people happier, we might turn to sci-
ence; however, whether it does or it does not will not justify promoting it on
moral grounds.

The Happy and the Good

It is problematic when forgiveness psychotherapists show a dependence on

happiness as an outcome of forgiveness. While we may not take issue with the
findings that being able to forgive makes people happier or more physically
well, that does not in itself argue for forgiveness. It still begs the moral ques-
tion: Why forgive? And to answer that question, forgiveness researchers will
need to do something they have not so far successfully done, which is em-
brace the issue of why, morally, people may not and should not forgive.
The research also does not address whether an alternative to forgiveness
would have gotten the same if not better results. For example, research on vic-
tims who forgive shows that they feel better, but there are many other specific
programs that have helped victims, specifically those that work on anger and
empowerment or address anxiety associated with rape. While Enright, Freed-
man, and Rique (1998) agree that many other intervention models will prove
effective, they "suspect" that only those involving forgiveness will prove the
test of time.

Lack of Attention to Context

Forgiveness theorists often ignore the context in which forgiveness occurs.

Enright claims that his style of forgiveness transcends social context; however,
the meaning of forgiveness and its usefulness may change depending on the
historical period as well as the particular person or group of people being
10 INTRODUCTION

asked to forgive. Certain therapeutic techniques may work better during cer-
tain periods of history when differing values concerning mental health come
into play. Likewise certain expectations of different groups of people
women, African Americans, Bosnians, Holocaust survivorschange over
time in terms of our reading of the historical events that produced their op-
pression or traumas.
Looking at women in particular, the recent period of backlash against
feminism shows women clambering to be seen as good, sweet, and caring and
not to be identified with those angry feminists. Empowerment therapy of the
1960s that depended on women's learning to express anger may not work as
well with today's women. Forgiveness therapy conforms to their vision of
who they want to be in this culture in this time. It is not surprising that
women are better at forgiveness counseling than men (Worthington,
Sandage, & Berry, 2000).
These theorists also have rarely developed their thinking with regard to
how such therapy applies to particular groups. Some give an exemption to
Holocaust survivors, claiming that some injuries are too great to forgive. But
rarely does a theorist consider how a belief in the virtue of forgiveness might
affect African Americans in relation to whites; women in relation to men; or
abuse victims in relation to perpetrators.
Alternatives offered by other religions and other cultures are often pre-
sented but not as real alternatives that have moral weight. For example, for-
giveness theorists often accurately reflect that the Jewish view of forgiveness
requires repentance first (see Dorff, 1988; Pargament & Rye, 1998). These
same theorists, primarily Christian, then go on to advocate their views of
unilateral forgiveness, without addressing their possible ethnocentrism or
Christian biases, which are the foundation of these beliefs. A Muslim view
would even argue that it is best sometimes for one's own sanity to avoid
those who have hurt us. The point is that these writers are not owning up to
their promotion of a distinctly Christian view of morality. When they are ac-
tually offering Christian counseling, they are calling it forgiveness counsel-
ing for all.

The chapters in this volume take on such issues as those mentioned here and
most likely raise more questions than they answer. Because forgiveness ther-
apy is moral therapy and not simply, in these theorists' view, therapy about
making oneself happier, it seems appropriate and important to consider the
thoughts of philosophers of law and ethics as well as psychologists. We have
purposely chosen people who have written with varying levels of criticism to-
ward this literature, from Margaret Holmgren, who advocates "genuine for-
giveness," but who here takes seriously the work toward addressing a wrong
that a victim has suffered before forgiving, to authors like Jeffrie Murphy and
myself, who have written more positively about vindictiveness and anger
than about the beauty of forgiveness.
The opening chapter by Jerome Neu describes many of the themes that will
be raised again in the chapters that follow. In particular, Neu examines deter-
 INTRODUCTION II

minism and forgiveness, to what extent either forgiveness or resentment are

choices we make, and to what extent understanding must lead to forgiveness.
Which explanations of acts, he asks, are enough or appropriate for forgiveness?
The core section that follows presents chapters by philosophers and psy-
chologists on the use of forgiveness in psychotherapy. Jeffrie Murphy, in his
chapter, acknowledges that forgiveness may sometimes not reflect lack of self-
respect and may sometimes serve to motivate sinners to repent, but argues
against universally advocating for forgiveness. For some people, there is a le-
gitimate need for continued resentment, and in some situations, the with-
holding of forgiveness can encourage a wrongdoer to repent. While Enright
claims we are "often healed" when we bestow forgiveness as a free uncondi-
tional gift, Murphy skeptically adds, "Perhaps often not, as well."
Jeffrie Murphy's introduction to the problems of forgiveness in psy-
chotherapy is followed by a straightforward analysis by Varda Konstam, Fern
Marx, Jennifer Schurer, Nancy B. Emerson Lombardo, and Anne K. Har-
rington, who have studied to what extent counselors today perceive their
clients to have concerns about forgiveness, as well as to what extent these
therapists would like to address these issues directly and promote forgiveness.
As a form of "baseline data," their research shows that the perceived need
among counselors is great. Their research also shows that counselors are pri-
marily interested in forgiveness as a tool to help their clients feel better and
rarely see it in the moral perspective that forgiveness theorists advocating for-
giveness therapy would like them to see it (as compassion, or as a gift to the
wrongdoer, or an act that makes the world a better place to live in, and even
as a possible way of encouraging a wrongdoer to repent). This last finding
raises concerns with regard to the purpose of forgiveness in psychotherapy, a
concern many of the following chapter authors examine more closely.
Norvin Richards contends that to induce the troubled victim of mistreat-
ment to forgive the person who inflicted the mistreatment is not always the
appropriate therapy, any more than penicillin is always the right treatment
for a physical illness. He offers several examples in which resentment of the
wrongdoer is not at the heart of the victim's injury, so that to focus on getting
the victim to forgive this person is at best to miss the opportunity to be of
help. The practice of moving all clients through Enright's stages of forgive-
ness (Enright, Freedman, and Rique, 1998) is especially vulnerable to this
criticism, he suggests, because those stages do not bring to light what is trou-
bling the client.
Mona Gustafson Affinito, a therapist who has written on how to help
clients forgive, emphasizes in her chapter that it is a decision that clients
should be helped to make and advocacy has little place in the counseling ses-
sion. People cannot be cajoled or induced to forgive. Deciding whether to
forgive, and putting the decision into action, requires intensive emotional
and cognitive work. Nor is forgiveness a "technique." Affinito presents a
fascinating case that flew in the face of her own urge to help clients forgive,
describing her client's pleasure in vengeance and her own understanding of
how this decision to take revenge may have been the right one for this
12 INTRODUCTION

woman. Her discussion of punishment and justice brings out a concern that
many raise; no matter how frequently advocates of forgiveness say that for-
giving does not mean condoning, it is hard for most of us to accept that view.
She raises an interesting question: Even when the individual forgiver is helped
through forgiveness, is the moral community well served in this process?
Margaret Holmgren argues that the practice of working toward genuine
forgiveness and genuine self-forgiveness in the therapy hour, when clients are
willing and able to undertake this work, actually promotes other values such
as self-respect, responsibility, and client empowerment. This practice is also
in the best interest of victims, perpetrators, and society as a whole. However,
she writes that genuine forgiveness and self-forgiveness involve thoroughly
addressing the wrong and warns that therapists should not encourage for-
giveness before this process is complete. Once this process is complete, gen-
uine forgiveness and self-forgiveness are always morally appropriate and de-
sirable outcomes of psychotherapy.
Chapter 7, written by Bill Puka, lays out several alternatives to forgive-
ness. While giving forgiveness its due respect, Puka demonstrates several al-
ternatives and, to his mind, better paths toward forgetting, mental health,
and reconciliation.
In the part titled "Culture and Context in Forgiveness," four theorists ex-
amine forgiveness in relation to particular groups and historical contexts.
First, I describe the difficulties inherent in asking women to forgive given
women's gendered role in relationships. Female victims in particular ought
not to be persuaded to forgive for the sake of either reforming the perpetra-
tor or healing themselves. Holding both anger as well as compassion simul-
taneously, not ridding oneself of either nor insisting on the purity of these
feelings, should be the hallmark of maturation, self-knowledge, and mental
health.
Janice Haaken, while agreeing with forgiveness theorists that the capacity
to absorb interpersonal tensions and disappointments and to make repara-
tion with others is a key indicator of mental health, wonders how we decide
on the threshold of a normative or optimal level of forgiveness. Her chapter
gives a psychoanalytic, cultural perspective on forgiveness. She looks at these
negotiations particularly with women, examining the cultural scripts that
make promoting forgiveness problematic for women.
Joshua Thomas and Andrew Garrod, in "Forgiveness after Genocide?" use
personal narratives as well as responses to fables and moral dilemmas to illus-
trate the difficulties of applying forgiveness therapy, let alone any psy-
chotherapy, to those traumatized by the war in Bosnia. While beliefs run high
among Bosnian college students that offering forgiveness may change a per-
petrator's character, in practice their coping is much more varied. Without
forgiving, many refuse to let anger rule their lives and are hopeful that justice
rather than forgiveness will brighten their future.
In the section on self-forgiveness that follows, philosopher Norman Care
and psychologist and poet Janet Landman reflect on caveats to self-forgive-
ness. Care examines a forward-looking dimension of forgiveness and self-for-
 INTRODUCTION 13

giveness, the possibility of "release" for the wrongdoer, a release that would
mean a renewal of energy for projects and responsible conduct associated
with effective human agency. He argues that other-forgiveness is not suffi-
cient for self-forgiveness and that when our agency is diminished by our
wrongdoing, our chances for self-respect can not only be harnessed to others'
ability to "forgive and forget." Psychotherapists are encouraged to also take
note that self-forgiveness may remain unattainable even when other-forgive-
ness is given to a perpetrator. Care asks, is the failure to self-forgive a psycho-
logical problem or something legitimately remaindered after other-forgive-
ness has occurred?
Landman writes eloquently of Katherine Power's struggles to forgive her-
self as well as to address the wrong that she has done in terms of the pain it has
caused others. At the age of twenty, Power participated in a bank robbery that
was, at the time, conceptualized as an antiwar act, but resulted in the murder
of a police officer, Walter Schroeder, a father of nine. Power went under-
ground but twenty-three years later gave herself up, waived her right to a trial,
pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and began serving an eight- to twelve-year
prison sentence at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framing-
ham. Through interviews, news reports, and Powers parole request state-
ment, Landman analyzes Power's efforts to earn forgiveness.

Philosophers can work out for us the implications of forgiving or advocating

forgiveness. Psychologists can tell us how healthy it is to advocate forgiveness
in the therapy space. Together, in this volume, philosophers and psycholo-
gists take a pragmatic perspective to examine possible problems in the prac-
tice of advocating forgiveness within the therapy hour. With examples of
those who have struggled long and hard to earn forgiveness as well as those
who have forgiven too easily, we hope to be of use to psychotherapists who
are inclined to promote what at first glance seems only to be a life-affirming
and morally virtuous act. We hope also to be a resource for those scholars
who continue to explore and try to better understand forms of both forgive-
ness and resentment we encounter in our daily lives.

References

Andrews, Molly (2000). Forgiveness in context. Journal of Moral Education, 29,

75-86.
Baumeister, Roy F., Julie Juola Exline, & Kristina L. Sommer (1998). The victim role,
grudge theory, and two dimensions of forgiveness. In Everett L. Worthington,
Jr. (Ed.), The foundations of forgiveness (pp. 79104). Philadelphia, PA: Temple-
ton Foundation Press.
Dorff, Elliot N. (1998). The elements of forgiveness: A Jewish approach. In Everett L.
Worthington, Jr. (Ed.), The foundations of forgiveness (pp. 29-55). Philadelphia,
PA: Templeton Foundation Press.
Enright, Robert D., & Catherine T. Coyle (1998). Researching the process model of
forgiveness within psychological interventions. In Everett L. Worthington, Jr.
14 INTRODUCTION

(Ed.), The foundations of forgiveness (pp. 139161). Philadelphia, PA: Temple-

ton Foundation Press.
Enright, Robert D., & Richard P. Fitzgibbons (2000). Helping clients forgive: An em-
pirical guide for resolving anger and resolving hope. Washington, DC: APA Press.
Enright, Robert D., Suzanne R. Freedman, & Julio Rique (1998). The psychology of
interpersonal forgiveness. In Robert D. Enright & Joanna North (Eds.), Explor-
ingforgiveness (pp. 4662). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Exline, Julie Juola, & Roy F. Baumeister (2000). Expressing forgiveness and repen-
tance: Benefits and barriers. In Michael E. McCullough, Kenneth I. Pargament,
& Carl E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 133
155). New York: Guilford Press.
John Templeton Foundation (2001). http://templeton.org/spirituality.asp.
Lamb, Sharon (1996). The trouble with blame: Victims, perpetrators, and responsibility.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McCullough, Michael E., Kenneth I. Pargament, & Carl E. Thoresen (2000). The
psychology of forgiveness: History, conceptual issues, and overview. In Michael
E. McCullough, Kenneth I. Pargament, & Carl E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness:
Theory, research, and practice (pp. 1-14). New York: Guilford Press.
McCullough, Michael E., Everett L. Worthington, Jr., & Kenneth C. Rachal (1997).
Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 73, 321-336.
Murphy, Jeffrie G. (2000). Two cheers for vindictiveness. Punishment and Society, 2,
131-143.
Murphy, Jeffrie G., & Jean Hampton (1988). Forgiveness and mercy, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Pargament, Kenneth L, & Mark S. Rye (1998). Forgiveness as a method of religious
coping. In Everett L. Worthington, Jr. (Ed.), The foundations of forgiveness (pp.
59-78). Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.
Patton, John (1985). Is human forgivenessPossible?Nashville: Abingdon.
Patton, John (2000). Forgiveness in pastoral care and counseling. In Michael E. Mc-
Cullough, Kenneth I. Pargament, & Carl E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness: The-
ory, research, and practice (pp. 281295). New York: Guiiford Press.
Seligman, Martin E. P., & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2000). Positive psychology: An
introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5-14.
Tavris, Carol (1982). Anger: The misunderstood emotion. New York: Simon & Schus-
ter.
Worthington, Everett L., Jr. (1998). Dimensions of forgiveness. Philadelphia, PA: Tem-
pleton Foundation Press.
Worthington, Everett L., Jr., Steven J. Sandage, & Jack W. Berry (2000). Group in-
terventions to promote forgiveness: What researchers and clinicians ought to
know. In Michael E. McCullough, Kenneth I. Pargament, & Carl E. Thoresen
(Eds.), Forgiveness: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 228-253). New York: Guil-
ford Press.
Part 1

WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T

MAKE SENSE
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 one

To Understand All Is to
Forgive AllOr Is It?
Jerome Neu

"To understand all is to forgive all," or so the famous saying goes. Madame de
Stael was actually more measured when she spoke of the relation of under-
standing and forgiveness in Corinne: "Tout comprendre rend tres indulgent"
(which Bartlett's Familiar Quotations translates as "To understand everything
makes one tolerant" [1968, p. 502b]). She is also credited with the more
sweeping and more familiar statement that provides my title and my theme:
"Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner" (which the familiar wisdom "To un-
derstand all is to forgive all" capturesnear enough). My theme is actually
two-fold. First, why is it that the saying does in fact seem wise? My second
theme, however, is to question its wisdom, to wonder whether the relation of
understanding and forgiveness is perhaps more complex. The philosopher
J. L. Austin is reported to have responded to the notion that to understand all
is to forgive all with, "That's quite wrong. Understanding might just add con-
tempt to hatred" (Dennett, 1984, p. 32 n.15). Surely Austin has a point. Sup-
pose that what one learns is that someone did something out of mean and
smallminded motives; such widened understanding need not, as Austin
points out, create sympathy. Indeed, all too often, understanding may pro-
duce a perception of the insult behind an injury. The mere fact that a persons
behavior had causes (and here it is important to note that causes can include
reasons) does not lift responsibility. It all turns on the character of the partic-
ular injuries, and the particular causes, and on what it is to forgive (or to tol-
erate). Some sorting out is needed.
On the first theme I can be, at least initially, brief. To say "To understand
all is to forgive all" is not only to render a descriptive judgment, but also to
offer a prescriptive piece of advice. If someone is not inclined to forgive, the
suggestion is that they do not know the whole story, and that if they did this
would (properly) soften their attitude. I think that is often good advice. It is
often good for the aggrieved to recognize the limits of their understanding, to
seek fuller understanding, and to be (at least somewhat) mollified when they
achieve that fuller understanding. That I say "often" here rather than "always"

17
18 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

connects with my second theme, and I will return to the point. Here we
should note that there is also insight in the descriptive aspect of the folk wis-
dom. To understand all is often to discover that the person who behaved
badly "could not help it." Once one knows all the factors that went into
bringing about an action, it will often emerge that the crucial determining
factors were outside of the person's control. Indeed, if one pushes the investi-
gation far enough, perhaps it will always emerge that the factors are outside of
the person's control (whether the crucial factors be upbringing, social pres-
sure, genetic inheritance, the force of circumstances ... or the influence of
cosmic rays). It is a deeply Kantian part of our understanding of ourselves
and others that where a person is not free to act otherwise, "could not help
it," that person is not regarded as responsible or properly blamable for the ac-
tion done due to the factors outside their control.
But this brings us to some of the limits on the folk wisdom which are also
limits on our Kantian intuitions. For if we are determinists about human ac-
tion, and believe that causal chains can always be traced outside the person, it
might appear that we never have ultimate control and so responsibility (if re-
sponsibility requires such control as a condition) and so everything must al-
ways be forgiven. To refuse to forgive is simply to cling to present ignorance.
If we wish to maintain belief in responsibility and to insist that some actions
are unforgivable, we may be driven to Kantian belief in a noumenal realm of
a pure will where freedom can reign in the face of the ever-expanding ex-
planatory power of science. But I do not think we have to make such a mys-
terious, nonempirical move to preserve our more retributive, our less forgiv-
ing, intuitions. We need not claim that there is some realm beyond the
explanatory power of science. We can grant, at least for the sake of argument,
that all human actions, like all events in nature, are open to the law-like ex-
planations of science, even if we have not yet uncovered them. (Kant insisted
that the fact that we have not yet found a cause does not prove it does not
exist [1785/1993, p. 419]. And even Hume could agree with that; indeed, he
insisted that unexpected, uncharacteristic, and unpredictable human actions
count no more against the reach of causal explanation than unexpected and
unpredictable events in nature such as earthquakes and the weather count
against there being causes that we simply have not yet uncovered [17487
1977, 8]. Hume's skepticism about causation was of a different kind.)
Rather than retreat to the noumenal, I think we should recognize that there is
always a story to explain how things have come to be as they are and why a
person did whatever it is they have done. But not all stories excuse. The diffi-
cult thing is determining which stories excuse, whether our concern is the ab-
stract problem of mapping out a domain of freedom or the more concrete
problems of assigning responsibility orvia forgivenessrelieving individu-
als of some of the consequences of responsibility. This is so whether the par-
ticular problem involves determining when a person should be regarded as
legally insane in a way that excuses from criminal liability or determining
whether a person could not help what they did in a way that entitles them to
sympathy and perhaps even forgiveness (if one can be entitled to forgive-
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 19

nessit is arguable that forgiveness, genuine forgiveness, must always be a

free gift, never an entitlement, just as love must be).1 The sorting out may
begin with a closer look at determinism, excuses, and forgiveness.

Determinism and Forgiveness

Determinism as such is not the issue. When we excuse or forgive someone, it

is not because of some general belief in causal order in the universe, it is not
because we believe that every event has a cause. Resentment is forestalled or
inhibited in particular cases for particular reasons, broadly classifiable in
terms of the voluntariness of the particular (otherwise) offensive or injurious
act (where certain cognitive conditions, such as nonculpable ignorance, or
certain control conditions, such as being pushed or the absence of viable al-
ternatives, prevail), in terms of the competence or capacities of the agent
(where at the time of action or always there are special pressures or the agent
is psychologically abnormal, or is simply a child), or in terms of the character
of the relation between the injurer and the injured (as when we forgive some-
one "for old time's sake"). As P. F. Strawson puts it in his discussion of these
matters in "Freedom and Resentment," "it has never been claimed . . . that it
would follow from the truth of determinism that anyone who caused an in-
jury either was quite simply ignorant of causing it or had acceptably overrid-
ing reasons for acquiescing reluctantly in causing it or. . . . The prevalence of
this happy state of affairs would not be a consequence of the reign of univer-
sal determinism, but of the reign of universal goodwill" (1974, pp. 1011).
Our commitment to ordinary participant reactive attitudes toward each
other (attitudes that include resentment, gratitude, and love) does not de-
pend on a denial of determinism, and an acceptance of determinism need not
undermine those attitudes. We can add that an acceptance of determinism
would not underwrite universal forgivenesshowever desirable or problem-
atic such a universal response. (While Christianity and some forms of therapy
might encourage unbridled forgiveness for the sake of communion, commu-
nity, and calm, an appropriate resentment may conduce to valuable restraint
in others as well as be necessary to self-respect and justice.)
If it is not a general thesis of determinism that leads us to excuse or forgive,
but rather particular conditions, the relevant conditions call for examination.
A good start on that is made by J. L. Austin in "A Plea for Excuses" (1970),
and some of the legal ramifications are explored in H. L. A. Hart's Punish-
ment and Responsibility (1968). But here we must pause to ask whether the
differences between excusing and forgiving matter, whether an excuse can
provide a reason for forgiveness or is instead incompatible with it. Despite
some possible complications (Richards, 1988), it seems to me fruitful to fol-
low Bishop Butler (1726/1970) and Jeffrie Murphy (1982) in taking forgive-
ness as forswearing resentment. Thus understood, as Murphy points out, for-
giveness is only properly in place where resentment is initially properly in
place (otherwise, there is nothing that really needs forgiving), and justified
20 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

resentment is restricted to responsible wrongdoing (1982, p. 506). (More on

the nature of resentment in a bit. More also on the suggestion that forswear-
ing, and so forgiving, must be intentional.) Excuses generally undermine
charges of responsibility, and so may put both initial resentment and subse-
quent forgiveness out of place.
But this need not always be so. While occasionally excuses may leave
nothing to forgive ("it was simply, purely, unavoidably, an accident"), more
typically they merely mitigate or make the offense less serious ("I didn't mean
to," if believed, may reduce an intentional fault to mere negligence, but neg-
ligence remains a fault). The depth of resentment, as well as the ease of for-
giveness, are normally tied to the seriousness of the fault (as well as to the
length of time since the offensea rankling resentment that may have ini-
tially been appropriate may itself become a fault when it persists too long
over too minor a matter). A lesser offense may still leave room for resentment
(and so forgiveness). And even where an excuse removes all responsibility,
and so makes resentment inappropriate, there may be a sense to forgiveness.
The therapeutic concerns served by forgiveness may require the overcoming
of anger as well as resentment. The kind of responsibility essential to resent-
ment (and so forgiveness as the forswearing of resentment) may not be essen-
tial to anger, and so an excuse that attenuates responsibility may not under-
mine the anger provoked by an injury. Anger at harm may persist in the
absence of resentment at wrong. So far as therapy aims to lessen both anger
and resentment, the difference between forgiving and excusing as bars to re-
sentment may not much matter. Our concern is with how understanding
might lessen responsibility, and so provide an excuse, or otherwise lead to
forgiveness. Excusing and forgiving are two different paths to disarming re-
sentment, one by showing it misplaced, and the other by renouncing it de-
spite its warrant.
The issues raised by excuses may be seen in perhaps more acute form in re-
lation to justifications. J. L. Austin provides a useful distinction between
these two. In a case of excuse, you have done wrong, but there are mitigating
factors and your "doing" may not be straightforward. In a case of justifica-
tion, what you have done is not, all things considered, wrongno excuse is
needed (1970, pp. 176177, 181 n.l). It might seem even more obvious in
the case of justification than in the case of excuse that talk of forgiveness is,
strictly speaking, out of place. Still, I am a bit uneasy at too quickly surren-
dering some of our looser usages. Even where someone's action is ultimately
justified, so they did the right thing, there may still remain something (even
perhaps a moral something, a moral remainder) to forgive. Think of the in-
nocent victims of Allied bombing in Europe in World War II. Their suffering
may be seen as the price of defeat of the Nazis (or more accurately as part of
the pricethe bombers too ran risks and made sacrifices). They (the victims
who survived) might well say, "I forgive you my injuries, I would have done
it too," or "It was necessary." Even in these cases, it must be admitted, it
would make as much sense to say "There is nothing to forgive" as "I forgive
you," but it seems to me that the second can be a way of acknowledging a
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 21

shift in attitude based on a full understanding or appreciation of the situa-

tion. It acknowledges justification for a harm. To say simply, "There is noth-
ing to forgive, you did the right thing" might fail to recognize and properly
note the existence of tragedy. And there are unfortunately many situations
tragic situationsin which the best that one can do is still wrong, has a moral
cost that remains to be regretted by the agent and (perhaps) forgiven by the
victim (Williams, 1973). Or, to put it slightly differently, the lesser of two
evils may still leave the chosen evil a wrong (an undeserved harm) even while
ultimately the right thing to do. Therapy can sometimes be an effort to get
someone to see that not every injury is an affront, that harm may be done
(even intentionally) without disrespect.
Some contemporary therapeutic movements urge forgiveness (of self and
others) as a step toward self-healing. The acceptance (and self-acceptance) of
limitations may be derived from a variety of sources. Some among these
movements worry less about whether an apparent wrong is (from the point
of view of objective judgment) excusable, justifiable, or forgivable, than
whether it is good for the individual to give up their anger and resentment
(whatever the characteristics of the object). But perhaps judgment of the ob-
ject and judgment about what is good for the subject who experiences anger
and resentment are not so simply separable.

Misplaced Anger

Let's consider a simple case of understanding leading to forgiveness. Some-

times wider context, more information, changes the perceived character of an
action, excusing or perhaps even justifying it. You learn someone has smashed
your car window. Anger turns to acceptance when you learn that the parking
brake on your car failed and smashing the window was the only way for a by-
stander to rescue an imperiled baby. Or you are stood up for a third time.
Anger turns to acceptance when you learn that your apparently inconsiderate
date was the bystander in the failed-brake case and so detained by the need to
smash a window to rescue a baby. But these are the easiest cases. It is hardly
surprising that knowledge should lead to forgiveness when the initial anger is
based on ignorance or incomplete information. But could it be that anger is
always based on ignorance or incomplete information? Is it never right to be
angry? (This question might remind one of the notion that some derive from
belief in determinism that people may never have ultimate control over, and
so responsibility for, their actions. It would be salutary to consider what "con-
trol" and "self-control" might mean in this context. That task is nicely started
on by Dennett in Elbow Room [1984, ch. 3].)
Aristotle certainly thought anger has its proper place. He speaks of those
who fail to be angry enough:

The deficiency, whether it is a sort of inirascibility or whatever it is, is

blamed. For those who are not angry at the things they should be are
22 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

thought to be fools, and so are those who are not angry in the right way, at
the right time, or with the right persons; for such a man is thought not to
feel things nor to be pained by them, and, since he does not get angry, he is
thought unlikely to defend himself; and to endure being insulted and to
put up with insults to one's friends is slavish. (Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
Ross and Urmson, 1126a)

Feeling anger (and variants such as indignation) when appropriate may be

a condition of self-respect, and so failure to feel appropriate anger may be
a sign of insufficient concern for one's rights and dignity, insufficient self-
respect. (See Hill, 1973; Murphy, 1982; and Spelman, 1989.) It does not fol-
low that one should never let the anger go. To think about the proper place
and conditions of forgiveness, one must think of the proper place and condi-
tions of anger and of its more restrained cousin, resentment. I call resentment
more restrained because it presumes a certain sort of justification not re-
quired by anger (at least by anger caused by frustration of desire). Of course
resentment may, like anger, on occasion be unjustified (the beliefs involved
may not be true). But resentment, unlike anger, typically asserts a moral
claim. "A person without a sense of justice may be enraged at someone who
fails to act fairly. But anger and annoyance are distinct from indignation and
resentment; they are not, as the latter are, moral emotions" (Rawls, 1971, p.
488). Rawls distinguishes the moral emotions, including resentment and in-
dignation, on the basis of the type of explanation required for a feeling to
count as a particular emotion. Rawls writes, "In general, it is a necessary fea-
ture of moral feelings, and part of what distinguishes them from the natural
attitudes, that the person's explanation of his experience invokes a moral con-
cept and its associated principles. His account of his feeling makes reference
to an acknowledged right or wrong" (p. 481).
One of the abuses of resentment that Bishop Butler emphasizes emerges
when there is no wrong (which Butler refers to as "injury"), "when we fall
into that extravagant and monstrous kind of resentment, toward one who has
innocently been the occasion of evil to us; that is, resentment upon account
of pain or inconvenience, without injury; which is the same absurdity, as set-
tled anger at a thing that is inanimate" (1726/1970, p. 77). There is some-
thing infantile about resentment at what could not be helped.
If something is genuinely outside of a person's control, we ought to forgive
them the harm they may have caused. But then (to return to an earlier point),
if something is outside of a person's control, is forgiveness needed at all?
Where is the wrong? If anger and resentment are out of place, is forgiveness
equally out of place? (Is a child forgiving the table it bumps into as absurd as
it being angry at the table in the first place?) Not every excuse, however,
amounts to a justification. There are, after all, degrees of control. There are
different kinds of wrongs. To see this, let us consider accidents.
It might seem that if something was an accident, no forgiveness is needed.
An accident is not an intentional wrong (indeed, it is the absence of intention
that makes something an "accident"). As Justice Holmes put it, "even a dog
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 23

distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked" (1881, p. 3).
But then, intentional wrongs are not the only kind of wrong, and not all ac-
cidents are blameless. Not every accident could not be helped. People are
often guilty of negligence, of failure to take due care.2 (Even stumbling may
sometimes show a failure to take due care.) We say the outcome should be in
their control, perhaps it would have been in their control had they behaved
responsibly earlier. Surely that is what we think in the case of the drunk driver
who, we admit, could not avoid hitting the pedestrian, given the driver's im-
paired reflexes. It is important to realize that the mere fact that something is
caused is not enough to put it beyond one's control. How much care is due
may depend, among other things, on the amount and kind of harm risked,
and its likelihood in the circumstances. Is clumsiness always an excuse? Is
thoughtlessness? Are these not themselves sometimes the central offense?
Can't they sometimes be helped?
Bishop Butler notes that proper resentment can have social value: "resent-
ment against vice and wickedness . . . is one of the common bonds, by which
society is held together" (1726/1970, p. 75). Since Butler, like Rawls, em-
phasizes that the object of resentment is wrongful injury rather than mere
pain or loss, he insists that its point is to prevent and remedy such injury. Re-
sentment "is to be considered as a weapon, put into our hands by nature,
against injury, injustice, and cruelty" (p. 76). Aristotle connects anger with
the notion of insult, a kind of wrong. "Anger may be defined as a desire ac-
companied by pain, for a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight at the
hands of men who have no call to slight oneself or one's friends" (Rhetoric,
trans. Roberts, 1378a). The thing to notice is that the resentment is directed
as much at an attitude as at a harm. As Murphy says:
One reason we so deeply resent moral injuries done to us is not simply that
they hurt us in some tangible or sensible way; it is because such injuries are
also messages, i.e., symbolic communications. They are ways a wrongdoer
has of saying to us "I count and you do not," "I can use you for my pur-
poses," or "I am here up high and you are there down below." Intentional
wrongdoing degrades usor at least represents an attempt to degrade
usand thus it involves a kind of injury that is not merely tangible and
sensible. It is moral injury. (1982, p. 508)3
I would only add that negligence and thoughtlessness can also send a mes-
sage, indicate lack of due care and regard. In our interrelations, what needs
forgiveness is underlying attitudes. In the case of the child angry at the table,
what makes the anger and forgiveness out of place, in addition to the table
being faultless, is that the table has and conveys no attitude.
If we understand forgiveness as the forswearing of resentment, we should
recognize that what is involved is an interplay of attitudes. What is resented is
an attitude (whether intentional or a lack of due regard that produces an in-
jury or is itself taken as an injury), and what changes when one forgives is
one's attitude toward the person whose attitude originally caused resentment.
We shall have to ask, are attitudes themselves in our control?
24 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

The Interplay of Attitudes

Following Bishop Butler and Jeffrie Murphy in taking forgiveness as the for-
swearing of resentment, more specifically as overcoming resentment for a
limited range of moral reasons (including repentance on the part of the
wrongdoer, but not including psychological ease on the part of the ag-
grieved), enables one to see the centrality of an interplay of attitudes in for-
giveness. Resentment focuses on the intention or lack of due care and respect
that an injury may convey, and forgiveness involves a change of heart toward
the wrongdoer. So one can begin to see systematic connections among the
sorts of reasons that may serve as appropriate grounds for forgiveness. For ex-
ample, both "repentance" and "old time's sake" enable one to distinguish the
attitude manifested in an agent's act and the current fundamental attitude of
the agent, and so make sense of St. Augustine's somewhat mysterious counsel
to "hate the sin, but love the sinner." (The mystery arises because people are
usually taken to be identified, to some degree, by and with their acts.) As
Murphy puts it, "When you are repentant, I forgive you for what you now
are. When I forgive you for old time's sake, I forgive you for what you once
were. Much of our forgiveness of old friends and parents, for example, is of
this sort" (1982, p. 510). There is a disparity in messages communicated. The
divorce between act and agent, or between the attitude manifested in an act
and the attitude of the agent, helps us see what shifts when understanding
leads us to move from resentment to forgiveness.
Attitudes, however, are complex. If our resentments are not simple matters
of choice, can forgiveness be? And even if we can, somehow, shift our inner
attitude, is such a shift by itself enough to constitute forgiveness? In all cir-
cumstances? Pardoning and showing mercy certainly require a shift in out-
ward behavior; might forgiveness (at least sometimes) require as much in
order for the supposed shift in inner attitude to be taken seriously?
Just as it may be difficult to separate offending wrongdoers from their acts,
it may be difficult to separate would-be forgivers from theirs; a change of
heart in the would-be forgiver without a change in behavior and treatment
may not be enough to constitute genuine forgiveness. While attitudes cer-
tainly matter, it is not always clear that an attitude can be taken to have
changed if one nonetheless demands one's pound of flesh, insists first (or
after) on extracting the full punishment. The poet Heine makes the point in
striking ironical fashion:

Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage

with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and but-
ter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if
God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of
seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before
their death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did
me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemiesbut not
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 25

before they have been hanged. (Gedanken und Einfalle, Section I, quoted in
Freud, 1930, p. 11 On.)

Attitudes

Attitudes are not typically under the direct control of our will. Here we may
compare deciding to forgive and deciding to care. As Harry Frankfurt writes
of caring, "The fact that someone cares about a certain thing is constituted by
a complex set of cognitive, affective, and volitional dispositions and states . . .
It certainly cannot be assumed that what a person cares about is generally
under his immediate voluntary control" (1988b, p. 85).
So, even if we were persuaded we would be better off if we forgave some-
one who had trespassed against us, we might find ourselves unable to forgive.
That is not necessarily something (a further something) to blame ourselves
for: "I am an unforgiving person." Perhaps the forgiveness is undeserved.
Perhaps the offense is in a sense unforgivable (due to its seriousness, its egre-
giousness, or the depth of betrayal involved). Perhaps the incapacity to for-
give is specific to this offense and this offender rather than a sign of a perpet-
ually unyielding and self-righteous disposition. For example, in the case of
the psychopath, insensitive to moral rights and obligations, we may not for-
give him (where that involves restoring him to full human relations) because
it seems more appropriate to dismiss him (regard him as not a moral agent at
all). Perhaps there is no ground for separating the agent from the act. (Un-
derstanding is not by itself sufficient for forgiveness. Why forgive the unre-
pentant wrongdoer?) And perhaps the wound itself is of a kind that renders
the victim incapable of forgiveness. The interplay of attitudes needs to recog-
nize a third kind of injury: Apart from whatever grievous harm might have
been done and whatever morally offensive message might have been sent
along with and through it, there is always a risk of moral injury, that the per-
son who is the victim of injustice may become capable of injustice in turn
(and withal incapable of forgiveness). It is that sort of moral damage that
deeply concerned Socrates, and it is the fear of it that sometimes makes
abusers and oppressors relentless; they may fear the justified resentment and
revenge of their victims. And all may fear other consequences of such moral
damage. Think of the molested child who becomes a child molester. Think of
the victims of genocide whose fear of genocide leads them to commit the
same crime.
Forgiveness is one path to reconciliation. There are others. Think of the
work of "Truth and Reconciliation" commissions after the defeat of evil
regimes. The truth, sometimes amounting to confession, insisted on by such
commissions is not quite the same as the understanding referred to in our
proverb. Nor is it the same as punishment or, for that matter, revenge.
So far as we think of forgiveness as a moral virtue, it must be given for
moral reasons. Hence, if someone seeks to forgive simply to ease their own
26 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

mind, for the sake of self-therapy, whatever kind of closure is achieved might
not amount to forgiveness (Murphy, 1982, p. 507). Indeed, in such a case
one might suspect that the relevant attitude does not really get shifted, it is
just the expression of anger that gets suppressed. Since the attitude of the
wrongdoer still presumably stands (the therapeutic interests of the aggrieved
give no ground to separate agent from act), a response to the affront is always
liable to be provoked anew. It is not clear that forgiveness to make ourselves
feel better, to free us to move on, is "forgiveness," that is, a genuine change in
attitude toward the offender or the offense. More broadly, the notion that
forgiveness is the only way to achieve closure, so one can move on, is of
course mistaken. The notion that one must achieve closure before one can
move on may also be mistaken. And the notion that understanding inevitably
leads to forgiveness and so closure is perhaps least plausible of all. The notion
of "closure" is itself problematic when we are dealing with an interplay of at-
titudes, which by their nature, especially in ongoing relationships, are always
in flux.
One may understand the sources of an offense, but to forgive might seem
to lessen the offense, to fail to take it and oneself sufficiently seriously. And
clinging to grievance may seem to offer other rewards (the rewards of self-
righteousness, of dignity, of not having to deal further with the other, etc.).
Understanding itself may sometimes be threatening. Even admitting the of-
fense is intelligible (say in the case of genocide or of incest) may seem a risk;
understanding might seem to make the offense thinkable and so possible
again. Part of the point of taboo is to make certain things unthinkable pre-
cisely so as to make them undoable. Still, one might forgive an offense one
fails to understand. One might do it because the wrongdoer repents. The
wrong may remain unintelligible, yet be forgiven. (Understanding is not nec-
essary to forgiveness.)
Even where one fails or refuses to forgive, one need not be left seething in
resentment. (The concern that one might be is one of the therapeutic argu-
ments for urging forgivenessletting go so one can move on.) It is not just
that there are alternative methods of letting go (I shall speak of forgetting in
a moment). Nor just that there are alternatives to resentment as a reaction to
wrongdoing and neglect directed at oneself in the first place (I shall speak in
a bit of an alternative discussed by Gandhi). It might just be that there are
good reasons to let the past rest as pastsay, in a political context, the evil is
past and so there is no need to struggle further against it, indeed, reason to
fear continuing the struggle against the admitted evil might run the risk of re-
viving it. The mere fact that an evil is past does not mean there is nothing to
forgive (despite Aurel Kolnai's concern over an apparent paradox), the harm
may persist, as may the attitude it expressed. What other accommodation is
needed to maintain moral integrity could be highly variable.
It can of course also be the case that precisely because one does understand
the forces and the pressures that led to, say, a betrayal, one refuses or is inca-
pable of believing it won't happen again. So despite apologies and apparently
sincere promises that it won't happen again, one may refuse to forgive. People
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 27

often reach such a point in dealing with alcoholics who say they are sorry
(and perhaps even mean it, and will go on meaning it each time they lapse
and relapse). And even where one understands the circumstances and pres-
sures that led someone to betray, there may remain the feeling that they could
have tried harder (Feinberg, 1970, pp. 282283). The blanket excuse of de-
terminism is met by our blanket faith in the ability to try.
Even in cases where there may be no alternative, if the outcome reflects the
agent's desires, the agent may still be responsible. It is arguable that the mere
fact that a person could not have done otherwise need not lift moral respon-
sibility. As Harry Frankfurt puts the point, "The fact that a person lacks al-
ternatives does preclude his being morally responsible when it alone accounts
for his behavior. But a lack of alternatives is not inconsistent with moral re-
sponsibility when someone acts as he does for reasons of his own, rather than
simply because no other alternative is open to him" (Frankfurt, 1988a, p. 95).
In such cases, the action can still be taken to express the agent's attitude.
Sometimes it is not our understanding but our ignorance that leads to for-
giveness. There are cases of too much and too little motive. Sometimes these
two may come together in simple difference from the norm. There is the
kleptomaniac who is willing to risk much for things that appear valueless to
us (and seem, on a conscious level, equally valueless to him). The person who
keeps getting in trouble for stealing the apparently valueless may become an
object of pity because of unintelligibility. The behavior is not necessarily
"compulsive." How, after all, does one distinguish an irresistible desire from
one that is simply not resisted? Again, one can always try; and whether one
would succeed may depend on which of a host of conditions are held con-
stant and which are allowed to vary. The conditions for determining capaci-
ties are too complex to go into here, but J. L. Austin sheds useful light on the
notions of "irresistible impulse" and "loss of control" when he tells a story
about a sophisticated academic taking more than his share of ice cream at a
dinner and dryly concludes, "We often succumb to temptation with calm
and even with finesse" (Austin, 1970, p. 198n).
Joel Feinberg (1970) includes the kleptomaniac in a small set of examples
of cases of apparently voluntary actions with bewildering motivation where
blame might seem out of place. In addition to the kleptomaniac, Feinberg
describes a nonviolent child molester, a repetitive exhibitionist, and a well-
to-do man who shoplifts, burgles, and assaults to obtain women's brassieres.
All four understand the illegal character of their acts and avoid unnecessary
risks of detection. What they do not understand is their own desires. And
when we classify them as "mentally ill," we are generally marking the fact
that we do not understand them either. What is particularly interesting,
however, is that bizarre desires, precisely the sort that puzzle the person who
has them and that seem incoherent to us, may lead us to forgive precisely be-
cause we do not understand. As Feinberg puts it, "Where crimes resist expla-
nation in terms of ordinary motives, we hardly know what to resent. Here
the old maxim 'to understand all is to forgive all' seems to be turned on its
ear. It is closer to the truth to say of mentally ill wrongdoers that to forgive is
28 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

to despair of understanding." What seems crucial "is the actor's lack of in-
sight into his own motives" (1970, pp. 284, 288). Of course, understanding
desires may sometimes simply be a matter of their being fairly widespread.
Most adults have sexual desires for other adults. Having sexual desires for
children seems (fortunately) rare, does not seem to fit in with other patterns
of adult desire, and may seem inexplicable. But we should not be too quick
to contrast this with a "normal" individual's insight into "normal" motives.
People in general would have great trouble in specifying the sources of their
"normal" sexual desires. Certainly they have an explanation, but so doubt-
less do the statistically aberrant or bizarre desires. (It does not follow that all
desires are equally desirable. There may be all sorts of good reasons for indi-
viduals and societies to seek to restrain acting on certain desires, whether or
not we understand their source.) The point here is that the path from lack of
understanding to forgiveness is no less strewn with problems than the path
from understanding to forgiveness.
In seeking to follow St. Augustine's advice to forswear resentment by hat-
ing the sin while still loving the sinner, the separation is sometimes effectu-
ated not by understanding, but precisely by lack of understanding. The atti-
tude is not so much detached from the wrongdoer as the message that an
injury might normally send is not received because the desires and attitude
behind the action seem so obscure and unintelligible. So far as the sinner does
not understand the appeal of the sin, the usual insulting message may be de-
tached. But, again, do we understand our own desires? Is it a matter of asso-
ciating with them versus renouncing them? May acting on them sometimes
itself be enough to count as associating with them?

Point of View

If we cannot simply and directly will our anger and resentment away, steps
can be taken, and perhaps sometimes ought to be taken. Therapy depends
upon the hope that attitudes can be changedif not by a direct act of will, by
a variety of techniques that give varying place to reason, thought, and argu-
ment. Spinoza's therapy for anger, and for passive emotions generally, in-
volves seeking wider understanding, ultimately sub specie aeternitatis (under
the aspect of eternity). So the prescriptive advice mentioned at the start of
this essay is not new, and modern therapeutic movements are picking up on
a philosophical, as well as a Christian, theme.
Spinoza counsels that we avoid as far as possible passive and painful emo-
tions, such as hatred and anger, and points out, among other things, that if
we appreciate "that men, like other things, act from the necessity of nature,
then the wrong, or the Hate usually arising from it will occupy a very small
part of the imagination, and will easily be overcome" (Ethics, Part V, Prop. 10
Scol.). In effect, he is suggesting a revision of belief about the operation of
causes, so that the object of anger will be seen as just an element of a necessary
structurea change that would inevitably alter the character of the emotion.
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL IS TO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 29

And the intellectual activity, the search for and consideration of broader
causes, is itself a pleasure and so alleviating. Along similar lines, he points out
that if we become aware of the multiplicity and complexity of causes, an
emotion will have many objects and we will be less affected toward each than
if we had regarded one alone as the cause (Ethics, Part V, Prop. 9).
Spinoza's advice, especially the urging to seek wider understanding, con-
tains good sense. Nonetheless, there is a risk, emphasized by Isaiah Berlin in
"Historical Inevitability" (1969), of mistaking the sort of necessity Spinoza
speaks of as some sort of justifying inevitability. It is what leads Berlin to con-
demn the notion that to understand all is to forgive all as a "ringing fallacy" (p.
41). However, I do not think we need to reject determinism outright in order
to leave room for judgment. As previously noted, belief in determinism need
not provide excuses or, we may now add, be a comfort. Of course, when we
manage to take a wider perspective on the travails of our life, even if we do not
come to regard them as inevitable, we may come to regard them as trivial. Cer-
tainly from a Gods-eye view, our concerns may seem absurd.4 But it is not ob-
vious that we always can assume such a perspective, or even that we should.
Sometimes we are able to direct our attention (though there are limits even on
this), and choosing a perspective and so perhaps shifting attitude may some-
times be like that. But why should we take God's point of view or think that
the perspective of eternity and the universe is somehow more correct than a
more limited perspective? The mere possibility of such an alternative is not
enough to make our concerns unjustifiedonce we recognize that justifica-
tion must always come to an end. Recognition of alternative views need not
leave us with an ironical view of the seriousness with which we take ourselves,
when we properly, by our own standards, do take ourselves seriously. After all,
what we are looking out onto are our individual human concerns. Such con-
cerns might disappear within some vastly larger picture, but why should a
point of view that makes them invisible be thought to make their position (in
relation to us) clearer? The concerns remain real for us and the issue is what is
the correct perspective for us. (The notion of a "correct perspective" itself de-
termined from no point of view seems unintelligible.) Even if we somehow
thought the God's-eye view the correct one, it seems clear that we could not
sustain it. (Aristotle recognized that we are neither simply gods nor animals,
though our natures may participate in characteristics of both.) And again,
even if we could sustain it, that would not show that what matters to us does
not really matter to us or should not matter to us. We love and (yes) we hate,
and the reasons of our hearts cannot be simply dismissed just because we can
imagine a perspective from which our reasons might no longer move.
The God's-eye view, like the perspective of determinism, is not really ours.
It is not what our attitudes toward others and ourselves depend upon. Per-
haps we can look from such a perspective in rare philosophical moments (like
looking from the point of view of the stars and seeing the Earth as an in-
significant little planet), but there is no reason that we should seek to shift
from the perspective through which we must inevitably live our lives or give
higher priority to an ultimately impossible standpoint.
30 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

While enlarged understanding may always offer some benefits, I myself

would hesitate to attempt to move permanently into a wholly expansive view,
not only because I don't think one could permanently succeed, but because
more particular perspectives seem to me often appropriate. That something
might not matter from a God's-eye view does not mean it does not matter.
Forgiving need not take one to a God's-eye view. The notion that to un-
derstand all is to forgive all, taken in the prescriptive sense, may sometimes be
urging one take the (apparently misbehaving) agent's view. If no person will-
ingly does evil, as Socrates thought, then understanding what the person
took themselves to be doing from their point of view is to see the person as
aiming at the good: intentional action always aims at the good. This is the
typical claim of the person who insists "I didn't mean to" when the unfortu-
nate nature of the outcome of their acts becomes manifest. But even an agent
conceded to be aiming at the good may be wrong about what constitutes the
good and their view of the good may include an insulting message for the ag-
grieved. (This leaves aside the deeper issues of Socrates' understanding of
human motivation and intention.)
In order to preserve the inner goodness of the wrongdoer, perhaps to
make it easier to go on loving the sinner while condemning the sin, people
sometimes distinguish an inner (real and true) self and an outer (false and
determined) self. (See Lamb, 1996, p. 82.) But the separation is as false as
the Cartesian split between mind and body that it mimicsboth ap-
proaches treating the real or essential self as though it were a disembodied
mind. It is the schizoid vision of the self popularized by R. D. Laing in the
1960s. The perhaps comforting vision of a well-meaning (and, in the full
schizoid version, all-talented and omnipotent) self should be resisted. There
are several protections against the metaphysical and moral temptation to re-
gard one's inner or mental life as somehow "true" and one's bodily life (with
its overt, observable actions) as external and somehow "false." The first is to
consider carefully what "false" might mean here. In most senses (except
where it is equated from the start with things bodily and visible) it can apply
equally to things mental and physical. That is, emotions and thoughts may
be as "false" as social roles in the sense of being, for example, undesired, un-
chosen, and disliked. Properly understood, the true/false distinction cuts
across the mind/body distinction, rather than running parallel to it. Mind
(mental states) can be false as well as true. Bodily states can be true as well as
false. This connects with a second major protection against the schizoid
delusion: the recognition that not all social roles are false. We build our iden-
tity partly through others' perception and recognition of us. Some of the
social roles that make us who we are we in fact desire and choose. Being a
parent, friend, student, lover need not be "false" just because each is a social
role involving an embodied, interacting life. And a third remedy to a
schizoid split of mind and body is to consider what constitutes a "mental
state." Philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle (1949) have emphasized the behav-
ioral aspects of intelligence, knowing how, vanity, and others. As Wittgen-
stein put it, "The human body is the best picture of the human soul" (1958,
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 3I

p. 178). The self inevitably becomes empty if it is regarded as disembodied

because the attribution and existence of many psychological states depends
on their bodily expression. The moral comfort of a retreat to a well-meaning
inner self can be bought only at the cost of gross distortion of just what it is
that makes us who and what we are. Sinners cannot shed their sins by a sim-
ple metaphysical shift in identity.

Forgiving and Forgetting

It might seem that, as a moral virtue, forgiveness must be given for moral rea-
sons and so forgetting could not be a form of forgiving. Typically we forget
for no reason at all, effortlessly; forgetting is not a straightforwardly inten-
tional activity. But then, perhaps forgiveness itself need not itself always be
intentional. (Whether it then ceases to be a virtue is a further question.) Of
course, sometimes we are unable to forgive despite our best intentions. Still,
as T. S. Eliot understood, there is many a slip between an intention and its ex-
ecution for all sorts of acts. The fact that an intention may not culminate in
action may leave the intention intact (at least sometimes). But the intention
in forgiveness involves a largely internal change, a shift in attitude. The fact
that one presumably can always say "I forgive you" does not mean that for-
giving itself (which involves a change of attitude, which as we have noted is a
complex process) is in one's direct control. Can one choose to forgive (to
change one's attitude, not just one's behavior)? Always? Certainly one can
choose not to forgive. But is choosing to forgive closer to choosing to love
(usually something not thought within the power of the will) than to choos-
ing not to forgive (which like deciding to bear a grudge, or to not speak to
someone, is regarded as within the power of the will)?
Control over emotions (despite the perhaps wishful thought of Sartre and
others who treat all emotion as action), like control over beliefs, is limited.
Belief, which aims at truth, is constrained by the evidence we acknowledge. (I
think Spinoza, who refused to distinguish a separate faculty of willing in rela-
tion to belief, was closer to the truth about the relation of belief and will than
Descartes, who insisted error was due to the extension of our will beyond our
understanding.) Our responsibility for our beliefs does not end, however,
with the limits on our will. There is always the question of whether to act on
the beliefs we happen to have and the even more crucial question of what ef-
forts and attitude to take toward gathering evidence in the formation and
maintenance of beliefs. All of these complications in relation to belief, given
the centrality of belief and thought in emotions, carries over to the realm of
emotions, judgments, and attitudes. If forgiveness is forswearing resentment,
the question arises of whether (and if so, how) we can choose to forgive. Can
we choose not to be angry? At best it seems a process, sometimes involving
steps over which we have only limited control. Not that forgiveness is simply
a matter of anger managementthe interplay of morally appropriate (or in-
appropriate) attitudes is at stake.
32 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

Forgetting can, I think, sometimes be a form of forgivinga way of let-

ting go. (Of course, forgiving need not entail forgetting. It might indeed
sometimes be foolish to forget.)5 While forgetting may not be directly willed,
it may sometimes reveal that an offense, like certain debts, no longer matters.
Indeed, a creditor may sometimes release an indebted individual from their
debt by telling them to "forget it." Where a forgiver lets go of their resent-
ment by forgetting the offense, the resentment has not been so much for-
sworn or renounced as simply allowed to die a natural death. (It is worth re-
membering that resentment has degrees and need not always be actively
overcome. We expect it to fade with time, especially where the offense is
minor and takes place in the context of an ongoing relationship characterized
overall by caring.) Can understanding have anything to do with such for-
giveness? While it is doubtful that understanding could lead directly to for-
getting (given that forgetting is not itself directly willed), it might free an in-
dividual to let goin the passive form of forgetting as well as in the active
form of renouncing. The test here would come in what happens when the
forgotten offense is recalled. (It might also be of interest to know what it
takes to recall the offense. Is it so deeply buried that only a new offense or a
direct statement about the old one can bring it back?) If a recalled offense
brings back with it the old resentments, it has not been forgiven. If it doesn't,
it may sometimes be that it is not just the passage of time that has made the
offense cease to matter, but that a new understanding plays a role. It is signif-
icant that the new understanding may be of the offense, of the other, of one-
self, or even of the world at large. (Following Spinoza's advice to consider
things sub specie aeternitatus can be effective in overcoming angerin the
larger scheme of things, small offenses may not matter. My hesitation is in
making the move to no offenses mattering.) This suggests an interesting twist
in the role of understanding in forgiveness in general. When one says "to un-
derstand all is to forgive all," the object of understanding is typically assumed
to be the same as the object of forgiveness. But in fact, a changed under-
standing of oneself or even of what matters in the world may be what enables
one to forgive.
Self-understanding may be as important as understanding of others in re-
lation to forgiveness. This is obvious in terms of recognizing one's own falli-
bility and proneness to faults. That is sometimes a condition of sympathetic
understanding (and so forgiveness) of others. But it may equally be the case
that understanding one's own tendency to attach undue importance to cer-
tain things, one's over-readiness to take offense, may free one to forgive an of-
fense that remains unjustified or even unintelligible in one's eyes. Under-
standing, we may note once more, is not a necessary condition of forgiveness.
(If it were, we might wonder whether children who cannot fully understand
can fully forgive. There is no age of forgiveness, unlike an age of consent. Un-
derstanding is a condition of consent, but it need not be a condition of for-
giveness. Children are encouraged very early to apologize and to forgive.
They may be very finely attuned to the interplay of attitudes.) Understanding
may also include a recognition of one's provocativeness in producing certain
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 33

offenses. In all, the object of understanding may be broader than just the ob-
ject of forgiveness itself.
It might seem that if forgetting can be a form of forgiving, a shifting of at-
titude, perhaps changing one's attitude not for reasons having to do with the
wrongdoer but for one's own sake, say for anger management or other thera-
peutic reasons, might also be a form of forgiveness toothis despite my ear-
lier remarks. But then there remain the earlier doubts about whether forgive-
ness with such a basis, aiming simply to allow the forgiver to move on,
involves a genuine shift in attitude. The offender's attitude and the offense
may not have shifted at all. It is only one's attitude toward one's own state of
mind that seems to have come into play.

The One and the Many

Does it matter who is being forgiven, who has wronged one? And does it mat-
ter whether it is just one who has been wronged, whether there were fellow
victims or perhaps even a group of victims, or whether one was perhaps sin-
gled out as a victim precisely because one was a member of a group? All of
these things may matter in a variety of ways, some of them affecting one's un-
derstanding of the nature of the wrong, of what needs to be forgiven or oth-
erwise dealt with, and some even affecting who (if anyone) might be in a
position to forgive. These questions about "who"who has been wronged
and who needs to be forgiven, who is the victim and who is the perpetrator
(not to mention beneficiaries and perhaps not-so-innocent bystanders)
may matter as much as the many "whys" that so often complicate under-
standing and forgiveness.
We should start with the recognition that one is always at least among the
victims when questions of forgiveness arise. Of course a mother may forgive
someone for something done to her child, or a husband forgive someone for
something done to his wife, but then the forgiver is clearly aggrieved on their
own behalf as well as because of the wrong done more directly to their loved
one. The notion that someone with more tenuous ties to a victim or victims
might be in a position to give vicarious forgiveness is at the very least pre-
sumptuous. One may forgive on one's own account, but to offer to forgive on
behalf of another is to invite the question: who does one think one is?
Only a wronged party can forgive. It is presumptuous for others to absolve
those who have not wronged them. Insofar as resentment is a moral emotion,
that is, insofar as it depends on beliefs about injustice, legitimate resentment
requires a legitimate grievance. To forswear a resentment one has no right to
bear in the first place is to renounce what is not one's own. One can of course
be indignant on behalf of another, angry at injustice, but to call a change of
heart in such circumstances "forgiveness" is liable to mislead. It takes place
outside the central interplay of attitudes.
There may be ties to perpetrators as well as to fellow victims. Is it worse to
be raped by a stranger or by a date, a would-be friend? A member of one's
34 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

family? The ties to the perpetrator, whatever they might be, open the possi-
bility of additional injuries. (See Neu, 2000.) In particular, those injuries in-
clude betrayal of trust. What trust there might have been depends on what
ties in fact there were, but we generally have less reason to trust strangers than
friends. (Freud points out that the concepts of stranger and enemy are not very
distant.) Still, people regularly report feeling "violated" when their house is
burglarized. Aside from the identification of their house with their person,
the description suggests that we may expect something even from strangers.
The character of our expectations from others and the relation of their iden-
tity to our feelings is tellingly revealed in a story told by Gandhi in his early
political pamphlet, Hind Swaraj. "Imagine, Gandhi suggests, that you are
awakened by a thief entering your bedroom at night, and that in turning on
the light you discover that the thief is really your own father. Would you not
be embarrassed for his shame?" (Meister, 2000, p. 1). As Robert Meister
makes clear in his retelling of Gandhi's story, anger and resentment are not
the only morally appropriate responses to a moral affront. These variant feel-
ings, however, may also call for something like forgiveness if they are to be
overcomewhich is not to say that they always should be overcome. In the
political realm, as Gandhi well understood, reconciliation can take many and
complex forms.6
Much may depend on the wrong and on one's understanding of one's rela-
tion to the wrongdoerwe have seen this already in the notion of forgiving
someone "for old time's sake." Forgiveness is not the only morally or psycho-
logically appropriate response to one's own anger and resentment. Herbert
Morris (1976) contrasts a regime of forgiveness to alternatives of punishment
and treatment of wrongdoers. He suggests automatic forgiveness, like auto-
matic treatment (as though all wrongdoers were somehow "sick," determined
by forces outside their control, and so in need of therapy), might be a terrible
mistake. Respect for the choices of the wrongdoer (which may morally re-
quire certain sorts of responses and preclude others) might be as much at
stake as self-respect. And, crucially, we would lose one of the central forces for
social control and harmony. Too much pity, as Bishop Butler pointed out
long ago, can be a mistake. "Just indignation," he says, "is necessary for the
very subsistence of the world, that injury, injustice, and cruelty should be
punished; and since compassion, which is so natural to mankind, would ren-
der that execution of justice exceedingly difficult and uneasy; indignation
against vice and wickedness is, and may be allowed to be, a balance to that
weakness of pity, and also to anything else which would prevent the necessary
methods of severity" (1726/1970, p. 77).
Since we may also sometimes need to forgive ourselves, the issue of who
forgives whom can become multiply complicated. Surely there are significant
differences between forgiving others and forgiving oneself. The latter may be
(as therapists often urge) all the more necessary because one must always be
with oneself. Insofar as forgiveness is a matter of attitude, an aggrieved and
unforgiving attitude toward oneself may be all the more disruptive to one's
life than a similar attitude toward an often absent (or avoidable) other. On
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 35

the other hand, there may be something unseemly in being too ready to for-
give oneselfat least for wrongs done to others. This connects with the two
faces of responsibility: taking responsibility can involve forward-looking
commitments to deal appropriately with the consequences of wrongs and it
can involve backward-looking acceptance of blame for shortcomings. Only
the latter might be at all undermined by some deterministic explanation of
how whatever went wrong was (ultimately) out of one's control. It may al-
ways be in place to take responsibility for one's failings, to clean up one's
messes (however uncertain one may be about the backward-looking attribu-
tion of the mess exclusively to oneself), and here being too ready to forgive
oneself may buy comfort and self-satisfaction at the price of ceasing to be
worthy of respect.
The direct connection between understanding and forgiveness claimed by
the expression "to understand all is to forgive all" is as questionable in relation
to self-forgiveness as forgiveness of others. As Isaiah Berlin puts the com-
monsense point, "Certainly it will surprise us to be told that the better we un-
derstand our own actionsour own motives and the circumstances sur-
rounding themthe freer from self-blame we shall inevitably feel. The
contrary is surely often true" (Berlin, 1969, p. 96).

Forgiveness and Knowledge

Going back to the quotation from Madame de Stael with which we started,
her character Corinne's thought is actually, in context, neither simply de-
scriptive nor simply prescriptive, but rather a kind of boast (Book XVIII, Ch.
5). Corinne there is claiming that among the virtues of "superiority of mind
and heart" (her own and in general) is that it, through superior understand-
ing, makes one exceptionally indulgent and accepting, and through superior
depth of feeling, makes one exceptionally kind and good. Would that it were
so. Leaving goodness aside (though here one should be aware that it is not
unheard of for people to have great depth of feeling where they themselves
are concerned, but less sensitivity when it comes to others), it is simply not
the case that superior understanding leads automatically to acceptance of the
foibles and crimes of others and oneself. Forgiveness, as we have seen, has
other conditions. And, depending on what one thinks follows from forgive-
ness, that may be a good thing.

Notes

1. As Murphy (1982, p. 116) elaborates: "Christians often like to speak of for-

giveness as a free gift or act of grace. Insofar as they are making the point that no one
has a right to be forgiven, they are making a sound point. But if they are attempting
to argue that no reasons can be given in favor of forgiveness, they are mistaken."
2. Aristotle writes, "Forgetfulness, too, causes anger, as when our own names are
forgotten, trifling as this may be; since forgetfulness is felt to be another sign that we
36 WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

are being slighted; it is due to negligence, and to neglect us is to slight us" (Rhetoric,
trans. Roberts, 1379b). Similarly, Bishop Butler (1726/1970) notes, "Men do indeed
resent what is occasioned through carelessness: but then they expect observance as
their due, and so that carelessness is considered as faulty" (p. 75).
3. There is another kind of moral injury that will need to be attended to. In addi-
tion to material harm and insult, there is the kind of injury that can make its victim
in turn capable of committing injustice. It was this kind of injury that Socrates re-
garded as the only true kind.
4. For Thomas Nagel (1979), absurdity arises from the contrast between the seri-
ousness with which we, unavoidably, live our lives and the arbitrariness of what we
care about when we step back, inevitably, to a transcendent standpoint. While Spi-
noza sees necessity when we view things sub specie aeternitatis, for Nagel what emerges
from a transcendent standpoint is contingency (p. 15).
5. Forgiveness does not require that one behave in the future as though the events
needing forgiveness had not occurred. It would be foolish systematically to ignore
evidence relevant to current and future expectations (that so-and-so is capable of be-
trayal, of deceit, of malicious action, and the like). Even if one does not assume the
future will be like the past in every respect, only a fool would think the past contains
no relevant guidance. (Hume, who insisted on the contingency of the connection,
came to the same practical conclusion.)
How forgiving connects with treating and interacting with the wrongdoer, given
the past act and one's understanding of what it reveals about the character of the
agent, can be a quite complex matter. As Murphy (1982) points out, "If I forgive, this
will primarily be a matter of my forswearing my resentment toward the person who
has wronged mea change of attitude quite compatible with still demanding certain
harsh public consequences for the wrongdoer. My forgiving you for embezzling my
funds is not, for example, inconsistent with a demand that you return my funds to me
or even with a demand that you suffer just legal punishment for what you have done.
Neither does my forgiveness entail that I must trust you with my money again in the
future. Forgiveness restores moral equality but not necessarily equality in every re-
specte.g. equality of trust" (pp. 506-507). But demanding full punishment might
undermine the claim to a shift in attitude (think of the parable of the unforgiving ser-
vant at Matthew 18:21-35 discussed by Murphy [pp. 512-513]). Can punishment
be the price of forgiveness? If forgiveness is bought at such a price, is what is earned
"forgiveness"? Does forgiveness require reparation (Melanie Klein's notion) that goes
beyond repentance, or does reparation function as the true sign of repentance?
6. As Meister's exploration delicately brings out, there can be difficulties at every
turn. If one follows the path of the unreconciled victim seeking revolutionary justice,
refusing to distinguish between the perpetrators and beneficiaries of evil, there is
hope of more than a merely moral victory but there is a risk of endless struggle, of the
constant creation of new enemies. If one follows the path of the reconciled victim,
willing to distinguish between the perpetrators and beneficiaries of evil, a moral vic-
tory may be claimed but there is a risk that the aftereffects of evil will persist in the
form of social injustice, with the old beneficiaries reaping a reward when in fact they
are no better than would-be perpetrators. Whatever its costs, a distinctive advantage
of forgiveness (and other forms of reconciliation) is that it avoids the third kind of in-
jury mentioned earlier (different from the grievous injuries done to victims and the
degrading messages reflected in injuries done with certain attitudes), "the distinc-
tively moral kind of damage that would make victims capable of doing injustice in
their turn, and thus incapable of legitimate rule" (Meister, 2000, p. 4).
 TO UNDERSTAND ALL ISTO FORGIVE ALLOR IS IT? 37

References

Aristotle (1984). The complete works of Aristotle, Vol. 2 (Jonathan Barnes, Ed.).
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Austin, John Longshaw (1970). A plea for excuses. In J. L. Austin, Philosophical pa-
pers (2nd ed., pp. 175-204). New York: Oxford University Press.
Bartlett, John (1968). Bartlett's familiar quotations (14th ed.). Boston: Little, Brown.
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(pp. 41-117). New York: Oxford University Press.
Butler, Bishop Joseph (1726/1970). Butler's fifteen sermons (Tom Aerwyn Roberts,
Ed.). London: S.P.C.K.
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bridge, MA: MIT Press.
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and deserving(pp. 272292). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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furt, The importance of what we care about (pp. 8094). Cambridge: Cambridge
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pp. 64145). London: Hogarth Press.
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philosophy of law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (1881). The common law. Boston: Little, Brown.
Hume, David (1748/1977). An enquiry concerning human understanding. Indianapo-
lis, IN: Hackett.
Kant, Immanuel (1785/1993). Groundingfor the metaphysics of morals. Indianapolis,
IN: Hackett.
Kolnai, Aurel (1978). Forgiveness. In Aurel Kolnai, Ethics, value, and reality (pp.
211-224). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Laing, Ronald Davis (1960). The divided self. London: Tavistock.
Lamb, Sharon (1996). The trouble with blame: Victims, perpetrators, and responsibility.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Meister, Robert (2000). Ways of winning: The costs of moral victory in transitional
regimes. Paper presented at the Conference, "Forgiveness: Traditions and Impli-
cations," University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Morris, Herbert (1976). Persons and punishment. In Herbert Morris, On guilt and
innocence (pp. 31-58). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Murphy, Jeffrie (1982). Forgiveness and resentment. Midwest studies in philosophy, 7,
503-516.
Nagel, Thomas (1979). The absurd. In Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (pp. 11-23).
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Rawls, John (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Ryle, Gilbert (1949). The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson & Co.
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Part 11

FORGIVENESS IN THE
THERAPY HOUR
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 two

Forgiveness in Counseling:
A Philosophical Perspective
Jeffrie G. Murphy

There is, in the contemporary world of counseling, an increasingly visible

movement called "philosophical counseling"a movement that seeks to
make the discipline of philosophy more central to counseling than the disci-
pline of psychology. Although this movement has just started to gain atten-
tion in America, it has already attained some prominence in other countries,
including Israel, Germany, and Holland.1 It seems that the influence of phi-
losophy on the practice of counseling is currently of sufficient weight that
even some who would not identify themselves as philosophical counselors
now impose philosophical constraints on their psychological research and
practice. For example, a recent essay by psychologist Robert D. Enright on
forgiveness in counseling explicitly makes "philosophical rationality" a con-
dition of appropriateness in counseling.
As a professional philosopher, I greet the entry of my discipline into a new
and practically important field with mixed feelings: delight that my disci-
pline might be put to use in helping those with problems in living, and fear
that my discipline might be used in irresponsible wayseither by psycholo-
gists who do not understand philosophy well enough or philosophers who do
not understand psychology well enough. Some careful thinking is surely in
order here, and the purpose of this essay is to make a start toward such think-
ing in a limited area of counseling practice: counseling forgiveness.
I begin by noting that I am not a counselor, philosophical or otherwise,
and that I have no expertise in the practice of counseling. I have become in-
terested in the present topic because my wife, who is a professional counselor,
recently brought to my attention the great emphasis that forgivenessboth
of self and othersnow receives in counseling literature and practice. In par-
ticular, she brought to my attention the work of psychologist Robert D. En-
right and his Human Development Study Group at the University of Wis-
consin at Madison. Since Enright is, in effect, the "guru" of forgiveness in
counseling, my remarks here will be directed in the main at his workpar-
ticularly his recent essay, "Counseling within the Forgiveness Triad: On For-
giving, Receiving Forgiveness, and Self-Forgiveness."2

41
42 FORGIVENESS INTHETHERAPY HOUR

Both on my own and in collaboration with the late Jean Hampton, I have
written on forgiveness as an issue in moral, political, and legal philosophy.3 It
is my hope that these studies might allow me to bring to bear a useful per-
spective on the role of forgiveness in the area of counseling. Since I am
painfully aware that this is a new area for me, and one in which I totally lack
expertise, my remarks here will be extremely tentativemainly raising ques-
tions rather than providing theories and answers of my ownand aimed pri-
marily at generating discussion. Perhaps counselors may have their thoughts
and practices about forgiveness enriched by philosophers, and perhaps
philosophers may have their speculations about forgiveness enriched by
learning how forgiveness works (or does not work) in a context that is gener-
ally unfamiliar to them. Or perhaps not. We will not know until we try some
cross-disciplinary discussions and see how they go. This essay is an attempt to
generate one such discussion.
First let me raise one general question about philosophical counseling. I
assume that counseling in general has as its goal improving the life and func-
tioning of clientsmaking them more viable in the primary arenas (if Freud
was right) of work and love. The ideal, I suppose, is that they should become
happyor at least, to recall Freud again, that their neurotic incapacitating
anxieties should be replaced by ordinary unhappiness.
I would assume that philosophical counseling, if it is truly philosophical,
will be to some degree guided not merely by such therapeutic values as anxi-
ety reduction, but also by the value that is arguably intrinsic to philosophy it-
self: the value of rationality in the realms of belief and morality. Could, for ex-
ample, a philosophical counselor welcome therapeutic improvement in a
client that results from that client's coming to embrace a religious view that
the philosopher might find irrationaleven superstitious? I fear a possible
dilemma here: If the intellectual merits of the comforting and therapeutic
views of the client are irrelevant, then why call this form of counseling "philo-
sophical"? If the intellectual merits are relevant, then will not the philosoph-
ical counselor at least sometimes experience a tension between the desire to
support whatever will move the client toward viability and the desire to give
no support toand perhaps even to challengeworldviews that (in the view
of the philosophical counselor) cannot survive philosophical skepticism?
In his introduction to the book Essays on Philosophical Counseling, Ran
Lahav suggests that philosophical counseling should avoid the "dogmatic ap-
proach" found in traditional philosophical systems. Philosophical counsel-
ing, he writes, "does not provide philosophical theories, but rather philo-
sophical thinking tools."4
Unfortunately, this claim by Lahav raises, at least for me, more questions
than it solves. Most systematic philosophers have not been dogmatic in the
sense of simply asserting views to be accepted as articles of faith. They have
rather offered arguments on reasons for those views; if these are persuasive rea-
sons, what is wrong with bringing the views to bear on counseling? If some-
thing is wrong, then one needs to argue for this and not merely hurl the in-
sult "dogmatism." If counseling requires only the "thinking tools"the
 A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE 43

methods of analysis and critical thinkingcharacteristic of philosophy, and

not any of the conclusions that philosophers have reached using those meth-
ods, then how does philosophical counseling differ from the cognitive ap-
proaches (using such techniques as cognitive restructuring) that have been
around in psychotherapy for a long time?
Consider an example germane to our present inquiry. Suppose a philo-
sophical counselor believes that a particular client will never achieve his
sought-after happiness or even viability unless he forgives himself. But sup-
pose, on philosophical groundsperhaps by embracing a strong form of the
retributive theory of punishment and sufferingthis same counselor be-
lieves that justice demands that culpable wrongdoers suffer in proportion to
their evil or iniquity. Now finally, suppose that this counselor believes that
her client has done something so culpably evil that he ought to suffer for a
long time, perhaps even unto death. Would such a counselor want to lead her
client toward self-forgiveness (and its potentially cleansing and restorative
healing) or might she instead, given her philosophical views, quite under-
standably think that this client should-absent deep repentance and atone-
ment perhapsnever attain self-forgiveness but should forever suffer the self-
hatred he so richly deserves?
Martin Buber (thinking perhaps of former Nazis who might seek thera-
peutic help) once cautioned therapists that, in their desires to help clients
overcome neurotic guilt, they should not do anything that might prevent
clients from dealing properly with what he called their "authentic" or "exis-
tential" guilt.5 Contemporary counselors do not get too many former Nazis
these days, of course, but they probably do get their share of those deep in the
evil of their own existential guiltthose who, for example, physically and
sexually abuse their own children. Should these children be encouraged by
counselors to forgive those who have visited these unspeakable horrors upon
them? Should the perpetrators of those horrors be encouraged to forgive
themselves? If so, is this because, in the realm of counseling, the value of
client well-being gets to trump all other values? Or is it because a background
worldview is being tacitly presupposeda Christian perspective of love and
forgiveness, perhapsthat might not withstand philosophical scrutiny or
that might compromise the "do not impose your values" principle that many
counselors recite as a near-mantra? These are the questions I shall address.

Robert Enright on Forgiveness in Counseling

Enright writes of what he calls "the forgiveness triad": forgiving others, ac-
cepting forgiveness from others, and forgiving oneself. Although I suspect
that he would not refer to himself as a philosophical counselor, he appears to
accept a philosophical constraint upon acceptable counseling with respect to
each aspect of his triad when he writes that "each aspect is ... presented as
philosophically rational and therefore appropriate within counseling.... We
. . . make a philosophical case for [forgiveness] as both rational and moral."
44 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

Unfortunately, Enright does not explain what he means by "philosophical

rationality." (He does find one philosopher, Margaret Holmgren, who agrees
with him; but agreement with one philosopher, even as talented a philoso-
pher as Margaret Holmgren, can hardly be a test for philosophical rational-
ity. ) Neither does Enright explain why philosophical rationality is an accept-
able constraint on counseling. These two omissions are related in important
ways, since the plausibility of the constraint will surely to some degree de-
pend upon how the operative concept in that constraint is analyzed. Also, for
reasons noted previously, even the most plausibly analyzed concept of philo-
sophical rationality might be in tension with therapeutic goals if those goals
are conceptualized in terms of making the client feel and function better by,
for example, removing anxiety. Though a philosophically rational morality
might acknowledge anxiety reduction as a legitimate goal, it surely would not
regard it as a dominant or controlling goal. There are clearly some puzzles
here that require more thought.
It is possible, of coursealthough Enright has provided neither an analy-
sis of philosophical rationality (including morality) nor an argument for why
such an analysis should constrain counselingthat an answer to both of
these worries will emerge from the details of his discussion. Thus I shall now
pass to the triad itself. Because of space limitations, I will focus mainly on for-
giveness of others and treat the other two elements in the triad in a much
more cursory way.

Forgiveness of Others

Enright is aware that some philosophers have argued that resentment of in-
juries may be a sign of self-respect and that therefore a too-ready willingness
to forgive, rather than being a virtue, may actually exhibit the vice of servility.
(Enright cites Joram Graf Haber for this view, but Haber clearly gets the view
from me who, in turn, probably got it from combining the views of Joseph
Butler, Peter Strawson, and Thomas Hill, Jr.)
My own version of this view involves the claim that victims may be
harmed symbolically as well as physically by those who wrong them. Wrong-
doing is in part a communicative act, an act that gives out a degrading or in-
sulting message to the victimthe message "I count and you do not, and I
may thus use you as a mere thing." Resentment of the wrongdoer is one way
that a victim may evince, emotionally, that he or she does not endorse this
degrading message; in this way resentment may be tied to the virtue of self-
respect. (A person who forgives immediately, on the other hand, may lack
proper self-respect and be exhibiting the vice of servility.) This does not mean
that a self-respecting person will never forgive; but it does mean that such a
person might make forgiveness contingent on some change in the wrong-
doertypically repentancethat shows that the wrongdoer no longer en-
dorses the degrading message contained in the injury.
 A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE 45

Against this view, Enright (following Holmgren) writes as follows:

A forgiver who knows that the act was unjust can see his or her own status
as equal to the other person, regardless of the other's stance toward the of-
fended person. In fact, resisting the act of forgiving until the offender
somehow changes is giving great power to the offender. . . . An offended
person who refuses to forgive until certain contingencies are met suffers
twice: once in the original offense and again as he or she is obligated to re-
tain resentment, along with its concomitant negative cognitions and per-
haps even negative behaviors. . . . To forgive, then, is to show self-respect.
(p. 109)
Who is rightMurphy or Holmgren and Enright? I am inclined to say
that the answer to this question is probably highly client- and context-de-
pendent; for this reason, no universal prescriptioneither "always try to for-
give" or "never try to forgive"is justified.7 Enright and Holmgren claim
that a person who fails to resent can see their status and dignity as not less-
ened by such a response, and I am happy to concede that this may be so in
some cases. I am not concerned to argue that one is obligated to feel resent-
ment or to retain it, only that feeling and retaining such a feeling is not always
wrong and is sometimes, for some people, a mark of self-respect. What I am
concerned to stress is that, while a failure to resent can be consistent with
proper self-respect, it sometimes is not. There are, I think, cases that should
be troubling to the uncritical boosters for universal forgivenesscases where
the victim does not "see" his or her moral status and dignity lessened, not be-
cause the victim's self-respect is so well-grounded as to be impervious to as-
sault but because the victim had an improperly low view of his or her moral
status and dignity in the first place.
Some people, of course, may get their self-respect from comprehensive re-
ligious views, for example, the view that each person is a precious child of
God. Given that such persons have a transcendent source for their self-re-
spect, they may be less vulnerable to attacks mounted by their fellow humans
and thus less inclined to feel resentment and more inclined to move quickly
to forgiveness.
Several questions must be raised here. First, is it rational to believe such a
comprehensive view? Second, may such a view simply be presupposed as a
given by a counselor? Third, and finally, what about those who lack such a re-
ligious vision and instead get their self-respect in more secular ways, that is, in
ways that are dependent to a nontrivial degree on how they are treated by
others? (John Rawls's treatment of the social dimension of self-respect and
self-esteem in Part 3 of A Theory of Justice is magnificent.) How are people
who live their mental lives in the secular, Rawlsian world to be counseled
with respect to resentment and forgiveness?
Enright seems to see mainly good consequences flowing from a counseling
strategy that aims at encouraging victimized clients (even such badly victim-
ized clients as incest survivors) to forgive those who have injured them. He
46 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

writes that those who undergo forgiveness counseling manifest "greater gains
in forgiveness, self-esteem, and hope and greater decreases in anxiety and de-
pression" than those in a control group (p. 111).8
I find this conclusion puzzling for several reasons. First, it seems hope-
lessly circular to count greater tendencies to forgive as among the gains expe-
rienced by those who are counseled to forgive. This will, of course, count as
a gain only for someone who is already committed to the general excellence
of forgiveness. Second, I would like to know more what counts as a gain in
self-esteem. Is this merely that the client feels better about herselfsome-
thing that could result if she came to think that her status as a victim is
proper, as no more than she deservesor that she has an accurate conception
of what it is to have full worth as a free and equal rational being? Third, and
related to this, is a concern about the circumstances in which anxiety and de-
pression reduction are to be counted as goods. What if they come about be-
cause we come simply to accept that our proper status in the world is that of
victim and thereby no longer, as the ancient Greeks used to say, "kick against
the pricks"?
In my view slavery, oppression, and victimization are made worse, not bet-
ter, when people are rendered content in their victimization. The counsel im-
mediately to love, forgive, and turn the other cheek may be justified in cer-
tain versions of Christian theology, but I am not at all sure that it is always
good advice for counselors to give to victims. When Marx claimed that reli-
gion is the opiate of the masses, he feared that certain religious worldviews
might make oppressed people compliant cooperators in their own oppres-
sion; I fear that forgiveness might sometimes function as such an opiate as
well. How many battered women, for example, have returned to their batter-
ers for more (and perhaps fatal) abuse because some counselor advised them
to keep trying to save the marriage out of love and forgiveness? I do not know
what the answer to this question is, but I am worried that the boosters for
universal forgiveness may not give ample thought to such issues.
One possible consequence of premature forgiveness as a strategy is that it
makes further victimization more likely. Such a consequence would have to
be counted as a negative, surely. This is a negative consequence for the victim,
but I can also imagine negative consequences for the wrongdoer.9 What if
confronting resentment gives some wrongdoers incentives to repent and re-
form? If this is so, then a hasty forgiveness might contribute to their further
moral corruption by depriving them of this important incentive. Thus mak-
ing forgiveness contingent on repentance by the wrongdoer might in part be
justified, not merely by the self-respect benefits that such a strategy some-
times confers on the victim, but also by the role that such a strategy might
play in the rebirth of the wrongdoer. We have all heard Augustine's admoni-
tionquoted approvingly by both Holmgren and Enrightthat we should
"hate the sin but love the sinner." It is hard to see how the distinction be-
tween sin and sinner can even be drawn, however, as long as the sinner re-
mains psychologically identified with his sin. However, if he breaks the iden-
tification through repentance, then the distinction may easily be drawn; this
 A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE 47

may be another reason why a strategy of making forgiveness contingent on

repentance might sometimes be rational.
Of course, we all know stories where rebirth has been generated from a
free gift of forgiveness without awaiting repentancethe rebirth of Jean Val-
jean in Les Miserables being the most famous literary example. I would not for
a moment deny these stories. I would, however, suggest that there might be
other stories as wellstories where rebirth was generated by the desire to earn,
through repentance, the forgiveness and love of the person victimized. My
point, you will recall, is not to debunk the possible value of forgiveness in
some (perhaps even many) counseling settings; I am rather concerned to ex-
press skepticism about it as a general counseling prescription.
I am reminded here of the famous story of Lord Bacon who, when he
asked a priest the meaning of a large painting in a seacoast church, was told
that it represented all those sailors who had been saved from drowning
through prayer. "And where," asked Bacon, "do you hang the picture of those
who were not saved?" I fear that Enright and his disciples may be a bit like
this priest.
I have, of course, no idea what Enright's own religious commitments
areor even if he has any. I cannot help suspecting, however, that certain
Christian assumptionsperhaps acquired simply from growing up in a
dominantly Christian culturehover behind his approach to forgiveness in
counseling. I have already noted some of these, but let me briefly mention an-
other: Enright's belief (a belief I once shared) that one should draw a sharp
distinction between (1) forgiveness as an internal change of heart and (2) all
those external behaviors required for social reconciliation. I would submit
that this sharp distinction is nearly unintelligible within the Jewish tradition
and perhaps in part explains why for Jews repentance is such an important
precondition of forgiveness. The Christian tradition tends to emphasize pu-
rity of heart as the core of the virtue of forgiveness, whereas the Jewish tradi-
tion gives primary place to the social dimension of reintegration into the
covenanted community.10
Enright claims that "resisting the act of forgiving until the offender some-
how changes is giving great power to the offender" (p. 109). But surely this is
not always the case. If the offender greatly wants to be forgiven by me and I
am not much interested in forgiving himat least until he repentsthen it
seems to me that in this case the balance of power is in my favor and not in
the favor of the offender. Again, these matters are highly client- and context-
dependent, and any universal prescriptions should probably be met with
skepticism.
Let me close this section with a couple of personal stories. The first con-
cerns one of my former students, a young man (let us call him Ralph) with
whom I developed a friendship.11 Ralph once came to me, both as a friend
and as someone who had thought about such matters philosophically, seek-
ing advice on a personal problem. His father, who had subjected him to re-
peated sexual abuse when he was a young boy, had recently attemptedafter
many years of separationto gain reentry into Ralph's life. The father
48 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

demonstrated no signs of repentance for his past iniquity, but simply seemed
his old arrogant selfacting as though, since Ralph was his only living child,
he had a right to at least the appearance of a conventional father-son rela-
tionship with him. (It seems that he was in part motivated by a desire to look
normal and respectable in the eyes of a new wife and family.) Ralph found
this very disquieting. He had previously broken off all relationship with the
fatherto the point of changing his last name so that he would not maintain
even that relationshipand had for years felt comfortable with putting the
father and all he stood for utterly out of his life. Ralphs problem was this: His
minister and several of his friends from church kept counseling him that he
had a duty to forgive the father and to welcome him back into family lifeat
least on limited terms. This was starting to make Ralph feel both guilty and
afraidguilty because he hated going against the teachings of his religion
and afraid that, if he did not continue to shun his father, the adaptive strategy
that had worked so well for so long would collapse and he would suffer psy-
chological damage. In short, for his own well-being, Ralph wanted to main-
tain his strategy of resentment and rejection but wanted to do so only if the
strategy was validated, conceptualized as rational and morally acceptable (in
contrast to having it conceptualized as sinful and unchristian). We had sev-
eral conversations and he read some of my writings on forgiveness and re-
sentment in which I argue for the legitimacy of resentment and for making
forgiveness generally contingent on repentance. As a result of these encoun-
ters, Ralph claimedwith what accuracy I do not knowthat I had helped
him to accept the legitimacy of his continued resentments. He decided to go
against his minister and retain a posture of rejection and resentment toward
his father. He seemed comfortable with thishe still doesand indeed
claims that the only time he was ever uncomfortable about the strategy was
when his minister was trying to make him feel guilty about it.
The story raises for me some interesting questions. Is there any reason to
think that Ralph's strategy of resentment and rejection wasfor himirra-
tional, immoral, or untherapeutic? Was he lucky that he talked to me? Was I,
without realizing it, providing him with a kind of philosophical counseling?
Would it have been better had he listened to his minister and perhaps ob-
tained counseling from an Enright disciple? What would Enright himself say
about cases like this: that they do not occur (and that my understanding of
this case is necessarily superficial) or that they occur so infrequently that
counseling forgiveness is still the best general strategy? I do not pretend to
know the answer to these questions, but I do think that they are worth ask-
ing. Perhaps, as Enright claims, we are "often healed" (p. 111) when we be-
stow forgiveness as a free, unconditional gift. But the skeptical voice within
me wants to say, "Perhaps often not, as well."
This brings me to my second story, one told to me by a colleague whose
mother, a Holocaust survivor, had been personally tortured by Doctor Joseph
Mengele in one of his many cruel medical experiments. This woman, now to
all appearances a psychologically viable human being, was once asked by her
sonmy colleaguewhat she would want him to do if, after all these years,
 A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE 49

he ever encountered Mengele. His mother thought for a moment and simply
said, "Kill him." I find it hard to believe that this woman has missed out
on something importantphilosophically, morally, or psychologicallyin
never attaining a posture of forgiveness toward her torturer.12

Receiving Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness

Because of space limitations, I will not be able to discuss in any depth En-
right's treatment of the final two items of his "forgiveness triad": receiving
forgiveness and self-forgiveness. The ideal case of receiving forgiveness, ac-
cording to Enright, involves changes in attitude and behaviorremorse, re-
spect for the offended person, and a willingness to make amends (p. 113). As
long as this does not involve imposing oneself upon an unreceptive forgiver,
for example, by making amends in an improper way or at an improper time,
I see little to quarrel with in what Enright says here. Being forgiven in a spirit
of arrogance or condescension is not true forgiveness, and one might prop-
erly resent it rather than accept it. Being truly forgiven as an act of love, how-
ever, might well be a step in the moral rebirth of some people (the Jean Val-
jean example); Enright is instructive and persuasive in describing the details
of how such a forgiveness interaction might be structured. (My doubts about
the universal validity of his prescription do not deny its potential value for a
wide variety of clients in a wide variety of contexts.)
I am less happy with what Enright says about self-forgiveness. In self-for-
giveness, he argues, the wrongdoer moves from a position of self-estrange-
ment to being comfortable with himself in the world (p. 117). He can finall,
in the vernacular, get on with his life.
But is it morally proper for all wrongdoers to get on with their lives in this
way? Returning to Buber's worries about authentic guilt, we might well won-
der if certain persons, by their horrible acts, have not forfeited forever their
right to be "comfortable" with themselves. Of course, most ordinary wrong-
doers, after most acts of ordinary wrongdoing, clearly have a right (after
proper repentance, at any rate) to resume their lives with some affection for
themselves.13 But what about the not-ordinary wrongdoerthe torturer, the
ethnic cleanser, the abuser of children? Might we not want to say of such a
person what Cynthia Ozick said of a Nazi murderer"Let him go to hell.
Sooner the fly to God than he"or what Elie Weisel said in his prayer at
Auschwitz"God of forgiveness, do not forgive those who created this place.
God of mercy, have no mercy on those who killed here Jewish children." If we
believe in the reality of evil and do not want to excuse all wrongdoers as
themselves helpless victims of their own terrible childhood and mental
pathology, might we not want to say of those involved in certain evils that
they should be brought to self-hatred, not freed from it, and forever view
themselves as persons who have made of their lives excrement?14
This deontological/retributive moral visionone that takes the past very
seriouslyprobably cannot be demonstrated as rationally superior to all
50 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

competing visions, but I do think that it has to be acknowledged as at least a

respectable candidate for a philosophically acceptable moral worldview. The
upbeat teleological vision of ultimate trust and love that seems to lie behind
much of the literature of forgiveness is not the only viable candidate.
What bearing might the deontological/retributive view have on the prac-
tice of counseling? Must a counselor reject the view entirely? (Are persons
who hold the view simply ill-suited to be counselors?) If the counselor does
hold the view, should he or she refuse to take on persons perceived as evil as
clients? (Imagine yourself a counselor called upon to help an unrepentant
Adolph Eichmann find peace with himself before his death. Would you ac--
cept him as a client? Would you accept serial rapists and abusers and murder-
ers of children? Would you accept those who brutalize the elderly?) If coun-
selors do take on such clients, might they justify the practice in terms of some
doctrine of role responsibility? Might they see their role responsibility as lim-
ited simply to serving their clients rather than considering large moral and so-
cial issuesmuch as a criminal defense lawyer might, in defending a danger-
ous criminal, seek moral insulation in the role responsibility of a lawyer? Just
as the lawyer might believe that matters of guilt are best left to a jury, even a
counselor who believes in evil and the retribution that evil people deserve
might feel fallible in making such determinations and believe that they are
best made by othersGod perhapsand thus might take on all clients in a
spirit of moral humility. (The counselor might here be guided by Nietzsche's
insight that, in doing battle with monsters, we must be careful not to become
monsters.)15 Is such a posture of caution and moral humility the proper one
for a counselor to adopt, or is it merely a rationalization that allows the coun-
selor to avoid giving evil its due and taking responsibility for a failure to con-
front it?
I have raised many questions here, and I do not pretend to know the cor-
rect answers to them. I do, however, believe that these questions must be
faced if counseling-and the role that forgiveness might play in counseling
is to be placed in a genuine philosophical context. Such a context will often
reveal complexity and tension, a war of competing values, and force us to see
that many gains carry with them some nontrivial losses. There might even be
a general tension between counseling (as client-centered) and philosophy (as
truth/rationality-centered)or at least a tension between counseling and
global moral concerns. If this is so, then it is better to bring this to full con-
sciousness than to pretend that all is well so long as we practice love and for-
giveness. What the Chicago School has taught us about economics may also
be true for forgiveness counseling: There is no free lunch.

Conclusion

In his closing argument in the Loeb and Leopold sentencing hearing,

Clarence Darrow made a passionate plea for the overcoming of hate by love
and quoted these famous lines from Omar Khayyam: "So I be written in the
 A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE 51

Book of Love, I do not care that book above, erase my name or write it as you
will, so I be written in the Book of Love."16 If we could only be written in one
book, then I suppose that all of us would prefer to be written in the Book of
Love rather than in the Book of Resentment. Forgiveness, as an outgrowth of
love, is often a wonderfuleven blessedthing; I have no quarrel with those
who would advocate its power and value in counseling or in a variety of other
contexts. Perhaps it is even reasonable to regard it as the default position. My
only concern is that allegiance to this value should not be blindthat it
should be tempered with a consideration of the possibility that, for some peo-
ple in some contexts, it might not be the course to be recommended by either
good philosophy or good counseling.

Notes
An earlier and much briefer version of this essay was presented at the March 1997
meeting of the American Society for Philosophy, Counseling, and Psychotherapy
(held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Pacific Division of the American
Philosophical Association). The paper has benefited from comments by Robert En-
right and Margaret Holmgren. It was first published in my essay collection Character,
Liberty, and Law. Kantian Essays in Theory and Practice (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998)
and is reprinted here with permission.

1. For a detailed discussion of the nature of philosophical counseling and its in-
creasing presence in the world of counseling, see Essays on Philosophical Counseling,
edited by Ran Lahav and Maria da Venza Tillmanns (New York: University Press of
America: 1995).
2. Counseling and Values, 40, 2 (Jan. 1996), pp. 107-126. All page references for
Enright quotes are to this essay.
3. See especially Forgiveness and Mercy, by Jeffrie G. Murphy (chapters 1, 3, and 5)
and Jean Hampton (chapters 2 and 4) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988).
4. See Lahav and Tillmanns, eds., Essays on Philosophical Counseling, p. xi.
5. Martin Buber, "Guilt and Guilt Feelings," in The Knowledge of Man (New
York: Harper and Row, 1965).
6. Margaret Holmgren, "Forgiveness and the Intrinsic Value of Persons," Ameri-
can Philosophical Quarterly, 30 (1993), pp. 341-352.
7. In correspondence, Enright claims that he does not mean to endorse forgive-
ness as a universal prescription. This restraint is present in some of his writings as well
butin my judgmentit does not get nearly the emphasis it merits.
8. I know nothing about designing experiments, but I wonder if the target group
did not do better than the control grouppresumably receiving no counseling?
simply because any counseling may be better than none. I would love to see a target
group encouraged to retain resentment and take steps (within the limits of law and
morality, of course) to get even with those who have wronged them, and see how they
do. I am sure that such a group will not make "gains in forgiveness"a question-
begging test anywaybut they might achieve a kind of closure that raises their self-
esteem and decreases their anxiety as well or better than forgiveness. Also, I would
like to know how many people in the forgiveness group came into it with an an-
tecedent beliefperhaps based in their Christian faiththat they ought to forgive.
52 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

9. Setting out to forgive others as a part of one's own therapeutic agenda has a
danger of drawing others into that agenda in ways that may not be beneficial to them.
In a splendid essay, Peter D. Baird describes his own realization that he was wrong-
fully trying to draw his aged father (who was suffering from Alzheimer's) into a drama
of forgiveness when that drama was not consistent with the father's desires or inter-
ests. Peter D. Baird, "Remembering LaRoux," Maricopa Lawyer (Feb. 1997), pp. 8-9.
The essay originally appeared as the "My Turn" column in Newsweek (Dec. 16,
1996).
10. I should note that I do not object to the use of religious assumptions in coun-
seling. Indeed, I favor them in many contexts. I think it is important, however, that if
they are used their use should be made explicit, not tacitly and quietly assumed. For
the relationship between Christianity and forgiveness, see my "Forgiveness, Reconcil-
iation, and Responding to Evil," Fordham Urban Law Journal, 27, 5 (2000), pp.
1353-1366.
11. What follows as a single case actually collapses two different cases into one,
with enough changes of detail to prevent (I hope) recognition of either person.
12. It is interesting that in the three James and Alice scenarios offered by Enright
(p. 115), the only time the forgiveness process seems to go at all well is in the third
scenario, where (if I understand it correctly) Alice is able to forgive James in part be-
cause James has reached a stage of repentancethe very thing that Enright claims is
not supposed to be a precondition for forgiveness. Rather than making Enright's
point, this scenario seems to go against it.
13. But perhaps not total affection. The fact that we should generally retain
enough affection for ourselves to get on with our lives does not have to mean that we
should not carry some burdens of guilt and shame forever. These burdens may prop-
erly humble us without crippling us. One can have a tragic view of human life with-
out being destroyed or defeated by that view. Note this wonderful passage from the
novelist A. N. Wilson:
It is only on those whom I have loved that I have ever knowingly inflicted pain.
The guilt of it remains forever, my words selected with such malice and the
startled expression on the victim's face as the effect went home. These are the
faces which return during nights of insomnia, forever hurt in my memories,
and inconsolably so. It is said that time is a healer, but it is not necessarily so.
Memory has the power to encapsulate moments of pain, to freeze them, so that
though the person who suffered has drifted on into other worlds and other
states of feeling or non-feeling, the remembered moments of pain can stay.
Sometimes in spells of profound depression, it is these moments alone which
surface in the memory. Everything else is a bland, misty background against
which these figures stand out sharp and clearwomen in tears, or my uncle,
drawing back the corner of his lips and sticking a pipe in his mouth, trying to
conceal the extent to which I was hurting him. (Incline Our Hearts [New York:
Viking, 1989], pp. 143-144)
14. I have developed my ideas on self-forgiveness at greater length in "Jean
Hampton on Immorality, Self-Hatred, and Self-Forgiveness," Philosophical Studies,
89 (1998), pp. 215-236. See also my "Shame Creeps through Guilt and Feels Like
Retribution," Law and Philosophy, 75(1999), pp. 327-344.
15.1 examine these cautions in greater detail in my "Moral Epistemology, The
Retributive Emotions, and the 'Clumsy Moral Philosophy' of Jesus Christ," in The
Passions of Law, ed. Susan Bandes (New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp.
 A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE 53

149-167. Nietzsche's remark occurs in Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kauf-
mann (New York: Viking, 1989), p. 89.
16. I have taken this quotation, and some of the ideas for this concluding section,
from Michael Moore's essay "The Moral Worth of Retribution" in Responsibility,
Character and the Emotions, ed. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1987).
 three

Forgiveness in Practice:
What Mental Health Counselors
Are Tel I ing Us
Varda Konstam, Fern Marx, Jennifer Schurer,
Nancy 8. Emerson Lombardo, and
Anne K. Harrington

Within the past decade, scientific studies have begun to document what reli-
gious leaders, theologians, and philosophers have long suspected. Forgiveness
is a potentially significant modality for increasing personal well-being and
improving interpersonal relations. Although the scientific literature is sparse,
initial studies agree that forgiving is effective in resolving feelings of remorse,
guilt, anger, anxiety, and fear (Cerney, 1988; Fitgibbons, 1986, 1998). Bene-
fits have been found in highly diverse populations such as incest survivors,
substance abusers, and cancer patients (Flanigan, 1987; Freedman & En-
right, 1996; Phillips & Osborne, 1989).
This current interest in forgivenesswhat it is, how it works, and whether
and how it can apply to the counseling processfollows years of neglect and
avoidance of the topic by research scientists. Despite the fact that for cen-
turies forgiveness has been lauded by most societies and cultures as valuable
and worthy of adoption, there has been a general reluctance to study it. This
has slowed efforts to understand what it means to forgive, how it occurs, or
advocate for its use (McCullough & Worthington, 1994). Denton and Mar-
tin (1998) explain the hesitancy as the result of associating forgiving with re-
ligion, not science.
Considering the negative association between science and forgiveness, it
is hardly surprising that the scientific literature on forgiveness is in its in-
fancy. There is ambiguity about many forgiveness-related issues, including
the definition of forgiveness, as well as many unanswered questions about
how the process works, how to measure forgiveness, what models of inter-
vention might be applicable, and what relevance any of this has for differing
populations.
Given the evidence pointing toward the beneficial effects of forgiveness
and the dearth of research assessing attitudes by counselors toward forgiving,

54
 WHAT MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS ARE TELLING US 55

we developed a survey to assess if and how counselors were addressing for-

giveness in their practice. This chapter will summarize the scientific literature
on forgiveness, describe the current study and findings, and discuss the im-
plications and conclusions. We specifically attempted to address the follow-
ing research questions:
Does forgiveness present itself as an issue in the counseling process and
how likely are mental health counselors to raise the issue by themselves?
What do mental health counselors view as essential components of for-
giveness?
What are the prevalent attitudes held by mental health counselors regard-
ing forgiveness and what factors contribute to their attitudes?

The Scientific Literature on Forgiveness

In general, current definitions of forgiveness lack clarity and consistency. As

Hebl and Enright (1993) point out, this hampers further productive research
and clinical application. But notable areas of consensus have begun to
emerge. Denton and Martin's (1998) definition of forgiveness is fairly repre-
sentative. They state that forgiveness involves "two people, one of whom has
received a deep and long-lasting injury that is either psychological, emo-
tional, physical or moral in nature; forgiveness is an inner process by which
the person who has been injured releases him- or herself from the anger, re-
sentment, and fear that are felt and does not wish for revenge" (p. 284). Sim-
ilarly, Hargrave and Sells (1997) state that forgiveness is a process that occurs
over time in which the individual who has been injured becomes less angry,
resentful, fearful, and interested in revenge.
Forgiveness, therefore, is interpersonal and intrapsychic. It takes place
over time and involves choice. Other areas of convergence in the literature in-
clude the belief that forgiving is not to be equated with forgetting, pardon-
ing, condoning, excusing, or denying the offense (Enright & Zell, 1989). In
addition, the viewpoint assumed by many current forgiveness studies is that
of the offended party's perspective, not that of the offender.
Areas of disagreement include the relationship between forgiveness and
reconciliation, whether forgiveness is a necessary component of personal
growth, and whether one has to feel love and compassion toward the offender
in order to forgive. To elaborate, while some argue that forgiveness is an act of
mercy independent of whether the injurer is remorseful or repentant (En-
right, Freedman, & Rique, 1998), proponents of reconciliation insist that the
injurer must demonstrate behavioral change and some type of compensation
and respect toward the person injured (Davenport, 1991; Hargrave & Sells,
1997). There is also disagreement in the literature as to whether forgiveness is
a necessary part of personal growth and development (Hargrave & Sells,
1997). Experts also disagree about whether a loving response toward the of-
fender should be (voluntarily) adopted (Denton & Martin, 1998).
56 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

There are four types of forgiveness models in the current literature:

(1) models based on psychological theories; (2) process models (the most
prevalent) describing psychological tasks involved in the act of forgiving over
a period of time; (3) models based on a moral development framework; and
(4) typologies of forgiveness (Demon & Martin, 1998).
Process models closely approximate Brandsma's (1982) model. According
to Brandsma, the individual must at first choose to let go of negative feelings,
face past experience and painful feelings, view the injurer in terms of his or
her needs, motives and behavior, and release feelings of anger and retaliation.
North (1987; 1998) also views forgiveness as a process. North emphasizes
that forgiveness requires a letting go that unfolds over time. As a process, it
involves certain important sequences. These are: (1) suffering a deep hurt as a
result of some injurious action(s); (2) overcoming the desire for anger and re-
venge (the offended party has a moral right to these feelings, she states, but as
time passes, she or he chooses not to continue to harbor resentment and
anger); and (3) developing a new response to the offender, including the pos-
sibility of compassion and love.
Enright and the Human Development Study Group (1991) cluster these
steps or sequences into four major phases: the uncovering phase, decision
phase, work phase, and deepening phase. These "phases" are facilitated or im-
peded by contextual conditions affecting the individual's ability and willing-
ness to forgive, including: (1) the need for punishment in proportion to the
offense; (2) the need for restitution; (3) the intent of the offender to harm;
(4) the severity of the consequences; and (5) the presence of an apology or re-
pentance from the offender. Enright, Freedman, and Rique (1998) view the
model not as an invariant set of prescriptions, but rather a flexible set of
processes with feedback and feed-forward loops, leaving space for variation.
Although intervention studies are not yet as abundant as in other fields,
the evidence seems to point to the benefits of forgiveness, particularly as a po-
tentially useful means of treating a wide range of psychological difficulties
(Worthington et al., 2000). For example, Freedman and Enright (1996)
evaluated the efficacy of an individual therapy intervention focusing on for-
giveness with incest survivors. The authors found significant increases in self-
reported levels of forgiveness and hope and lower levels of anxiety and de-
pression relative to the wait-list control. Treatment gains persisted one year
after intervention. Similarly, group intervention studies with a wide range of
populations, including adolescents, college students, and elderly females,
found an increase in forgiveness as well as lower levels of anxiety and depres-
sion and increased self-esteem (Al-Mabuk, Enright, & Cardis, 1995; Hebl &
Enright, 1993; McCullough, Worthington, & Radial, 1997).
DiBlasio and Proctor (1993) state, "Without exception, forgiveness is re-
ported . . . as restoring relationships and healing inner emotional wounds" (p.
176). Question remains, however, whether promising intervention results re-
lated to forgiveness are due to common factors present in all effective psy-
chotherapies. Comparisons between forgiveness protocols and more tradi-
 WHAT MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS ARE TELLING US 57

tional protocols are needed to gain further understanding of the specific role
and responsibility of forgiveness interventions in achieved therapeutic gains.
Age appears to be related to forgiving. Enright and Zell (1989) examined
the relationship between age, justice, and forgiveness and found that the rea-
soning of adolescents differed from adults and children, paralleling develop-
mental theory. Girard and Mullet (1997) found an increase in the propensity
to forgive from adolescence to old age. The greater tendency to forgive in the
elderly was due in part to a significant proportion (22%) of unconditional
forgivers, who espoused a perspective consistent with Enright's final stage of
forgiveness, associating forgiveness with love.
Propensity to forgive is dependent in part on cognitive and affective char-
acteristics, such as an individual's moral emotional style. Shame, guilt, and
particularly empathy have been identified as moral emotions that inform for-
giveness (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997; Tangney, Fee, Rein-
smith, Boone, & Lee, 1999). Individuals who reported a disposition toward
empathy were more inclined to forgive a transgressor after a transgression
(McCullough et al., 1997; McCullough et al., 1998). Konstam, Chernoff,
and Deveney (2001) reported that guilt proneness, in contrast to shame
proneness, was positively associated with forgiveness, findings consistent
with Tangney et al. (1999) and Baumeister, Stillwell, and Heatherton (1994).
Guilt proneness appears to engage individuals in a process supportive of res-
olution of conflict and forgiveness. In contrast, shame proneness has been as-
sociated with a desire to self-protect, isolate oneself, and engage in destructive
responses to anger, thus increasing the probability of angry interpersonal ex-
changes (Worthington & Wade, 1999).
Inconsistent findings have been reported with respect to gender and for-
giveness. While the majority of findings suggest no gender differences (En-
right & Zell, 1989), a small number of studies suggest that men are more in-
clined to forgive (Hanson, 1996). The work of Azmitia, Kamprath, and
Linnet (1998) and Konstam, Chernoff, and Deveney (in press) raise the pos-
sibility that processes leading to forgiveness may differ for men and women.
To date, only five studies have been conducted that attempt to explicate
attitudes by practitioners toward the process of forgiving, including its place
in clinical practice. Denton and Martin (1998) studied the perceptions of
101 experienced social workers regarding (1) the definition and process of
forgiveness; (2) common misconceptions about forgiveness; and (3) the cate-
gories of problems most helped by forgiveness. Participants belonged to the
North Carolina Society of Clinical Social Workers, and the majority was in
private practice for a minimum of fourteen years. The overwhelming major-
ity (80%) agreed that forgiveness (1) is an inner process of releasing anger and
fear; (2) reduces the desire to retaliate; (3) is a slow process that takes time;
and (4) does not mean that the person has to forget the injury. There was no
support for the idea that forgiveness involves certain sequential steps that
must be followed, one after another. Findings supported the notion of a
process but not the particular order of the steps.
58 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

Findings from the Denton and Martin study also indicated that clinicians
perceived forgiving as very useful for the problem areas of family, marital, and
relationship issues; grief and loss; and guilt associated with abuse of sub-
stances. Psychotic and character disorders were ranked low as being influ-
enced by forgiving.
Significant sex differences were observed in this study. Contrary to cul-
tural expectations, male social workers were more favorable to the definition
and benefits of forgiving than women, a finding which may be attributed to
sample bias and "the fact that men in social work might be sensitized differ-
ently toward forgiveness than the general population" (Denton & Martin,
1998, p. 288). Hanson (1996) also reported findings that favor male practi-
tioners with respect to use of forgiveness in their clinical settings. There were
no significant differences between practitioners of different religious orienta-
tions, a finding which may suggest a "universally accepted basic understand-
ing of forgiving across religions" (p. 288). The authors suggest that setting
and type of client may be relevant variables in assessing the effectiveness of
forgiving. For example, clinical social workers in public practice viewed for-
giving as less effective with problems related to chemical dependency than
did their peers in private practice.
In another study, DiBlasio and Proctor (1993) surveyed 128 clinicians be-
longing to the American Association of Marital and Family Therapists to ex-
plore the use of forgiveness techniques in clinical practice. The mean age was
47 years and 55% were female. Respondents were diverse with respect to re-
ligious affiliation. The authors assessed the extent to which therapists had de-
veloped specific techniques to assist clients: (1) seek forgiveness; (2) grant for-
giveness; and (3) forgive themselves. Although only 10% of the respondents
indicated no religious preference, the majority of respondents (57%) re-
ported that their religious ideologies should be completely separate from
their clinical work regarding forgiveness interventions. Results revealed that
therapists were more likely to develop techniques related to forgiveness if
they were older, and if they reported openness to assessing and working with
clients' religious belief systems in therapy. Therapists' levels of religiosity were
not related to the development and use of forgiveness techniques. The rela-
tionship between age of therapist and openness to forgiveness may suggest
that as therapists gain clinical experience, they may feel more comfortable
and aware of forgiveness as a relevant clinical issue for clients.
DiBlasio and Benda (1991) examined the relative and cumulative effect of
religiosity on forgiveness. They hypothesized that practitioners with strong
religious beliefs would hold more positive beliefs regarding the therapeutic
potential of forgiveness, and would be more open to clients' religious issues in
treatment. Religiosity explained less than 5% of the variance with respect to
identified forgiveness factors, including attitudes and techniques. The au-
thors concluded that religiosity was related to forgiveness attitudes and tech-
niques of practitioners, but explained a small amount of the variance.
DiBlasio (1993) assessed attitudes toward forgiving as well as the use of
clinical techniques related to forgiveness in thirty social workers. An addi-
 WHAT MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS ARE TELLING US 59

tional focus of this study was the comparison of highly religious practitioners
with those less religious. The mean age was 43 years, and 71% were female.
A questionnaire was developed to assess (1) attitudes toward forgiveness;
(2) forgiveness techniques used in assisting clients with issues related to for-
giveness; (3) perception of the role of forgiveness in resolving depression;
(4) perception of the role of forgiveness in reducing anger; and (5) sensitivity
toward clients' religious issues as part of the therapeutic process (religious
openness). DiBlasio found that highly religious clinicians differed signifi-
cantly from less religious clinicians on only one of the five variables studied.
Although highly religious clinicians were more likely to express favorable at-
titudes toward forgiveness relative to less religious practitioners, their more
positive attitudes did not translate to a greater emphasis on forgiveness in
clinical practice. This finding conflicts with the results reported by DiBlasio
and Proctor (1993) in that social workers' religious involvement was associ-
ated with more positive attitudes regarding the use of forgiveness in clinical
practice. In a critique by McCullough, Exline, and Baumeister (1998), the
authors suggest that, if future surveys do not report a relationship between
therapists' religious involvement and openness to forgiveness, findings may
be due to increased comfort with the use of forgiveness as a clinical tool by re-
ligious and nonreligious therapists.
Hanson (1996) assessed the use of forgiveness by 86 licensed psychologists
and found that psychologists reported that they were inclined to use forgive-
ness in their practice and that their use of forgiveness was context-dependent.
The author concluded that although practitioners tend to use forgiveness in
their practice, a lag exists with respect to our knowledge base regarding cur-
rent practices related to forgiveness.

The Current Study

In our study, participants were 381 members of the American Mental Health
Counselors Association who responded to a request to participate in a for-
giveness-related survey. The questionnaire was designed to explore whether
forgiveness-related issues arise in clinical practice, how these issues are dealt
with, and what the counselor thinks about forgiveness. The survey also ex-
plored gender differences among clients raising forgiveness-related issues and
among counselors in their approach to forgiveness. In addition, counselors
were asked about interest in obtaining additional professional training on the
subject of forgiveness. The survey was mailed to a random sample of 1,132
association members between December 1998 and March 1999. Two follow-
up mailings to nonresponders were completed to improve the response rate.
The overall response rate was 35.8%.
The survey itself consisted of four sections. The first asked general back-
ground questions regarding the counselor's clinical environment, supervisory
and teaching experiences, theoretical orientation, education, age, and reli-
gion. The second section assessed whether or not forgiveness arose as an issue
60 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

in practice and how likely counselors were to raise the issue by themselves.
Only participants who indicated that forgiveness did arise as an issue in their
counseling practice completed the remaining questions in this section. Ques-
tions were designed to assess the incidence and nature of forgiveness in clini-
cal practice and to describe the background of clients who most often raise
the issues themselves.
In section three, counselors were asked to identify essential components of
forgiveness. They were asked to indicate which forgiveness-related activities,
out of a list of 18, they utilized in their clinical practice. The final section con-
sisted of 16 Likert scale items that assessed mental health counselors' atti-
tudes toward forgiveness (i.e., "Forgiveness is highly beneficial as a therapeu-
tic goal for problems of anger and depression," "Forgiveness perpetuates
abuse"), as well as several questions about each respondent's interest in ob-
taining additional professional training on the issues of forgiveness in clinical
practice.

Respondents' Background

Participants of the study ranged in age from 24 to 79 years of age (M = 47).

There were more women than men (71% vs. 29%); and the men, on average,
were 3 years older than die women, a significant difference and consistent
with other surveys (Denton & Martin, 1998; DiBlasio, 1993). The over-
whelming majority of the respondents held advanced degrees, with 76% hav-
ing master's degrees and 22% having doctoral degrees. In terms of religious
preference, 46% indicated themselves as Protestants; 19% Catholics; 8%
Jewish; 3% members of an Eastern faith, such as Buddhism; 17% had no re-
ligious preference; and 7% listed a variety of other affiliations.
Counselors had been practicing on average, 10.7 years. The range was
from less than one year to 50 years. Male respondents had been in practice
significantly longer (regardless of age) than female respondents, almost 14
years compared to about 9.5 years. Respondents reported practicing in a va-
riety of settings, from solo practice to a variety of group settings (more than
one setting could be selected). The most frequently mentioned clinical set-
tings included solo practice 43%; social service agencies 26%; group practice
18%; schools/colleges 15%; and hospitals 6%. Other settings (mentioned by
less than 3% of respondents) included religious settings, outpatient clinics,
correctional facilities, and community mental health centers (more than one
setting could be selected).
The respondents came from a variety of theoretical orientations ranging
from psychoanalytic to cognitive/behavioral. The largest proportion (52%)
reported that they utilized more than one orientation, citing various combi-
nations of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic, family systems, and cognitive/
behavioral. Among those reporting a combination of orientations, 43% indi-
cated that they utilized all three. Forty-eight percent reported using a single
theoretical approach. Among this group, 63% indicated that they used a cog-
 WHAT MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS ARE TELLING US 61

nitive/behavioral orientation, followed by 24% using psychodynamic/psy-

choanalytic, and 13% using family systems.
The client population served by these counselors varied widely in age from
children through the elderly. The most frequently mentioned issues respon-
dents dealt with in their practice were substance abuse (21%) and depression
(16%). Between 6% and 10% of respondents reported treating clients whose
issues included mental illness, abuse, anxiety, sexual abuse, rape, and trauma.
Marital problems, domestic violence, neglect, loss, grief, or death were men-
tioned less often, by 4% or less of respondents.

Issues of Forgiveness in Clinical Practice

The survey revealed that 88% of the counselors saw forgiveness as an issue in
their practice. Furthermore, they indicated that, on a 5-point scale (from 1
"rarely" to 5 "very often"), the issue arose often (mean score = 3.47).
Respondents' theoretical orientation was a significant factor in the fre-
quency with which issues of forgiveness arose in their practices. Counselors
who used a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic perspective were least likely to
identify forgiveness as a presenting issue, while counselors who used more
than one theoretical orientation were most likely to identify forgiveness as an
issue. Those who practiced in a group setting felt that forgiveness presented
itself as an issue more frequently than respondents who practiced in other set-
tings. Additionally, counselors who dealt with issues of substance abuse,
trauma, and rape also felt that forgiveness came up more frequently than
counselors who did not address these issues.
Although 94% of participants indicated that it was appropriate for coun-
selors to raise forgiveness issues in their practice, only 51 % indicated that it
was the counselor's responsibility to do so. A number of factors were found to
contribute to whether or not respondents would raise the issue of forgiveness
in counseling. The factor that was the strongest predictor of counselors rais-
ing this issue of forgiveness was whether or not they felt it presented itself as
an issue in their practice. Additionally, participants who answered positively
to the question of whether or not it is appropriate for counselors to raise is-
sues of forgiveness were more likely to bring up the issues, in comparison to
those who felt that it is not appropriate. The same was true for participants
who indicated that they felt it is the counselor's responsibility to raise the
issue and who practiced in a solo practice as opposed to another setting.
Counselors who had a highly positive attitude toward forgiveness, as mea-
sured by section 4 of the instrument, were also more likely to raise issues of
forgiveness in their clinical practice. It is interesting to note that counselors
who felt that the forgiving process is the same for men and women reported
that they were less likely to raise issues of forgiveness than those who believed
that the process is different.
When asked how the forgiveness process differed between men and
women, interesting themes emerged with respect to perceived sex differences.
62 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

Although our questionnaire did not allow for thorough and more detailed ex-
plications regarding how the process of forgiveness differed for men and
women, nevertheless, interesting preliminary patterns were observed. Re-
spondents were asked whether men or women were more likely to raise for-
giveness-related issues or whether they were equally likely to do so. Respon-
dents reported that female clients are more likely to raise forgiveness-related
issues (female clients 55%, male clients 4%, equally likely 42%). In addition
59% of respondents reported that the process for working with issues related
to forgiveness appeared to be different for men and women. Specifically, re-
spondents reported that women were emotionally more open and more likely
to raise forgiveness-related issues in counseling. In addition, respondents re-
ported that different meanings were attached to the process of forgiving by
men and women. Respondents reported that women valued the process of
forgiveness and tended to view it as central to successful relationships. Men,
it was reported, "have a harder time of coming to the point of seeing forgive-
ness as a vital component in relationships." Another perspective articulated
by respondents is that "Women frequently feel that they must forgive in
order to heal. Men do not feel this way in general." The data suggests that
among counselors who reported gender differences with respect to the
process of forgiving, women were viewed as more open and available to ex-
plore forgiving-related issues.
Respondents noted that social expectations differed for men and women
regarding forgiveness. It was perceived that the ability to forgive was accept-
ableperhaps admirable and socially sanctionedfor women. In contrast,
the ability to forgive was more likely to be associated with weakness for men.
It was noted that women were expected to be more forgiving in our culture.
Respondents suggested that men and women get "stuck" at different junc-
tures of the forgiveness process. Men focus on "revenge and anger issues" be-
fore focusing on issues of forgiving. Women focus on feelings of hurt and
loss. "Men seem to forgive causes of anger, women seem to forgive causes of
hurt." The results appeared to suggest that pathways toward forgiving may
differ for men and women. Men may initially present anger as the most press-
ing issue, specifically a need to retaliate or seek revenge, whereas women may
present with initial concerns related to feelings of hurt and loss.

Components of Forgiveness

Respondents were asked to indicate which of 18 activities devoted to the

process of forgiveness they utilized in their practice. The 18 activities were
based on the units of the Enright, Freedman, and Rique (1998) process of in-
terpersonal forgiveness. Respondents were asked to indicate which of these
activities they utilize in their practice. Of these 18 activities, a group of eight
items was endorsed by over 75% of the participants, and a group of five items
that was endorsed by approximately 40% of the respondents. Upon closer in-
spection of the content of these two groups of items, a theme emerged for
 WHAT MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS ARE TELLING US 63

each. The cluster of items endorsed by the majority of participants related to

the forgiveness process and the self, or client, while the cluster of items that
was endorsed by the smaller proportion of counselors related to the forgive-
ness process and the offender.
Activities relating to forgiveness and the self/client
New insight that old strategies are not working
Emotional release and letting go
Examination of psychological defenses (focusing on what is helpful/not
helpful to the individual)
Confrontation and release of anger
Admittance of shame and guilt, when appropriate
Reframing such that the situation itself is understood in a different way
Awareness of what inhibits forgiveness
Acceptance of pain by the individual who has been wronged
Activities relating to forgiveness and the offender
Reframing who the wrongdoer is
Empathy toward the offender
Insight that the injured party may be comparing self with the injurer
Decrease of negative affect toward the injurer
Increase in positive affect toward the injurer

An average score was computed for both groups of activities. These scores
were then used as cut-off points to measure overall utilization of the activi-
ties as they relate to the client or the offender. Forty-four percent of re-
spondents endorsed both the client/self and offender groups, while 24%
endorsed neither. Twenty-three percent of respondents utilized only the ac-
tivities relating to the client, and 9.5% solely utilized the activities relating
to the offender. Overall, 66% of respondents indicated they used most
of the activities pertaining to forgiveness and the client/self, and 44% also
indicated use of the items pertaining to forgiveness and the offender. En-
right, Freedman, and Rique's (1998) steps clearly include activities, or
"units" addressing both the client's relationship to him- or herself as well as
to the injurer, implying that both parts are equally crucial for full, true for-
giveness. Our findings indicate that almost 25% of respondents appear not
to be addressing forgiveness in any sort of systematic way, while another
third are only addressing part of the process. In particular, it seems that the
activities relating to the offender are less often being addressed by the par-
ticipants than those relating to the self/client. Additionally, counselors who
indicated use of activities pertaining to forgiveness and the client/self had
fewer negative attitudes toward forgiveness compared to counselors who did
not use them.
64 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

Attitudes toward Forgiveness

The fourth section of the survey consisted of 16 statements about forgive-

ness, scored from 1 "strongly disagree" to 5 "strongly agree." Factor analysis
resulted in two theoretically based factors: one that measured respondents'
level of positive attitude toward forgiveness, while the other measured their
negative attitude toward forgiveness. Respondents were scored on each sub-
scale independently.

Positive Forgiveness item

The ability to forgive is a sign of strength.
Dealing with one's anger is an essential ingredient in the process of forgiv-
ing-
People mature into the capacity to forgive not only others, but themselves
as well.
Forgiveness is highly beneficial as a therapeutic goal for problems of anger
and depression.
Encouraging letting go of resentment is a beneficial goal for individuals in
therapy.
Religious/spiritual beliefs can play a significant role in the process of for-
giveness.
Forgiveness is a choice.
There is therapeutic value in having perpetrators of sexual abuse seek for-
giveness for the acts they have committed.
Negative Forgiveness item
Forgiving is condoning.
Forgiving is not helpful to an individual who has been wronged.
Forgiving implies reconciliation.
Forgiving perpetuates abuse.
The ability to forgive is a sign of weakness.
Males and females differ in their approach to forgiveness.
Forgiveness belongs in the realm of religion/spirituality and has no place in
clinical practice.

Overall, participants had a very positive attitude about the therapeutic im-
plications of forgiveness; the average score for positive forgiveness was 3.99
out of a possible 5, while the average score for negative forgiveness was 1.82.
Forgiveness scores also differed significantly depending on the counselors' re-
ligious affiliation. Specifically, respondents who subscribed to a Protestant re-
ligious tradition had a significantly more positive attitude toward forgiveness,
compared to those who subscribed to a religion classified as "other" such as
 WHAT MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS ARE TELLING US 65

paganism, interfaith/pluralism, or Native American religious traditions. Al-

though not significant, the highest positive forgiveness scores were found
among participants practicing an Eastern religion such as Buddhism, Islam,
or Hinduism and those with no religious affiliation. Participants' theoretical
orientation also had a significant bearing on their positive attitudes toward
forgiveness. In particular, the counselors who had a psychodynamic/psycho-
analytic orientation had a significantly lower positive forgiveness score com-
pared to cognitive/behaviorists and family systems clinicians, who had the
highest mean.
Respondents with lower positive scores were, predictably, more likely to
have higher negative scores. Respondents who indicated that the elderly was
one of their primary populations had a more negative view of forgiveness
than those who did not, and those who believed that the forgiveness process
was the same for men and women had a less negative view of forgiveness than
those who believed the process was different for the genders. Counselors who
indicated that they employed activities relating to forgiveness and the
client/self also had lower negative forgiveness scores.

Training Needs

Almost all respondents to this survey (90%) indicated that forgiving is an im-
portant clinical issue that should be addressed in professional training. Those
who felt forgiving is an important clinical issue had significantly higher posi-
tive forgiveness scores and indicated using therapeutic activities related to
forgiveness and the offender more often than respondents who did not feel
forgiving is important. Seventy-six percent of respondents indicated they
would be interested in attending workshops on forgiveness; these clinicians
also had significantly higher positive forgiveness scores.
Eighty percent of respondents indicated that they would like to learn
more about factors and counseling techniques that facilitate forgiveness. Re-
spondents who indicated interest in learning more about counseling tech-
niques had significantly higher positive forgiveness scores and had been in
practice fewer years. They also indicated that they already utilized activities
relating both to forgiveness and the client/self, as well as to the offender, sig-
nificantly more often than respondents who did not wish to learn more. It
appears that counselors who have already been exposed to forgiveness issues
and have already devised techniques to bring their clients through the process
are more positive and eager to learn more about forgiveness.

Discuss/on

Although the sample of counselors in our study is the largest to date, most
diverse in populations served, and the most diverse with respect to theoreti-
cal orientation, the results must be viewed with caution given the low re-
sponse rate. It is unclear whether the sample is representative of mental
66 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

health counselors belonging to the American Mental Health Counselors As-

sociation. Identifying characteristics of the sample are, however, consistent
with other samples reported in the literature (Denton & Martin, 1998; Di-
Blasio, 1993).

Forgiveness in Clinical Practice

Our findings indicate that issues related to forgiveness are very much present
and relevant to the clinical work of mental health counselors. Indeed, 88% of
our sample reported that forgiveness arises as an issue in their practice. Inter-
esting findings were reported regarding mental health counselors' attitudes
toward raising forgiveness-related issues with their clients. Although 94% re-
ported that it was appropriate for the counselor to raise forgiveness-related is-
sues in practice, significantly fewer mental health counselors (51%) reported
that it was the counselor's responsibility to do so. Further inquiry would be
helpful in understanding the meaning attached to appropriate counselor be-
havior versus counselor responsibility. Our findings indicated that counselors
who held more positive attitudes toward forgiveness were more likely to raise
forgiveness-related issues, a finding that is consistent with expectations re-
garding attitudes and comfort level with content and process related to for-
giveness. Results revealed highly positive attitudes toward forgiveness and
implications for its use in clinical practice.
Counselors reported that female clients are more likely to raise forgive-
ness-related issues and that the process for working with issues related to for-
giveness may be different for men and women. Analysis of qualitative data
suggested the possibility of different pathways leading to forgiving for males
and females. While a majority of mental health counselors reported anger
and hostility as particularly salient for men with respect to forgiveness, issues
related to loss and feelings of hurt appeared to be more salient for women.
The findings of Konstam, Chernoff, and Deveney (2001) and Azmitia, Kam-
prath, and Linnet (1998) also suggest gender differences with respect to
processes leading to forgiving.
Azmitia, Kamprath, and Linnet (1998) reported differences with respect
to how boys and girls work through or come to terms with a violation in their
friendships. Boys chose to renew their friendship after a modal time of one
day. In contrast, girls chose to renew their friendship after a modal time of
two weeks. The authors interpreted the difference as boys' "greater willing-
ness to forgive their friends" (p. 175). In a study with high school students,
they reported that boys are more likely to "forget about it" and never discuss
a violation in friendship, focusing instead on the advantages of avoiding con-
flict with friends. The authors reported prolonged retaliation in girls; in con-
trast, boys returned to being best friends within a few days.
Konstam, Chernoff, and Deveney (2001) reported that the ability to for-
give for female graduate students was related to diminishment in anger, in-
crease in guilt proneness, and feelings of detachment, accounting for 16% of
 WHAT MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS ARE TELLING US 67

the variance. For male students, in contrast, age, proneness to shame, and
pride in behavior informed the process of forgiveness, accounting for 54% of
the variance. The older the male, the more prone to shame, the less likely he
is able to forgive. In addition, the greater the pride in behavior, the more
likely he is to forgive. Issues of detachment and pride are relatively unex-
plored in relation to forgiveness in general, and gender differences and for-
giveness specifically. Our findings, in addition to those of Azmitia, Kam-
prath, and Linnet (1998), Konstam, Chernoff, and Deveney (2001), and
Konstam et al. (2000), suggest the need for further qualitative and quantita-
tive study regarding gender-related differences in the processes leading to for-
giveness. Linkages to clinical intervention appear to be particularly germane
given the possibility that men and women understand and negotiate forgive-
ness differently.

Use of Therapeutic Activities Devoted to Forgiveness

Examination of the items endorsed by the respondents revealed an interest-

ing and important difference with respect to the therapeutic activities uti-
lized by mental health counselors. While Enright clearly endorses activities
that are related to both the self/client and the offender, our findings indicate
that almost 25% of respondents do not appear to endorse forgiveness-re-
lated activities in a systematic way, and furthermore 66% of our respon-
dents do not endorse activities that acknowledge and address the signifi-
cance of the offender. Thus, critical activities such as reframing who the
wrongdoer is and exhibiting empathy toward the offenderactivities that
appear to be integral to the forgiving processwere not endorsed by
respondents.
The majority of respondents in our survey appear to view forgiving as a
process that involves the self and ignores the interpersonal quality of forgiv-
ing. Consideration of the offender as well as contextual variables surround-
ing the nature of the offense appear to be ignored as significant to the for-
giving process. The majority of respondents appear to view forgiveness as a
gift primarily to the self alone, in contrast to a gift to the offending person as
well as the self. Our participants seem to take away the construct of forgive-
ness from the interpersonal and moral qualities of generosity and/or moral
love. Contextual conditions affecting forgiveness (i.e., intent of offender to
harm, severity of consequences) do not appear to be acknowledged, al-
though these contextual variables have been cited as crucial to the forgiving
process (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997). Endorsed clinical
activities by respondents appear to indicate a lack of knowledge regarding
key activities cited in intervention studies with a wide range of clients. En-
dorsed practices suggest a lack of understanding regarding activities de-
signed to reduce the relative salience of the offending person's hurtful ac-
tions, and ability to reduce the power of the offender's action to seek
revenge, resulting in the maintenance of estrangement (McCullough, Wor-
thington, & Rachal, 1997).
68 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

Attitudes toward Forgiveness

Religious affiliation of respondents was related to attitudes toward forgive-

ness. This is in contrast to the findings of Denton and Martin (1998),
whereby no significant differences in attitudes between practitioners of dif-
ferent religious orientations were reported. They suggest a "universally ac-
cepted basic understanding of forgiving across religions" (p. 288). Our find-
ing indicating that respondents who practice an Eastern religion hold more
positive attitudes toward forgiveness suggests that religious affiliation is re-
lated to forgiveness attitudes. Levels of religious involvement were not as-
sessed in this study, and therefore comparisons with DiBlasio's findings
(1993) regarding level of religious involvement and attitudes can not be an-
alyzed. In addition, our findings must be viewed with caution given the
small sample size of those counselors identifying themselves as "other." Fur-
ther study is indicated to gain a clearer understanding of the role and rela-
tionship of religious affiliation and the involvement and use of forgiveness in
clinical practice.
Our results also revealed that theoretical orientation was related to atti-
tudes toward forgiveness, with clinicians trained in systems therapy express-
ing the most positive attitudes. Although our findings are significant, further
study is merited regarding the understanding of the actual impact of these
findings in day-to-day practice of mental health counselors as well as thera-
peutic outcomes related to forgiveness.
Results also revealed that those respondents who espoused more positive
forgiveness attitudes were more likely to raise issues of forgiveness in their
practice. They were also more likely to include the use of forgiveness activities
related to the offender. It appears that more positive attitudes expressed by
the practitioner are associated with increased use of therapeutic activities
related to forgiveness and the client/self as well as activities related to the
offender.
This finding has implications for training, although causality regarding
positive attitudes and use of activities focusing on the offender can not be
determined.

Training Needs

Respondents overwhelmingly indicated a need for further training related to

forgiveness and its use in clinical practice. Specific competencies endorsed by
respondents included mastery of the professional literature as well as applica-
tions to the counseling process. Predictably, respondents who espoused more
positive attitudes toward forgiveness indicated greater interest in learning
more about counseling applications. They were also more likely to view for-
giveness as a process that incorporated the self/client and offender. They also
were in practice fewer years, although they were experienced practitioners
(mean years = 10). It appears that practitioners who hold more positive views
toward forgiveness, who view the forgiving process as interpersonal, and who
 WHAT MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS ARE TELLING US 69

include the incorporation of the offender are also more likely to engage in
further training.

Conclusion

In summary, our survey findings revealed forgiveness-related issues to be

highly salient and relevant in clinical practice. Counselors reported that fe-
male clients are more likely to raise forgiveness-related issues and that the
process for working with issues related to forgiveness may be different for
men and women. Our qualitative data suggest interesting gender differences
meriting further research. In addition, our findings raise interesting issues
with respect to clinical practice, indicating that a significant percentage of
mental health counselors do not perceive the inclusion of the offender, in-
cluding contextual variables related to the offender, as critical to the forgiving
process. Thus, key concepts such as empathy and refraining and their role in
the forgiving process were not endorsed and probably not addressed by a sig-
nificant majority of mental health counselors. Finally, 90% of respondents
indicated that forgiving is an important clinical issue and would be interested
in pursuing professional training focusing on forgiveness-related issues in
clinical practice. There appears to be a gap between our current understand-
ing of the forgiving process and the results obtained in this survey regarding
clinical practice. The identified gap can be effectively addressed, given the
overwhelming endorsement by respondents of the need and interest in fur-
ther professional training

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 four

Forgiveness asTherapy
Norvin Richards

We are all mistreated, from time to time. That is not to say that we all have
equally hard lives at the hands of others, of course. We differ in how seriously
others mistreat us, in how regularly they do so, and in what patterns there are
to the ways we are mistreated. We also differ in how we react, not only while
the mistreatment is underway or when we first realize what has happened but
also in the aftermath, as time goes by. Some of us are able to move on with our
lives more or less readily, perhaps with a lesson learned, and perhaps not. Oth-
ers, though, continue to suffer in various ways from what was done to them;
sometimes, they suffer from it in ways that disrupt their lives. For them, time
falls far short of healing the wounds, or at least it does not heal them in a rea-
sonably prompt fashion. Neither are they able to do the healing themselves;
their troubled state is not only distressing to them and to those who care
about them but can also interfere with their everyday interactions with the
rest of the world.
What can be done to help them? The answer, some say, lies in the healing
power of forgiveness. According to this view, the victim's continued hard feel-
ings toward whomever did him wrong are the source of the disruption in his
own life. If his anger and resentment toward that person could be replaced
with positive feelings, the victim would be much better off himself, advocates
of forgiveness therapy contend. The therapy aims to produce this change,
and to do so without doing its own damage to the victim's self-respect.
Does it work? Not for everyone, presumably, but to some extent it does
work, and it seems to be working better as the procedure evolves. In a 1993
study, the group of patients receiving forgiveness therapy did better than the
control group in coming to have "less anger and harsh thoughts (toward
those who had hurt them) and showed more love and willingness to help"
(Hebl & Enright, 1993; see especially table 3, p. 665). They also did better
than the control group at becoming more forgiving people in general. On the
other hand, they did not do markedly better at achieving improved self-
esteem than the control group, or at becoming less depressed and anxious

72
 FORGIVENESS AS THERAPY 73

(Hebl and Enright, 1993). In a different study conducted three years later,
the results were more impressive. This time, the patients given forgiveness
therapy "gained statistically more than the control group in forgiveness and
hope . . . [and] decreased statistically significantly more than the control
group in anxiety and psychological depression" (Enright, Freedman, &
Rique, 1998, p. 58. The results quoted are more fully presented in Freedman
& Enright, 1996).
Those are only two studies, however, and presumably the majority of
those who are given forgiveness therapy are not participants in a study at all,
but individual patients. For a more general picture of the therapy's success
and prospects, consider these remarks by a prominent practitioner:
Enright and others in the Wisconsin group have made a major scientific
contribution to the mental health field as a result of their pioneering re-
search in forgiveness studies. Their research findings of decreases in anxiety
and depression and improved self-esteem and hope in those who achieve
forgiveness are extremely encouraging. They have proved what therapists
knew from their clinical work but were unable to demonstrate empirically:
Forgiveness has remarkable healing power in the lives of those who utilize
it. . . . The research on forgiveness by Robert D. Enright and his colleagues
may be as important to the treatment of emotional and mental disorders as
the discovery of sulfa drugs and penicillin have been to the treatment of in-
fectious diseases. (Fitzgibbons, 1998, p. 71)
This is high praise. Even the use of sulfa drugs and penicillin was not per-
fect from the outset, however, and we are in relatively early days where for-
giveness therapy is concerned as well. There is still considerable room for mis-
givings about the state of the art, and for constructive suggestions.
My own misgivings and suggestions fall into three rough categories. I
want to raise questions about what forgiveness therapists take forgiveness to
be, about the procedure by which they move patients to forgive, and about
which patients should be urged to employ this means of solving the problem
in their lives rather than another. As we might expect, these matters are inter-
related, and that makes the discussion of them less tidy than this separation
into categories might suggest.

What Should Count as Forgiving?

Forgiveness is more than ceasing our anger toward the injurer . . . forgiveness is not
a neutral stance toward our injurer.Enright, Freedman, & Rique, 1998, p. 48

What forgiveness therapists want the patient to do is not just to stop resent-
ing the wrongdoer so fiercely for treating her as he did, while perhaps re-
taining hard feelings of some more manageable kind. They want all hard
feelings abandoned, and that is not all: they want the patient to come actu-
ally to have positive feelings toward the person who did her wrong, feelings
74 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

of "compassion, generosity, and even love." The patient's "new stance" is to

include changes in "affect (overcoming resentment and substituting com-
passion), condemnation (overcoming condemnation with respect and/or
generosity), and behavior (overcoming indifference or the tendency toward
subtle revenge with a sense of goodwill)" (Enright, Freedman, & Rique,
1998, p. 47).
It is reasonable to ask why the patient must go this far. Suppose that she
doesn't manage to have such positive feelings, but does manage to stop hold-
ing the particular episode that troubles her against this person in any way or
to stop hating him for the series of occasions on which he abused her. She has
not come to regard him as an object of compassion, let alone to have more
general goodwill toward him or love him, but she has still achieved a very
considerable change. She has gone from hard feelings so intense as to be vir-
ulent to having no negative feelings toward him, of any kind, for having done
what he did. Why may this never count as success? Why may it never count as
forgiving the wrongdoer?
Advocates of forgiveness therapy might reply that for some patients, it
could be said that unless they have come to feel positively toward the wrong-
doer, they have not completely abandoned all their negative feelings toward
him. Take, for example, a case in which one loving spouse has done another a
terrible wrong, but aside from that there was a warm relationship between the
two. If the victim really had put this one cause for hard feelings completely
aside, there would be no coolness between them now; if there is, the process
must not have been completed. What this victim managed should not count
as complete forgiveness but as something short of that, and surely there could
be patients whose troubles would remain until they had completely forgiven
the person who mistreated them.
This cannot explain why it is never enough just to abandon the hard feel-
ings, however, since there will also be cases in which the mistreatment is not an
aberration in an otherwise positive relationship. Sometimes the mistreatment
is all there is to the "relationship" such as a victim who fell prey to a stranger
who misused her terribly and then moved on. Their only encounter was the
one in which he dragged her into an alley a few steps from her door, beat her
severely, ripped the jewelry from her neck and her hands, and left her whim-
pering and bleeding. She simply has no residual reasons to feel warmly toward
this person if she can just get past this one episode. We cannot use the earlier
rationale to explain why her forgiveness of her assailant should not count un-
less she comes to have positive feelings toward him. We cannot say, that is, that
we can tell, from the absence of positive feelings, that she has not really aban-
doned the hard feelings she had toward him for having done this to her.
Similarly, there are victims who did have larger relationships with the per-
son at whom they are so angry, but who were given more than one reason to
resent that person in the course of that relationship. Here too, we cannot say
that they have not really put what made them so angry behind them unless
they come to have warm feelings toward the person they used to resent so in-
tensely. Perhaps they have put that episode completely aside, and what it
 FORGIVENESS AS THERAPY 75

made room for were not warm feelings but harsh ones that were based on the
rest of what this other person did in their years together. I would describe this
person as having forgiven the other party for what was troubling him or her
so, without also having forgiven this person for everything else. It seems as if
that should be possible for a person to do, but the therapists appear not to
want to count it as forgiving the other person at all.
It might be tempting to dismiss this as a quibble over terminology or to
grant the therapists license to redefine "forgiving" as a technical term of their
own which will apply only to replacing hard feelings with positive ones. But
it is not at all clear why forgiving, thus defined, should always be the goal of
forgiveness therapy. The goal (it seems) should be to solve the patient's terri-
ble problem with what was done to him. What would solve the patient's
problem would vary with the case, would not it? It would not always require
coming to have positive feelings or putting everything this person did behind
one. Take, for example, the sort of person who has been mistreated in many
ways by the person he resents so bitterly, though most of it pales in compari-
son to the treatment that is bothering him most. Suppose we do get him to
abandon his bitter resentment, but do not get him to regard the wrongdoer
with affection or even compassion. Instead, he now regards this person as
someone who is less than a monster but is definitely someone to be wary of
and to be disliked for his lesser deeds. This second set of hard feelings do not
need to be so intense as to call for therapy, it seems, despite falling far short of
"compassion, generosity, or even love." If so, we would have solved the pa-
tient's problem without inducing him to "forgive," as the therapists would
have redefined the term. It may be similar for the person who was horribly
mistreated by someone who only passed through her life on one dreadful oc-
casion and then went his way. It is not clear why the disruption this caused in
her life cannot cease unless she comes to regard the predator with "compas-
sion, generosity, or even love" and why it could never be enough just to drop
the hard feelings toward him.
To speak more generally, what change the patient would need to undergo
seems to be something that would vary with the patient, a distinction that is
obscured if we aim in every case for replacing hard feelings with positive
ones. That further step could be unnecessary. Moreover, since it is a step that
must often be especially difficult for the patient to take, to require that all
patients take it must increase the number who end their therapy with a sense
of failure, of having fallen short in their efforts to deal with their problem. It
is easy to see how that could cause troubles of its own, and we would have
caused them by pushing the patient to perform something both difficult and
unnecessary.
Perhaps the therapists will reply that these worries rest on an illusion. The
illusion would be that a person can abandon disruptive anger and resentment
without also coming to regard the former object of those feelings at least with
compassion, if not with affection or love. If we cannot have the one change
without having the other, it is certainly a mistake for me to suggest that we
should sometimes aim only for the one. As we shall see, the therapists' efforts
76 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

to induce forgiveness rely heavily on painting the wrongdoer as an object of

compassion and on getting the patient "to understand deeply the offender
and his life struggles" and "develop a degree of empathy for the 'wounded boy
or girl' within the adult" who mistreated them" (Fitzgibbons, 1998, p. 66).
For forgiveness therapists, the two changes might seem inseparable.
That would be a mistake, however, because there are other reasons to for-
give than compassion for the wrongdoer, and the patient might be induced to
attend to these. For example, sometimes the reason to forgive someone is that
although what he did to you was very bad, so bad that you were perfectly
right to resent him bitterly for quite a while, it was not so bad as to be per-
manently unforgivable. It was not so bad that you should still feel this way, to
put the point more precisely; it is time you forgave him. A person could be
brought to see this, it seems, and to forgive for that reason, without the
wrongdoer becoming an object of compassion.

The Gift in Forgiveness

The offended willingly chooses to forgive. Forgiveness is volitional, not grimly obliga-
tory.Enright, Freedman, & Rique, 1998, p. 47

This accords with the conventional understanding of forgiveness as some-

thing to which the wrongdoer is never entitled, something for which she can
only beg, never demand-a gift the offended one is always free to withhold, if
that is his or her choice. Oddly, Enright and his colleagues think forgiveness
has this quality because forgiving someone necessarily includes coming to
hold him in a positive light. They say that if forgiving someone is just a mat-
ter of abandoning the hard feelings one had toward him for doing what he
did, then "giving a gift to the offender is going beyond the requirements of
true forgiving" (p. 48, emphasis added). Apparently any gift is in the new
"undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity, and even love" that the vic-
tim has for the person she once resented, to their way of thinking, not in the
abandonment of the hard feelings. I think this is mistaken.
Suppose the victim has a perfect right to resent this person to the degree
she does, given the way he treated her. Surely it would also be a gift for her
just to lighten up, if that were welcome to the wrongdoer. After all, she would
be abandoning the "resentment, negative judgment, and indifferent behav-
ior" to which she has a right (p. 47). Since she has a right to feel and act in
these ways toward him, it follows that he has no right not to be the object of
those hard feelings and that behavior. He has no right to be released from
them, to put it differently, unlike someone who had not actually behaved in
the way the victim had taken him to act. So, for her to release him from them
is a gift in the sense that it is "volitional" rather than "grimly obligatory"
(though of course it would be a further gift also to be positively nice to him).
Consider next a more radical thought. It might be put in either of two
ways, depending on possible answers to some questions we needn't sort out.
 FORGIVENESS AS THERAPY 77

One way to put it is to say that although it is very often true that there is no
obligation to forgive, there are also times when there is an obligation to do so.
The other is to say that although forgiveness is always a gift, it is sometimes a
gift one would be wrong not to give. In the relevant sort of case, the victim
was perfectly right to regard the wrongdoer as she did, but things are now dif-
ferent. We think it is just time she forgave him, given what he did, and that
she is wrong to continue to hold it against him after all these years, despite
having been perfectly right to feel that way for quite a while.
The idea that it is wrong for her to continue to hold what he did against
him has its home in our more general way of thinking about misbehavior. Ac-
cording to this way of thinking, we should take misbehavior more seriously
the worse it is. Taking worse misbehavior more seriously than lesser misdeeds
includes thinking worse of those who do very bad things than we do of those
who misbehave more trivially. Part of that perspective is to continue to allow
what we take this person to have done affect our view of her.
Now, suppose we learned that we were making a mistake about a particu-
lar wrongdoer in this way, and the mistake was one of overreaction. We were
acting as if she had mistreated us more seriously than she actually did. In that
case, we ought to change our attitude toward her, it seems to me. We ought
not to be as condemnatory as we have been. Quite possibly, we ought to
abandon the hard feelings that would still have been in place if our picture of
what she did had been correct. We ought to forgive her, that is, just as others
ought also to stop thinking of her in a way that would have been appropriate
if she had acted as we thought. These changes of attitude are only fair; al-
though making them could require quite an effort, these are efforts we would
be wrong not to make under the circumstances.
Such scenarios seem to get lost in the talk of forgiveness as always a gift,
and as never obligatory. Forgiveness therapists do want to be able to offer
their therapy to patients who (as I've put it) would be wrong not to forgive
those who mistreated them, as well as to those who would not be. Forgiveness
therapists want to help anyone whose hard feelings disrupt his life, and hard
feelings that are exaggerated in the way described can certainly do that. How-
ever, the language with which the therapists describe forgiveness and the pro-
cedures by which they enable their patients to forgive seem suited to patients
of a different kind: patients whose forgiveness really is beyond the call of
duty. That excludes these others.

Good for What Ails You?

Enrightand'the Human Development Study Group have developed a very important

and much needed modelfor the process of forgiveness, with the four phases of "uncov-
ering, decision, work, and outcome."Fitzgibbons, 1998, pp. 6768

The process Enright and his colleagues have developed has many elements:
17 of them, in the 1993 version of the therapy, and 20 in the 1998 one. (For
78 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

a table representing the process employed in the 1993 study, see Hebl & En-
right, 1993. For a table representing the process in 1998, see Enright, Freed-
man, & Rique, 1998.) This is to their credit, since bringing someone from
disruption to forgiveness cannot be simple. The complexity of the process
limits the depth to which the authors discuss any of its elements, however.
Perhaps a fuller discussion would reveal that the points I am about to raise are
dealt with in the therapeutic process after all. I hope so.
It is particularly troubling that the "uncovering" phase with which the
process begins does not appear to attend especially closely to identifying what
is troubling the patient so deeply about what happened to her, and that later
sessions also seem to ignore it. I found only one mention of any particular ef-
fort to elicit what precisely it is that troubles the patient so deeply. This was in
the 1993 study, which reported, "Some of the questions for reflection and
group discussion toward the end of the (first) session included . . . "What
specifically was there about the perceived hurt that caused the most pain?" (Hebl
& Enright, 1993, p. 661). There are several reasons to think the matter mer-
its a great deal more attention.
First, if we clarified what troubled the patient so deeply it might emerge
that he is one of those discussed a bit earlier, someone who is actually wrong
not to forgive. Although this patient certainly was done wrong and was justi-
fied in being angry, the anger now disrupting his life is an overreaction in the
sense that he is acting as if the wrongdoer had mistreated him much more se-
verely than she actually did. If so, to treat him now forgiving her as the com-
pletely gracious gift that Enright and his colleagues take all forgiveness to be,
would be mistaken.
Moreover, surely it would be helpful to the patient to understand that he
is overreacting and to learn the reasons why he is doing so. That could enable
the therapists to help him with some more general problem he has with being
mistreated, or with this particular kind of mistreatment; or with this particu-
lar person. Those opportunities are missed if we devote all our attention to
getting him to forgive. If patients of this kind could be identified, they could
be taken down a different path.
That sort of patient aside, here is a second point in favor of working harder
at clarifying what it is that troubles the patient. Although the hard feelings
someone has toward the person who did this terrible thing could be very cen-
tral to the disturbance in his or her life, it also seems as if they could be pe-
ripheral to it. As an example in which the hard feelings toward the wrongdoer
are at the heart of the trouble, we can imagine someone who hates and fears
his father. Those feelings distress him because he thinks he should love his fa-
ther, and they also work some general disruption in his relationships with
older men, including potential employers. Here it is easy to see how replacing
the hatred and the fear with a different attitude might do the man a great deal
of good.
Now imagine a different patient, though. This patient was raped, and she
feels that this experience has ruinedher. She feels soiled, deeply and irretriev-
ably; she believes no decent man could respect her now, and that she is now
 FORGIVENESS AS THERAPY 79

incapable of doing what she believes God created women to do, which is to
marry and have children. The disruption caused in her life by what was done
to her is at least as great as that in the life of the man who hates and fears his
father. But it is not at all clear that the key to helping her is to get her to stop
hating the person who did this. Suppose we did get her to see the man who
assaulted her as an object of compassion. That would not change the fact
that she was raped, and, in her eyes, ruined as a woman; it would only make
her someone who was ruined by a pitiful creature rather than by a hateful
one. She might still feel just as devastated, that is, even if we did get her to
forgive him.
In short, what the therapists mean by forgiveness will not take care of what
distresses her. For that matter, neither would forgiveness that consisted only
in ceasing to hate the person who raped her, if she could manage that. She
needs help of a different kind, help (it seems) that focuses on correcting her
feelings about what happened to her rather than her feelings about the person
who did it, beginning perhaps with efforts to change her picture of what it
means. More generally, what she needs seems more akin to grief counseling
than to a change of feelings about an individual. The worry is that a patient's
need for help of a different kind will not emerge, in a process devoted single-
mindedly to inducing those distressed by having been mistreated to forgive
the person who mistreated them.
There are cases of at least three other kinds that raise this same worry. In
these cases too, hard feelings toward the wrongdoer seem to be either periph-
eral to the patient's troubles or are only one aspect of those troubles, condi-
tions under which forgiving the wrongdoer should not be the only goal. The
therapeutic process developed by Enright does not seem sensitive to cases of
these kinds, either.
As an instance of the first kind of case, take the following example, offered
originally by Joanna North in defense of forgiveness therapy. The example
concerns a woman who "is unable or unwilling to forgive her attacker, a man
who assaulted and robbed her on her way home one night." The woman's
feelings toward the attacker disrupt her life, to some extent, since even
though the attack took place three years ago, "She thinks about him every
day" (North, 1998, p. 18). No doubt this poor woman would be better off if
she could do something about that, and forgiveness therapy might be just the
ticket. Her feelings toward the attacker are only a small part of her troubles,
however; she engages in uncontrolled generalizing from what happened to
her to similar situations. She was attacked by a man when walking home
alone. Now, "Every time she walks home, she is nervous, edgy, perhaps even
panic-stricken when she hears someone walking behind her. . . . She has given
up her job and has developed a more generalized fear of going out alone, even
in daylight. Furthermore, the attack has affected her relations with men.
Whenever she is with a man, she fears he might attack her; she cannot trust
him and cannot build a relationship with him" (North, 1998, p. 18).
It is hard to see why our efforts to help this poor woman should concen-
trate on getting her to forgive the man who attacked her rather than on
80 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

enabling her to stop all this misplaced generalizing. It seems as if what her
therapy should focus on is why this happened to her, so that she can abandon
her false hypotheses, such as: "It happened simply because the attacker was
male and I was a woman walking alone and so all males are dangerous or all
walking alone is dangerous or everywhere outside the apartment is dangerous,
or ..." What would do her the most good, it seems, would be coming to ac-
cept that he attacked her not because he was male but because he was a male
of this kind who acted under conditions of thatkind, after she herself had not
simply been outside her apartment and alone but had done the following
things to make herself vulnerable. The hope would be that if she could accept
that, she would cease to generalize wildly and be uneasy and anxious only
when in genuinely similar circumstances. That would erase the extensive dis-
ruption of her life, which consists not in her feelings about the person who
attacked her but in mistaken interpretations of where danger lies.
It is conceivable that changing her feelings about her attacker would play
some key role in effecting this other correction. This needs demonstrating,
however, since the two seem very different and quite unrelated. In lieu of any
such demonstration, this seems instead to be another respect in which forgive-
ness-therapy misses the chance to do what would help the patient the most.
Before leaving this point, it should be acknowledged that there must also
be cases that would not neatly resolve themselves by helping the victim to see
why this terrible thing had happened to her and thus to be anxious and fear-
ful only when the circumstances call for anxiety and fear. There are cases of
another kind, because life includes coincidence and luck. It is possible to do
everything right, taking no unreasonable risks, and still just be in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Suppose that one man had been terribly mistreated,
not in a series of events he could learn to recognize as dangerous, but in cir-
cumstances he could not learn to see in that way or should not learn to see in
that way (because the bad effect was one in a million). Suppose, further, that
his fear and anxiety after this event were free-ranging, leaving him desperately
uncomfortable most of the time. Clearly the solution would not be to help
him accept that his mistreatment came about through special circumstances
and to be anxious only in those circumstances, because that is not the way it
was, for him; his misfortune came out of the blue.
It is no more obvious why forgiveness therapy should be a help to him,
though. Rather, he is another person whose distress comes not from how he
feels about the person who mistreated him but from how he now feels about
other matters. He is another person it would seem best to identify and send
down a different therapeutic path. Perhaps it would help him if we acknowl-
edged the random nature of what befell him, and reassured him that this
means he did nothing wrong himself and that it is perfectly understandable
to be distressed when what ought to be trustworthy goes so terribly wrong.
We could then offer an assessment of how much or how little it would have
helped if he had been anxious or fearful on this occasion and how much or
how little help it would be to feel that way in the future, and discuss both
how unlikely it is that he would be unlucky in this way again and the costs of
 FORGIVENESS AS THERAPY 81

trying to protect himself from it by continually being on guard. Perhaps this

might help him, but that is only amateur guesswork, based on what may be a
naive supposition that if the truth does not always set us free, at least it should
help correct emotions that misconstrue the facts. Those who know therapy
will do better than I can at identifying the best therapy for someone whose
troubles began when he was mistreated in a way no one could have predicted,
when he was the victim of a terrible coincidence of factors that almost never
come together or that almost never produce this sort of result when they do.
Still, it is fair to say that getting him to forgive the person who did him wrong
on this occasion has no obvious claim to be the best therapy for troubles of
this kind. Again, this sort of case would probably be better served if forgive-
ness therapy took greater care to identify what it is that troubles the patient
and to direct some patients elsewhere.
As one last point of that kind, consider the patient whose distress over
what happened to her is partly distress with herself, over what she did on this
occasion. This is a particularly common reaction in women, according to
Sharon Lamb's excellent book The Trouble with Blame (1996). As Lamb
points out, the rest of us often have a powerful urge to assure victims who
blame themselves that they are entirely wrong about this; in our efforts at this
we may speak as if the victim had been an entirely passive object, on this
occasion, someone who did nothing but only fell victim to the wrongdoer
(Lamb, 1996; see especially chapters 2 and 4). This is well meant, but notice
how closely the story we press on her resembles the one so troubling to the
victim discussed previouslythe man whose ill-treatment was impossible to
predict. "You did nothing wrong," we told him and now tell her. "This is
something that just happened to youessentially, you were hit by lightning
when Thor was in one of his moods." This may not be reassuring, as noted
above. The picture it gives of what life is like can be its own source of potent,
stubborn distress, of a kind not obviously amenable to forgiveness therapy.
I think forgiveness therapy might encourage this picture and certainly
does little to dislodge it, since its attention focuses largely on the victim's feel-
ings about the wrongdoer. It does not also address the woman's feelings about
her own role on this occasion or include any attention to what that role might
have been. That is close to treating her as if she did nothing, as if she had been
only the passive victim of one of the unpredictable lightning bolts. At the
very least, since it leaves the victim's actual role unexamined, it misses an op-
portunity to be of help to her.
Of course, it could be that the victim was entirely helpless and that her
own behavior was utterly blameless, and (as Lamb points out) we certainly
don't want to encourage the old picture in which the victim is entirely to
blame for what happened to her. One of Lamb's many useful points, though,
is that there are several alternatives to an individual (1) being entirely to
blame for what happened to him or her and (2) either not having been an
agent at all or having made no contribution whatever, in his or her actions.
Among those alternatives are (3) having acted in a way that was both blame-
worthy and foolish but does not in the least diminish the blameworthiness of
82 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

the person who took advantage of this. Surely it would be much more useful
to understand that you had played that part than to be told repeatedly that
you had played none. This would allow you to come to terms with part of
what was upsetting you, including, perhaps, correcting a mistaken feeling of
responsibility for what happened; it would correct that mistake without in-
ducing you to make a different one. That is, it would do so without encour-
aging you to think the reason you were not responsible was that you did
nothing, or that whatever you did do was faultless: If that is not why you were
not responsible, it would be better not to treat you as if it were.
In addition, clarifying the part you actually did play could show you
something you could change, if you wished, in order to avoid having some-
one else treat you in this way. If you chose not to make that change, you
would at least have some warning of what might get you mistreated the next
time. And, since you would understand what it was that others were taking
advantage of, you would be better able to attend to what sort of person takes
advantage of it and what sort does not.
The general points are that understanding what part you played when you
were mistreated can be empowering, and that unhappy suspicions about that
part can contribute substantially to the disruption of your life. Forgiveness
therapy will not help you in these matters. It ought to include ways to iden-
tify those patients who need this help and to steer them toward it.
Finally, the therapeutic process appears to pay no attention to the possibil-
ity that the patient has moral misgivings about forgiving the person who mis-
treated her. In one essay, Enright, Freedman, and Rique (1998) do address
moral objections to forgiveness, but only by dismissing Nietzsche's con-
tention that all forgiveness is craven (pp. 4950). It is possible to believe in-
stead that although forgiveness is sometimes legitimate there are other times
when it amounts to selling out, to being too weak to continue feeling as a
good person would. That conviction might be particularly strong in a patient
whose hard feelings were not over what this person had done to her but over
what he had done to her mother, or to her daughter. This person might feel
that to stop hating him for it would be to fail those other people; it would be
a way of acting as if what he did to them was not so bad after all, as if they did
not matter all that much. If the cost of continuing to hate him is the disrup-
tion of her own life, to her way of thinking that is but one she is called to pay.
What does the therapy include to deal with deep moral concern of this
kind about what the therapist is asking the patient to do? It will not be
enough to tell her repeatedly that she is not being asked to condone or to ex-
cuse the wrongdoer; that is not what worries her. What does worry her is that
she would be forgiving him too lightly, and, ultimately, doing so for reasons
of self-preservation to which it is disgraceful to yield. That seems to be both
an obstacle to the therapy's success and a way in which succeeding in induc-
ing the patient to forgive would not be of unqualified value to her, but would
bring troubles of its own. There is no sign that forgiveness therapy takes this
seriously.
 FORGIVENESS AS THERAPY 83

What Happens in Forgiveness Therapy?

The injured party begins the "work" phase of theforgiveness process. . .. The individ-
ual engages in "reframing". . . by striving to understand the offender's personal his-
tory, current pressures, and basic human worth. It is important to understand that the
outcome of reframing is understanding, not condoning.Enright, Freedman, &
Rique, 1998, p. 54

Certainly it is important that the outcome not be one in which the injured
party comes to condone what the offender did to him. To condone it would
be to regard it as an acceptable way to act, or at least as an acceptable way to
treat the likes of the injured party. Neither of these is a direction in which we
would want the victim to move, even in order to end the previous disruption
the mistreatment had wrought in his life.
We are also told that reframing does not induce the victim to excuse the
wrongdoer: "First, forgiving is not condoning or excusing wrongdoing" (En-
right, Freedman, & Rique, 1998, p. 48); "It is important to distinguish this
process from one of condoning or excusing his father's behavior" (North,
1998, p. 25). Here matters are a little more complicated.
First, therapists are absolutely right about there being a conceptual differ-
ence between forgiving someone and excusing him. To excuse someone is to
stop holding him responsible for the behavior for which you were holding
him responsible, because you have found that he was not responsible for it
after all. To forgive him for it would not involve this change, but only one in
your attitude toward him for having done it. You would cease to hold it
against him, as it were; you would abandon the hard feelings you had toward
him because of his actions, despite still considering him responsible for hav-
ing done it.
We can also see why forgiveness therapists aim for forgiveness rather than
for excusing. For one thing, it is only forgiveness that fits their picture of a
victim who has a right to be hurt or angry at this person but graciously fol-
lows a different emotional path; excusing someone who had an excuse for
what he did would be a very different matter. For another, presumably many
wrongdoers actually have no excuse for what they did. If the goal were to get
the emotionally wounded to excuse those who had mistreated them, often
this could only be achieved by inducing them to accept a false excuse. Like
condoning what was done, in that it wrongly treats the behavior as if it were
not an improper way to treat this person after all.
So there is a difference between forgiving and excusing, and it is forgiv-
ing that is to be sought. The trouble is that the considerations urged upon
the victim in the reframing stage are at least as well suited to function as ex-
cuses as they are to be taken as reasons to forgive. Here is one set of such
considerations:
In reframing . . . the client views the other in context, seeing the influences
on the offender at the time of the hurtful event (Hebl & Enright, 1993,
84 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

p. 660). Typically, this involves understanding the pressures that the wrong-
doer was under at the time of the wrong (North, 1998, p. 24). In reframing,
the victim is urged to change her picture of what was done to her, indeed, to
correct that picture: "This is not done to condone or distort but to understand
motives and behaviors more accurately" (Hebl & Enright, 1993, p. 660). "It
is important to note that the outcome of reframing is understanding (En-
right, Freedman, & Rique, 1998, p. 54) (as opposed, presumably, to the mis-
understanding she had beforehand). She was wrong about the motives from
which this person acted, or she didn't understand the pressures he was under
at the time or the influences under which he acted.
Very often, this shift to seeing such things in a different light is seeing that
the wrongdoer has an excuse for what he did. If he did not mean to hurt her,
if his motives were quite different, that exonerates him completely from the
charge of having acted with the aim of doing harm. But then what she ought
to do is to excuse him from responsibility for that offense, since he did not
commit it, not forgive him for having done itsince, again, he did not do it.
A similar shift occurs with learning in the "reframing" stage that the man was
under tremendous pressure to do what he did; that means he did not do it
perfectly freely and lightheartedly. If that had been her preconception, then
what emerges in reframing is that she was mistaken; he did not act in the way
that was assumed. What she should do is not to forgive him for having acted
in that way, then, but to recognize his excuse.
Of course, these excuses may leave him responsible for having mistreated
her in a different way than she had previously thought. Even if he did not
mean to do what he did, he should have been much more careful than he was
about the effects on her; even if he did act under pressure and so not entirely
for the sake of hurting her, he ought not to have yielded to those pressures. As
J. L. Austin once put it, "The typical excuse in a bad situation only gets us out
of the fire and into the frying pan; but, then, any frying pan in a fire" (Austin,
1966, p. 125). There may still be something to forgive, namely, the lesser (but
perhaps still considerable) offense that remains once the client has given the
offender's true motives and the pressures and influences under which he
acted their proper due.
Can those same considerations now be reasons to forgive him for the lesser
offense, though? It does not seem as if they can do double duty in this way. If
they could, then the reason the victim should forgive this person for mistreat-
ing her in the way she now understands that he did is this; he mistreated her in
that-way, not in some worse one. If this alone were a reason she should forgive
him, though, the message to her would be uncomfortably close to the one con-
tained in condoning what he did. The message would be, "Treating you in this
(admittedly bad) way isn't something you should hold against a person." Why
not? Because it is only you he did it to? Because bad behavior shouldn't be held
against a person if there are worse things he could have done? Neither is a mes-
sage with which we should be comfortable. Unless there is more to reframing
than this, what happens in a session appears either to be excusing that is misla-
beled as forgiving, or else to be a form of forgiving that should worry us.
 FORGIVENESS AS THERAPY 85

The solution, I think, is to inform those who undergo forgiveness therapy

that what might happen during the course of their therapy is this. First, they
might come to realize that the person against whom they bore such ill-will
had not acted in quite the way they had always thought. Second, they might
find that the way he had acted did not trouble them in the same deep way.
For this reason, their feelings toward him might change to a level that would
not be disruptive in the way their current feelings are. If so, the original mo-
tivation for seeking to find a way to forgive this person would be gone,
although of course there might be other good reasons to do so. Third, the pa-
tients might find instead that they still had great resentment toward the per-
son who mistreated them, even now that they properly understood the form
of mistreatment to which he had subjected them. They might find that those
feelings toward him were stronger than they ought to be, given what the mis-
treatment had actually been and given the length of time since it had taken
place. In that case, they may be told that they ought to forgive this person. Al-
ternatively, they might find that although they now recognize that the mis-
treatment was not what they had always taken it to be, their hard feelings over
what this person actually did are not at all out of line. In that case, for them to
forgive this person would be the gift that forgiveness therapists take all for-
giveness to be.
These same concerns apply to other considerations that receive emphasis
in the reframing stage. Specifically, reframing includes mining "the offender's
personal history" (Enright, Freedman, & Rique, 1998, p. 25; Hebl & En-
right, 1993, use the phrase "developmental history" instead), considering his
"personality as a result of his particular developmental history" (North, 1998,
p. 24), presumably in search of the " 'wounded boy or girl' within the adult"
(Fitzgibbons, 1998, p. 66). In one presumably typical reframing session:
An example was given of an abused wife who understands her husband as
he was growing up. She understands his own abuse and sees him as emo-
tionally wounded. The group was challenged to reframe relative to the one
who hurt them. (Hebl & Enright, 1993, p. 662)
The first point is that these considerations too might function as excuses,
in the mind of the victim. The victim had always taken what was done to her
to be a monstrous act, her father was indulging a taste for having someone
completely in his power, to do with whatever he might wish. Now we press
this story of her father's own abuse or sad background upon her, and it casts
what he did in a different light. She comes to see it as something he did be-
cause of what happened to him, some further consequence of his own mis-
treatment, which he was helpless or nearly helpless to avoid.
If this is how the reframing works for the patient, we have moved her to
excuse her father, not to forgive him. The therapists emphasize that they
bring about forgiveness through reframing, but there is no assurance that
they are right about this. The second point is that none of these excuses are
necessarily good excuses. It may be that the patient is induced not only to ex-
cuse but also to excuse when she should continue to hold the wrongdoer
86 FORGIVENESS INTHETHERAPY HOUR

exactly as responsible as she has been holding him. If that happens, what we
press her to do is to accept that this behavior, at least when committed against
her, should be excused more readily than it actually should be. That carries
risky messages.

Conclusion

The research on forgiveness by Robert D. Enright and his colleagues may be as impor-
tant to the treatment of emotional and mental disorders as the discovery of sulfa drugs
and penicillin have been to the treatment of infectious diseases.Fitzgibbons, 1998,
p. 71

Not all patients who are treated with penicillin or sulfa drugs are necessarily
getting the treatment they should be given. Some do not have infectious dis-
eases at all, despite their symptoms, but a problem of a different kind. Some
do have infectious diseases but also have allergies to these drugs, so that their
administration can be fatal. Using the drugs to the patient's benefit requires
being careful about what exactly the ailment is and about considerations in
what we might call the patient's broader physiology.
There are similar limits to the use of forgiveness therapy, surely, and I have
suggested that it is not always used with the appropriate care for those limits.
If it is forgiving we seek to produce, it is important to be right about the
source of the patient's symptoms, namely, that they do derive from hard feel-
ings the patient is entitled to have toward someone who mistreated him,
rather than from hard feelings that are misplaced or exaggerated or out of
date, or stem from a different aspect of the mistreatment altogether. No
doubt the diagnosis is often right, and it is hard feelings toward the wrong-
doer that cause the disruption in the patient's life. Then forgiveness therapy is
at least an option, but it will still be important to be sure it is the right option;
it does not appear that forgiveness therapists are as careful about this as they
should be. For one thing, it might not be a change to positive feelings that is
needed in order to ease the pain and disruption in the patient's life, but only
an end to negative feelings or a reduction in their intensity. For another, there
is (of course) more to the patient than this one problem. Other features of the
patient's psychology, personality, and personal morality can make forgiveness
therapy only one part of the treatment to be used, and still other such features
can make the therapy hard on the patient rather than the help it is meant to
be. These are all matters to consider, before forgiving.

References

Austin, John Longshaw (1966). A plea for excuses. In James Opie Umson and Geof-
frey James Warnock (Eds.), Philosophical papers. Oxford: Oxford University
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 FORGIVENESS AS THERAPY 87

Enright, Robert D., Suzanne R. Freedman, & Julio Rique (1998). The psychology of
interpersonal forgiveness. In Robert D. Enright & Joanna North (Eds.), Explor-
ingforgiveness. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Enright, Robert D., & Joanna North (Eds.) (1998). Exploring forgiveness. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press.
Fitzgibbons, Richard (1998). Anger and the healing power of forgiveness: A psychia-
trist's view. In Robert D. Enright and Joanna North (Eds.), Explaring forgiveness.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Freedman, Suzanne R., & Robert D. Enright (1996). Forgiveness as an intervention
goal with incest survivors. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64,
983-992.
Hebl, John H., & Robert D. Enright (1993). Forgiveness as a psychotherapeutic goal
with elderly females. Psychotherapy 30, 658-667.
Lamb, Sharon (1996). The Trouble with blame: Victims, perpetrators, and responsibil-
ity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
North, Joanna (1998). The 'ideal' of forgiveness: A philosophers exploration. In
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versity of Wisconsin Press.
 five

Forgiveness in Counseling:
Caution, Definition, and Application
Mono Gusto/son Affinito

The ultimate goal of this chapter is to support the value of forgiveness in the
counseling setting and to provide some guidelines for its effective applica-
tion. But first there are concerns to be met based on the general failure of pre-
cision in using the term. Therefore, an analysis of misleading ideas about for-
giveness will be undertaken, leading to a clear pragmatic definition which
will provide the basis for a new model of forgiveness counseling. Because
there is the danger that hasty forgiveness will fail to uphold justiceanother
term that suffers from loose definitionan analysis of the meanings of jus-
tice as they apply to forgiveness counseling will be included. Related to these
concerns is the context in which counselors practice, which may well con-
tribute to biased application of forgiveness, for example, by supporting indi-
vidual comfort to the neglect of community, or simplistically misusing some
biblical injunctions.
"Forgiveness in counseling" is, therefore, a title deliberately chosen rather
than "counseling forgiveness." The former appropriately recognizes that
clients will bring forgiveness issues with them; the latter proposes forgiveness
as policy. While practitioners should be sufficiently aware of forgiveness the-
ory and practice to provide professional help when called upon, to advocate
forgiveness without sufficient definition and training may be to practice out-
side one's level of competence and, therefore, to verge on the unethical.
Unfortunately there is a dearth of training materials available. My own
Helping with Forgiveness Decisions (Affinito, 1998) is currently out of print
and being rewritten. Enright and Fitzgibbons's Helping Clients Forgive (2000)
advocates forgiving and provides examples of its effectiveness, with a mini-
mum of instruction on how to help clients reach the point of electing to for-
give. And choosing not to forgive is essentially ignored as an option.
Those who read in depth for the purpose of training themselves will find
many positive examples of forgiveness, testimonials to its virtues. Cases

88
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 89

where forgiving has led to negative consequences, if there are such, are not
likely to be published or identified as forgiveness-related and are therefore
unavailable for evaluation. This potential bias in available materials can well
contribute to premature advocacy of forgiveness.
Recently I was present at a group supervision session where an intern, dis-
cussing a marital therapy case, asked, "How can I make them forgive each
other?" The supervisor tried to help her do that. Her question and the re-
sponse demonstrate a three-fold bias: (1) forgiveness is always to be desired,
(2) counselors have the power to induce forgiveness, and (3) forgiveness is a
technique that can be taught.
None of these are true.
1. Smedes (1984), in presenting the case against forgiveness, concluded
that "the question is not whether forgiving is dangerous, but only
whether it is a safer bet" (p. 175). The ethical and practical function of
the counselor is, I believe, to help clients decide exactly thatwhat is
the "safer bet"in responding to an injustice. The emphasis is on prac-
tical and moral decision making, not advocacy.
2. People cannot be cajoled or induced to forgive. Deciding whether to
forgive and putting the decision into action requires intensive emo-
tional and cognitive work. The specific resolution varies based on the
social, personality, and moral characteristics of the decision maker and
the injustice that raised the issue of forgiveness in the first place. Aside
from the dangerous potential for shaming and revictimizing the suf-
ferer or for failing to deal effectively with injustice, cajoling simply does
not work.
3. Forgiveness is not a technique, though procedures can be described to
lay the groundwork for healthy, moral decision making. This is the
essence of counseling, helping clients to arrive at practical and emo-
tionally releasing decisions consistent with their moral base.
Recently, Jaron Lanier (1999) referred to a "recurring phenomenon that
began with Freud and Marx." He said, "Those men were so entranced by the
early peek they got at a rational understanding of obscure and forbidding
topics that they were overtaken by messianic zeal. They thought they knew
more than they did, and decided to move from being observers and theorists
of reality to social engineers. Tragedies large and small resulted when those
well-meaning men and some of their less well-meaning followers tried to
change people to fit premature theories" (p. 43).
Counselors should ponder these dangers in recommending forgiveness.
Workers in the field of domestic abuse, for example, are familiar with victims
returning to their abusers because they have been advised to "forgive" the per-
petrator. Physical and emotional injury, child abuse, and death of both vic-
tims and abusers have resulted (e.g., Beattie & Shaughnessy, 2000; Wallace
1999). Some counselors have worked, as I have, with parents and grandpar-
ents who "forgave" the behavior of drug-addicted youth, resulting in not only
failure to treat the addiction, but, in some cases, the murder of the "forgiver."
90 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

Applying forgiveness theory prematurely based on positive evidence, without

adequate consideration of negative instances, is not a benign error.
Similarly, it behooves philosophers and theologians to recognize their lim-
itations in recommending applications to therapy. In this volume, Jeffrie G.
Murphy describes Ralph, a composite case, who responds with guilt and fear
when a clergyman insists that he must forgive his unrepentant abusive father
(2002, p. 47). The clergyman has revictimized Ralph, who, in presenting the
situation to Murphy, reveals his present distress. In assuring Ralph that his re-
sentment is an acceptable response, Murphy has upheld the justice of Ralphs
anger. The professional counselor reading this wonders, however, if validat-
ing the resentment is the end of the story or whether Ralph is reflecting an
energy-consuming tension that might be relieved with further counseling,
achieving freedom from the control of his father's offense, and restoration of
energy for positive moral living.

Definition

The most troubling problem with forgiveness is the lack of definition. In pre-
vious paragraphs I have chosen often to place the word "forgive" in quotation
marks. This represents the fact that the meaning of the word varies with the
person who is using it. Philosophers, theologians, psychologists, psychia-
trists, counselors, self-help advisers, and authors of testimonial autobiogra-
phies all fail to define their terms with sufficient precision to meet the needs
of counselors. Since 1985, I have searched for definitions in the growing
body of forgiveness writings. Rarely are they stated in the practical and objec-
tive terms required to measure the success of a therapeutic intervention. Most
often no definition is given at all. Such is the fate of a word so fully incorpo-
rated into the language.
Searching for implied meanings we find, in varying degrees, issues of rec-
onciliation, trust, mutuality, love, relief from anger and resentment, and the
forgoing of retributive justice. From these it is possible to summarize some
contributing ideas, as follows.
It may be interpersonal or intrapersonal, but forgiveness is never directed
toward an object or event, since these cannot be held morally responsible for
making offensive choices (Pingleton, 1989). Only Casarjian (1992) deviates
from this point, including a chapter called "Forgiving Your Body."
For the majority of forgiveness writers, forgiving is not defined in such a
way as to include freeing the guilty party from blame. One exception is
Susan Forward (1989), who has defined forgiveness as having two facets:
giving up the need for revenge, and absolving the guilty party of responsibil-
ity. Given her definition, she objects to counseling forgiveness, arguing that
the injustice needs to be recognized, labeled, and confronted. While her def-
inition is idiosyncratic, her concern does remind us of the hazards of for-
giveness interventions that fail to consider the issue of justice. Krog (2000),
in struggling with the issues raised by South Africa's Truth and Reconcilia-
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 91

tion Commission (see also Tutu, 1991), quotes her husband, "The act of
forgiveness involves a refusal to blame" (p. 261). For most who write on the
topic of forgiveness, this view is erroneous. But it is this very view of for-
giveness as release from blame that raises fears that forgiveness is the antithe-
sis of justice.
On the contrary, if we were to recognize that there was no blame in the
perceived affront, then there would be no forgiveness issue, but rather a need
to explore the personal sensitivity of the offended person. Except for Forward
and Krog's husband, common to all the definitions is first a recognition that
an injustice has occurredthat the forgiveness process begins with an identi-
fiable personal offense which is not excused or condoned. All recognize that
the potential forgiver has a right to anger and resentment.
Most agree that reconciliation is not necessary to the definition. Har-
grave's (1994) emphasis on reconciliation is an exception. "Essentially," he
says, "forgiving is relationship reconstruction, giving up one's claim to the in-
justice and reestablishing the relationship based on love and trust" (p. 79).
Working with family situations, his definition is designed to fit his particular
client group.

What Forgiveness Is Not

Probably because forgiveness has accumulated centuries of connotative

meaning, the initial impulse is to assume that we know the intent of the per-
son speaking the word. But when using the term, especially in writing or
other public presentations, we discover that members of the audience have
heard something quite different from our intention. Therefore, the defini-
tional effort has been focused on eliminating inappropriate intrusions into
the meaning of forgiveness. (See most recently Affinito, 1999; Casarjian,
1992; Enright & the Human Development Study Group, 1991; Enright &
Fitzgibbons, 2000; Simon & Simon, 1990; Smedes, 1996.)
There is general agreement that forgiveness is not excusing, forgetting,
condoning negative and inappropriate behavior, absolution, a form of self-
sacrifice, a clear-cut one-time decision, approval of injustice, pretending
everything is just fine when you feel it is not, assuming an attitude of superi-
ority or self-righteousness, simply allowing angry feelings to diminish across
time, pardon, or justification. It does not preclude taking action to change a
situation or protect one's rights, nor does it require verbally communicating
directly to the person who has been forgiven.
In addition, Enright and the Human Development Study Group (1991)
have distinguished forgiveness from legal mercy and leniency and from
mourning. He is particularly concerned with his fear that forgiveness may be-
come confused with self-centering (pp. 129-131).
In their recent book, Enright and Fitzgibbons (2000) include a chapter in
which they counter arguments that forgiveness is a weak and inferior re-
sponse to injustice, a form of injustice, passive, logically impossible, and that
some offenses are unforgivable (pp. 267276).
92 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

Constructing a Useful Working Definition for Counselors

A working definition of forgiveness in counseling must satisfy the practical

requirements necessary in any counseling. The goals of the client should be
met, usually with a reduction in anxiety and other emotions that interfere
with the ability to live life productively, joyfully, and with good mental health
as that may be defined. Forgiveness issues are by definition interpersonal, so
practical and moral decisions have to be made concerning reactions to the
person(s) involved in the offense and others affected by it.
Specifically, forgiveness counseling must recognize the fact that the victim
of injustice will normally experience anger, resentment, and hurt, and often
shame and guilt, even when someone else was clearly the offender. This im-
plies a recognition of the "right" to these reactions, as well as validation of the
emotional and cognitive consequences of the offense; acceptance of the desire
to punish the offender as a morally viable option; the desirability of reducing
obsessive preoccupation with the offense and its results, freeing the victim
from the energy-consuming consequences of the injury; careful evaluation of
possible responses to the injury, their feasibility, and their potential benefits
and costs to individual peace or justice; acceptance that cognitive work, ex-
cept in rare cases, will precede emotional results; awareness of the client's lim-
ited power and authority to punish injustice; and awareness of the counselor's
limited power and authority to advocate reactions to injustice.
Some of these requirements are met in the definitions provided by Enright:
"Forgiveness is a forswearing of negative affect and judgment, by viewing the
wrongdoer with compassion and love [italics added] in the face of a wrongdoer's
considerable injustice" (Enright & the Human Development Study Group,
1991, p. 123), and "Forgiving is a willingness to abandon one's right to re-
sentment, negative judgment, and indifferent behavior toward one who un-
justly injures us, while fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, generos-
ity, and even love [italics added] toward him or her" (Enright, 1995, p. 2). He
is clear that forgiveness is a reaction to injustice, entitling the victim to resent-
ment and negative judgment. The suggestion, however, that the right to judg-
ment will be abandoned has the potential for creating exactly the immoral sit-
uation that many fear will result from advocating forgiveness, that injustice
will be condoned whether implicitly or by refusing to deal with the issue.
Based on my personal experience as a practicing psychologist, Enright's
requirement that forgiveness demands "viewing the wrongdoer with com-
passion and love," and "fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion,
generosity, and even love" is too restrictive, and even hard to evaluate as an
outcome. My client Gloria, for example, the victim of childhood sexual
abuse, realized, after a long therapeutic process of dealing with the injustice
and fruitlessly seeking confession and reconciliation, that she could not
spend time with her family of origin. She literally got sick to her stomach
when she was with them. Still, she wanted to maintain a family connection,
so she resolved to send them holiday and birthday cards and to visit them
on special occasions. On these visits she would be accompanied by her hus-
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 93

band and would stay for a very short time. Working out a comfortable and
distant relationship with her family did a great deal to solidify her marriage,
which had been getting shaky under the influence of her agitation. By ap-
plying these principles, she was able to shape a solution that was right for
her (Affinito, 1999, p. 184). Gloria ceased to be obsessed with the effects of
the abuse and was able to move on with her life and improve her relation-
ships with others, but it would be a stretch to say she felt compassion and
love for her abusive parents. By my definition of forgiveness, Gloria's solu-
tion qualifies.
After many revisions, and anticipating future refinements, this is the defi-
nition that currently works best for me. Forgiveness is the decision to forgo
the personal pursuit of punishment for the perpetrator(s) of a perceived in-
justice, taking action on that decision, and experiencing the emotional relief
that follows.
My definition differs from Enright's in seeing the emotional relief as a sec-
ondary gain of the process of arriving at a forgiveness decision, not as the es-
sential first case. Nor does my definition necessarily require compassion and
love for the offender, though that may occur. I see the issue of just reaction to
an offense as central to the definition, recognizing that the most common, if
not universal, first reaction to injustice is anger and the desire to punish.

Pursuing the Theme of Justice

As I define it, forgiveness is a process of reacting to injustice. If counselors are

to help with the making of forgiveness decisions, then a working understand-
ing of injustice and just reactions to it is required.
Forgiveness can be seen as a practical balance between justice and mercy
one that leads to nondestructive reactions to injustice as reflected in the
works of Bishop Tutu (1991) and Donald Shriver (1995). Both men propose
forgiveness as a pragmatic means of recognizing the extreme injustices of past
ethnic conflicts while working toward positive solutions and a reduction in
self-perpetuating vengeance.
Our job is made difficult by the fact that justice is not easily defined. Wol-
gast (1987), for example, says, "Justice is not an original notion from which
injustice is derived but vice versa, and this fact is what makes it so difficult to
say what justice is" (p. 132). As a consequence, it is easier to identify and react
to injustice than it is to work proactively for justice.
There are at least three approaches to justice, varying in the extent to
which they are proactive or reactive, past or future oriented, limited or gen-
eral: (1) retributive justice, (2) restorative justice, and (3) pervasive justice.

Retributive justice

Masterson (1981) refers to the talionic impulse, "that deepest and most an-
cient of human impulses to exact revenge by taking pleasure in inflicting on
94 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

others the hurt one has experienced" (p. 182). I have sat with clients who cre-
ated the most horrendously delicious visions of tortures they would like to in-
flict on wrongdoers knowing they had no intention, or even ability, to carry
them out. There are clients who have proposed realistic means of vengeance,
seriously considering putting them into action. The underlying belief is that
one can "get even," that retribution will restore a sense of balance and fair-
ness. The fact is that the injustice has forever changed the situation. If it is the
hope that one can return to a pretrauma state of balance, then the prognosis
is very poor.
If, however, the goal is to create a new state of balance, then retribution
may be effective. My client, Joyce, chose to cut her offending son out of her
will (Affinito, 1999, p. 117 ff). It was a vengeful decision that reduced her
own tension and might have resulted in permanent estrangement. Perhaps
because of their initial closeness, there was a reconciliation after a period
measured in years, but it was not a restoration to pre-injustice status. "Some-
thing has died," she reported (p. 118).
Vengeance is primarily an emotional impulse, motivated by events in the
past. Punishment, on the other hand, is a goal-seeking behavior that defines
the anticipated end result and the conditions required to meet it. Encourag-
ing clients to consider very practical matters transforms the issue into one of
considering punishment as a problem-solving mechanism with an eye on the
future. Do they have the power and authority to carry out the punishment, as
well as the means for doing so? What might be the ultimate effect on their
own lives, the people they care about, and justice in general? The issue for our
clients, then, is to arrive at practical and moral decisions about punishment
that will free them from the control of the offender and the offense and allow
them to restructure their lives, restoring or recreating the sense of predictabil-
ity and justice. To do that requires careful analysis of possible reactions.
When one does have the personal power and authority to accomplish it,
punishment may be appropriate. A woman in one of my workshops ex-
pressed a sense of guilt for having punished her teenage son. He had bor-
rowed her car, agreeing to return it with a full tank of gas. When he brought
it back empty, she grounded him for two weeks, after which he could borrow
the car again but would not be allowed to have it in the future if he failed to
live up to his end of the bargain. Having been taught that forgiveness is al-
ways the correct route, she wondered whether she had committed a wrong in
punishing him. My view is that the punishment was appropriate. The general
expectation was that more responsible behavior would result.
And her actions met what are, in my opinion, the three major criteria for
effective punishment: (1) the reason for the punishment is made explicit;
(2) there is a clear definition of the end of the penalty; and (3) the require-
ment for avoiding future punishment is defined.
If punishment is the chosen option, then my forgiveness definition is met
by ceasing to punish after the three conditions described above have been
met. Forgiveness does not require that there be no penalty for wrongdoing.
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 95

If punishment, or even vengeance, is to meet counseling requirements, it

must be in keeping with the moral standards of clients and their commu-
nitywhich are not necessarily the same as the therapist's. My client Joyce,
for example, wrote a poem about the pleasures of vengeance and decided to
act on her talionic impulse by removing her son from her will. This flew in
the face of my own impulse toward forgiveness, but my equally strong respect
for the integrity of the client prevailed. I led her through a process of carefully
evaluating the possible results of her actions, which culminated in her fol-
lowing through on her plan. As mentioned earlier, her actions bore practical
and morally acceptable fruit. Her choice of vengeance differed from the pun-
ishment option I might have preferred in that she had no plan for terminat-
ing the punishment and no expectation that her son's behavior would change
as a result of it. She simply enjoyed the pleasure of disinheriting him and the
consequent emotional release.
If the punishment issue is not resolved, the effect may be perpetual self-
punishment on the part of the client, expressed perhaps in guilt or shame or in
obsessive experiencing of anger and resentment. To leave the talionic impulse
unconsidered is to fail the client. Accepting the reality and even appropriate-
ness of the talionic impulse allows for its evaluation in terms of the power, au-
thority, moral appropriateness, and practicality of applying punishment.
The decision to punish does not mean that punishment should be perpet-
ual. In fact, as long as clients are punishing, their own lives are controlled by
the need to stand guard over the process. In some situations, it may simply be
impossible for the offended to address and punish the transgressor, who may,
for example, be dead or geographically unavailable. The murderer of Wilma
Derksen's daughter, for example, was never found, leaving no option for pun-
ishment either under the judicial system, or personally. In such cases, the im-
pulse to punish the offender can only reverberate and imprison the victim in
helplessness, effectively resulting in revictimization. Some other method has
to be found to satisfy the need to take action. Wilma Derksen told her story
in her book, Have You Seen Candace?(1991); she became an activist for help-
ing families and others affected by the murder of loved ones, founding Path-
ways, a publication that offers a forum for family members of murder vic-
tims.1 Others may choose to lobby for punishment for those who commit
offenses similar to the ones they themselves suffered.
Some have found personal satisfaction in working to influence the broader
system. MADD (Mothers against Drunk Drivers), provides one example, as
does VOMA (Victim Offenders Mediation Association), many of whose
members, victims themselves, work to encourage restorative justice through
mediation.2 The need to regain control and balance lies at the root of this work.

Restorative Justice

For many victims there is no avenue for avenging the injustice or other-
wise punishing the offender(s) in any effective way. The restorative justice
96 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

movement (Umbreit, 1994, 1995; Zehr, 1995) attempts to address this for
those who have suffered from crimes against the state, with increasing success
in gaining recognition of the rights of people who are victims of those of-
fenses, but the personal power to punish is minimal and indirect. So too is
the power to reduce punishment minimal. Members of Murder Victims'
Families for Reconciliation report widespread bias within the criminal justice
system against hearing opposition to the death penalty (Murder Victims'
Families for Reconciliation, 2000, p. 1).
In our American culture, victims of crime have traditionally been left out
of the judicial process; the focus is on the accused offender. The restorative
justice movement (Umbreit, 1994, 1995; Zehr, 1995) began with lobbying
for more attention to and effective integration of victim views into the sys-
tem. The opportunity for victims to testify at presentencing hearings has
been one result of this movement. The personal goal is restoration of a sense
of control and fairness. The movement has broadened not as an effort to
abolish punishment, but to do restorative work within its context. Zehr's
"Restorative Justice Yardstick" helps to summarize the goals of restorative jus-
tice: "1. Do victims experience justice? 2. Do offenders experience justice?
(e.g. Are they encouraged to understand and take responsibility for what they
have done?) 3. Is the victim-offender relationship addressed? 4. Are commu-
nity concerns being taken into account? 5. Is the future being addressed?"
(1995, pp. 230231). Because the mediation process applied in restorative
justice work requires the consent of both the victim and the offender, it is ex-
pected that there will be changes for both parties.
Restorative justice, a relatively new movement in the western world, has
deep historical roots. Until the emergence of strong, centralized states during
the past millennium, with the related redefinition of crime as offenses against
the king/state, community leaders intervened not with an eye to retribution,
but with an understanding that retaliation could result in a cycle of ven-
geance that would threaten public safety. Restorative justice prevails cur-
rently, for example, in contemporary Japanese culture and among indigenous
populations in North America and New Zealand, where the emphasis is on
community survival and peace (Van Ness & Strong, 2001).
Restorative justice is initiated by past offenses, but the focus is on practical
achievement of future justice. Both victims and offenders will, to the extent
the process works, be restored to health within a moral context.

Pervasive Justice

Zehr juxtaposes what he calls biblical and modern justice (1995, pp.
151152). For example: "(1) Justice divided into areas, each with different
rules" (contemporary) vs. "Justice seen as integrated whole" (biblical); or
(9) "Justice as maintenance of the status quo (contemporary) vs. "Justice as
active, progressive, seeking to transform status quo" (biblical). His compari-
son of biblical and modern justice is fruitful, but I prefer the more secular
term "pervasive" to refer, as Susan Engh suggests, to a systemic concern for
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 97

culturewide justice, as defined by fairness and equality, a concern for the

human rights of all people (S. Engh, personal communication, March
2001).
In researching my 1999 book, I collected many stories of victims of crime
who choseoften after a long period of painful processingto respond with
working toward pervasive justice. Paul Stevens, for example (Affinito, 1999),
after years of anger and hate following the murder of his daughter, found
peace in becoming a prison chaplain and advocating against the death
penalty (pp. 145146). My own clients have not generally suffered criminal
injustice, but some have elected to focus on pervasive justice as a resolution to
their personal pain, choosing to support groups that lobby for laws against
domestic abuse, for example, or working for affordable housing in their
communities.

judgment and Guilt

Judgment is an integral part of justice. To confront offenses either against or

by our clients, we need to be prepared to encounter judgment and conse-
quent guilt. In 1961, O. H. Mowrer warned against psychology's tendency
toward facile absolution of guilt while ignoring its moral value. But while
early forgiveness theorists did not espouse being nonjudgmental, some of
what they said encouraged that view, thus easing the way into a late twenti-
eth-century view of relativism and humanism and the importance of being
nonjudgmental. Smedes (1984), for example, suggested that people behaved
unfairly "despite their best intentions" (p. 12) and "even if their intentions
were pure" (p. 30). Jampolsky (1985) spoke of cleansing our mind "of its neg-
ative thoughts of fear and guiltall those condemning judgments that make
us feel vulnerable, separate, and fragmented" (p. 82). Oversimplifying the
Christian culture's "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged" (Matt. 7:1,
New Revised Standard Version), led to the easy conclusion that forgiving
meant dropping all blame.
The view that forgiveness abolishes judgment persists despite efforts of
forgiveness writers to make clear that to forgive does not mean to absolve.
Smedes clearly stated, "You do not excuse people by forgiving them; you for-
give them at all only because you hold them to account and refuse to excuse
them" (1984, p. 72). In a later book, he responded to what he called the
"Who am I to judge?' fallacy" saying, "The moment we say, 'Who am I to
judge?' we resign our membership in the family of rational human beings.
And we are reneging on one of the most important tasks assigned to rational
human beings: to size up people's actions the best we can and to assign re-
sponsibility for them. Which is to say that imperfect people have not only the
right but an obligation to blame people" (1996, p. 78-79).
We cannot wrestle effectively with the justice issue in our personal coun-
seling if we cannot first identify blame and declare it unacceptable. Working
in supervisory settings, I have witnessed the tendency of some therapists,
98 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

especially as they begin their careers, to enter into a "taking sides" alliance,
too quick to blame the "other" and at the same time to absolve their own
client of guilt. I have also seen clients, often steeped in Christian heritage,
who suffer guilt at the very idea of blaming someone else. Guilt assessment
deserves a studied place early in the forgiveness process, especially when the
issue is self-forgiveness.

The Religious Influence

Our attitudes of judgment and guilt are influenced by religious positions,

even if we ourselves are not religious. Understanding the complexity of reli-
gious positions is, therefore, crucial to grasping the implications of forgive-
ness counseling. At its best, religion contributes to an avoidance of vengeful
escalation of violence and the promotion of physical or psychological
strength of conscience, with courage to identify injustice when it occurs and
to consider appropriate modes of its prevention and correction, a firm spiri-
tual base, and caringsometimes self-sacrificingdevotion to pervasive jus-
tice. At its worst, it encourages self-righteous vengeance on those who dis-
agree, an easy conscience that puts personal comfort above difficult moral
decisions, an unthinking adherence to beliefs imposed by others, vigilant at-
tention to the appropriateness of others' behavior, and, consequently, rigid
self-righteous judgment of those who don't behave "rightly."
Dennis Prager, an outspoken critic of easy forgiveness, cites the recent ten-
dency for Christian groups to rush to forgive the perpetrators of such horren-
dous crimes as the murders of high school students in West Paducah, Ken-
tucky, or Timothy McVeigh's terrorist bombing. He criticizes the argument,
given by some, that "victims should be encouraged to forgive all evil done to
them because doing so is psychologically healthy" as "selfishness masquerad-
ing as idealism" . . . "the argument being, 'though you do not deserve to be
forgiven, and though you may not even be sorry, I forgive you because I want
to feel better.'" The easy forgiveness doctrine, he says, "undermines the moral
foundations of American civilization, because it advances the amoral notion
that no matter how much you hurt other people, millions of your fellow cit-
izens will immediately forgive" (1997, A22). He has placed the hazard of for-
giveness without justice clearly in the context of communal danger exacer-
bated by religious belief.
His critique seems to imply that there is a single Christian position sup-
porting nonjudgmental forgiveness. But he goes on to present a contrary as-
sumption as if it were universal Christian doctrine: It is Christianity's central
moral tenet that "forgiveness, even by God, is contingent on the sinner re-
penting, and that it can only be given to the sinner by the one against whom
he sinned" (Prager, 1997, A22). If Prager is right, then the victim of evil is
condemned to perpetual bondage to the evildoer who refuses to repent, or
perhaps, being dead, cannot repent. But it is not a universal Christian belief
that forgiveness by humans, or even by God, is contingent upon repentance.
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 99

In fact, referring to the New Testament story of the Pharisee and the whore
(Luke 7:36-47), Paul Tillich argues that it is not repentance that creates for-
giveness, but forgiveness that creates repentance. Forgiveness, he says, has the
character of in spite of (Tillich, 1940, p. 8). Tillich's position recognizes that
we are all fallible and that those who have wrestled with their own imperfec-
tions will be able to reach just forgiveness resolutions more easily than the
righteous who cannot see their own faults. The practical fact is that requiring
victims to hold on to their anger unless the offender asks forgiveness holds
them in thrall to the offender and condemns them to perpetual pain.
Prager's critique reflects a couple of popularly oversimplified biblical in-
junctions. One is "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," and the other is
"turn the other cheek." Perhaps because they are so quotable they become
aphorisms for action, both within and outside of religious traditions. In the
Hebrew Testament one finds, "Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for
tooth, the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered" (Lev. 24:20) and "Show
no pity. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot"
(Deut. 19:21).
The Christian Bible adds a "but": "You have heard that it was said, 'an eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evil-doer.
But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also" (Matt. 5:38).
Without appropriate context, these injunctions seem starkly simple, but
they are not. Obviously current western law and practice do not allow for the
cutting off of hands and feet, or the putting out of eyes, as punishment for
wrongdoing. Its application must, therefore, be metaphorical. The oversim-
plified interpretation is that the punishment must be at least as bad as the
crime, but Robert Solomon, for example, refers to "the Old Testament in-
struction that revenge should be limited (italics his) to 'an eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound
for wound, stripe for stripe'" (1990, p. 293). The talionic law may best be in-
terpreted as a limit on punishment rather than a demand for it. Given that
none of us is morally perfect, the danger to the community is that we would
all end up with missing parts. Demanding an eye for an eye, it has been said,
would leave the whole world blind.
"Turn the other cheek" probably lies at the base of the easy and hasty for-
giveness that Smedes warned about or that Prager responded to with dismay.
In the extreme, it seems to decree that we should not fight injustice, but ac-
cept patiently anything that others may dish out, not only to ourselves, but
even to others. But it fails to take context into account.
Based on understanding the sociology of Jesus' time, Wink (1992) has
suggested that the maintenance of dignity in the face of adversity is the lesson
being taught. He quotes from Matt. 5:38-42, "If anyone strikes you on the
right cheek, turn the other also." In that society, to use the left hand was for-
bidden, so to hit the right cheek would require a backhand with the right
hand, a traditional way of admonishing inferiors. But a strike on the left
cheek could be done only with a direct blow or a fist, methods reserved for
100 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR,

responding to equals. Turning the left cheek forces the striker, then, to treat
one as an equal. Wink's may not be the universal interpretation of the "turn
the other cheek" injunction, but it does point out that simple aphorisms are
questionable guides for life inside or outside the counselor's office.
To be effective in forgiveness counseling, the therapist must be ready to
work with the context of the client's religious, cultural, and moral positions.
While Hyde (1984) claims that for most of Hebrew scriptures there is in this
life no hope of forgivenessthat it could be anticipated only with the future
coming of the messianic ageDroll (1984, p. 9) cited Jewish sacred books
among those which laud forgiveness, and Donnelly (1993) quotes the Tal-
mud, "If a (person) has received an injury, then even if the wrongdoer has not
asked forgiveness, the receiver of the injury must nevertheless ask God to
show the wrongdoer compassion" (p. 8). Another author (Bangley, 1986) was
vehement: "Sometimes I hear it said that the God of the Old Testament is a
God of anger and wrath, and that it took Jesus and the New Testament to in-
troduce a warmer and more forgiving side to God's nature. Nonsense! Noth-
ing could be more incorrect. The God who is busy in the pages of the New
Testament is the same God who is at work in the Old Testament. . . . Yes,
there are moments in the Old Testament when God is reported to be exas-
perated by human behavior. Who could blame him? But behind that divine
displeasure is a constant, caring, loving, and forgiving nature" (p. 42).
About forgiveness and vengeance, a Moslem friend added, "The Koran
tries to find a mid-point between the vengeance of the Hebrew tradition and
the forgiveness preached by Jesus. We are taught that punishment is OK, but
forgiveness is better." "All our prayers begin with a plea for forgiveness," her
friend added (personal communication). McDonald (1984), however, be-
lieves that "the harsh justice of the Islamic Allah has no significant place for
real forgiveness" (pp. 32-33). There are wide differences in Islamic practices,
just as there are in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
It would be comforting to believe that we can make objective statements
about religious views, but clearly these are areas where complexity reigns. It
seems prudent to recognize that religious differences obviate applying any
hasty assumptions about their influence on clients.

Mercy Revisited

If, as I believe, forgiveness is a balance between justice and mercy, then mercy
needs to be considered in the context of justice. Hasty "mercy" may reflect
unthinking avoidance of the issues raised by injustice. It may actually be un-
merciful by failing to bring the forgiven to task in a way that encourages
growth, a goal of most therapy. Eugene Fisher (1986), for example, a Chris-
tian writer who joined the debate about President Reagan's visit to the Bit-
burg cemetery where Nazis were honorably buried, argued, "Christian teach-
ing and Christian theological categories were themselves part of the problem"
of anti-Semitism (p. 57). "Jews, then," he says, "best show their love and
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 101

compassion for Christians in not 'letting us off the hook,' in reminding us, by
the testimony of their very existence, of Christianity's need for repentance"
(p. 59). Whether in a therapeutic setting or in the broader social context, ig-
noring inappropriate or immoral behavior on the part of another is basically
to discount that person as an ethical human being.
Similarly, to ignore our own need for self-examination is to perpetuate
moral weakness. Early in my exploration of forgiveness, I was introduced to a
highly respected motivational speaker on the subject of forgiveness. I was
shocked as he beatifically told me that he tells Jews they should stop fighting
the Holocaust, forgive the perpetrators, and get on with their lives. His posi-
tion not only revictimized Jews by failing to respect their right to seek justice,
but it failed as well to respect the potential for non-Jews to grapple with their
own ethical obligations.

Self versus Community

The effort to be nonjudgmental contributed to another phenomenon in the

forgiveness movement, namely the focus on the welfare and comfort of the
forgiver to the neglect of justice for the community, which dovetails nicely
with the contemporary therapeutic emphasis on personal peace and health.
Smedes (1984), writing from a Christian base, supported "our need to forgive
for our own sakes" (italics his: p. 30). Although he clearly warned against "the
muddle-headed softness of the easy forgiver" (p. 172), the forgiveness culture
of the time was better prepared to respond to forgiving for our own sake.
In 1979, Gerald Jampolsky produced a packet of cards, called To Give Is to
Receive: "Mini Course for Healing Relationships and Bringing about Peace of
Mind" each of which he attributed as a quote from a Course in Miracles.3
Specific content from a few of the cards gives a sample of the message: card
#10, "Forgiveness Is the Key to Happiness;" card #11, "All That I Give Is
Given to Myself;" card #13, "Today I Will Judge Nothing That Occurs." In-
spiring and focusing on love, the message was positive and easily interpreted
as emphasizing the comfort of the individual reader.
In 1983, Jampolsky pursued the same theme, describing forgiveness as "an
inner correction that lightens the heart. It is for our peace of mind first. Being
at peace, we will now have peace to give to others, and this is the most per-
manent and valuable gift we can possibly give" (p. 110). Again, the primary
emphasis rested on the message, "peace of mind first"; a series of popular
publications in the Course in Miracles tradition supported the value of for-
giveness in producing healthy results for forgivers.
Bernie Siegel, in his influential book, Love, Medicine, and Miracles(1986),
reported the story of the amazing good health of "Wild Bill," a long-term
concentration camp inmate who showed little of the deterioration seen in his
fellow prisoners (pp. 194195). Wild Bill's report of immediately forgiving
those who gunned down his entire family was seen as the miraculous cause of
his good physical and mental health.
102 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

In 1992, Casarjian wrote, "Regardless of our unique story, forgiveness

holds the promise that we will find the peace that we all really want" (p. 10).
And, in 1995, Borysenko declared on tape, "Peace of mind is our only goal,
forgiveness our only function," and asked, "What good does that grudge do
for you?" The professional culture of the time contributed to our hearing the
emphasis on personal peace and happiness. Intended or not, the message re-
ceived from these writers was that to forgive is always the appropriate and
moral choice because of the wonderful benefits provided the forgiver.
It is not my intention here to contradict the value of forgiving for the for-
giver. In fact, I am convinced that the one person who is sure to gain from
forgiving is the forgiver. The issue is whether the needs of the community are
being met as well.
While emphasis on individual welfare was foremost in forgiveness litera-
ture, another movement was growing, drawing psychologists to considera-
tion of community. When Shweder, Mahapatra, and Miller (1987) con-
trasted the rights-based, individualistic culture on which our theories are
based with duty-based, communal cultures in which the group is central,
the very concept of identity was challenged. The former approach tends to
treat the individual as the unit of identity, while the latter views the com-
munity as the unit. In 1988, Sampson disputed the assumption that indi-
viduals should be the focus of theory and practice and urged consideration
of community, and Seligman (Bule, 1988) attributed a source of depression
to the isolating individualism of the "me" generation. Even the "self-esteem"
movement has been charged with reducing individuals' communal responsi-
bility (Damon, 1995).
At the same time, religious positions on forgiveness were presenting con-
trasts between communal and individual purposes. Murder is unforgivable in
Judaism, Prager reports (1997, p. 217), because it goes to the heart of God's
relationship with humans. In the Hebrew Testament, God relates to the en-
tire community, and anything that disrupts that unit is evil, murder most dis-
ruptive of all. It is the Christian Bible that emphasizes the hairs on individual
heads (Luke 12:7).
For much of early Protestantism, and in many traditions today, preserva-
tion of community is the purpose of forgiveness. The penitent confesses pub-
licly to the whole congregation which, either in general meeting or through
delegated committees, decides what penance or guidance is needed to rein-
state the sinner to full membership. But Christian practice varies widely. In
the 1970s, for example, the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions moved
from a tradition of penance and absolution by the priest, God's agent, with
the effect of maintaining the sinner's membership in the community to con-
fession as counseling in search of a clear conscience for the individual (Hyde,
1984). Each person is now expected to take responsibility for the morality of
his or her own life. For these traditions, forgiveness changed from a commu-
nity function to an individual one.
The counselor or client who searches for easy answers in religion will find
them only by being blind to alternatives. The following pragmatic model re-
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 103

quires a thorough examination of alternatives, their practical and moral costs

and benefits.

From Definition to Practice: A Pragmatic Model

Enright and Fitzgibbons fret about the dangers of pragmatism, that for-
giveness may become identified "only with its usefulness in therapy," and
urge a differentiation between "what forgiveness is from what happens once
a person does forgive" (2000, p. 324). I find it difficult to divorce the coun-
seling process and outcome from the practical and moral impact on the
broader society. Doris Donnelly writes, "Forgiveness frees not only the one
who forgives but also the network of persons from their supportive roles
in the strenuous and dehumanizing effort of taking sidesand forgiveness
frees the victims as well!" (1993, p. 41). In my experience, this freedom
expands exponentially as each of these persons influences others, not nec-
essarily through conscious intention, to greater integrity and consequent
wider and, indeed, pragmatic morality. Only if the end of a therapeutic
process is selfish focus on the immediate pleasure of the client can I con-
ceive that forgiveness would be identified "only" with its usefulness in
therapy.
My definition of forgiveness as "the decision to forego the personal pursuit
of punishment for the perpetrator(s) of a perceived injustice, taking action on
that decision, and experiencing the emotional relief that follows" can be
translated into a model for forgiveness counseling.

Giving Voice: Perceiving Injustice

Giving voice to the hurt and anger is an essential first step that encourages
and allows the probing of the perception of injustice, with all its related emo-
tions, validating the right of the clients to their experiences. Wilma Derksen
(1998), whose 13-year-old daughter Candace disappeared and was later
found murdered, says that "surviving victims can not rest or be comforted
until we find a way to tell our stories." Antjie Krog, a reporter covering the
trials of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2000),
found the following thought clarifying as she listened to the testimony of ter-
rible experiences: "But more practically, this particular memory at last cap-
tured in words can no longer haunt you, push you around, bewilder you, be-
cause you have taken control of ityou can move it wherever you want to.
So maybe this is what the commission is all aboutfinding words for that
cry of [the sufferer]" (p. 57).
Those who testified at the hearings were for the most part unable, from
any practical point of view, to exact punishment, and the commission in gen-
eral may have failed (Krog, 2000, p. 385) to repair and heal the trauma of the
victims. But the victims were heard. Ralph, as described by Jeffrie Murphy
earlier, was denied that right by the clergyman who counseled him to forgive;
104 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

he was deprived of the validation he deserved and hampered in his further

progress toward considering the practicality and implications of the punish-
ment option for his recovery. Among other errors, the clergyman committed
the wrong of treating forgiveness as if it were an end in itself, rather than a
process for bringing about just resolution and healing. In this voicing phase,
to recommend forgiving to a sufferer who is not ready to consider it implies
some inadequacy on his or her part and is, therefore, shaming, especially in
the religious context where there is a long history of recommending forgive-
ness as the "right" response. As in Ralph's case, shaming is very likely to exac-
erbate the pain, anger, and sense of betrayal.
A recent phone call from a reader of my book (Affmito, 1999) revealed
another kind of failure to validate. According to the caller, she had told a
therapist of her anguish over the fact that her father had all her life "jokingly"
insulted her. As she heard the therapist's response, it was that she had nothing
to be so concerned about, compared to the painful situations so many other
people suffer. I do not know, of course, whether the callers report of the ther-
apist's words was accurate, but she had come away from the encounter feeling
that her own emotions were invalid.
During the early voicing of the pain and anger, it may become apparent to
the counselor that there has been no real injustice committed against the
client, but rather there is a sensitivity arising from the client's own personal-
ity. One of my clients, for example, was enraged and hurt that her son's for-
mer girlfriend had married another man long after the girlfriend and the son
had broken off their relationship. My client deserves the same hearing and re-
spect for her pain, but this is noton the surface, at leasta forgiveness
issue, though there will still probably be the same need to address the impulse
to exact vengeance. In this kind of situation the counselor may be tempted to
recommend forgiveness, which would be just as shaming and premature as if
there had been a serious offense. It may also be that underlying the voiced
complaint is a real offense of some kind; all the counselor's skills should be
applied to get to the bottom of the issue for the purpose of gaining relief for
the client.
That the first task for the therapist is to validate the right to the rage and
hurt doesn't mean to "side" with the client against someone else or to encour-
age immediate action. Room should be made for the client to spend the rage
in talk and fantasy for the time beingto postpone action until there has
been an opportunity to explore all options. The goal is to reduce the obsessive
rage or resentment sufficiently so that the client can move on to a more cog-
nitive, decision making perspective.

Gathering Data
Although this may sound like a coldly objective way to state it, the fact is that
decision making requires fact gathering. When emotion has cooled down
sufficiently, examination of the offense can begin. This includes an analysis of
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 105

the offense itself, the moral code that was broken, and the impact it had not
only on the client, but also on the larger community.
The client's part in the hurtful event calls for examination as well. This
may range from accepting responsibility for one's part in an interpersonal re-
lationshipeven, perhaps, for having allowed oneself to be victimizedto
exploring ways that one might have avoided the offense. The purpose is not
to blame the client (unless it is appropriate) but to help him or her to regain
power. If guilt is a major component, it needs to be evaluated for its appro-
priateness. Sometimes the client really has sinned, a fact which therapists
have often chosen to overlook, in spite of some early efforts to make the point
(e.g., Mowrer, 1961). Sometimes the guilt is inappropriate, in which case the
examination of the event with its moral ramifications is an aid to appropriate
assessment of responsibility.
What the data will be depends on the specific situations brought by
clients. If the examination is to be complete enough to lead to good decision
making, it should incorporate all aspects: moral, individual, and community.
It should include an analysis of the offender's possible motives, not with the
purpose of excusing the offense, but to bring the offender down to control-
lable size. Attribution theory tells us that people are more likely to attribute
unmitigated power to someone about whom they know little, while under-
standing the perpetrator's fallibility frees the victim from the perception of an
all-powerful evil person. Unless an offender is understood as a fallible human
being, he or she looms unrealistically large and evil in the eyes of the victim.
Regaining control requires rehumanizing the offender. It may also happen
that humanizing offenders facilitates the experience of empathy for them.
Seeking complete analysis is not a romantic ideal. Pieces that are left unat-
tended will reappear later to activate uncontrolled emotion and interfere with
decisions and their consequent activation. As in any other situations, the best
decisions are based on full assessment of the relevant data. Validating ex-
pressed emotions, clarifying the facts and the morality of the offense, under-
standing the offender as completely as possible, and assessing the client's own
cognitive, behavioral, and moral reactions provide the material for deciding
whether and/or how to punish.

Making Action Decisions

In the context of the definition I have presented, deciding what to do about

punishing is an ultimate goal of forgiveness counseling, exceeded only by the
behavioral application of choices made. In this phase it is especially impor-
tant to avoid following recipes prescribed by self-help books or other well-
meaning advisers. Several years ago I was a participant on a call-in show on
forgiveness on a public radio station. One woman left her car to go to a pay
phone to call in her criticism of forgiveness. She had, she said, worked with a
therapist on the issue of her childhood sexual abuse by her father. On the
advice of her therapist, she reported, she had written a letter to her father
106 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

forgiving him for what he had done. The response was angry letters not only
from her father, but also from her mother and sisters, who essentially cut her
out of the family. The response is not surprising. To forgive is to accuse, and
in writing her "forgiveness" letter, she had charged a family that was unpre-
pared to deal with the indictment.
Before taking action, it is important to measure the benefit against the
cost. Clearly the caller had not done that. What the specifics of any case may
be can be spelled out only individual by individual. Some general rules may
apply. As in the caller's case, it is wise to be prepared for a negative response
from the "forgiven" who is, in the process, being accused. Or, like Gloria who
felt nauseated in the presence of her family, facing the offender may create
emotional, even physical negative reactions that the client is not ready to face.
In other circumstances, though deciding not to punish might provide relief
for the victim, it might fly in the face of his or her moral judgment, as for
Wiesenthal (1997), who chose to devote his life to seeking punishment for
the Nazi offenders even as he sought understanding of the whole concept of
forgiveness.

Choosing Punishment

In contemplating punishment, clients must consider whether they have the

power or authority to carry it out. This may seem obvious, but witnessing the
pain of those who consistently demand punishment (often vengeance) with
no control over its possible enactment, illuminates the vanity of impractical
punishment decisions. This is especially true when the offender is in the
hands of the legal system. It is in this context that the mediation activities of
VOMA (cited earlier) are helpful.
Generally, the purpose of punishment is to prevent undesirable behavior,
with emphasis on two words: "undesirable" and "behavior." It is important
for clients to decide whether behavioral regulation is their major goal, as
compared, perhaps, to a change in emotional relationship with the offender.
Of further importance is considering whether the focus is best placed on re-
acting to events in the past, or encouraging positive healthy development in
the future.
While each case is different, there are some guidelines that can be applied
in considering the punishment option. (1) It should be possible to specify
the expected end result of the punishment. That is, be clear about the effect
one expects as a result of the punishment. (2) It should be within the control
of the potential punisher to carry it out. (3) The criterion for termination of
the punishment should be defined. (4) The punisher must be prepared to
pay the price of the punishment. (5) Careful consideration should indicate
that this is the best possible option for gaining the desired result.
Joyce, for example, some time after cutting her son out of her will, did
enjoy a reconciliation. The woman who deprived her son of the use of her car
for two weeks had to put up with his angry sulking. Presumably, however, the
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 107

gas-buying behavior improved in the future. In either of these situations,

there is no way of knowing whether a less punitive approach might have been
less stressful yet still effective. Noting that these are both family situations, a
long history of relationship may have contributed to a successful end result. It
is wise to avoid attributing the successful outcome simply to the punishment.
The same guidelines apply when clients seek self-forgiveness where appro-
priate guilt is identified. Self-forgiveness may differ from other-forgiveness in
that the individual can demand of him- or herself full confession, apology,
and restitution. Atonement may be sufficient within the client's moral base,
perhaps requiring a working through with a member of the clergy or other
appropriate representative of the clients faith community.
These criteria are intended clearly to discriminate punishment from
vengeance, an emotional reaction that, centering on the past, seeks only
pleasure in witnessing the offender's pain.

Choosing Not to Punish: The Mercy Option

The decision not to punish may follow punishment whose goals have been
met. This option may also apply without any prior punishment. The non-
punishment option may be chosen by men like Bishop Tutu (1991) or Don-
ald Shriver (1995) in the tradition of those who recognize the danger to com-
munity of self-perpetuating vengeance (e.g., Van Ness & Strong, 2001).
Individuals, especially those working on situations with family or friends,
may similarly recognize that punishment will create unacceptable damage to
their community.
Nonpunishment generally does not mean nonaction. Positive action may
range from a healing conversation with an offending friend to a mediated
visit with an imprisoned murderer. As in the choice of punishment, there are
some guidelines that can be applied in considering the nonpunishment op-
tion. (1) It should be possible to specify the expected end result of the action
taken. That is, be clear about the effect expected as a result of the chosen ac-
tion. (2) It should be within the control of the potential forgiver to carry out
the plan. (3) The criterion for determining the effectiveness of the action
should be defined. (4) The forgiver must be prepared to pay the price of the
action taken. (5) Careful consideration should indicate that this is the best
possible option for gaining the desired result.
As in the case of punishment, it is wise to avoid attributing results to a
simple choice of the nonpunishment option. Just as the examples of Joyce
and of the car-lending mother do not prove the greater effectiveness of pun-
ishment, so too to attribute "Wild Bill's" health to his quick forgiveness of
the Nazi murderers fails to consider the myriad of factors involved in his
situation. He may, for example, have learned the futility of remaining
stressed about something which could not be undone, and chosen to focus
on what he could control. Perhaps he was better able than some to divorce
grief from anger.
108 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

The choice is individual. As in all therapy, we cannot know what the result
would have been if different options had been chosen. All we can do is pro-
vide the best counseling possible geared to an effective resolution for
the client.

Emotional Relief Cannot Be Timed

There is no fixed elapsed time between decision/action and emotional relief,

but there are possible measures one might take to help in the process. Sup-
port groups or supportive friends may, for example, ease the stress of waiting.
"Practicing" forgiveness on a daily basis in controlling road rage or waiting in
grocery lines may increase the sense of control over life. For some, prayer or
meditation are useful, or practicing the productive use of anger. (See Affinito,
1999, pp. 183-197.)
The point is, there is no recipe for forgiveness counseling. It is a long, hard
process of decision making. As Enright and Fitzgibbons (2000) maintain,
forgiveness is more than just an act, without emotional and moral depth.
"The act of forgiving eventually may form a part of the person's identity as he
or she practices forgiveness, knows it is good, and realizes that forgiveness is
not some quality that exists independently of the self or event outside the self
but is part of who one is. At this point, forgiveness ceases to be only an act
that one performs and becomes part of the moral self" (p. 256). It is my po-
sition that the process of arriving at a forgiveness decision as outlined in my
definition accomplishes exactly this.

Advocating Forgiving

Within the context of my definition, I confess to being an advocate of for-

giveness, it requires a careful consideration of the issue of justice within the
context of the client's well-being in relation to his or her morality and larger
community. The person who gains most from forgiving is the forgiver, with
energy released to build a healthier, more loving, life. Probably the only rea-
son to reject forgiveness is in order to serve justice by choosing to punish
wrongdoers.
Murphy (2002) questions whether someone with a strong commitment to
retributive justice should be doing forgiveness counseling. I would argue that
retributive justice is destructive when it contributes to self-perpetuating
vengeance. On the other hand, there is a case against forgiveness, as in the
work of those who serve justice by pursuing punishment for offenders who
threaten the social good.
Two questions are appropriate here: What is gained by resentment with-
out action? What is gained by wishing perpetual misery on repentant sinners?
I suspect that someone who harbors a sense of satisfaction in someone else's
misery, for whatever reason, may not be the best qualified to counsel those
with forgiveness issues. At the same time, those who cannot tolerate punish-
ment as an option are equally disqualified.
 CAUTION, DEFINITION, AND APPLICATION 109

Cautions

To conclude that there can be no relief unless the offender confesses, asks for-
giveness, and atones is poor therapy and of questionable morality, because it
leaves clients in a state of helpless dependence on the person or persons who
offended them in the first place. In effect it becomes a secondary offense.
One of the costs of the offense has been loss of control for the victim, a con-
trol which cannot be regained if the sufferer depends for resolution on the be-
havior of a nonrespondent or perhaps even dead, gone, or unknown offender.
If a goal of counseling is to increase mental health, facilitate the ability to
deal realistically and comfortably with the problems of ourselves and our life
situations, and live more adequately and productively as responsible mem-
bers of the community, then forgiving is worthy of consideration as an op-
tion. It requires the ability to place blame squarely and accurately where it be-
longs, accept responsibility for our own behavior and moral position, and
assess carefully the impact of our forgiveness decision not only on our own
peace of mind but also on justice.

Notes
1. Pathways, edited by Wilma Derksen, is available from 134 Plaza Drive, Win-
nipeg, Manitoba, R3T SK9, Canada.
2. Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD), P.O. Box 541688, Irving, Texas
75354-1688 (tel. 214-744-6233); Victim Offenders Mediation Association (VOMA),
143 Canal Street, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32168.
3. A Course in Miracles is a motivational course developed by the staff of the
Foundation for Inner Peace (New York: Viking Penguin). It is described as follows by
Jampolsky (1979): "A Course in Miracles consists of a 622 page text, a 478 page
Workbook for Students with 365 lessons and an 88 page Manual for Teachers. The
Course extensively develops the material presented here, plus additional related con-
cepts, all in a spiritual context." The Foundation for Inner Peace address is P.O. Box
598, Mill Valley, CA 94942-0598.

References

Affmito, Mona Gustafson (1998). Helping with forgiveness decisions: A brief guide for
counselors. Providence, RI: Manisses Communications Group.
Affinito, Mona Gustafson (1999). When to forgive. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger
Publications.
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 six

Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness

in Psychotherapy

Margaret R. Holmgren

Both forgiveness and self-forgiveness are now receiving significant attention

in the literature on counseling, and in my judgment, rightly so. There is
much to be said in favor of therapists helping their clients to forgive them-
selves and others. Nevertheless, some authors have raised questions about the
appropriateness of forgiveness and self-forgiveness, both in general and in
psycho therapeutic practice. Jeffrie Murphy (2002), in particular, has raised
important questions about whether therapists should always help their clients
to forgive and self-forgive. (All further references to Murphy in this chapter
are to this work.) With regard to interpersonal forgiveness, he asks whether
there are cases in which the client would be better off and exhibit more self-
respect if he were to maintain a posture of resentment toward the offender, or
cases in which the wrong done to the client is so heinous that it is simply un-
forgivable. With regard to self-forgiveness, he asks whether there may be cases
in which the clients wrong is so extreme that self-forgiveness would be
morally inappropriate. In cases of this sort, he also questions whether the
therapist, who supposedly acts for the benefit of the client, should advocate
self-forgiveness anyway, to improve the client's state of mind.
These questions are important. They are also complex, as answers to them
require an understanding of both the morality of forgiveness and the moral
parameters of the therapist-client relationship. The conclusion that Murphy
reaches with regard to interpersonal forgiveness is that no universal prescrip-
tion can be given. In some cases it will be appropriate for the therapist to
help the client to forgive, and in other cases it will not. With regard to self-
forgiveness, he seems to adopt a similar position. In some cases it will be ap-
propriate for the therapist to advocate self-forgiveness, but in other cases,
when the violation is especially serious, it may be wrong for the therapist to
encourage the client to forgive himself, even if the client's state of mind could
be improved in this manner.

112
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS I I3

In this chapter I offer a different set of answers to these questions. I argue

that genuine forgiveness and self-forgiveness are always morally appropriate
and desirable goals of psychotherapy for those clients who are willing and
able to achieve these states. However, it is important to recognize that these
states can generally be attained only after we have worked through a process
of addressing the wrong. If we attempt to forgive ourselves or another pre-
maturely, before the necessary work has been done, our forgiveness will be in-
compatible with our self-respect and respect for others. It will therefore be
morally inappropriate. Further, it will not be genuine. Clearly there is a
moral imperative for the therapist to respect her client's autonomy, and
therefore she is limited in her work with the client by what the client is will-
ing to do. There may also be real limitations as to what the client is able to do.
But I argue that within these limitations, it is always desirable for the thera-
pist to help her client work through the process of addressing the wrong.
Once this process is sufficiently complete, but not before, it is also always de-
sirable for the therapist to help her client to reach a state of genuine forgive-
ness or self-forgiveness.

The Therapist-Client Relationship

In order to determine whether therapists ought to help their clients to forgive

or self-forgive, it is necessary to have some understanding of what therapists
ought and ought not do in their work with clients. Let us begin, then, with a
brief examination of the moral parameters of the therapist-client relationship
that bear on our discussion.
First, the therapist has an obligation to respect her client's autonomy. As
autonomous moral agents, we all have both the right and the responsibility to
determine which attitudes we will adopt and which decisions we will make
(provided, in the latter case, that we respect the rights of others as we do so).
The client, then, must make the final decisions about what kinds of attitudes
and behaviors he will adopt and about what kind of work he will do in ther-
apy. Some clients will enter therapy with specific short-term goals that do not
include fully addressing a wrong, and others who have no specific agenda
may simply be unwilling to address a given wrong or to consider the possibil-
ity of forgiveness. The therapist will be limited in her work with the client by
his decisions on these matters. But to the extent that the client is genuinely
open to the therapist's guidance, she can help him to shape his own attitudes,
decisions, and behavior patterns.
Second, the therapist has an obligation to act as an advocate for her client
and to draw on her professional resources to promote his welfare. The thera-
pist is a health-care provider and as such enters into a fiduciary relationship
with the client that is similar in most respects to the physician-patient rela-
tionship. Beauchamp and Childress (1994) describe the latter as follows:
"The patient-physician relationship is a fiduciary relationshipthat is,
founded on trust and confidence; and the physician is therefore necessarily a
114 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

trustee for the patient's medical welfare" (p. 430). In the same vein, Daniels
(1985) says, "The physician is seen as having entered into a relationship with
a specific patient which binds him to acting in the best interests of the pa-
tient" (p. 135).
Fiduciary relationships are distinct from contractual relationships. In con-
tractual relationships the provider of a product or service is only required to
supply the consumer with what he asks for, at the price they have agreed
upon. Contractual relationships are considered morally insufficient when
there is reason to believe that the provider could take unfair advantage of the
consumer if she were only required to give him what he requestsfor exam-
ple, in cases in which the provider possesses specialized knowledge not pos-
sessed by the consumer and in which the consumer is in a vulnerable posi-
tion. Fiduciary relationships make possible the provision of services that can
take place only in an atmosphere of trust. Psychotherapy in particular re-
quires a high level of trust between the therapist and client if it is to be suc-
cessful, and this level of trust can only be maintained if the client is convinced
that the therapist is centrally committed to the client's best interest.
In promoting the client's best interests, then, the therapist is responsible
for doing more than simply giving the client what he wants. She is expected
to draw on her professional resources to give him direction as to how his wel-
fare can be enhanced. Just as the physician is the trustee of the patient's phys-
ical health, the therapist is the trustee of the client's mental health. But what,
exactly, is good mental health? Murphy identifies what he takes to be the goal
of counseling (presumably good mental health) in the following passage: "I
assume that counseling in general has as its goal improving the lives and func-
tioning of clientsmaking them more viable in the primary areas (if Freud
was right) of work and love. The ideal, I suppose, is that they should become
happy, or at least, to cite Freud again, that their neurotic incapacitating anxi-
eties should be replaced by ordinary unhappiness" (Murphy, 2002, p. 42).
Given this conception of the goals of therapy, Murphy later suggests that
there might be "a general tension between counseling (as client-centered) and
philosophy (as truth/rationality-centered)or at least a tension between
counseling and global moral concerns" (p. 50). He points out that this kind
of tension could arise if the client could be made happier, more viable, or less
anxious by adopting a morally inappropriate or philosophically indefensible
attitude or belief. For example, it could arise if a client would be less anxious
and more functional in the areas of work and love if he were to forgive him-
self for a very serious wrong, when self-forgiveness in this case may be morally
inappropriate.
These remarks raise an interesting question that should be explored in
much more depth than I can undertake here. However, I am inclined to be-
lieve that a conflict between counseling and global moral concerns will arise
only if we adopt a shallow and inadequate conception of mental health. Even
with regard to physical health, the substantial majority of authors have agreed
that the concepts of health and disease are inherently value-laden. We cannot
define physical health without reference to the value we place on various
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS I I5

types of physical functioning. It should be even more clear that the concept
of mental health is inherently value-laden. We cannot define mental health
without reference to the value we place on various attitudes and behavior pat-
terns, or on various mental orientations toward the world.
Mental health is not easy to define, and I do not want to attempt a defini-
tion until I have acquired more of this commodity myself. However, it seems
clearly mistaken to define mental health simply in terms of the reduction of
anxieties and the enhancement of viability in the areas of work and love. Sup-
pose there is a man who experiences chronic anxiety and performs poorly at
work because he is afraid of being fired. He finds that he can reduce his anxi-
ety and improve his performance if he robs convenience stores to build a cash
reserve, and if he relieves his stress by verbally abusing his wife on the phone
at regular intervals during the day. We would not describe such an individual
as mentally healthy, nor would any therapist support this program as en-
hancing her client's psychological welfare. The inescapable fact is that we are
moral agents, and functioning well means, at a minimum, functioning in ac-
cordance with our basic moral obligations, and with attitudes that are at least
minimally decent from a moral point of view.
In considering what constitutes her client's welfare, then, the therapist
must respect her client as a moral agent. She does not promote his welfare by
supporting him in morally unworthy actions and attitudes, however "thera-
peutic" they may be, any more than a parent promotes a child's welfare by
supporting him in morally unworthy actions and attitudes. To respect her
client's autonomy, the therapist must refrain from imposing her values on
him and she must respect the limits he sets on what he is willing to do in the
course of his therapy. But to the extent that the client is willing and receptive,
a good therapist will encourage the client (either directly or indirectly) to re-
spect himself as a moral agent. She will help him to develop and refine his
own moral attitudes and to comply with his basic moral obligations. Further,
she will do so in a nonjudgmental manner that conveys respect for the client
and concern for his welfare and that does not undermine his trust in the
relationship.
I will argue below that there is no conflict between counseling and global
moral concerns in the area of forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness and self-for-
giveness do bring clients healing, release from debilitating emotions, and an
improved ability to function, and just as important, they are always appro-
priate from a moral point of view. The therapist who helps her client to reach
a state of genuine forgiveness or self-forgiveness enhances her client's mental
health and at the same time respects his moral agency. Although I cannot
argue the point here, I believe that the attitudes that are truly therapeutic
that give us lasting peace of mind and ability to function well-are just those
attitudes that embody the global moral concerns of respect and compassion
for ourselves and others.
A third obligation for the therapist is to respect her own moral integrity.
She must be true to her own moral beliefs and refuse to undertake a course of
action that she considers to be immoral. If she believes that it is wrong to
116 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

bring a perpetrator of incest to a state of self-forgiveness, then she ought not

do so. In this case, however, she owes it to clients to explain her position to
them at the earliest appropriate point in their association, and it might be
best if she could avoid working with this segment of the population. (I will
argue below that a clear-headed therapist will not encounter this problem.)
Finally, although their primary responsibility is to promote their clients'
welfare, therapists also have specialized knowledge and experience that put
them in a unique position to contribute to society as a whole. It is morally de-
sirable for society to consult therapists regarding practices, policies, and gen-
eral attitudes that will be beneficial to society as a whole from the point of
view of mental health. It is also desirable from a moral point of view for ther-
apists to consider these issues, and to support those practices that will en-
hance the general welfare.
To summarize, then, the therapist has a fiduciary relationship with the
client in which she acts as his advocate. She respects his autonomy by honor-
ing his boundaries concerning what he is willing to do in therapy and by rec-
ognizing that he must make his own decisions and determine his own atti-
tudes. Within these bounds, she draws on her professional resources to help
the willing and receptive client make decisions and develop attitudes that
best promote his mental health. This includes helping the client to respect
himself as a moral agent. The therapist is also obligated to maintain her own
moral integrity, and it is desirable for her to give some thought to the general
practices and attitudes that will be most beneficial to society as a whole. In
the remainder of the paper, I will argue that therapists can meet these respon-
sibilities by helping willing and able clients to work through a process of ad-
dressing the wrongs they have suffered or perpetrated, and then by helping
them to forgive or self-forgive.

Internal Preparation for Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness:

The Process of Addressing the Wrong

My contention is that genuine forgiveness and self-forgiveness are always

morally appropriate and desirable goals of psychotherapy for those clients
who are willing and able to achieve them. However, it is important to recog-
nize that these states can generally be attained only after we have worked
through a process of addressing the wrong. It is at this point that both cau-
tion and clarity about forgiveness are required. If we attempt to forgive our-
selves or others prematurely, before the necessary work has been done, our
forgiveness will be incompatible with our self-respect and therefore morally
inappropriate. It will be detrimental to ourselves and others, and it will not be
genuine. I argue in this section that when a client has suffered or perpetrated
a wrong, the first concern of the therapist must be to help him work through
the process of addressing that wrong. At the same time, she must help him to
avoid the pitfalls of premature forgiveness or self-forgiveness by encouraging
him not to forgive or self-forgive until this process is sufficiently complete. By
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 117

proceeding in this manner, the therapist promotes her client's welfare, en-
hances his self-respect, and respects his moral agency. She also helps to lay a
foundation that will enable him to attain a state of genuine forgiveness or
self-forgiveness. Let us consider interpersonal forgiveness and self-forgiveness
in turn.

Forgiveness

Bishop Joseph Butler (1986) explicates interpersonal forgiveness as the for-

swearing of resentment toward the offender. He describes what it is to forgive
someone as follows: "to be affected towards the injurious person in the same
way any good men, uninterested in the case, would be if they had the same
just sense, which we suppose the injured person to have, of the wrong, after
which there will yet remain real goodwill towards the offender." The person
who forgives, then, transcends his initial attitude of resentment toward the
offender and replaces it with an attitude of "real goodwill," in which he ex-
tends respect, compassion, and understanding to the offender and genuinely
wishes the offender well.
A brief comment is in order about the type of respect to be extended to
the offender when we reach a state of forgiveness. We sometimes use the
term respect to indicate a type of admiration. For example, we may respect
or admire an outstanding musician, a person who exhibits great courage, or
simply a person who does the right thing in a difficult situation. Offenders
clearly do not warrant this type of respect for their offensive actions, and
some of them will not be people we respect in this sense from a more gen-
eral perspective. The type of respect at issue in forgiveness is the Kantian
notion of respect for persons. According to Kant, all persons have intrinsic
value and warrant respect in virtue of the fact that we are autonomous ra-
tional beings. We are moral agents, capable of moral choice, growth, and
awareness, and as such we warrant fundamental respect for our personhood
regardless of the actions we have performed and the attitudes we have
adopted. Some people may suffer from mental illnesses or other conditions
that actually render them incapable of moral choice. These individuals are
not responsible for their hurtful behavior any more than someone who
inadvertently strikes us in the middle of an epileptic seizure is responsible
for her injurious behavior. Although we may have some work to do in ad-
justing to our injury, we do not properly speak of forgiving individuals in
these cases. In order to be a candidate for forgiveness, an individual must be
a moral agent, and as such will warrant Kantian respect for his or her per-
sonhood. Throughout this paper, I will be using the term respect in the
Kantian sense.
In some cases it may be appropriate for a client not to experience any ini-
tial resentment when he is harmedsuch as cases in which the wrong is triv-
ial, or in which the client has reached an advanced level of compassion for
others. But in the large majority of cases that will arise in therapy, the client
who has been harmed will have work to do in addressing the incident of
118 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

wrongdoing. For the purposes of discussion, this work can be described in

terms of discrete tasks. However, the therapist's work with the client is un-
likely to proceed in such an orderly, discrete fashion. Nor need any of this
work be explicitly directed toward having the client forgive the offender. I am
not a therapist, but I would imagine that it would often be better not to dis-
cuss forgiveness with the client until most, if not all, of this work has been
done. The manner in which the therapist proceeds to help the client address
his victimization and the point at which she introduces the subject of for-
giveness are clinical judgments that are best left to the therapist. I only want
to suggest that the following tasks need to be completed if the client is to re-
spect himself and truly forgive his offender.
First, the client who has been wrongfully injured must recover his self-
respect and recognize that the act perpetrated against him was wrong. As
Murphy points out, every act of wrongdoing carries with it the implicit mes-
sage that the victim does not warrant a full measure of respect. In Murphy's
words, the message is, "I count and you do not, and I may use you as a mere
thing" (p. 44). The first undertaking for the therapist, then, is to help the
client understand and appreciate the fact that he is a valuable person who de-
serves to be treated well and that the offensive behavior was not his fault. She
must help him to recognize that the act perpetrated against him was wrong
and to understand why it was wrong.
Murphy raises some important questions about how the therapist might
work with the client to help him establish his self-respect after the incident of
wrongdoing. He recognizes that some clients derive self-respect from the re-
ligious belief that they are precious children of God, and that these clients
may be able to overcome resentment toward an offender more quickly than
others. But he asks whether this belief is rational and whether it should be
presupposed by the therapist. He also asks how the therapist should counsel
"those who lack such a religious vision and instead get their self-esteem in
more secular ways, that is, in ways that are dependent to a nontrivial degree
on how they are treated by others" (p. 45).
Clearly the therapist should not presuppose that her client believes that he
is a precious child of God. Many clients do not. If the client does happen to
hold this belief, I see no reason why the therapist should not draw on it to
help him secure his self-respect. The therapist's job is not to debate with the
client the rationality of highly controversial philosophical beliefs. Instead, her
goal should be to promote the client's welfare and to honor him as an au-
tonomous being who must establish his own belief system. However, it is im-
portant to recognize that even if the client has no religious beliefs, there are
many things the therapist can say to him to help him secure his self-respect.
She can point out that he need not ground his self-respect in other people's
attitudes toward him. Other people's attitudes and opinions vary radically,
and they are often distorted by ignorance, prejudice, self-interest, substance
abuse, mental illness, and a variety of other factors. Ex hypothesi, the wrong-
doer's attitude toward the client was distorted; he did not deserve to be
treated as the offender treated him. The therapist can help him to understand
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 119

why this was so. She can suggest to him that all persons warrant equal con-
cern and respect and have certain rights that ought not be violated by others,
further insisting that the offender had no right to harm him. She can suggest
to him that he has as much right to be on the planet as any other person, and
that his needs, feelings, and interests matter very much. (These beliefs should
pass any test of philosophical rationality.) If the client is psychologically inca-
pable of grounding his self-esteem in anything other than other people's atti-
tudes toward him, the therapist can at least encourage him to detach from the
wrongdoer's defective attitude and to take more seriously the attitudes of
other persons who have recognized his worth and treated him well.
In any case, the therapist who helps the client to establish his self-respect
after an act of victimization clearly promotes his welfare. It is important for
him to have an accurate view of his own status as a person and to understand
that he has certain rights that others must honor. It is equally important for
her to encourage him not to forgive until he appreciates these points. As
Murphy points out, it is bad for people to be rendered content in their vic-
timization. If the client forgives his offender thinking that his interests really
do not matter and that he probably deserved the treatment he received, then
his forgiveness is incompatible with his self-respect and therefore morally
inappropriate. Further, in this case his forgiveness is not genuine, as he is
condoning the wrong rather than truly forgiving the offender for having
committed it.
Second, it is important for the client to acknowledge his feelings about the
incident. The client who has been wrongfully harmed is likely to have a vari-
ety of legitimate emotional responses to the incident of wrongdoinggrief
over his loss, anger toward the offender, feelings of betrayal, and other emo-
tions, depending on the circumstances. It is important to his healing process
that he allow himself to experience these feelings. (Other emotional re-
sponses, such as shame, self-loathing, excessive rage toward the offender, etc.,
will obviously not play the same role in the healing process.) The next job for
the therapist, then, is to help the client to identify his feelings and to validate
them, where appropriate, as normal, legitimate reactions to his victimization.
These feelings serve to connect him with the reality of what has happened to
him and to appreciate more fully the true nature of the wrong. The client's
welfare and self-respect will be enhanced if he is honest about how he feels
and if his feelings are validated. For a variety of reasons, the client may want
to shut down his feelings and attempt to forgive his offender immediately.
For example, he may believe that he has a duty to forgive or that forgiving the
offender is the virtuous or Christian thing to do. He may believe that it is
wrong for him to be angry at his father or mother, or at anyone at all. On
some level, forgiving his offender may seem psychologically easier than expe-
riencing his grief and anger in all of its intensity, or he may fear the conse-
quences of acknowledging his true feelings. It is important for the therapist
to encourage the client to avoid this sort of premature forgiveness. Not only
does the client treat himself in a psychologically destructive manner by shut-
ting down his emotions, he also fails to respect himself by deceiving himself
120 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

about how he actually feels and by discounting his emotions as invalid and
insignificant. This type of forgiveness is morally inappropriate, then, to the
extent that it is incompatible with the client's self-respect. It is also not gen-
uine forgiveness. To forgive is not to refuse to recognize one's negative feel-
ings toward the offender. Instead it is to experience an actual change of heart
in which these negative feelings are overcome and replaced on a spontaneous
level by an attitude of real goodwill. If the client shuts his feelings down, he
will not experience the true internal resolution of the issue that genuine for-
giveness requires.
Third, it may be important for the client to express his beliefs and feelings
to the offender. He may need to tell the offender that it is not acceptable for
him to be treated in this manner, that he feels hurt and angry about the inci-
dent, and so on. If the client does feel a need to speak to his offender, then it
is important that he do so, unless this course of action would be harmful to
himself or others. At this point, the therapist can help the client to make a
good decision about whether to confront his offender, suggest to him differ-
ent ways of expressing himself, and help him prepare for the various possible
responses. If direct communication with the offender is not a good idea, she
can also suggest psychotherapeutic techniques that can be practiced in a safe
setting to help the client meet the needs that would have been served by di-
rect communication. The therapist who helps the client in this manner
clearly enhances his welfare and self-respect. Again, it is important for the
therapist to encourage the client not to forgive until he has addressed this
issue. If the client withholds something he needs to say, he fails to respect
himself and fails to achieve the true internal resolution of the issue that gen-
uine forgiveness requires.
Fourth, the client faces the task of assessing his situation with respect to
the offender, and the therapist promotes his welfare and self-respect by help-
ing him to do so. The offender may have attitudes and behavior patterns that
are likely to injure the client again in the future, and it is critical for the client
to determine what steps he needs to take to protect himself from further vic-
timization. It is also important for the client to take his own need for reward-
ing personal relationships seriously. If he has a personal relationship with the
offender, he needs to consider whether there is a significant problem in the
relationship that should be addressed or whether the relationship should be
redefined or terminated. If the client is concerned about forgiveness at this
stage of the therapy, the therapist can help him to understand that he can for-
give the offender and at the same time decide to restrict or end the relation-
ship between them. For example, a client could forgive his wife for repeated
acts of verbal abuse and still decide to divorce her. He can understand the
pressures that lead to her wrongful behavior, regard her with respect, con-
tinue to love her, and wish her the best, but at the same time decide that he
no longer wishes to live in this manner.
Here again, the therapist must encourage the client not to forgive until he
completes this task. If he forgives the offender without considering his own
needs for protection and rewarding personal relationships, he acts against his
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 121

own best interests and fails to respect himself. Further, his forgiveness will not
be genuine. By forgiving the offender blindly hoping that things will be dif-
ferent in the future, he extends an attitude of real goodwill to the person he
hopes the offender will become rather than to the offender as she actually is,
as genuine forgiveness requires.
Finally, the client may face the task of determining whether he wants to
seek restitution from the offender or to press criminal charges. Although
restitution from the offender does not obviate the need for the client to work
through his own internal healing process concerning the incident and cannot
generate the same kinds of rewards, there will be some cases in which he is
owed material compensation for his loss. As the client's advocate, the thera-
pist can help him to understand in this type of situation that he has been
wrongfully harmed and is owed restitution. To the extent that he is receptive,
she can also encourage him to respect himself as a moral agent and to weigh
objectively his own needs, the situation of the wrongdoer, and, when crimi-
nal charges are at issue, the needs of society as he makes these decisions. By
helping him to recognize what he is entitled to and to make a morally sound
decision, she promotes his welfare and enhances his self-respect. Again, if the
client attempts to forgive before he addresses this issue, he fails to respect
himself and fails to achieve the true internal resolution of the issue that gen-
uine forgiveness requires.
We have just seen that the client who has been wrongfully harmed must
generally work through a process of responding to the wrong. The therapist
who works to promote her client's best interests and to enhance his self-re-
spect will help him to complete this process. At the same time, she will help
her client to avoid the pitfalls of forgiving his offender before this process is
sufficiently complete. Not only does the therapist enhance her client's welfare
and self-respect by helping him in this manner, she also makes it possible for
him to attain a state of genuine forgiveness, in which he attains a true internal
resolution of the incident of wrongdoing without deceiving himself about
any aspect of the wrong and without evading any of the issues he needs to ad-
dress as a result of it. Further, throughout this process, the therapist honors
the client as a moral agent by helping him to develop a morally appropriate
respect for himself, as well as a basic respect for others.

Self-Forgiveness

The client who has wrongfully harmed another must also work through a
process of addressing the wrong if he is to respect himself and attain a state of
genuine self-forgiveness. This process is parallel to the process outlined previ-
ously and may be explained more briefly. It should again be understood that
the way in which the therapist helps the client to achieve these results and the
point at which she introduces the topic of self-forgiveness are clinical judg-
ments that are best left to the therapist. For a client who feels very guilty
about his offense, it may be best for the therapist to introduce the idea of self-
122 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

forgiveness at the outset. A different approach will probably be indicated for

a client who is cavalier about the offense or who fails to recognize that it was
wrong. If the client feels terrible about himself and is overcome by guilt, the
therapist must help him to recover enough self-esteem to address the tasks
that follow. If he happens to hold this belief, she can remind him that he is
still a precious child of God in spite of what he has done. In any case, she can
tell him that he retains his intrinsic worth as a person, that all human beings
make mistakes, and that it is possible for him to proceed with dignity and
self-respect to address the wrong to the best of his ability.
In addressing the offense, the client must first acknowledge to himself that
the act was wrong and take full responsibility (where warranted) for having
committed it. Further, he must recognize why the act was wrong and ac-
knowledge to himself the victim's status as a person. It is important for him to
understand that the victim has a moral status equal to his own, that she has
her own needs, feelings, aspirations, and vulnerabilities, and that it was
wrong for him to harm her. The therapist who helps her client perform this
task acts in his best interest, provided that she proceeds in a nonjudgmental
manner that exhibits genuine respect for the client and concern for the qual-
ity of his healing around this incident. There are two types of clients who
might be inclined to forgive themselves without acknowledging the true na-
ture of the wrong. The first is a client who is generally decent, but who
rationalizes his behavior in an attempt to avoid responsibility for the particu-
lar act in question. A client who engages in premature self-forgiveness of this
sort fails to respect himself by engaging in self-deception. He also deprives
himself of the level of self-respect and healing that he could attain by honestly
acknowledging the wrong, addressing it to the best of his ability, and then
truly forgiving himself for having committed it. Here the therapist shows re-
spect for the client and promotes his interests by drawing his attention to the
fact that he is rationalizing. (Recall that in a fiduciary relationship the thera-
pist draws on her professional knowledge to promote her client's best inter-
ests, rather than simply giving him what he asks for.)
The second type of client is capable of dismissing wrong acts from his
mind because he simply does not care that they are wrong. A client of this
sort will be more difficult to work with, and again, the therapist is limited in
her work by what the client is willing to do. However, to the extent that the
client is receptive, the therapist promotes his interests if she can get him to
respect himself as a moral agent and take responsibility for his own wrong-
doing. The client will develop more fully as a person, have better interactions
with others, and attain a higher level of self-respect if he can be helped to rec-
ognize himself as a moral being. In either case, the client who forgives himself
before he acknowledges the nature of the wrong fails to attain a state of gen-
uine self-forgiveness, since he condones his wrong rather than truly forgiving
himself for having committed it.
Second, the client must acknowledge the feelings that arise for him in con-
nection with his offensecompassion for the victim, grief that he has injured
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 123

her, guilt, revulsion toward the wrong and the attitudes that led to it, and so
on. Again, it is important to distinguish between these legitimate emotional
responses to the wrong and other inappropriate and destructive feelings the
client may have, such as intense hatred for himself as opposed to revulsion to-
ward his behavior and attitudes. The client's legitimate feelings serve to con-
nect him with the reality of what he has done, and it is important that he
allow himself to experience them. The therapist promotes his welfare by
helping him to look at the incident of wrongdoing without shutting these
feelings down and by providing support for him as he does so. If he attempts
to forgive himself without acknowledging his feelings about the wrong, he
will not attain the true internal resolution of the incident that genuine self-
forgiveness requires.
The third task for the client is to address the beliefs, attitudes, and behav-
ior patterns that led to the offense. If he fails to do so, it is likely that he will
perform a similar act in the future. Again, the therapist who helps the client
to do this work serves his best interests. He will be better off if he learns to
meet his own needs in a manner that is more functional and compatible with
his self-respect. Here again, it is important for the therapist to encourage the
client not to self-forgive before he makes a good-faith effort in this regard. If
he ignores his problematic attitudes and behavior patterns, he is almost cer-
tain to experience more guilt and grief in the future. Premature self-forgive-
ness of this sort is not only incompatible with respect for both himself and
others, it also fails to constitute genuine self-forgiveness. The incident will
not be over for the client if he ignores the source of his problematic behavior,
and he will not attain the true internal resolution that genuine self-forgive-
ness requires.
The final task for the client is to make amends for the wrong. He must ex-
press his sincere regret for his wrong to the victim unless a direct apology
would do her more harm than good. He must also offer restitution for any
harm he has wrongfully inflicted on her or on others in the course of his
wrongdoing. It is important for the client to consult the victim to find out
what she needs or wants in terms of compensation for her loss. It is also im-
portant that he be honest with himself about how much compensation he
owes. He must not shortchange the victim, but he must also not allow him-
self to be taken advantage of, humiliated, or degraded in the process of mak-
ing restitution. The focus of restitution should be a positive contribution to
the victim's life that compensates her as nearly as possible for the loss she has
suffered. If it is beyond the client's ability to make full restitution for the
wrong in the course of his life, then he must simply make a good-faith effort
to do what can reasonably be expected of him under the circumstances.
Although the client may not want to make restitution and may suffer a
material setback if he does so, he has a moral obligation to compensate the
victim for the harm he has wrongfully inflicted on her. To the extent that the
client is willing and receptive, and to the extent that she can do so without
undermining the client's trust in her, it is important for the therapist to
124 FORGIVENESS INTHETHERAPY HOUR

encourage the client to respect himself as a moral agent and honor his moral
obligation. Not only does this course of action enhance his self-respect at the
deepest level, it also allows him to experience a true internal release from the
incident. If he forgives himself before he apologizes to the victim and com-
mits himself to the course of action he needs to undertake to make restitu-
tion, his self-forgiveness is incompatible with respect for himself and for the
victim. Further, the incident will not be over for him and he will not achieve
the true internal resolution of it that genuine forgiveness requires.
Like the client who has suffered a wrong, then, the client who has perpe-
trated a wrong must work through a process of addressing the incident in
question. The therapist who is concerned to promote her client's welfare and
enhance his self-respect will help him to complete this process. She will also
help him to avoid the pitfalls of forgiving himself before this process is suffi-
ciently complete. By doing so, she makes it possible for him to reach a state of
genuine self-forgiveness in which he attains a true internal resolution of the
incident without deceiving himself about any aspect of the wrong and with-
out evading any of the issues he needs to address in connection with it.
Throughout this process the therapist encourages the client to respect himself
as a moral agent. She helps him to honor his moral obligations and to develop
a morally appropriate respect for himself and others. In this way she helps to
lay a solid foundation for him to attain lasting peace of mind and to feel truly
good about himself.

Genuine Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness as

Goals of Psychotherapy

We have seen that the therapist can best meet her fiduciary obligations to the
client by helping the willing and able client to work through a process of
addressing the wrong and by encouraging the client not to forgive or self-
forgive until this process is sufficiently complete. Once this process is com-
plete, the client has done what he needs to do to address the wrong. He can
then step back and look objectively at the offender, whether himself or an-
other. He can recognize that the offender retains his intrinsic value as a per-
son in spite of what he has done and that he struggles with various needs,
pressures, and confusions (as we all do), some of which may have been quite
intense. He can come to understand why the offender did what he did, regard
him with respect and compassion, and extend to him an attitude of real
goodwill. At this point, if this perspective actually produces a change of heart
in the client, he will have attained a state of genuine forgiveness or self-for-
giveness. In this section I argue that genuine forgiveness and self-forgiveness
are always appropriate goals of psychotherapy for those clients who are will-
ing and able to achieve these states. Genuine forgiveness and self-forgiveness
are always in the best interest of the client, and they are always appropriate
and desirable from a moral point of view. Thus the therapist can maintain her
own moral integrity and at the same time promote her client's welfare by
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 125

helping him to forgive himself or his offender. Let us again consider interper-
sonal forgiveness and self-forgiveness in turn.

Forgiveness

The client who reaches a state of genuine forgiveness will realize several ben-
efits. He will benefit from the freedom and peace of mind he gains when the
incident of wrongdoing is over for him and no longer rides on his mind.
Making the transition from a traumatized, resentful victim to a person who
is at peace and free of the past will also allow him to focus more effectively
on his own positive pursuits. As a result, his life will be enriched and his self-
esteem will be strengthened. If the client's offender is a family member or
close friend, he will benefit from the release of conflict in the relationship
and from being able to experience a more unadulterated love for the indi-
vidual in question. Further, Enright's studies suggest that he will experience
decreases in anxiety and depression and increases in self-esteem when he for-
gives (Enright, 1996). By way of contrast, living with a deep-seated or per-
vasive resentment for the offender will be debilitating for the client. His at-
tention will be (at least partially) focused on the offender's wrongdoing
rather than on his own positive pursuits, drawing him off center and in-
fringing on his personal growth. He will have to live with anger and pain
concerning the incident, and with ill will toward the offender. He will feel a
lack of resolution about the incident, and he may become stuck in a victim
mentality, in which he sees himself as relatively powerless and subject to per-
secution by others.
Although the client stands to benefit from forgiving in all these ways, it is
important that he not sacrifice his self-respect in order to forgive the offender.
As we saw before, Murphy recognizes that the act of wrongdoing conveys the
following degrading message to the victim: "I count and you do not, and I
may use you as a mere thing." He goes on to say "Resentment of the wrong-
doer is one way that a victim may evince, emotionally, that he or she does not
endorse this degrading message; and this is how resentment may be tied to
self-respect. This does not mean that the self-respecting person will never for-
give; but it does mean that such a person might make forgiveness contingent
on some change in the wrongdoertypically repentancethat shows that
the wrongdoer no longer endorses the degrading message contained in the
injury" (p. 44). Murphy concedes that in some cases clients may be able to
forgive unrepentant offenders without sacrificing their self-respect. However,
he believes that there are other cases in which failure to resent is inconsistent
with the client's self-respect, and that these cases "should be troubling to un-
critical boosters for universal forgiveness" (p. 45).
The uncritical boosters for universal forgiveness he has in mind seem to be
Robert Enright and myself. However, I believe that Murphy and I are more
in agreement than he recognizes. I am not an uncritical booster for universal
forgiveness; I am an uncritical booster for unconditional genuine forgiveness.
I believe that forgiveness is always appropriate and desirable from a moral
126 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

point of view after one has worked through the process of addressing the
wrong, but not before. As I argue above and have argued before, forgiving the
offender before one has completed this process will be incompatible with
one's self-respect and therefore morally inappropriate. It will also fail to con-
stitute genuine forgiveness.
Two of the cases that concern Murphy are cases that I have already dis-
cussed, and cases that we fully agree upon. First, I agree completely with
Murphy that a situation is made worse, not better, when people are rendered
content in their victimization. As I have argued, it is important that an indi-
vidual not forgive his offender until he recognizes his own status as a person
and recognizes that the act perpetrated against him was wrong. And second,
I agree completely with Murphy that battered women should not forgive
their offenders only to return to them for further abuse. Again, I have argued
that an individual ought not forgive her offender until she has determined
the steps she needs to take to protect herself and until she has considered her
need for rewarding personal relationships. The client who has worked
through the process of addressing the wrong will have completed these tasks
and will not engage in premature forgiveness of this sort.
Are there cases in which a client who has worked through the process de-
scribed above would compromise his self-respect by forgiving the offender? I
have argued that maintaining a posture of resentment after one has com-
pleted this process assigns far too much power and importance to the wrong-
doer's confused opinions, and in doing so takes power away from the victim
and undermines his self-respect. Enright has made a similar argument. Mur-
phy responds as follows: "But surely this is not always the case. If the offender
greatly wants to be forgiven by me and I am not much interested in forgiving
himat least until he repentsthen it seems to me that in this case the bal-
ance of power is in my favor and not in favor of the offender" (p. 47).
There is a sense in which Murphy is correct. If the client chooses to engage
in an external power struggle with the offender, he may well gain the upper
hand by refusing to forgive. But the question for the therapist and the client
to consider here is whether it promotes the client's best interests and enhances
his self-respect to engage in this type of power struggle. I would submit that
the therapist does not promote her client's welfare or self-respect if she en-
courages him to spend his time and energy on such a pursuit. A power strug-
gle of this sort focuses the client's thought and energy on the fact that the
offender failed to respect him and did something wrong. It makes the wrong-
doer's confused opinions and bad behavior the center of the client's attention.
It further orients the client toward using resentment and rejection to manip-
ulate the offender into acknowledging his worth, or at least toward attempt-
ing to dominate the offender in some way. These orientations will not enrich
the client's life or serve him in any manner after he has completed the process
of addressing the wrong, and the client does not evince a high level of self-
respect by adopting them. The therapist can truly empower the client and en-
hance his self-respect by encouraging him to step back from the power strug-
gle with the offender. She can encourage the client to stop reacting to the
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 127

wrongdoer's disparaging message about his lack of worth, and to take the
more proactive stance of developing his own assessment of the incident. The
client who has worked through the process just described will know that he is
valuable and deserves to be treated well, and that the wrongdoer's actions and
attitudes were inappropriate. If he then drops the focus on the wrong actions
and attitudes and starts to think carefully about the wrongdoer as a person, he
will recognize that the incident of wrongdoing really was not about him and
his supposed lack of worth in the first place. Instead, it was about the wrong-
doer's misguided attempts to meet her own needs. If the client looks at the of-
fender with understanding, respect, and compassion, he will recognize that
there is no need to engage in a power struggle of any kind. He can honor his
own needs by maintaining healthy boundaries with the offender, and at the
same time extend to the offender an attitude of real goodwill.
Murphy offers a story that may help us to fix these ideas more clearly. The
story is about Ralph, who was repeatedly sexually abused by his father when
he was young. As an adult attempting to cope with the past abuse, Ralph
changed his last name and broke off relations with his father. After years of
separation, Ralph's father, without expressing any remorse for the serious
harm he inflicted on Ralph, requests reentry into Ralph's life. His motive is to
look more respectable to his new wife and children. Ralph's minister's ap-
proach to this situation seems to be for Ralph to disregard his own needs and
feelings in order to fulfill his Christian duty to forgive. This solution is ob-
viously incompatible with Ralph's self-respect. Murphy's suggestion is for
Ralph to maintain his posture of resentment and rejection toward his father.
Although this solution is preferable to the minister's, I believe that Ralph can
attain a higher level of well-being and self-respect if he reaches a state of gen-
uine forgiveness.
If Ralph completes the process of addressing the wrong, he will know that
he deserves respect, that his father's actions and attitudes were (and continue
to be) terribly wrong, and that the truth of these points will not be affected by
any kind of external power struggle. He can then drop his focus on his father's
wrongful actions and attitudes and look at his father as a person. As he does
so, he will realize that the sexual abuse really was not about his own lack of
worth. Instead it was about his father's misguided attempt to feel as if he had
some power and control, and quite possibly, to come to terms with similar
abuse that was inflicted on him at some point in the past. Likewise, he will see
that his father's current request is not about Ralph's lack of worth. It is simply
a misguided attempt to gain the love and approval of his new family. Once
Ralph has addressed these wrongs through the process suggested above, he
can look at his father from this more objective point of view. He can regard
his father with understanding, respect, and compassion; forgive him for his
past and present wrongs; and extend to him an attitude of real goodwill.
It is also critical for Ralph to honor his own needs, and as his advocate, his
therapist must encourage him to do so. However, it is important to recognize
that Ralph can honor his own needs at the same time that he extends an atti-
tude of real goodwill to his father. For example, suppose that Ralph does not
128 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

want to be used as a mere means to making his father look good in front of his
new family. Further, he believes that given his father's current attitudes, he
will almost certainly experience more pain if he reunites with his father at this
time. These are very legitimate desires and beliefs, and they should certainly
be honored. Ralph has every reason to be wary of his father, and to be un-
willing to be used by him. The key point to recognize here, however, is that
Ralph can set appropriate boundaries with his father to honor his own needs
at the same time that he opens his heart to his father and forgives him. Ralph
can feel real love and compassion for his father and wish him the best in his
new family relationships but at the same time tell his father that he does not
want to reestablish contact with him at this time. To forgive another person is
not to do exactly what the other person wants you to do, at whatever cost
to yourself. It is not to abandon all thought of your own needs, to ignore the
reality of the other person's current attitudes and behavior patterns, or to
reestablish contact or an intimate relationship with that person. Rather,
to forgive someone is to extend an attitude of respect, compassion, and real
goodwill to an individual in spite of what he is doing or has done. Ralph can
establish any boundaries he wishes to set with his father to honor his own
needs, and at the same time regard his father with understanding, respect,
and compassion. At this point Ralph has nothing to gain from maintaining a
posture of resentment and rejection. He evinces more respect for himself by
setting his boundaries and then opening his heart to forgive his father. In this
way he can let go of the focus on his father's wrong actions and attitudes and
focus instead on his father's worth as a person, as well as on the other things
that are truly worthwhile in his own life. If the arguments presented here are
correct, then regardless of whether the offender repents and regardless of
what he has done, the therapist promotes her client's welfare and self-respect
by helping him to reach a state of genuine forgiveness.
The question that remains to be considered is whether there are cases in
which genuine forgiveness is morally inappropriate. If the therapist is to re-
spect her own moral integrity, she cannot encourage the client to adopt a
morally inappropriate attitude. Nor would she promote the client's self-re-
spect or honor his moral agency if she were to do so. There are three deonto-
logical arguments that have been advanced to show that genuine forgiveness
is sometimes morally indefensible. The first argument is that forgiving an un-
repentant offender is incompatible with the victim's self-respect. We have just
addressed this argument. The second argument holds that forgiving an unre-
pentant offender is incompatible with respect for morality. In order to respect
morality, we must refrain from condoning acts that are morally wrong. Until
the offender repents, she implicitly endorses her own wrong, and by forgiving
her at this point, we condone the wrong as well. Therefore it is morally inap-
propriate to forgive an unrepentant offender.
This second argument is easily refuted by distinguishing between the
wrongdoer as a person and the wrong act she committed. When the client
forgives an unrepentant offender, he condemns the offender's wrongful ac-
tions and attitudes but extends an attitude of real goodwill toward the of-
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 129

fender as a person. In Augustine's terms, he hates the sin but not the sinner.
Murphy, however, calls this distinction into question. He says, "It is hard to
see how the distinction between sin and sinner can be drawn ... so long as the
sinner remains psychologically identified with the sin. However, if he breaks
the identification through repentance, then the distinction may be easily
drawn; and this may be another reason why a strategy of making forgiveness
contingent on repentance might sometimes be rational" (pp. 4647).
If it is actually impossible to distinguish between an unrepentant sinner
and a sin, then it may be inappropriate to forgive an offender before she re-
pents. However, it seems both possible and morally important to distinguish
between a person and her actions and attitudes. A human being is not identi-
cal to the actions she performs or the attitudes she adopts. Last spring break I
skied some double black ski runs, but I am not the skiing of these runs. I am
rather the human subject of experience who felt scared, exhilarated, and very
pleased to reach the bottom of the hill. I also currently hold an attitude of re-
sentment toward the way in which a particular program is being adminis-
tered, but I am not this attitude. Rather, I am the autonomous, experiencing
subject who is struggling with this attitude and who will hopefully outgrow it
in the near future.
If we hold that an individual is identical to her current attitudes, then the
concept of moral growth is rendered incoherent. For moral growth to take
place, there must be a subject of that growth who first holds one attitude and
then later replaces it with another attitude that is more morally appropriate.
Further, it is critically important for the retributivist to recognize that if we
hold that an individual is identical to her current attitudes, then the notion of
moral agency also becomes conceptually incoherent. For the retributivist to
hold that resentment or retributive hatred is the morally appropriate response
to an unrepentant offender, he must hold that the offender is a moral agent
who is responsible for her own wrong actions and attitudes. However, if an
individual is identical to her current attitudes, then she cannot choose to
hold those attitudes, nor can she choose to change them. Instead, she simply
is those attitudes. In order for moral agency to exist, there must be an agent
or subject who chooses which actions to perform and which attitudes to
adopt. His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Gyatso, 1995) articulates the problem
with equating the sin and the sinner and then hating the sinner in the fol-
lowing passage (although it should be noted that the Buddhist position on
the mind is highly sophisticated, significantly different from Western con-
ceptions, and in no way represented by my remarks in this chapter: "You can
also reflect on how, if inflicting harm on others is the essential nature of the
person who is harming you, there is no point in being angry since there
would be nothing that you or that person could do to change his or her es-
sential nature. If it were truly the person's essential nature to inflict harm, the
person would simply be unable to act otherwise" (p. 79).
To fail to distinguish between a person and an action or attitude is not
only to engage in conceptual confusion, it is also to commit a moral error. It
is to objectify that person in a manner that is morally inappropriate. For
130 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

example, the therapist is not identical to the action of providing therapy.

Rather, she is an autonomous, experiencing subject with needs, feelings, and
aspirations of her own. If the client regards her simply as "provider of ther-
apy" or "provision of therapy," he objectifies her in a manner that is very sim-
ilar (but not identical) to regarding her as a mere means to his own ends. He
fails to recognize and respect her personhood, and therefore his attitude to-
ward her is seriously inadequate from a moral point of view. If we fail to dis-
tinguish between the unrepentant sinner and the sin, we commit the same
type of moral error. By regarding the offender as somehow the same thing as
the offense or offensive attitude, and then extending an attitude of resent-
ment toward the conglomerate, we objectify the offender and fail to recog-
nize her status as a person. Regardless of whether the offender repents and re-
gardless of what she has done, she retains her personhood. She is both a
subject of experiences and a moral agent with the capacity for moral growth,
and as such, she warrants compassion and respect. It is therefore fully appro-
priate to extend to her an attitude of real goodwill.
It is also worth noting that we do not engage in the conceptual confusion
described above when we truly care about each other, and when our own egos
are not implicated in the wrongful acts or attitudes. For example, the parent
of a teenage child does not hate that child when she adopts a wrongful atti-
tude or behavior pattern, nor does he continue to hate the child until she re-
nounces this attitude or behavior pattern to adopt one that is more appropri-
ate. Further, no sane individual would suggest that it was morally obligatory
for him to do so. The parent does not find it impossible to distinguish be-
tween the child and the child's attitude. Instead the parent continues to love
the child unconditionally, at the same time that he condemns the attitude.
He cherishes the child as a person and does everything he can to help her out-
grow the wrongful attitude and to develop attitudes and behaviors that are
more appropriate and rewarding.
The third deontological argument advanced to show that genuine for-
giveness is sometimes morally inappropriate is that forgiving an unrepentant
offender who is guilty of serious wrongdoing is incompatible with respect for
the offender as a moral agent. In order to respect the offender as a moral
agent, we must regard her as responsible for her own wrongdoing, and an
unrepentant offender who is responsible for serious wrongdoing deserves
retributive hatred. Further, justice demands that we give persons what they
deserve.
This argument can be refuted in much the same way as the second one. It
is true that moral agents are responsible for their own actions and attitudes.
However, it is much more difficult to justify the claim that unrepentant of-
fenders deserve permanent resentment, or more formally, retributive hatred.
This proposition is rooted in the same type of moral and conceptual confu-
sion that we have just described. It is certainly appropriate to hate the actions
of someone who is guilty of serious wrongdoing and to hate the attitudes that
led to such acts. But the unrepentant offender is distinct from these actions
and attitudes, and by equating her with them we objectify her and fail to re-
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 131

spect her personhood. Like all persons, the offender is a subject of experience
and a being with the capacity for moral growth, and, as before, warrants our
compassion and respect. Therefore it is always morally appropriate for a
client who is willing and able to do so to extend an attitude of genuine for-
giveness to his offender. Justice does demand that we hold moral agents re-
sponsible for their choices, and that we require them to bear the burden of
their wrongful behavior when this behavior creates burdens that someone
must bear. Justice also often permits us to take action to protect ourselves
from those who threaten our significant interests. But justice does not require
that we hate sentient beings.
If my reasoning has been correct, then genuine forgiveness is always an ap-
propriate goal in psychotherapy for those clients who are willing and able to
achieve this state. Once the client has worked through the process of address-
ing the wrong, reaching a state of genuine forgiveness serves his best interests
and evinces and enhances his self-respect. Further, genuine forgiveness is al-
ways appropriate and desirable from a moral point of view. Thus the therapist
who helps the client to reach a state of genuine forgiveness fulfills her fiduci-
ary obligations to the client, respects his moral agency, and maintains her
own moral integrity. Let us now turn to the question of whether genuine self-
forgiveness is always an appropriate goal of psychotherapy as well.

Self-Forgiveness

In the case of self-forgiveness, it is more readily apparent that the therapist

promotes her client's welfare and enhances his self-respect by helping him to
forgive. The client who has worked through the process of addressing the
wrong has done his best to deal with his wrong honestly and responsibly. Pro-
vided that he continues to work on the attitudes that led to his wrongful be-
havior, and provided that he continues to honor his moral obligation to make
restitution to the victim, it is clearly in his best interest to forgive himself for
the wrong. To remain in a state of self-hatred or self-contempt at this point
would be debilitating. It would destroy the quality of his own life and under-
mine his ability to relate and contribute to others. The therapist will promote
her client's welfare and enhance his self-respect if she can help him to regard
himself with respect and compassion and turn his attention to his own posi-
tive pursuits.
The main worry about genuine self-forgiveness is that it may be morally
inappropriate. Again, there are three deontological arguments that might be
advanced to challenge the morality of forgiving oneself. These arguments are
parallel to the arguments used to challenge the moral appropriateness of in-
terpersonal forgiveness, and may be addressed in much the same manner.
The first is that genuine self-forgiveness is incompatible with respect for the
victim. It might be argued that the client who forgives himself fails to respect
the victim in that she is the one who has been wrongfully harmed, and there-
fore it is her prerogative to do the forgiving, not his. This argument is not
132 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

persuasive. It is certainly the victim's prerogative to decide whether or not she

will forgive the client, but the client is responsible for determining what his
own attitudes will be. It is up to him to determine how he will regard himself
in light of his own wrongdoing. The client can honor the victim's decision
about whether or not she will forgive him, whatever it turns out to be, and at
the same time decide to regard himself with respect, compassion, and real
goodwill.
It might also be argued that genuine self-forgiveness is intrinsically in-
compatible with respect for the victim when the wrong is very serious. To for-
give oneself under these circumstances would be to dismiss the victim from
one's mind too readily, after seriously damaging her welfare. This argument is
not persuasive either. In order to respect the victim under these circum-
stances, the client must honestly acknowledge the full extent of his wrong
and express deep and sincere remorse for having harmed her so severely. He
must do everything that can reasonably be expected of him to help compen-
sate for her loss. And he must continue to show great respect for the victim
and concern for her welfare throughout his life if she is receptive to this kind
of contact with him and if she is not seriously abusive to him in return. In no
instance should he dismiss the victim from his mind. However, to respect the
victim of his serious wrong, the client need not hate himself. To fix his atten-
tion on the fact that he did wrong and to dwell on this fact in a state of self-
hatred or self-contempt serves no moral value after he has completed the
process of addressing the wrong. Respect for the victim is a positive attitude
that is focused on the victim. It is not a negative attitude centered on the
client and his past moral performance. He respects the victim by transcend-
ing his focus on himself, by recognizing her status as a person, and by show-
ing sustained and profound concern for her needs and feelings.
The second deontological argument is that forgiving ourselves is incom-
patible with respect for morality. The argument holds that by forgiving our-
selves, we condone our own wrong acts. Again, this argument is easily refuted
by distinguishing between the person and the action that he performed. In
reaching a state of genuine forgiveness, the client extends an attitude of re-
spect and compassion toward himself as a person at the same time that he
condemns his own act of wrongdoing. The client who has worked through
the process of addressing the wrong has acknowledged that the act is wrong,
understands why it was wrong, and has done his best to correct the attitudes
and behavior patterns that led to his offense. There is no sense in which he
condones his wrongful behavior.
The third and final argument is that genuine self-forgiveness is incompat-
ible with respect for oneself as a moral agent when the wrong is very serious.
Again, the argument is that in order to respect ourselves as moral agents, we
must hold ourselves responsible for our past wrongful behavior. When this
behavior has been truly heinous, we deserve retributive hatred unto death. As
we have already seen, this argument objectifies the wrongdoer, in this case the
client, by failing to recognize and respect his personhood. Although heinous
actions and attitudes warrant our hatred, persons do not. Whatever the client
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS 133

has done, he is a sentient being and a being with the capacity for moral
choice, growth, and awareness. As such he warrants compassion and respect.
Once he has done his best to address his wrong, it is appropriate for him to
extend to himself an attitude of real goodwill.
Further, if the client is to respect himself as a moral agent, he must exercise
his moral agency in a responsible manner. In order to exercise his moral
agency responsibly, the client must make choices and adopt attitudes that
have moral value. To dwell on one's own past record of moral performance,
either with a sense of self-hatred and self-contempt or with a sense of superi-
ority, is an activity that is overly self-involved and devoid of any real moral
value. The client will exercise his moral agency much more responsibly if he
removes his focus from the fact that he did wrong and concentrates instead
on the contributions he can make to others and on the growth he can experi-
ence in the moral and nonmoral realms.
I conclude, then, that genuine forgiveness and self-forgiveness are always
appropriate goals of psychotherapy for those clients who are willing and able
to achieve these states. The therapist's first concern must be to help her client
complete the process of addressing the wrong, and to help him to postpone
forgiveness or self-forgiveness until this process is sufficiently complete. In all
cases, after the client has completed the process of addressing the wrong,
reaching a state of genuine forgiveness or self-forgiveness will promote the
client's welfare and enhance his self-respect. Further, after the client has com-
pleted the process of addressing the wrong, genuine forgiveness and genuine
self-forgiveness are always appropriate and desirable from a moral point of
view. Therefore the therapist can fulfill her fiduciary obligations to the client,
respect his moral agency, and at the same time respect her own moral in-
tegrity by helping the willing and able client to achieve a state of genuine for-
giveness or self-forgiveness. At least with regard to forgiveness and self-for-
giveness, there is no tension between counseling and global moral concerns.

The General Practice of Pursuing Genuine Forgiveness

and Self-Forgiveness in Psychotherapy

A final point to consider is whether it is desirable for the therapist to support

the general practice of helping clients to achieve states of genuine forgiveness
and self-forgiveness in psychotherapy. Given her professional training, the
therapist is in a unique position to help us determine which practices are
most beneficial to society as a whole from the point of view of mental health.
Although a thorough discussion of this question is beyond the scope of this
paper, the arguments advanced so far support a general practice of helping
persons to reach a state of genuine forgiveness or self-forgiveness. With re-
gard to self-forgiveness, it seems reasonable to expect that everyone will ben-
efit if therapists regularly help their clients to address their wrongs and then
to reach a state of genuine self-forgiveness. Offenders clearly benefit from
attaining a state of genuine self-forgiveness, as they are liberated from the
134 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

debilitating states of guilt and self-hatred. It also seems clear that the interests
of victims will be served if offenders are routinely helped to work through the
process of addressing their wrongs in therapy. In this case victims will be ac-
knowledged and respected by their offenders, and they will receive both apol-
ogy and restitution for the harm wrongfully inflicted on them. Finally, it
seems plausible to believe that the interests of society will be served if offend-
ers are regularly helped in psychotherapy to work through the process of ad-
dressing the wrong. By acknowledging the wrong, addressing the attitudes
that led to the wrong, and making restitution to those they have injured, of-
fenders take responsibility for themselves and arguably become less likely to
commit violations in the future.
With regard to interpersonal forgiveness, I have argued that victims of
wrongdoing will benefit if their therapists help them to address the offense
and to reach a state of genuine forgiveness. They will be released from the de-
bilitating states of hatred and resentment, experience more positive emo-
tional states, and be able to focus more fully on their own positive pursuits.
They will also be empowered to form their own assessments of both the of-
fender as a person and the act of wrongdoing, rather than merely reacting to
the offender's implicit claim that they do not warrant a full measure of re-
spect. It also seems clear that society as a whole will benefit from a general
practice of therapists helping their clients to reach a state of genuine forgive-
ness. This practice will produce more peaceful, respectful, and compassionate
relationships among citizens. Will offenders benefit if the persons they have
harmed are regularly helped to forgive them? They will certainly feel better
and have more pleasant lives if they are forgiven. However, Murphy suggests
that they may have more incentive to repent if they have to earn the victim's
forgiveness, rather than receiving it unconditionally. I am not a psychologist,
and I lack the expertise to address this question in any definitive manner. But
speaking for myself, I find it easier to examine and correct my wrongful be-
havior in an environment of respect, compassion, and acceptance than in an
environment of hatred, resentment, and rejection. My hope and expectation
is that if we can systematically regard ourselves and others with the former set
of attitudes, it will be easier for offenders to come to terms with their own
wrongdoing. And more importantly, if we routinely regard offenders with re-
spect and compassion, it will be easier for those who feel as if they might
commit an offense in the future to seek help from their fellows. If so, then so-
ciety as a whole will again benefit from a general practice of helping victims
to reach a state of genuine forgiveness in psychotherapy.

Note
I have benefited a great deal in thinking about these issues from discussion with Jef-
frie Murphy and Robert Enright. I am also deeply indebted to Lu Klatt, LISW, for a
very careful reading of this paper from the perspective of a therapist and for many
valuable, insightful suggestions that I have incorporated into the text. Discussions
with my colleague Joseph Kupfer and with Maura Peglar, LISW, have also had a very
significant influence on my thinking about this topic. For a more complete develop-
 FORGIVENESS AND SELF-FORGIVENESS I 35

ment of my position on the morality of forgiveness and self-forgiveness, see my arti-

cles, Holmgren 1993, 1998. Finally, I would like to thank Sharon Lamb for several
helpful comments on an earlier draft.

References

Beauchamp, Tom L., & James F. Childress (1994). Principles of biomedical ethics. 4th
ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Butler, Joseph (1986). Fifteen sermons. Charlottesville, VA: Lincoln Rembrandt Pub-
lishing.
Daniels, Norman (1985). Just health care. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Enright, Robert D. (1996). Counseling within the forgiveness triad: On forgiving, re-
ceiving forgiveness, and self-forgiveness. Counseling and Values, 40(2), 107-126.
Gyatso, Tenzin, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (1995). The world of tibetan buddhism:
An overview of its philosophy and practice. Translated, edited, and annotated by
Geshe Thupten Jinpa. Boston: Wisdom Publications.
Holmgren, Margaret R. (1993). Forgiveness and the intrinsic value of persons. Amer-
ican philosophical Quarterly, 30(4), 341-352.
Holmgren, Margaret R. (1998). Self-forgiveness and responsible moral agency. The
Journal of Value Inquiry, 32, 75-91.
Murphy, Jeffrie G. (2002). Forgiveness in counseling: A philosophical perspective. In
Sharon Lamb and Jeffrie G. Murphy (Eds.), Before forgiving: Cautionary views of
forgiveness in psychotherapy. New York: Oxford University Press.
 seven

Forgoing Forgiveness
Bill Puka

Before we forgive someone their offenses, we should consider the costs of

doing so against the benefits, comparing this response with other ways to go.
In this chapter I do so. The main pros and cons of a forgiveness critique are
used to devise several alternative responses that avoid them and offer addi-
tional benefits as well. One such alternative is compared with forgiveness in
detail. It looks forward in the relationship toward compensation and renego-
tiation, not backward toward restoration.
To begin, I summarily credit the praise afforded forgiveness in our culture
and, more recently, in contemporary psychotherapy and philosophy (Enright
& Fitzgibbons, 2000; Enright, Freedman, & Rique, 1998; Holmgren 1993).
Rather than being a simple virtue, forgiveness is a complex psychology divid-
ing into several cognitive systems that evolve in several developmental phases
much like the grieving process does. Its personal power is not limited to dis-
pelling harbored resentments and fermenting self-liberation, though these
are remarkable feats. Its interpersonal poignancy is not limited to bridging
rifts and bringing heartfelt reconciliation. Rather, forgiveness can provide a
general orientation to problems we confront in relationships, forestalling
long cycles of resentment and self-stultification. It promises the increased
sense of personal empowerment and expansiveness that comes from taking a
situation in hand. Through the tenderness of its ministrations, forgiveness
boosts self-esteem and self-respect. It garners a sense of "doing good" and of
"being a good person" as a result. And this is not even to mention how it ac-
tually does good and expresses goodness admirably.
Do these reputed assets establish forgiveness as a favored response to being
wronged or to handling conflicts in relationships generally? Do they recom-
mend forgiveness as a preferred psychotherapeutic tool? Not really, and the
reason why is simple. There are many options to choose from: many "psy-
chological techniques," interpersonal strategies, virtues, and abilities that

136
 FORGOING FORGIVENESS 137

promise the fruits of forgiveness or fruits comparable. Some promise more

besides. Forgiveness may work well in some ways, in some contexts, and for
some people. But even here there may be much better ways to go.
The present discussion takes a much broader perspective on forgiveness
than the psychotherapeutic context; thus, differences in prominent accounts
of forgiveness do not concern us here. (Some of the distinctions put forward
in this volume among forgiveness, pardoning, or excusing, for example, also
are secondary here; we focus on forgiveness as it is in daily thought and life,
not on "true forgiveness" in some intellectually partisan sense.) Surprisingly,
taking this broader everyday perspective focuses us more pointedly on for-
giveness itself. This is because prominent forgiveness advocates blur this
focus as they gowhether depicting developmental forgiveness, psychother-
apeutic forgiveness, or forgiveness as a general virtue. Rather they depict a
variety of processes that often precede, accompany, intersperse with, and fol-
low forgiveness. Some seem prerequisite to it, though this is unclear from the
evidence presented. Forgiveness is prominently included in each chapter
here, but only as a component or two, or as a thread running through. (Often
the thread wears quite thin.) The thematic or integrating role of forgiveness
in these processes seems injected by the authors or the characters they de-
scribe, without considering divergent interpretations. Most components or
steps of forgiveness do not include any aspect of forgiveness or resemble for-
giveness. (Expressing anger would be an example.) They often conflict with
forgiveness in form, content, and intent. By contrast, a process of forgiveness
should show forgiving qualities growing on a continuum or developing and
integrating with each other in series.
In depicting a "forgiveness process," the substance of forgiveness should
not be confused with its background conditions, intervening variables, and
the like. Also, inherent features of forgiveness (sufficient and perhaps neces-
sary to the orientation) should not be conflated with typical but dispensable
ones. Such confusions are illustrated below.
The alternatives I offer overlap with many of the features in prominent
"forgiveness" accounts. However, they exclude the actual forgiveness compo-
nents, illustrating the advisability of doing so. If forgiveness is a preferable
treatment or response component, by contrast, then eliminating it would ei-
ther be worse, no better, or no great improvement. This is what prominent
forgiveness advocates must demonstrate.
An obvious point should be kept in mind as we proceed. Alternatives to
forgiveness need not be withholding (unforgiving) or ungenerous. Their case
would be unpromising from the start otherwise. Consider the scenario in
which a friend has suffered a great setback. Instead of commiserating, we send
her or him on an exciting vacation. We are unsympathetic here. We are not
being "ungenerous" with our compassion simply because we are being gener-
ous through our pocketbooks; rather, we are focusing elsewhere. We are re-
sponding in a way that might be more likely to remedy the situation than
share its sorrows. Still, withholding, like intolerance, can be a plus, depending
on the context. Intolerance of rape is obviously called for, as is a withholding
138 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

attitude toward one's body during the attempt. Nurturing a forgiving attitude
at this juncture of such an offense, by contrast, is inappropriate and harmful.
In Utilitarian ethics (which encompass "psychological effectiveness"), we
are advised to do the best thing we can wherever possible. We try to maximize
the good. In daily life, most situations present us with two or three main op-
tions. The best course seems to involve choosing the best among them. For-
giveness usually is pitted against a refusal to forgive or even forget. Here for-
giveness seems clearly the better choice. But rarely should we confine our
choice to the options presenting themselves. The best course is the best
course, whether related to the choice posed or not. Responsiveness is usually
called for in a situation, but sometimes not. Ignoring what "the world" pre-
sents to us so that we might pursue more fun possibilities often is the best
course. While psychotherapists might argue that a "Let's talk this issue out"
approach is best, I would like to argue that "Let's dance a tango and then fly
to Venice" can sometimes be preferable. Flaws aside, providing this outside-
the-box perspective makes any "maximization" ethic of great value to us.
Maintaining this perspective when scrutinizing a conventionally established
virtue is of even greater value because it raises the burden of proof for cham-
pion as well as challenger.

The Faults of Forgiveness

To rate the alternatives to forgiveness I propose, we need first to set its assets
as standards for comparison. A good alternative should liberate users from
the yoke of harbored resentment, empower them in harmful situations and
their lives generally, and bring reconciliation in fractured relationships. It
should at least offer similar advantages within similar functions. An alterna-
tive should also involve fewer costs and dangers. Because any alternative has
its own pros and cons, preferring it to others rests on weighing the seriousness
of deficits in each and the significance of its benefits. No reliable method ex-
ists for doing so, but some attempt will be made.
Psychologically, the drawbacks of forgiveness are obvious. Our attempt to
forgive can cause us to suppress or repress lingering resentments rather than
deal with them. This compounds the problems to be confronted by a course
of psychotherapy, setting back its overall progress. Suppression can express or
fuel denial, pushing back attempts to overcome ego-defensiveness in therapy.
Rather than increasing our empowerment, forgiveness can cause a decreased
sense of efficacy in controlling a situation. This can demoralize us, lower our
self-esteem, and make us more vulnerable to depression. One need not be a
psychotherapist to see the self-deflating potential of being a "sucker" in a re-
lationship or situation.
Yet these are only dangers, and diffuse ones at that. Even when botched,
forgiveness does not itself shape these scenarios (as sufficient cause). Inter-
vening factors must fall in line. If forgiveness is rendered ably, with therapeu-
tic guidance, many such dangers can be avoided. Any approach can be mis-
 FORGOING FORGIVENESS I 39

used as well, forgiveness included. Thus it is the inherent defects or draw-

backs of forgiveness (if any) that should worry us most.
One of these drawbacks is the enormous time and effort it can require
not the forgiveness itself, but the whole process leading up to and through it.
This is hard to see in therapy, as in ethics. After all, forgiving someone can be
a valuable learning experience, nurturing important personal outlooks and
skills. Assuming that good psychotherapy takes several years, adding a long-
term regimen of forgiveness alongside seems quite feasible. Its developmental
phases are of a piece with the psychotherapeutic growth process. But if we
view the great length of psychotherapy as testament to its crude mediodology
and grasp on psychopathology, adding a forgiveness regimen to it seems out-
landish. It adds the insult of a second regimen to the injury of the first, which
drifts aimlessly, stagnates, and even regresses over the course of treatment
and at great financial cost. There are many other perhaps less time-consuming
ways to develop the ethical traits it promises and learn the lessons it involves.
We can nurture them directly, along with those traits that are more centrally
targeted in current social and moral education programs. (So far as I know,
forgiveness has never been proposed as a curricular focus for such programs.)
Even more acute forms of forgiveness, aimed at discrete violations, can
place great "burdens of commitment" on us. (This is important if it is admit-
ted that forgiveness is but one element in so-called forgiveness development.)
It is no easy thing to throttle our rage and then peel off our layers of resent-
ment regarding a serious offense. It is not easy to warm up to an offender,
nurturing a sense of understanding and mercy toward him or her. Forgive-
ness provides legitimate rage and resentment with virtually no place to go.
(Here I refer to the forgiveness component, and not the release of anger com-
ponent, of a so-called forgiveness regimen.) "Merely just" or righteous re-
sponses, by contrast, channels these emotions into demands and stands. A
forgiveness advocate can claim that these other responses are part of a true
forgiveness, just as disbelief, anger and the like are part of a true grieving
process. Fine, one can say anything. But the reality is that disbelief and anger
are prelude to grievingtypical prelude, but prelude nonetheless. They are
not themselves forms of grieving in any way. Likewise, demanding accounta-
bility and compensation is no part of forgiving even if we claim that these
"steps" first move anger to the side and then "trigger sympathy" (at the sight
of an offender prostrate and penniless.)
More serious and inherent problems arise for forgiveness on the ethical
side. This includes the self-responsibility component of the psychological
processes noted above. The most obviously defective tendency of forgiveness
is self-exploitation.

Exploitation
In forgiving, it is not enough to forgo our just deserts and bear the conse-
quences of an offense. We also must proactively do our victimizer good turns,
from good motives. It is hard to see how being harmed could put these added
140 FORGIVENESS INTHETHERAPY HOUR

ethical responsibilities on us or take away those of ethical self-respect. It is

hard to see how putting such added responsibilities on ourselves is an appro-
priate reaction to the offense given and harm done.
Whether our forgiving act is self-liberating, self-enabling, and self-elevat-
ingwhether it restores a cherished relationship or notit may still mistreat
us. Do we not deserve an apology when betrayed or harmed, along with some
recompense? (Forgiveness is not conditioned on it and need not demand it
we need only consult our experience to see this.) Should we not sustain our
sense of being wronged if we do not get the redress owed? And are we not
complicit in our victimization if we let an offense pass or continue an abusive
relationship? Out of fairness to ourselves we should fight an injustice in an
ongoing fashion or discontinue the relationship.
Of course, if an apology with recompense is forthcoming and our victim-
izer pleads for forgiveness as well, we might grant it. But what are we really
forgiving here? (What are we really doing, in fact?) If someone has done all
they could to "take back" the wrong they did us (resolving to forestall future
offense), what offense remains in them? What is there left to forgive?
In some cases, the pluses of a (forgiving) action can outweigh the deficits.
A victim might acknowledge that she is in effect mistreating herself through
forgiving, but might also exclaim, "Look at all I'm treating myself to in re-
turn." Still this need not make forgiveness right, merely justifiable. That is, it
is always wrong to mistreat ourselves, but under some circumstances doing so
might be the least harmful option available.
The sticking point is the wrong or injustice involved. Wrongs are not sim-
ply a matter of bads or harmful consequences. They cannot simply be out-
weighed, along a continuum of benefit, by the good feelings gained from
"using ourselves" in this way. Even just or generous compensation does not
cancel out a wrong. Violating someone's trust or dignity is a wrong in itself.
Its victim is wronged even if she "doesn't mind" or does it to herself. We cer-
tainly can give ourselves permission to mistreat ourselves and get away with it
without complaint. But we should not give or use that permission.
I assume also that we have duties to ourselves. These derive in part from
the general prohibition against using an autonomous person as a mere ob-
ject. An ethically adequate stance toward oneself must maintain the per-
spectives of subject/agent and object/subject simultaneously. We cannot as-
sume that because we are freely using the same self being used that we are
respecting our autonomy as recipient. Our recipient self, rather, is being
used as a mere means whose assumed consent to this treatment is ethically il-
legitimate if "autonomous" otherwise. Kant (1964) himself saw that this
way of thinking might render generosity an inherent form of injustice and
so dismissed it outright. But why is generosity not unjust if there are not
more others than the self in a situation, or no better reason to help one other
person than to help ourselves? The choice of "other" is arbitrary here and
discriminates against ourselves. (Psychotherapists are well aware that many
of us find it easier to love and do for others than for ourselves.) Our sense
that such kindness is noble and that self-interest is undue selfishness seems
 FORGOING FORGIVENESS 141

based on a perhaps Christian prejudice against self-pride and toward sacri-

fice for its own sake.
A forgiveness advocate might argue, "But true forgiveness involves venting
one's anger, getting apologies, holding offenders to just account, and the like
first. So our eventual acts of forgiveness are not self-exploitative." Yes, fine.
But why exactly are these prerequisites to nonexploitative forgiveness any
part of forgiveness? Is it because you or the forgiver see it that way, possibly in
retrospect? What other conceptual renderings of these processes, or their di-
vision into several processes, have been tried? And why are the ultimate for-
giving acts recommended preferable to other actions we might take at that
point, including letting the matter drop?

unresponsiveness

A second ethical concern is whether forgiveness might fail to respond appro-

priately to the situation at hand. Forgiving someone is responsive to some as-
pects of a wrong done and its perpetrator. These are what it pardons, after all.
Forgiveness also is expressive of personal understanding and a generosity of
spirit that we might strive toward generally and in this case eventually. But at
best these are secondary responses, not directly attached to the action itself or
its objectionable quality. Forgiveness more or less ignores the wrong as
wrong. And this puts it out of kilter on all frontsethical, psychological, and
interpersonal.
Forgiveness may (or may not) heal a fractured relationship, but it forgoes
a transformative process that a relationship should go through before healing.
It forgoes various positionings that a betrayed friend or injured colleague
should maintain relative to the offending party, moving from victimization
upward. Some of these will itch and be painful, like the healing of a physical
wound. And some may seem to make the offense worse before it gets better.
When accusations are made and borne, bitterness expressed and heard, both
parties can feel worse. So can the initial rejection of admissions made
"That's not sufficient; it's too little too late."
These "negotiations" must preceed healing, it seems. Psychologically they
clear away aspects of the infection and the infecting agent of offense. A sin-
cere apology requires truly admitting to ourselves what we have done. Ad-
mitting to the victim is not enough. Sincere forgiveness requires a similar flir-
tation with the options and a clearing away of shadows. Only when we have
freed our bad feelings, allowing them to vent, can a pardon come fully from
the heart. But venting bad feelings is not a form of pardoning, and the nasty
interactions compatible with the reposition process I imagine here may pre-
clude pardoning completely.

Presumption and Hegemony

A third ethical concern is raised by the sometime arrogance of forgiving. For-

giveness indeed can be met with derision or offense even when asked for. This
142 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

reaction seems the height of perversity, treating full-hearted generosity with

shameless disdain. But ridiculing reactions may reflect a dark side of forgive-
ness that grateful reactions miss. It may be a hidden arrogance in forgiveness,
not nobility, that fuels its personal empowerment, and this may be worri-
some in therapy.
Forgiving someone presumes the power and authority to forgive. This ele-
vates the forgiver relative to the entreating recipient. In asking forgiveness of
us, others put themselves in a disabled position and we realize this potential
for them when forgiving. (Some forgiveness advocates hold that forgiveness
requires a sense of equality, but this runs in the face of common experience.)
Contrast this "uplifted" response with one that uplifts. "You do not need my
forgiveness; all the resources and ability you need to handle this situation re-
side in you." In forgiving, we do not show this sort of respect or generosity.
Instead we "save our entreator's soul" by fiatwith a wave of our hand. At
least we can forgive in this way.
True, forgiving requires great inner struggle, often battling demons of ha-
tred and resentment. We may have only the kindest of intentions, hoping to
relieve guilt and regret with a forgiving balm. But while these inner processes
deserve credit, the way we are showing them (in orienting to and treating our
recipient) bears scrutiny.
The very concept, "fore-give" signals presumption and preemption. It
does not require negotiation or mutual decision, but can preclude them. No
necessary sharing of perceptions is involved, no course of communication
that comes to mutual understanding, no necessarily joint evolution of a solu-
tion. We sometimes are free to add these practices to our forgiving process,
but we do not need to. A forgiver summarily pardons the offense involved,
sometimes before "getting into it," and its offensiveness is then supposedly
gone. Sometimes we do not even think to add relational features to our for-
giveness. Consider forgiving someone in the privacy of our heartsor in the
co-conspiracy of a therapy session. Here we are doing something with our-
selves only, for ourselves. It can be a masturbatory virtue in which we may use
another as a fantasy object. (Many forgiveness advocates recognize these
points and shape their conception of "true forgiveness" to handle them. But
here I am talking of actual forgiveness.)
Even when asked, how can we grant a request to forgive? What makes us
think that it is within our purview? We can say, "Let's just forget it," or "Let
it pass." We can promise to overlook the offense or not hold it against some-
one: "You and I are fine." But we cannot really forgive what the offender did,
or that he did it. We can not forgive its being done to us or the harmful im-
pact it had. A time machine would seem necessary for that, but, paradoxi-
cally, it would in fact preclude forgiveness. So are we then forgiving the rift
between us, or our offender for having created it? A joint process would seem
necessary for thatfor repairing or advancing the relationship.
Behind the sincere self-effacement of the forgiving act, then, lurks a kind
of structural smugness. (Recall the composer Salieri in the film Amadeus, for-
giving his fellow asylum inmates for their mediocrity as he wheeled past.) As
 FORGOING FORGIVENESS 143

a narrativist might effuse, being divine, forgiveness resists our attempt to ar-
rogate its power and brands us with the sin of pride.
Religious instances often are held up of innocents forgiving their con-
demning enemies or executioners as they go off. ("Forgive them for they
know not what they do.") This seems the noblest of acts when we focus on
the compassionate self-expression involved. But doing so ignores the ongoing
miscommunication involved. Typically the offenders in question have not
asked for forgiveness; it is the last thing they want. They see what they are
doing as right and noble, thus there is nothing to forgive. The act of forgiving
them does not appeal to their conscience, nor even try. It does not show the
slightest consideration of their perspective on the matter. Rather, it presumes
to judge their possibly righteous position unilaterally as a crime. To allow for-
giveness to be thrust on them in this way, the offenders would tacitly be ac-
cepting this judgment. They do not.

Alternative Responses

The alternatives I now present are designed to be less limited in scope and ap-
peal than forgiveness. Thus they start with an edge. Four alternatives are
notedranging from minimalist to lush. Only one is analyzed compara-
tively in any detail.

Focus Facing Up

In the Focus Facing Up approach, the victim vents her legitimate anger, re-
sentment, and incredulity on the offender. This is done in the least harmful
way possible. The aim is primarily to show him what he has done, spurring
his regret. She then may either depart, to continue her diatribe later, or con-
tinue, trying to mollify her rage in the attempt. Eventually she discusses dif-
ferent ways of interpreting the offense with the offender. This acknowledges
that she may be exaggerating the wrong and harm done, but also that she may
be underrating it. The victim now waits for signs of penitence, including
apologies and explanations. Where they are not forthcoming, she makes a re-
quest and demands them if necessary, asking that the offender face up to
what he has done and take his medicine. She also expresses her doubt that any
form of compensation can be sufficient and that she does not trust her of-
fender to come through. Finally, she specifies a schedule of compensation
that he might undertake. If he keeps to schedule she relents, beginning to
credit his efforts and accept the prospect of reconciliation. If he does not, she
perhaps breaks off the relationship (or forgoes further encounter), noting
that his failures are responsible. But he still owes her for what he did.
It would be remarkable if such a hard-nosed response could rival forgive-
ness. It certainly trumps forgiveness on the justice or righteousness dimen-
sion, helping the victim pursue "proper revenge." But it has the potential for
additional harm to both offender and victim. (In the latter case, a few might
144 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

see her coldness as "bringing herself down to his level," allowing the offense
to offend twice. That is, it makes her act less humanely than she normally
would.) Being so hard-nosed could lead to guilt and a sense of self-doubt or
self-deflation. This could lead eventually to blaming herself or excusing the
offender for his crime. This approach is less likely to bring out the best in
either party or foster reconciliation between them. In fact, its demanding
quality may sabotage the attempt, causing the offender to be defensive and
self-justifying. Most striking, this approach lacks generosity of forgiveness on
any level. It is far from admirable, and it lacks poignancy at every turn.
While it is difficult still to assess the overall pros and cons here, let us as-
sume that this response can not rival forgiveness. Doing so provides a bench-
mark against which to assess other alternatives. However, we must recognize
that any "merely just" response to an offense can be amended by acts of gen-
erosity elsewhere. We hold our offender accountable because of his offense.
This makes sense. But then we show understanding and helpfulness to oth-
ers, because they need it and are innocent of offense. There is no reason to
think that we must cover all moral bases in a single response to a single indi-
vidual. If holding accountable is the appropriate response to offense, then
understanding and charity is the appropriate response to need or suffering.
And we should bifurcate our response, not mixing up the two contexts.
Even devout Christians recognize the bizarre quality of meeting offense
with kindnessturning the other cheek or being a good Samaritan to rob-
bers. But we can indeed turn the other cheek of ethics here by putting the
generosity of forgiveness in the hands and hearts of those who call out for
help and understanding. Everyone gets what they deserve in both ethical
senses, fairness and benevolence. Great good is done where it is most needed
and with typical poignancy. And we can feel very good about ourselves for
what we have done. Despite the drawbacks remaining, this bifurcated ap-
proach can cause the minimalist Facing Up approach to rival forgiveness, or
come close. But again, this requires more detailed analysis.

Focus Compensation

In the Focus Compensation approach, I assume that the offense committed

is recognized as regrettable by both offender and victim. I assume also that
the offender is seeking to be "let off the hook." Seeing this, the victim sug-
gests that she does not have the power to erase or excuse the offense. It is also
inappropriate that she be asked to take the lead in setting things right. She
notes, however, that gestures of apology are welcome, especially if they reflect
clear and concerted attempts to compensate for harms done. This provides
credibility to expressions of regret and requests to be forgiven; they "earn" an
offender the "right" to ask. And if his earning is sufficient, it eliminates the
need to ask. To match the poignancy of forgiveness, this alternative requires
artful communication. The victim must show her devastation in being be-
trayed or violated. The penitent offender must show true pain at the sight of
 FORGOING FORGIVENESS 145

the pain he has caused. Then pledges must issue from both sides regarding
their sincere openness to reconciliation.
While more likely to rival or surpass forgiveness than "facing up," this al-
ternative remains unilateral in form. The victim holds all the cards and sets all
the ground rules. If reconciliation is achieved it is hers, not theirs. Let us
move straightaway then to a variant of this alternative that removes this
shortcoming.

Focus Partnering

Through Focus Partnering, the response works from both sides as a form of
interaction. The offender starts by merely informing the victim that he
deeply regrets his offense, but recognizes that his mere presence may be nox-
ious to the victim. He may ask if he should stay away for a certain period be-
fore coming back to hear her out, apologize, and try to make amends. He
makes it clear that he deserves to be told off in no uncertain terms, perhaps
even screamed at. He admits also that no apology is sufficient and there may
be no way to make up for what he did. At a subsequent encounter, the of-
fender again asks permission to communicate with the victim. Apologies
and explanations flow in profusion and a request is made to make amends. If
the victim is open to this, some ways of compensating are suggested and
solicited.
In this scenario, the victim shows an initial reluctance to talk, making her
devastation and the rift created clear. But she does not hastily vent her anger
on the offender. She agrees to an eventual meeting to talk. There she com-
municates to the perpetrator the negative impact of his offense and the range
of reactions she had to it. She expresses her anger, resentment, and disbelief
that he could do what he did. Then she holds him to account. He begins by
saying that there is no justification and likely no sufficient explanation of his
behavior. But he tries his best to convey his own insights into his offense. He
agrees with the victim that his explanations are poor and incomplete and
conveys her dissatisfaction. The offender solicits other negative feelings she
may have, all the while listening intently, showing understanding, and bear-
ing the brunt of her negative feelings.
The offender asks whether the victim is now open to considering ways he
might show his regret and prove his resolve to make amends. He then pro-
poses things he might do and asks for the victim's suggestions. She listens in-
tently, expressing some dissatisfaction and skepticism and some willingness to
go along. They then jointly set the conditions for making amends. She also ac-
knowledges that it is not impossible for things to be set right and for their re-
lationship to continuethough she cannot imagine it at present. From here,
the victim monitors the offender's attempts to compensate. She expresses
recognition or appreciation when they are sizable and tries to be won over by
them. The victim might even ask help from the offender in pursuing this
cause. The pair continues from there, perhaps to reconciliation, perhaps not.
146 FORGIVENESS 1N THE THERAPY HOUR

This alternative response evolves the sort of generosity and benevolence

found in forgiveness. But its basis is not self-discretion. Rather, legitimate
self-expression and joint understanding ground it, along with just deserts
when the offender carries through. A wider range of goals is achieved in this
focus than in forgivenessholding the offender to account, venting anger,
and the like. Both parties are afforded the opportunity to do good and be
generous, which opens the door to poignant interchange. Should their efforts
succeed, forgiveness would be rendered unnecessary.
We turn now to an alternative response that takes a totally different tack.
It suggests how rich the field may be for supplanting forgiveness with better
responses.

Focus Elsewhere

In the Focus Elsewhere approach, the victim vents about having been sorely
mistreated, with a focus on "cooling down" or "getting over." The key aim
here is in easing the offense's grip so that its injury is not repeated and per-
petuated through victimization. In dealing with the offender, she gives short
shrift to the offense, suggesting that he do the same. They agree to partner in
the attempt. The victim offers an assessment of where things stand now and
seeks one from the offender. She then notes where they stood before, citing
how much has been undone by the offense and how much might never be re-
covered. This serves many purposes, including "just revenge" or "rubbing it
in." It is important that they get a joint view of where they are now starting
back from and that the victim sets these parameters initially.
Since they can not undo the past, the victim suggests that they look ahead
instead and start moving forward, either apart or together. Victim and of-
fender discuss plans for setting out with a clear sense of limits. (There is no
going back, no chance at full restoration.) Still, they focus on how to turn dis-
advantage to advantage. What has this rupture taught them? In what ways
had they fallen into relationship previously, falling into mutual trust as well,
rather than building it? And how can they proceed more carefully now, ac-
cording trust as it is merited?
This approach sidesteps the formidable problems involved in recovering
lost relationship or lost innocence. It is duly partnered and thus likely to pro-
duce a variety of promising strategies for moving ahead. It pulls for optimism
and builds on any that comes forward. It also has the potential to either re-
capture what should be maintained or create something better. The victim
holds onto her sense of injury here, starting out. "Looking forward" does not
imply "looking away" or "ignoring." No therapeutic regimen of self-transfor-
mation is required, and no transformation that occurs is found chiefly in
imagination or fantasy. The focus is on practice, and joint practice at that.
Focus Elsewhere provides many avenues for sublimating the initial dynamic
of anger and resentment. This helps prevent it from festering in the victim
and wrecking further havoc on the situation. Where this does not happen,
specific plans can be laid to deal with it as a pair. The offender is held to ac-
 FORGOING FORGIVENESS 147

count through indirection, in piecemeal fashion, making responsibility-tak-

ing more palatable. The victim can reap compensation (of a "get-back" sort
simply) by placing limits on their plans. "What you did to us makes this nec-
essary." And trust can build between victim and offender as it is earned.

Making the Case

We now take up one of these cursory comparisons with forgiveness in detail.

Hopefully this provides an inkling of how a full account would go forward in
this one area. I believe the final alternative, Focus Elsewhere, is strongest; thus
I'll "argue for" Focus Partnering instead. Showing the superiority of a less than
optimal alternative to forgiveness makes the case for alternative responses
stronger.
Our standards for comparison fall into four main groups: (1) the positive
goals of forgiveness that Focus Partnering must approach or accomplish;
(2) the flaws in forgiveness that Focus Partnering avoids; (3) defects in Focus
Partnering that must be rebutted; and (4) additional assets that Focus Part-
nering achieves while forgiveness does not.
The Focus Partnering approach achieves the chief goals of forgiveness as
follows.
Self-Liberation. This focus allows us to liberate ourselves from harbored
resentments in a straightforward, proven way. We vent our legitimate griev-
ances in a context designed to get them heard. This improves on the inner
"mental-enactment" liberation provided by forgiveness in most contexts. It
offers actual liberationinterpersonally effective liberation. Focus Partner-
ing also preempts the many dangers of denying, suppressing, or harboring re-
sentments. We do not forsake our interests or feelings for the sake of "being
done with it" or reconciling.
Sympathetic Understanding. Focus Partnering nurtures a joint sense of un-
derstanding through negotiation between the victim and offender. Different
perceptions are shared and consensual interpretations reached. This is the sort
of interplay most likely to spur empathy between them. Both understanding
and empathy are earned here through joint effort. They thus have greater
meaning and worth for both victim and offender. By contrast, forgiveness can
occur without any mutuality or negotiation and is often considered most
noble in this form. A recipient need only accept the pardon granted, if that;
he need not understand why it is granted or learn from its bestowal. He need
not even admit his offense or grasp the harm he caused. (Forgiveness advo-
cates might not wish forgiveness to proceed in this way, but it does.)
Self-Empowerment and Esteem. Though Focus Partnering shares power
between the victim and offender, the victim stands up for herself from the
first. And she continues to do so all along the way. She pursues her expecta-
tions across the full range of legitimate claimsinterpersonal responsibil-
ity, self-respect, accountability for harm, and just recompense. Indeed, in
Focus Partnering, the victim has the offender stand up for her as well. The
148 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

forgiveness orientation is less self-assertive and more other-enhancing, for the

most part. Still, the staunchness of this focus does not preclude giving and
generosity, far from it. The victim shows herself open to suggestions from the
offender, willing to listen and talk with him, and willing to try out various
prospects. She even reaches out to him for help in increasing her generosity of
spirit as they go, but her generosity partners with offender merit. Both just
and benevolent orientations are fully served in this focus. As the offender re-
pairs the rift he has created in their relationship, the victim's generosity rises
accordingly. The generosity of this focus shows itself in the way in which it
can be grounded on some improvement in the relationship. This in turn fos-
ters trust. As compared to being forgiven his offense, earning his way back in-
vests the offender in the resulting relationship. The victim is less likely to be
taken advantage of as a consequence.
Each of these factors is likely to boost self-esteem for the victim. She does
not give in or give up, yet she gets to give. Forgiving, by contrast, surrenders
control, especially in an unresolved situation. (The fairness factor is in-
evitably unresolved.) This all but guarantees that the victim takes advantage
of herself. Doing so ferments self-doubt and self-disappointment: "Why do I
do these things to myself?"
Forgiveness, by its faults ironically, makes a stronger showing than it
should in this area. As noted, forgiveness can be issued unilaterally and pre-
emptively. Thus it can seize control of a situation for the victim more firmly
than partnering can. It is certainly self-empowering to resolve a conflict by
pronouncementwith a wave of the hand. But this additional "divine" qual-
ity of forgiveness seems anything but desirable.
Benevolence. While Focus Partnering allows for generosity, forgiveness
clearly overflows with it. Holding someone to account and demanding one's
due are not generous-minded practices, whether they lead to forgiveness or
not. They judge, they accuse, they make the offender squirm. And they may
set off cycles of defensiveness and mutual recrimination. Asserting what is
right and fair often conflicts with kind-hearted sentiment. For this reason
Focus Partnering can not compete with fairness on this dimension judged on
its own, but it can claim an ethical edge overall. What Focus Partnering for-
goes in do-gooding, it more than makes up for in fairmindedness and self-re-
sponsibility. To see this, imagine rating these two alternatives across the main
categories and standards of ethics. While Focus Partnering makes a strong
showing in each, forgiveness all but defaults (or can default) in the areas of
fairness. Recall that benevolence has two sides, kindly intent and good effect.
Focus Partnering promotes great benefits even when it is being demanding
and showing self-regard. Recall also that yielding benefits can not compen-
sate sufficiently for doing wrong. This includes the wrong of letting oneself
be taken advantage of, or assisting in the process. Forgiveness does not simply
surpass just deserts in "going that extra mile," but forgoes it. It veers to one
side of the path, leaving the other untrodden.
Poignant Reconciliation. Forgiving someone or being forgiven can be a
deeply moving, life-changing experience. A tearful, long-wished-for reconcil-
 FORGOING FORGIVENESS 149

iation can hold more meaning and value than perhaps any other encounter in
human affairs. This is another divine quality in the character of forgiveness.
This admitted, being forgiven also can be experienced as a joke by the recipi-
ent of such forgiveness. Much of the drama here may come from taking
things too seriously. Surely much of the drama comes artifactually, from the
coalescence of "many things leading up to" something or from the surprise
sprung. The climactic, peak experience achieved is less about forgiveness it-
self than the way the encounter played out, in which it was embedded.
Much of the meaning and value we ascribe to the forgiving reconciliation
derives from a presumed mutuality in the reconciling process. In forgiveness,
however, this mutuality is often more presumed than actual. In Focus Part-
nering, by contrast, it is the focus. Mutual negotiation is not likely to produce
a moving peak experience, crystalizing perhaps years of process and effort
preceding it. It is work, not drama. It resolves itself gradually with many frus-
trations along the way. However, it promises many insights and emotional
movements, achieving real understanding and relationship as it goes. For-
giveness itself cam rarely boast of such accomplishments. It may do nothing
for a relationship except create a false impression that one exists or has been
resurrected.
The deficits avoided in Focus Partnering include exploitation, unrespon-
siveness, and presumptive hegemony. Focus Partnership seems designed to
avoid the deficits of forgiveness. Joint decision making is an ideal antidote for
unilateral choice. Calling an offender to task is ideally responsive to the of-
fensive part of an offense. So is seeking compensation. And obviously if we
"get ours" in all these ways, we are not allowing ourselves to be exploited.
These points need not be belabored. It is still worth emphasizing that while
forgiveness seems to surpass "mere justice," it only does so on one of two
major dimensions. Like any form of benevolence, it has goodness covered.
But it doesn't really go beyond the call of duty because duty has two many
faces-one turned toward goodness, the other turned toward fairness. For-
giveness often flouts duty or responsibility while stretching its benevolent
wings, going too far and not far enough simultaneously.
There are some possible deficits of the Focus Partnering approach. Con-
sider a worst-case scenario for Focus Partnering: Initially the victim is un-
yielding, unwilling even to talk to her offender. He is made to grovel despite
his gestures of apology and offers of recompense. Her unresponsiveness to his
overtures are meant to hurt him, to drive in the needle of guilty conscience,
to "make him suffer as I suffered." Rather than eventually responding to his
initial overtures, she makes him come begging again, seeking her permission
simply to discuss the terms. This discussion is used to "let him have it" with a
barrage of angry and exaggerated accusations. Defensiveness results, leading
to heated argument and greater alienation between them. The victim could
have been at least understanding initially, if not generous. She could have vol-
unteered motivations that she herself has harbored in the past that might pre-
cipitate such an offense. Instead, she is defensively self-aggrandizing. She in-
sists on an accounting, on making the offender "feels her pain." Through
150 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

focus partnering, though the offender hears her complaints, bears the brunt
of her bitterness, and apologizes abjectly, the victim is still not satisfied. She
still lacks the generosity of spirit to excuse the offense, demanding her pound
of flesh instead.
This scenario seems appropriately if exaggeratedly negative, raising far
more faults with a compensation strategy than were raised against forgiveness
above. I present these faults summarily because each may seem weak on their
own. And I respond summarily to them as well. First, Focus Partnering must
concede the problems noted as dangers. Some of them are serious dangers,
such as taking out resentments on an offender under the guise of simply ask-
ing for an explanation. In my experience, this danger is more serious than,
say, the self-recrimination following the hasty forgiving of an offense. Espe-
cially within an ongoing regimen of forgiveness, the act of forgiving helps us
"forget" our anger and retire our resentment. Jumping the gun in forgiving
someone leaves vestiges of self-doubt and blame. But these typically dissipate
if not obsessed upon. The "demand" quality of just deserts, by contrast, fuels
anger and resentment and the likelihood of acting out on it.
I offer three grounds for tolerating these dangers and preferring Focus
Partnering. The first is that we can not forgo justice, engaging in self-ex-
ploitation. And Focus Partnering seems among the best of the justice alterna-
tives. It is far preferable to take precautions against these dangers in a re-
sponse than commit the great sin of injustice.
Ethics is an inherently dangerous business, especially on the justice side.
Taking a righteous stand is taking, in part, a negative stand. It inevitably tram-
ples on some people's feelings. Fighting for justice, even in defense of justice,
is still fighting. Expressing resentment, legitimate or not, is a noxious affair,
filled with unsavory intentions and likely harms. Likewise scolding is bad, in-
ducing guilt and shame are bad, and punishing is bad whether it is legitimate
or not. Moreover, each of these ethical measures are liable to misuse and
abuse. History is filled with misguided and punitive moralism of this abusive
sortindeed, with murderous and perhaps genocidal moralism. No wonder
a benevolence focus is so perennially admired in ethics and called for time and
again by the most enlightened, mature, and well-intentioned among us.
Moralism is the fault here, not justice, and it can be targeted directly. We
can fashion righteous duties and rights to be as gentle and kindly as possible.
We can supplement moral education with explicit warnings against moral-
ism. Specific strategies can be offered for "combating" it. This is preferable to
deserting justice for forgiveness.
There is a ready remedy also to the underwhelming generosity of Focus
Partnering. Be more generous. We can always add generosity to the way we
reconcile with our offender even if this means going outside the reconcilia-
tion process. It is usually most appropriate to ply our generosity elsewhere,
outside the now-damaged relationship.
Second, the potential harms of seeking compensation are lightat least
light enough not to constitute wrongs. Thus in an injurious situation, risking
them is usually justifiable. Of course, we can not assess the relative credibility
 FORGOING FORGIVENESS 15 I

of this second rationale without knowing the offense we are dealing with. But
in general, being taken to task seems "small change" relative to an offense
grave enough to call for forgiveness. It is also "small change" relative to con-
spiring in one's own further exploitation.
A third more controversial ground is that the victim should rightly take
some revenge on the offender, or at least feel free to. The offender "merits" it
as part of just punishment and compensation. True, such "retributive pun-
ishment" itself borders on revenge. And "revenge" has about as bad a reputa-
tion as one can find within the ethics arena. But I believe this reputation is
undeserved and opposition to it disingenuous. In a nutshell, here is why. All
parties to this one-sided ethics debate accept just punishment. Regardless of
the grounds they choose to justify such punishment (deterrence, rehabilita-
tion, correction), they invariably opt for methods that inflict unnecessary suf-
fering on the offender. When asked to justify this tendency, they seem to rec-
ognize that suffering some of the pain they have caused is necessary to truly
understand what they did. It seems morally incumbent on us to "help" an of-
fender to understand this, thus stirring up regret and the desire to make
amends. Visiting this suffering on the offender also assures victims that he
understands his crime and its impact and probably feels guilt and repentance
as a result. The more typical (Kantian) assumption is that an offender wills
punishment on himself by choosing to violate rules of cooperation he clearly
accepts. Our correctional system merely carries through for him, executing
his will where he falters. This redirects his action, in a sense, to meet the
golden ruleallowing him to be treated (by himself) as he is willing to treat
others. I have never seen a satisfactory overall argument for retribution. And
I am very compelled by the view that we have no grounds for hurting an of-
fender but the perverse hope of "sinking to his level." Still, there seems an in-
herent, intuitive validity to the notion that has never been satisfactorily ex-
plained away. An offender deserves to be offended back and to suffer. And
those he has offended should be the carriers of this justice.

Conclusion: Unique Advantages to Focus Partnering

Focus Partnering affords two main sets of advantages that forgiveness cannot
claim. First, unlike unilateral forgiveness, it fulfills all the expectations and re-
sponsibilities of just regard and deserts, allowing the requisite rights and lib-
erties to be exercised. These ethical measures also provide a psychological
boon, allowing victims to vent frustration and resentment, to attain satisfy-
ing explanations, to hold those responsible to account, and to be proactive in
a system of victimization. Second, the Focus Partnering alternative to for-
giveness allows us to cover the full range of pressing concerns, especially
major ethical concerns. At the last, an adequate response to offense must be
fairwith all that fairness implies regarding self-respect and the likeas well
as benevolent. Foremost, it must be minimally fair. Otherwise it is objection-
able, perhaps intolerable, in a way that undergenerosity is not.
152 FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR

References

Enright, Robert D., & Richard P. Fitzgibbons (2000). Helping clients forgive: An em-
pirical guide for resolving anger and resolving hope. Washington, DC: APA Press.
Enright, Robert D., Suzanne R. Freedman, & Julio Rique (1998). The psychology of
interpersonal forgiveness. In Robert D. Enright & Joanna North (Eds.), Explor-
ingforgiveness(pp. 4662). Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Holmgren, Margaret R. (1993). Forgiveness and the intrinsic value of persons. Amer-
ican Philosophical Quarterly, 30(4), 341-352.
Kant, Immanuel (1964). Groundwork for a metaphysic of morals, H. J. Paton (Trans.).
New York: Harper & Row.
Part 111

CULTURE AND CONTEXT

IN FORGIVENESS
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 eight

Women, Abuse, and Forgiveness:

A Special Case
Sharon Lamb

In the first edition of The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgive-
ness, Eugene Fisher, one of the guest essayists in this amazing collection,
writes that when the dying Nazi asks forgiveness of the Jewish concentration
camp prisoner, he commits yet another sin. Fisher suggests that the enormity
of the crimes against the Jews makes it unethical to put a burden of responsi-
bility to forgive on any Jew. In this intriguing book, Simon Wiesenthal asks
philosophers, authors, Jews, Buddhists, and Christians to turn over the ques-
tion in their minds about whether a remorseful Nazi ought to be forgiven for
his crimes against humanity and individual Jews. Some of the writers advo-
cate forgiveness for the peace of mind of the Jew or for the greater good of civ-
ilization. Some, though, say that the suffering of the Jews was so great, the
damage so huge, and the crime so horrific that it is understandable why a Jew
could never forgive.
Herein we have some of the strongest arguments against forgiveness
some sins are too great; some requests for forgiveness do more damage than
good; and there are special cases or groups to whom, given historical circum-
stances and the particularity of their position in a culture, we ought not to ad-
vocate forgiveness. In this chapter, I examine women as one such group, a
special class of victims and potential forgivers. I consider them not in relation
to crimes of oppression per se but in relation to acts of violence and abuse
perpetrated by men. In choosing this topic, I realize that the crimes against
Jews and the crimes against women are not completely parallel. I also want to
note that the majority of crimes of abuse and victimization against women
have not been equal in horror to the crimes of Nazis against Jews, that some
women victims have only experienced mild abuse whereas some have experi-
enced torture. I use the Nazi example so that I may discuss women as a class
of people, like Jews, who may have some particular reasons not to forgive.
I also want to make the point that for the purposes of this chapter I refer
to nonrepentant wrongdoers, those who have not apologized, shown re-
morse, or made reparation. I choose to limit my discussion to these hardest

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cases for forgiveness to challenge one aspect of forgiveness counseling that

most proponents of forgiveness agree on. This is their claim that forgiveness
is more than a self-help strategy; it is a gift, though not a pardon, to an of-
fender. While it would go too far to say these authors are disingenuous in
their claims, their writing and examples demonstrate that in many ways, to
advocate the use of forgiveness in psychotherapy, their arguments must be
based on the good it does the individual rather than the good it does for soci-
ety or for another person. In so arguing, they do portray forgiveness as a form
of self-help. If forgiveness theorists do indeed see forgiveness as a form of self-
help, it makes sense to look at whether there might be better strategies for
self-help for women who have been abused.
Concerning women, and particularly women who have been abused, the
idea of offering forgiveness toward unrepentant perpetrators in an effort to
help a woman free herself from anger is dangerous and plays into deep stereo-
types of women's "essential" nature, stereotypes that have been harmful to
women in the past. Opening the heart to a perpetrator who is unrepentant,
although not a pardon, is extremely close to one and too consistent with the
perpetrator's own worldview that allows him to excuse his behavior. I am
concerned about recent trends in psychotherapy that put an unfair burden on
women to forgive their abusers. There is a cultural context and history of
women as an oppressed class that makes urging them to forgive different
from urging men to forgive.
For a person to forgive another for the harm that person has perpetrated,
the victim not only needs the self-esteem to do so (Holmgren, 1993), but also
the autonomy, or what I prefer to call agency. I would like to explore how cul-
tural pressures to be "nice and good," as well as the devastating effects of
abuse, combine to make such agency less likely. And if forgiveness is coerced
in anyway, if it is not an expression from an autonomous agent, there may be
something about it that works against a woman's psychological and moral
best interests.

Advocating Forgiveness in Therapy

As in many psychotherapy movements, proponents advocate the use of a

strategy or technique, or, in this case, a set of goals or steps to pass through
that will relieve a person of suffering. The suffering to be relieved is some-
times referred to as anger (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000), resentment
(Fitzgibbons, 1986), ruminative thoughts, the inability to let go, or, even
more pointedly, the desire but inability to forgive.
While supporting the idea that improved mental health is a crucial bene-
fit of forgiveness, theorists specifically argue against what they call a "self-
help" version of forgiveness (Enright, 1998; North, 1998). One of the leaders
in the advocacy of forgiveness as a therapeutic tool, Robert Enright, tries to
differentiate forgiveness from self-help, writing that forgiveness is "more than
a gift to the self" (Simon & Simon, 1990); it is more than just making our-
 WOMEN, ABUSE, AND FORGIVENESS 157

selves feel good. Enright and others claim that forgiveness is also more than
just doing away with negative feelings such as anger toward the offender or a
wish to retaliate (Enright, Freedman, & Rique, 1998; Flanigan, 1992; North,
1998; Yandell, 1998). To these theorists forgiveness is more than ceasing to
be angry, forgetting, and tolerating; it definitely is not excusing, pardoning,
or reconciling. But what is left to the definition once you peel away all these
associations? What is left is a vaguely expressed view that is perhaps best de-
scribed in imprecise terms like "love" or, a "gift," thus making it difficult and
curmudgeonly not to support an act of love, a freely chosen gift to another.
Although most forgiveness advocates see forgiveness as helpful to the for-
giver, they also emphasize that the force of forgiveness is ultimately other-
directed. Enright writes that forgiveness is not only the giving up of resent-
ment, hatred, or anger, but also the taking up a stance of love and compassion,
even when the forgiver understands that the offender has no right to such
benevolence (Enright, Eastin, Golden, Sarinopoulos, & Freedman, 1992;
Enright, Gassin, & Wu, 1992). And although Beverly Flanigan (1992) em-
phasizes forgiveness as a path to mental health, she also see it as a transaction
in which a wounded person "reopens his heart to take in and reaccept his of-
fender" (p. 11). All argue that such an opening of the heart does not require
that the offender acknowledge the wrong, show remorse, or make amends.
And all argue that opening the heart to the offender does not mean pardon-
ing, excusing, or even forgetting the crime. All do indeed hope that such com-
passion will make the offender repent and do better in the future. Once again,
this interpersonal and social perspective is one that countries or cultures or re-
ligious groups might want to support for social good; it is hard not to support.
But traditionally psychotherapy has focused on the individual in society and
directed its purposes toward changing the individual.
Almost all these definitions of what forgiveness actually is involve an in-
ternal change in the forgiver that is other-directed (an offering of "moral
love," a reopening of the heart). DiBlasio and Proctor (1993), theorists who
use forgiveness as a psychotherapy tool, see forgiveness as "an act of the will
. . . to let go." For phenomenological theorists, forgiveness is not so much a
decision but a surprise to the victim: "Experientially, however, the moment of
forgiveness appears to be the moment of recognition that forgiveness has al-
ready occurred" (Rowe et al., p. 235).
Where these authors fail in their attempts to describe forgiveness as some-
thing more than self-therapy, however, is when they claim that forgiveness is
other-directed even when the other is not repentant, even when the other does
not admit to his wrongdoing, and even when the other is dead. Thus, al-
though these authors would vehemently disagree that forgiveness is merely a
path to mental health, this is an essential way in which they persuade others
of its benefits; they cannot argue that it restores relationships (as in reconcili-
ation) or persuades another to do better next time. As a gift, it has no strings
attached. Without the self-help argument, they can only persuade a person to
forgive because forgiveness is a virtue and because it helps society, but not be-
cause it will benefit the individual.
158 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

Those who advocate unilateral forgiveness may be somewhat disingenu-

ous when they claim it is not primarily for the self. Why else would they
argue forgiveness needs so little from the offender, and why else would En-
right develop what is called a "therapy" program to teach forgiveness to only
the wounded, one-sided programs very different from mediation or reconcil-
iation programs? While definitions proclaim forgiveness as "interpersonal"
and a "gift," much of the discussion on forgiveness in psychotherapy clearly
show it to be something we do for ourselves and our own mental health.
Studies that involve teaching forgiveness or helping clients to forgive re-
port gains in physical and mental health (Coyle & Enright, 1997; Freedman
& Enright, 1996; Pettit, 1987; Salovey, Rothman, Detweiler, & Steward,
2000). Positive emotions can also motivate health-relevant behaviors and
elicit social support (Salovey et al., 2000). Psychologists also report the
restoration of a feeling of personal power (Fitzgibbons, 1986; Smedes, 1984).
Coyle and Enright (1997) who studied men hurt by their partner's abortion
decision show that after forgiveness intervention the men feel less grief and
anxiety, but not less anger. In a study of an intervention with college students
who had been hurt by their parents, there were improvements in self-esteem,
hope, and attitude toward the parents, though not in present anxiety or de-
pression (Al-Mabuk, Enright, & Cardis, 1995). These studies of forgiveness
intervention do not isolate what it is about the process of forgiveness therapy
that actually makes a difference in people's lives. But they seem to imply that
the worth of forgiveness is in its ability to relieve or prevent symptoms or in
how good it makes a person to feel.
Theorists often use personal case histories and individual stories to sup-
port this view (see several chapters in McCullough, Pargament, &Thoresen,
2000, as well as Enright and Fitzgibbons, 2000). Flanigan (1992) and
Freedman and Enright (1996) all write of the enormous sense of release that
is felt once someone chooses to forgive. McCullough and Worthington
(1994) warn that if a person does not forgive, it is possible "the hurt in-
curred by the client will continue to affect the client" (p. 3). They even go so
far as to argue that before counselors advocate forgiveness, they should make
sure that the client's "motive for forgiving is to achieve the positive benefits
of forgiving and not revenge or self-righteousness, which only exacerbate
negative emotions" (p. 8). This warning points again to a self-help motive in
forgiving.
Many of the examples these theorists use of people who have not forgiven
or who need to forgive are people who are clearly in need of some mental
health help, the implication being that these are the people most in need of
forgiving. They are usually people who are obsessed with their trauma or
wrongdoing and think about their perpetrator day in and day out. For exam-
ple, Joanna North (1992) describes a woman who was assaulted and robbed
on her way home at night. At first she felt angryand rightfully so. Later we
see that the incident has "affected every aspect of her life. . . . She feels anx-
ious, nervous, depressed, suspicious, and mistrustful. . . . She has allowed the
original attack to dominate her whole existence, indeed, we might say to de-
 WOMEN, ABUSE, AND FORGIVENESS 159

fine her very existence. Its effects live on and thrive, because she cannot let go
of the pain, cannot forgive the man who attacked her" (p. 18).
Within this short description, we see the author imply that forgiveness of-
fers a person a way not to feel "anxious, nervous, depressed, suspicious, and
mistrustful," that it is a path toward mental health. It is also implied that
anger can lead to these other more debilitating emotions. The description
even controversially implies that this woman has made a choice to feel bad:
she has "allowed" it to happen and is responsible in this way for the effects of
the attack on her own mental health. This latter point is not altogether inac-
curate because we often do hold people responsible to get help or seek out
some form of therapy if they are disturbed in such a way that they might hurt
someone else. In this light, if we apply this same moral principle to the self, it
makes sense to hold someone morally responsible for seeking out therapy so
that they do not hurt themselves further. Reinforcing this obligation to the
self plays down the passivity of the victim and encourages a victim to see her-
self as an agent so that she might recover some of the agency she has lost be-
cause of the attack. (See Lamb, 1996, 1999 for a full discussion of victims
and agency.)
There is a problem, however, with a view that holds a victim responsible for
her inability to forgive; it implies that she is not only responsible for seeking
help to rid herself of negative emotions but that she is essentially responsible
for her emotions. The last line from North's description is ambiguous on this
point; the effects of the attack live on in her client because "she cannot let go
of the pain, she cannot forgive." If "cannot" means "unable to," that is perhaps
most accurate. But forgiveness advocates perceive forgiveness as a choice and
speak of not forgiving as a "refusal to let go" (DiBlasio, 1998, italics added).
There are several different psychological explanations for why this
woman has become depressed, anxious, and mistrustful that hold her
slightly less responsible and have little to do with her inability to forgive.
Perhaps she was uncomfortable with the amount of anger that she felt after
the attack and felt guilty and ashamed about such strong feelings. Surely her
socialization as a woman has taught her that anger is an unacceptable emo-
tion. (See Lutz, 1990, or Cox, Stabb, & Bruckner, 1999, for a discussion of
anger and women.) Perhaps she had been attacked as a child, and this recent
attack brought back old feelings and memories that were never resolved and
now need to be addressed. If so, the current perpetrator is bearing the weight
of other perpetrators' attacks. Perhaps the victim's reaction is physiological.
Research shows that with sudden and traumatic attacks, when a person feels
her life is in danger, there is a biological reaction that is hard to get rid of af-
terward (Foa, 1997; van der Kolk, 1999). Forgiveness advocates imply that
these sequels of abuse and trauma are perpetuated by the client's inability
to forgive.
They also imply that victims' reactions are excessivethe attack "domi-
nates" a woman's life and invades "every aspect" of her existence. Who is to
say, however, how much grief is normal after a loss or how much anger, fear,
and mistrust is appropriate after an attack? While psychologists generally try
160 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

to relieve people of their discomfort, there are some situations in which dis-
comfort (anxiety, depression, fear) is appropriate and beyond the control of
the individual, at least temporarily. Those theorists who advocate forgiveness
often make judgments that the person who can't forgive, can't let go, and can't
give up resentment have gone too far in their resentment. In this way, advo-
cates of forgiveness seem afraid of anger and strong feeling. "Release from
anger" and all other negative emotions is central to their definitions.
I agree that when a person is consumed with anger he or she is usually not
happy about it. But is forgiveness the only way to be released from anger? A
victim might find release from anger by embracing it. Some therapeutic
modalities suggest that the deep experiencing of emotion rather than resis-
tance to it can bring release and relief. In the play Death and the Maiden by
Ariel Dorfman, the main character harbors fears, anxiety and thoughts of re-
venge against the man who captured her and only finds satisfaction in her re-
venge. Care (2002) brings up the interesting idea that individuals have dif-
ferent temperaments for forgiving, different constitutional capacities for
resenting and forgiving. While forgiving may bring about peace of mind to
one, only retaliation may bring satisfaction to another. Rowe and his col-
leagues (1989), who have researched forgiveness through in-depth interviews
with adults, have found that even when apologies were forthcoming, these
apologies did not typically enable people to forgive. Forgiveness, instead, was
something people did for themselves.
Suzanne Freedman and Robert Enright (1996) designed a therapy group
for incest survivors who said they would "never forgive." However, it is im-
portant to note that they each entered a therapy program specifically adver-
tised as designed to help them to forgive. Six of the women went through the
therapy process and six were wait-listed, going through the process after the
first six. All of the participants in the end chose to forgive, and all of them felt
better afterward. Psychological tests indicated that they felt less anxiety and
less depression. But we will never know whether it was forgiveness that did
the trick, for all of them also went through a process that most good therapies
would provide. They all were made to feel that their anger was fully justified
and were encouraged to express and own this anger rather than project it
onto another. They also all were encouraged to think about the perpetrator as
a human being, and why he did what he did. That they all successfully went
through these stages of therapy tells us that we don't know what was die key
to their recovery. Perhaps it was an earlier pre-forgiveness stage that did the
trick. Maybe it was even the stage that allowed the women to feel and own
their anger in a safe place that brought about the outcomes of less anxiety and
depression. Maybe it was the stage of therapy that asked the women to un-
derstand the perpetrator; in so doing they may have been better able to blame
themselves less and the perpetrator's act may no longer have seemed person-
ally directed at them.
Not everyone who has been wronged harbors intense negative feelings in-
definitely toward their perpetrators. Through time passing, understanding
the randomness of an attack, and even through other life experiences, an old
 WOMEN, ABUSE, AND FORGIVENESS 161

wound can be forgotten or occluded and a perpetrator removed from a pow-

erful position in the psyche. The forgiveness psychotherapist might argue
that the person who forgets an old wound or an old perpetrator is unhealth-
ily defending against the wound, but there are mature and immature de-
fenses. Denying his or her pain would be an immature defense and one less
likely to be successful. Understanding and accepting pain is more mature.
Maturity offers a variety of nonforgiving solutions for dealing with people
who have wronged us and dealing with past traumas. Forgiveness psycho-
therapists ask that the potential forgiver try to view the perpetrator as sepa-
rate from the bad act. But why focus on the perpetrator, especially one who
hasn't shown remorse? One can attain mental health by seeing oneself as sep-
arate from the act, and as separate from the victim who once suffered. One
can see oneself as the person who is now "different," who has moved beyond
but who still remembers. Some might argue that this is one aspect of forgive-
ness, but it is not forgiveness by definition and it does not require a conscious
decision to forgive.
An individual can experience a lessening of symptoms through the natural
processes of responding and reacting to wounds. Anger lessens, grudges dis-
appear, the offender seems different, less capable of having done that prior
act. Sometimes a bad act loses its significance because good deeds, warmer
feelings, and a sense of a changed character crowd it out. Sometimes a person
grows, deepens, softens, gains insight, and comes to feel differently about the
offender. Thus there are other ways to help the self overcome anger and other
ways to loosen the bond to the person who has caused the harm than through
forgiveness.

Forgiveness as a Gift to Society

Before considering women as a special case for nonforgiving, one other claim
made by forgiveness advocates needs to be addressed. This is the claim that
forgiveness, and for that matter, love and compassion, make a better world
for everyone and encourage better behavior in wrongdoers. Whether or not it
helps the self, it is the moral thing to do. For the purposes of argument, let us
say that forgiving does not even provide release and that there is evidence that
people who forgive might never feel better. Then why might a person want or
need to forgive?
For a start, religious reasons. We are all familiar with the Christian view
that we forgive others because we would want to be forgiven ourselves, be-
cause we are all imperfect, or because we act like Christ when we forgive oth-
ers and follow his teachings which advise Christians to love their fellow
human beings and forgive. Christians write that forgiving has spiritual effects
and restores a person's relationship with God (McCullough & Worthington,
1994). But then are we not doing something for ourselves, making ourselves
into the kind of person we want to be by acting like Christ, reconfirming our
own goodness? Thus we reconfirm that quality of self-help.
162 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

What about the reason to help civilizationif we all acted with more
compassion, the world might be a better place. But couldn't compassion
come about without forgiveness? Surely there is the possibility that someone
might feel empathy toward a perpetrator and still not forgive him. While em-
pathy and compassion are noble sentiments that encourage good acts, I'm
not sure forgiveness is the best pathway.
What about forgiveness as a way to help the other person move toward a
place where he might be repentant or remorseful, where he might be able to
look at himself and his character and make changes. Empathy has great
power to help someone in that way, and compassion toward perpetrators
is crucial if we want to help them engage in self-reflection and make some
difficult changes in character. But those, once again, can be offered without
forgiveness.
Most forgiveness advocates claim that a person can forgive someone they
never see, even someone who is dead. How would this kind of forgiveness
help the world at large? A transaction with someone not listening or not re-
sponding is indeed something we do only for ourselves.
When forgiveness is offered to someone who is nonrepentant, who may be
listening but is listening for some words that might support his own view that
what he did was not wrong or not so bad, the forgiver's act serves as a form of
pardon. Does it not say to the pardoner, "I don't care what you do about your
own bad deeds from now on, because I understand why you did them and
forgive you for that"? When a perpetrator does not apologize, show remorse,
or make reparation, what is the purpose of the forgiver opening her heart to
him? To help him to change? But if he refuses to see the harm he has done or
take responsibility for it, doesn't the forgiver give him reason to believe he is
pardoned? Under these circumstances, could we call forgiveness anything but
self-help? Perhaps. We could call it a shot in the dark that it may, against
many odds, reform a wrongdoer.
Compassion toward wrongdoers is lovely and can be a motivator for the
wrongdoer's self-examination and change. But there is something about for-
giveness advocates that says to me that they don't like complex feelings and
won't tolerate ambivalence. This is clear in their refusal to see compassion
without forgiveness as a viable alternative to forgiveness. The purpose of most
therapy is to understand ambivalence and not to do away with it. Can't a
wronged person feel both resentment and compassion?

The Special Problem of Anger for Women

Women in our culture have particular problems with ambivalent feelings, es-
pecially with negative emotions like anger. Women in particular are in danger
of forgiving prematurely or overlooking offenses (Forward, 1989). Socializa-
tion practices teach young girls to place a high priority on the resolution of
conflict, healing wounds, and repairing relationships. Gilligan (1982) has
pointed out women's tendencies to preserve the relationship even at the ex-
 WOMEN, ABUSE, AND FORGIVENESS 163

pense of their own individual rights, citing this as a different moral virtue,
one of "care." The demands on individual victims to forgive are bound
up with traditional notions of what it means to be a "good girl" or "good
woman" in which anger and resentment are suppressed (Becker, 1997), and
the needs of others are put before the needs of the self. Krestan and Bepko
(1992) have argued that wives of alcoholics, recently under criticism for
being "enablers" of their husbands' alcoholism, are simply doing what they
were brought up all of their lives to do: take care of their husbands, protect
them, and try to meet their needs.
Nietzsche (1969) warned against forgiveness as "sublimated resentment."
Along these lines, women's forgiving can be a way of avoiding confrontation,
confrontation with the injurer but also with their own anger. This kind of
forgiving has been called "pseudo-forgiveness" (Enright, Eastin, Golden,
Sarinopoulos, & Freedman, 1992), and while forgiving may protect a valued
relationship, it may also damage it by not requiring accountability from the
injurer and not acknowledging remaining anger which may emerge in subtler
ways later on (Forward, 1989). Women who do forgive their husbands their
battering are often abused again and continue to fail to protect themselves
and their children. This is an aspect of the battered women's syndrome
(Walker, 1984).
Trainer (1981/1984) developed the idea of "role-expected forgiveness,"
which is the act of lower-power individuals offering forgiveness to higher-
status individuals without any attitudinal or emotional change toward the
offender. She found that such role-expected forgiveness led to increased
anger in the forgiver over time. However, McCullough & Worthington
(1994) argue that Trainer's scales are weak. Furthermore, the idea that an in-
dividual can know whether or not status plays a part in their willingness to
forgive is naive. But Carol Tavris (1982) offers the point of view that a
woman's anger becomes a problem when she is in a position subordinate to
the person she is angry at. Likewise, forgiveness may be an easy way out of
this problem.
Women who forgive too easily may not be showing enough self-respect
the philosopher P. F. Strawson argues that if we do not resent the violation of
our rights, then we do not take our rights very seriously (1974). And Jeffrie
Murphy in "Forgiveness and Resentment" (1988) sees proper resentment as a
way to support the moral order. Feminist movements to "take back the night"
and teach the public that a woman "never deserves to be hit" have helped
women recognize rights they did not even realize they had.
Bonnie Burstow (1992), writing about sexual abuse survivors, brings up
the issue of anger. She writes that "by treating forgiveness as necessary, thera-
pists effectively pathologize anger, close down the survivor's own process, and
reinforce social messages" (p. 140). Karen Olio (1992), also writing about sex
abuse survivors, identifies the myth advocated by some therapists that "for-
giveness makes you a better person." She adds that this myth reflects a fear
and misunderstanding of anger as something damaging to the victim without
distinguishing anger itself from various options for expressing it.
164 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

Arguments for forgiveness that aim at a release from anger are aimed also
at a kind of conformity over what "mental health" in women has been defined
as. Psychological research has long showed us that women who are angry and
resentful are viewed by the mental health profession as unhealthy (Becker,
1997; Burstow, 1992). Gender conformity then is "met" when a woman for-
gives her wrongdoer and lets go of resentment, even at the cost of self-respect.
With these role expectations, can we tell the difference between pseudo-
forgiveness and the sincere forgiveness that arises from self-respect and ac-
ceptance of anger as a part of who we are? I would argue that the letting go of
anger and resentment that is a part of so many definitions of forgiveness is in
and of itself unhealthy for women. Forgiveness professionals play into stereo-
types of the "good" woman when they help her to experience her anger and
then move beyond it. Instead, the integration of anger and aggression with
their identity, even as a compassionate, caring person, is ideal for women who
have been brought up in this culture.
Also, it is clear that forgiveness advocates make some moral judgment
about those who "refuse" to forgive. A female victim's character may be im-
pugned because of her response to a wrongdoing, when the victim herself did
not do wrong. There is more of an obligation for women in this culture to
forgive because it supports their role in society. Those who deviate from role
expectations are generally judged harshly.

Victim as Noble Creature

The role of the victim is a special role for women in this society. It is true that
women are victimized in greater numbers with regard to rape, sexual abuse,
and battering than men. However, it is also true that there is something about
the role of the victim in our culture and the discourse on victimization that
elevates victims into "noble" creatures, "survivors." Janice Haaken (1998)
writes beautifully on this topic, claiming that for women who have been de-
nied the authority to define their past, victim narratives give them moral
authority to speak. This agency is granted only within the "role of the vic-
tim," which seems to support women staying in this oppressed role. Being a
victim affords a woman an instant purity and sympathy, if not martyrdom,
and all too often the public has trouble with victims when they do not live up
to this idealized standard.
The victim-offender dyad is set up as a dichotomythat one is evil, the
other pureand this takes place in the narratives of our time in exaggerated
form (Lamb, 1996, 1999). Claims to victimization are always challenged on
grounds that the victim was not pure (she invited the man to her apartment;
her prior sexual history; prostitutes cant be raped.) Victims are sensitive to
these issues, thinking of themselves as blameworthy when they do not con-
form to idealized standards of the pure and innocent victim, and portraying
themselves in rape trials as more weak and feminine than they really are in
order to influence juries (Konradi, 1996).
 WOMEN, ABUSE, AND FORGIVENESS 165

When a sex offender apologizes, it can be an act of power with which he

manipulates a victim, playing on her notion of herselfas well as her need to
see herselfas good. Especially when a woman has been harmed, a perpetra-
tor's sincere apology pulls at our own inclinations to expect and require for-
giveness from a victim. To maintain her role in the dichotomy as the "good
one," the victim will need to forgive and show compassion. It would not be
consistent with her victim role to be angry, resentful, and retaliatory. (She
may, however, at times through anger be able to prove that her wounds are
too immense, her suffering too great.) Rarely is anger considered an appro-
priate response to a sincere apology. An apology offered by an offender who
ultimately has power over the injured party, for example an incestuous father
apologizing to his daughter, brings with it even more pressure for forgiveness.
Forgiveness psychotherapists warn against forgiving a person in order to
assume some kind of moral superiority to the other (Ausburger, 1981; Cun-
ningham, 1985). But these authors see attempts at power as conscious, willed
acts and do not address inherent relationships of dominance and subordina-
tion. If we take a more postmodern view of power as present in all discourse
and reinforced by institutionalized practices, we might see that forgiveness
embodies a power relationship.
Can a person in a subordinate position forgive someone in a dominant po-
sition without reinforcing that subordination? The power that authors talk
about is some kind of "inner strength" or internal power to not allow the per-
petrator to rule her anymore. In their advocacy of forgiveness, psychothera-
pists see "letting go" of resentment as no longer letting the perpetrator have
power over the victim. The relationship that is restored is thus not one of
equality, but of turning the tables and saying, "You no longer have power over
me." When victims say, "You no longer have power over me," they are also
saying, "I have a certain kind of power over you and that is to forgive you, to
see you differently than before, to not allow you to bother me anymore."
I am reminded of the good men who argued against the suffragettes say-
ing, "Why would you sweet ladies want the vote when you have so much
more power in the home? Through your femininity you can get your way,
through the cradle, through love and compassion, these are the ways that
women work." When women exchange this kind of power for the power of
anger, when they threaten retaliation, seize their rights, and overthrow unjust
practices, are they not just imitating what's least noble about men, taking on
their worst attributes? In this scenario, where would letting go of resentment
have gotten women? For women, refusing to be angry historically has kept
them in a position of subordination; realizing and acting on anger has led to
greater rights and freedoms.
This is why forgiveness as an act of self-help may be in some way immoral.
The act of incest, the act of rape, the act of battering is not just a personal in-
sult, it is an insult to all women and makes it more dangerous for all women
to exist in the world. One might ask why might a Jew condemn another Jew
for forgiving her Nazi torturer? Some would say it is none of her business. But
the act of forgiveness is not just interpersonal, it has social repercussions and
166 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

can be representative of more than an individual's emotional well-being.

Although a woman may think she is speaking for herself, her words affect
all women.
Forgiveness advocates have argued that individual acts of forgiveness con-
tribute to the world, making it a better place. But could they not contribute
to society also by weakening solidarity in groups where members have a right
to be angry, a right to feel resentment? When examining these actsgiving
up resentment and offering forgiveness independent of a perpetrator's re-
morse, apology, or reparationon a larger social scale, it is more difficult to
see what good unilateral forgiveness might bring. Wrongdoers who do not
change, and yet are genuinely forgiven? What moral good would that do
for society?

Women's Responsibility for Relationships

Why is it that we have so much trouble with the woman who will not forgive?
Do we feel as unsympathetic to the black man who will not forgive white
people, even if he himself has been distinctly advantaged in comparison to his
ancestors? Do we feel unsympathetic to the Jew who will not forgive the Ger-
mans? Perhaps. But if we do, I think it is to a lesser degree than we feel lack of
sympathy for the hard-hearted woman.
This expectation that women will be more compassionate has been helped
along by women's own acts and commitment to an ideal of caring. Women
have been forgiving men their sins for years, without requesting remorse, repa-
ration, or damages. What is meant by the phrase "boys will be boys"? What is
meant by "enabling" the alcoholic? What is meant by understanding men's
sexual lack of control? Haven't we heard that in divorce mediation, women get
the raw end of the deal, and that they're better off with aggressive lawyers? In
terms of the good of the greater society, has there been any proof that such a
strategy by women, if indeed we can call it a strategy, has reduced the amount
of gender-based violence or harm? In fact, there probably is proof for the con-
trary. Has there been proof that such compassion enables men to take respon-
sibility for their acts? There is probably more proof for the contrary.
The deep moral question in advocating forgiveness for women is the rela-
tionship of forgiveness to responsibility. As noted earlier, forgiving as defined
by forgiveness advocates requires no change from the perpetrator, it requires
no apology, and it requires no response from the broader community. One
may ask that if it only is represented as a change of the internal state of the in-
dividual forgiver, how does it restore relationship? It takes place only at the
expense of women's realistic vision, and the resulting unrealistic vision, a psy-
chology of optimism, hope, and love has kept women very vulnerable. Per-
haps morally superior, but certainly vulnerable to future attacks. It has kept
them reading self-help books rather than marching in the streets.
On an individual basis, what does it really mean to not forget and not par-
don but to keep your heart open to another? If that other person does not re-
 WOMEN, ABUSE, AND FORGIVENESS 167

form, if that other person does not begin to take your perspective into ac-
count, it does not promise mental health but instead continued abuse. The
promise that love restores relationship has been a problem for women who
believe that battered men will stop battering, problem drinkers will stop
drinking, and philandering husbands will stop philandering. Forgiveness
means that the relationship continues and no grudge (if possible) is harbored,
that the wife will not seek retaliation for the harm done her.
What does it mean to the person forgiven? How does a wrongdoer who is
unrepentant experience "forgiveness"? Baumeister, Exline, and Sommer
(1998) write that forgiveness is often experienced by the nonrepentant as a
pardon. He suffers from no more recriminations except those he makes to
himself. He is, in effect, allowed, if he can, to forget.
When an offender begs for forgiveness, what exactly is he asking of the vic-
tim? What is the act of "begging for forgiveness" really except a plea for par-
don? It is a plea that the victim not be angry any longer; that he or she show
hope in his promise to change or to do better; and that the injured believe in
the existence of a good inner character, separated from the offender's bad acts.
Any of these expectations seems to be asking too much from a person and too
much of a lone verbal act"I forgive you."
It would seem that it is entirely possible to have compassion for an of-
fender, even your own offender if you have been abused, and not be willing to
forgive. While it may be difficult to live with such ambivalent feelings, this is
the human condition. Relationships can be, in part, restored, yet there can be
problems with trust; an injured party can simultaneously love and resent
someone close to her who has injured her.

Advocating Apology

We must step back from this whole discussion in the end and ask why is it
that psychologists are so inclined to advocate forgiveness rather than apology.
Why is there little media attention to the value of reparation? What about the
idea that forgiveness is something a person must earn? Why are there not sev-
eral multistep programs in existence that lead people to apology, to remorse,
to reparation?
It is easier and more pleasant to work with victims rather than perpetra-
tors. Marital therapists have known for years that a lot of the therapy work
gets done with the women when they can get their husbands to come in. It is
hard to even get husbands in the door. And let's face it, it is harder to induce
guilt and remorse (negative emotions) in men who batter than to invite love
and compassion (positive ones) in women who have been harmed.
Programs that advocate remorse and apology do exist, but they do not exist
within the framework of psychotherapy, which traditionally cares only for the
individual and not the culture as a whole. The Truth and Reconciliation trials
in South Africa is one such example where forgiveness is not necessarily a
demand, and ambivalence is embraced. The Restorative Justice programs
I 68 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

developing in several states ask perpetrators and victims to meet in a way that
raises expectations more of the offender than the victim, but also offers vic-
tims some relief through perpetrators' sincere efforts to make reparations.
But what then shall we do with the victim whose offender will not apolo-
gize, show remorse, take responsibility, or make reparation? How can this
person heal, deal with the anger and resentment, or process ruminative
thoughts? First, this person should feel that the culture supports her in her
lack of forgiveness; she should be told that forgiveness is only one of many
options and that it might even lead her to foreclose on important areas of per-
sonal growth if she chooses to move in that direction. Second, the wounded
individual should understand that her anger is entirely acceptable and not a
stage through which one passes. Anger and resentment could be presented as
part of our human responses to being injured, negative feelings that we learn
to live with and through which we grow. Third, loving compassion to the vic-
tim can help her live with her own injuries as well as the negative feelings
such injuries bring about. It fights against the self-blame and shame that the
culture in other ways encourages, through our beliefs that the victim either
must in some part be to blame or that she needs to reaffirm her goodness
through acts like forgiveness.
If we really want change in offenders, and I think this is a nobler goal than
helping clients to forgive, there is no need for forgiveness, only compassion.
Compassion is essential to aid those who are willing and ready to engage in
self-reflection and face the horrors of what they did. Compassion is different
than forgiveness, and ambivalence is the key. The hatred of the victim re-
minds the wrongdoer of the act and the harm he did, whereas the love from
the victim reminds him that although he cannot undo that harm, he can be
different. Forgiveness advocates seem to want two things: (1) that the person
with resentment is released from their inner turmoil; and (2) that the person
who is wronged not lose compassion for the wrongdoer. Both, it would seem,
can be achieved without forgiving the wrongdoer. The first is achieved
through time and space, creating for the person some distance from the act of
harm, going on to live a good life, really, perhaps "forgetting" in a way. The
second can be achieved through caring for the wrongdoer's soul or character
whether or not he is remorseful. In a world that welcomes ambivalence, nei-
ther of these require the giving up of resentment. In the special case of
women and forgiveness, of those who have been through rape, incest, batter-
ing, and betrayal, learning to live with their anger and resentment, to even
embrace it, may be the healthier response, whether or not it includes the kind
of compassion that may (and yet unfortunately may not) change the heart of
the perpetrator.

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 nine

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

Psychoanalytic and Cultural
Perspectives on Forgiveness
Janice Haaken

In the summer of 1999, I had the opportunity to visit refugee camps in

Guinea to interview women who had fled the civil war in Sierra Leone. As I
talked with women about their experiences of the wara brutal conflict that
raged on in the countryside of Sierra Leone despite a tenuous peace accord in
placediscussion turned to the meaning of forgiveness. Some women
stressed the importance of forgetting the past and looking to the future. "We
have to put it at our backs," one woman insisted. "If you dwell on the past,
the trauma will never leave you. The way we do this is by engaging in activity
together, by working together." Other women stressed remembering as vital
to the project of recovery. As one of the sisters at a center for child soldiers ex-
plained, "We have to understand why this happened to us. If you do not deal
with the past, it will never leave you." While these prescriptive statements
seem contradictory, I came to see them as a necessary contradiction. In the
refugee camps, children and adults came together to create theater reenacting
and reworking memory of the war. But they also taught each other skills and
found creative ways of remembering the positive side of the cultural past. Re-
membering meant recovering the good as well as the bad within the past and
finding collective means of "holding" the trauma.1
Talk of forgiveness also led to the issue of how responsibility for suffering
should be socially distributed. For Sierra Leonean women, identifying the
enemythe perpetrators of the wardefied the individualist categories that
prevail in Western discourse on forgiveness. Women struggled with the ques-
tion of who to hold responsible as the primary perpetrators of this war. Is it
the young men and boys who joined a violent rebel movement and turned
brutally on their own communities? Is it corrupt government officials who
made deals with foreign governments and investors while turning their backs
on their own people? Is it the International Monetary Fund, the institution
that forced the government to lay off a third of its public sector workforce
just prior to the outbreak of the war? Is it the continuing impact of colonial-
ism? Is it the international diamond trade and the global economysystems

172
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 173

that extract raw materials from Africa without building the productive capac-
ities of its peoples? While women differed in where they placed most blame,
there was considerable agreement that the villainy behind the war was not
readily located. Some of the perpetrators of the war were more easily identi-
fied than others. But social understandings predominated over individual-
istic ones as women struggled to find some transcendent feelings of hope to
bridge the unbearable suffering and trauma they and their families had en-
dured atop the war that was still all too present, and some semblance of hope
for the future.
In reviewing the mental health literature on forgiveness on my return from
West Africa, I was struck by the extent to which typologies and categories
distinctions between premature, intentional, decision-based, arrested, and
other types of forgivenessdominate the discourse. Classification is, of
course, a means of ordering and making sense of the world. But classification
systems also may serve as a defense against unsettling areas of ambiguity. The
social science literature is a fertile ground for generating categories, which
may easily be confused with real understanding. Forgiveness, like love, is sug-
gestive of the noble and the good, just as hate, revenge, and violence evoke
their opposites. We know that television violence and hate crimes are bad,
just as we know that positive role models and helping behaviors are good. In
psychological research, there are specialists in good behaviors (such as social
support, prosocial behavior, helping), just as there are specialists in the bad
(such as violence, child abuse, stalking). But these social scientific categories
and their associated moral loadings are not so readily cordoned off into spe-
cialized functions when we enter into the complex matrices of human en-
counters. Indeed, the concept of forgiveness suggests a disturbing uncertainty
about how to transform the bad into good.
In striving for a more dynamic approach, this essay takes up a series of
dilemmas associated with forgiveness and explores them from psychoanalytic
and cultural perspectives. My use of psychoanalytic theory bridges individual
and collective experience, moving from psychological processes associated
with forgiveness in psychotherapy to cultural dynamics shaping contempo-
rary discourse on reparation. In moving from individual dynamics to group
life, I also explore the cultural implications of forgiveness as a "feminized" po-
sition and how contemporary discourses on forgiveness signify shifts in the
cultural choreographing of conflict resolution.
There are several metatheoretical concepts that distinguish psychoanalytic
approaches from other therapeutic models. The literature on forgiveness is
particularly dominated by cognitive approaches, which stress conscious, in-
tentional processes of mind (See DiBlasio, 1998; Sells & Hargrave, 1998).
These models assume a contractual approach to resolving conflict, with the
aggrieved party adjudicating the terms under which a guilty party may be re-
leased from an emotional debt. Psychoanalytic approaches, on the other
hand, direct attention to unconscious processes. The concept of the dynamic
unconscious suggests a realm of mind resistive to the demands of external re-
ality, particularly to demands that conflict with infantile fantasies and desires.
174 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

The term infantile in the psychoanalytic tradition is not necessarily pejora-

tive. Rather, it suggests that advanced psychic structures rest on older, deeper
structures of the self. Various schools of psychoanalytic thought share an em-
phasis on the unconscious as that aspect of mind that is pushed to the mar-
gins, particularly by the operation of conventional codes and normative
ideals. In other words, the unconscious refers to those objects of conscious-
ness felt to be most alien to whatever constitutes the "I," the phenomenolog-
ical self. The unconscious is prelogical, organized around reversals, transfor-
mations, and oppositions to what Freud termed the "reality principle," the
guiding principle of ego functioning.
Psychoanalytic approaches to therapy focus on how responses to conflict
are overdetermined by a complex array of associations from the past, specifi-
cally those associations formed through early attachments. The emphasis is
on the rich generativity of mind and the disjuncture between the imaginary
and the "real" in the interpretation of events. This need not imply a limited
focus on individual experience. Indeed, collective life includes group psycho-
logical processescollective forms of subjectivityexpressed in language,
discourses, and defensive practices.
I would like to avoid at the outset any pronouncement about whether for-
giveness is good or bad, a virtue or a weakness. Rather, I suggest that the func-
tion of forgiveness depends on how it operates within in a wider arena of
human dramas. In other words, without a signifying frame of reference, the
term is devoid of useful significance. From a psychodynamic perspective, this
frame of reference includes a range of developmental and psychic factors as-
sociated with moral conflict. Distinctions in the literature between "mature"
and "pseudo-forgiveness," between illusory forgiveness and the genuine arti-
cle, have some bearing on a psychodynamic discussion (see Scobie & Scobie,
1998; Sells & Hargrave, 1998; Walrond-Skinner, 1998). Certainly these dis-
tinctions suggest that one state of mind may conceal or defend against an-
other state. But drawing firm boundaries between "good" and "bad" forms of
forgiveness may foreclose important areas of ambiguity. Indeed, the assump-
tion that there is a true or ideal state of genuine forgiveness leaves aside much
of what is interesting about the problem: The coexistence of baser and nobler
human impulses is at the heart of much of the worried discourse on forgive-
ness. Separating the wheat of genuine forgiveness from the chaff of its inferior
versions obscures the rich complexity of those human situations that initiate
the call for reparation.

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Forgiveness

and Reparation

When we look at the phenomenon of forgiveness psychoanalytically, we are

less interested in the act of forgiveness than we are in the process of getting
there. The literature on forgiveness pays scant attention to internal processes,
even though there are ample caveats concerning premature forgiveness,
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 175

which implies a problematic foreclosure of conflict (Lamb, 1996; Walrond-

Skinner, 1998). This relative inattention to internal processes is particularly
surprising given that reaching a state of forgiveness is generally recognized as
requiring considerable expenditures of emotional work (Walrond-Skinner,
1998). Indeed, many writers consider forgivenessas a frame of mind based
on a modified mental representation of self and otherto be the develop-
mental prototype of later capacities for flexible, adaptive mental structures
(see Finn & Gartner, 1992). For example, the wronged party may invoke
memories of having committed similar transgressions, or she or he may try to
remember the good side of the person seeking forgiveness.
In turning to the problem of forgiveness through the lens of psychoanaly-
sis, we are concerned with developmental processes, with self and object
(other) representations, with unconscious motivations and defenses, and
with the narrative structure of the story. The focus is less on the state of for-
giveness than it is on those self-object representations enlisted in getting
there. Psychoanalytic theory is concerned with the development of psychic
structures, and particularly with how self and object representations are inte-
grated over time into mental functioning. Love relationships seem to be par-
ticularly vulnerable to a reawakening of the powerful emotional currents of
early life, with their associated dependencies, ambivalences, and archaic (all
good/all bad) self-object representations.
In assessing therapeutic issues related to forgiveness, the focus would be
on the relative complexity and flexibility of subject positions available to the
patient. What is the cast of characters in this particular dramaturgy of the
self? Who is being forgiven for what, and how does the cast of characters or-
ganize or modify some important aspect of the patient's relational world? In
listening to the patient's story in psychotherapy, the therapist would be at-
tuned to how the patient arrived at this state and with what psychological
functions it serves. Over time, the therapist would try to assist the patient in
developing a richer, more complex, and flexible internal world of representa-
tional resources. The patient who always is let down by others, never feels un-
derstood or appreciated, or constantly needs to be right confronts particular
obstacles in situations calling for forgiveness. For such patients, the therapist
would attempt to widen the scope of consciousness, identifying motifs, plots,
and subplots that open up new possibilities for understanding the relational
world. Therapy would focus on moving beyond rigid, stereotypical scripts
that limit her or him to the position of playing one part in the drama of life.
As a subjective response, forgiveness may emerge as an imperative of the
social egothe system of internalized mechanisms for negotiating con-
flictor as a directive of the more morally charged realm of the superego.
Whereas the social ego reconciles adaptive interests and competing demands
on the self, there is a sense of "oughtness" to the superego mode of voice, with
some diminution in self-regard for resistance to its influence. For example, a
battered wife might override her own feelings of outrage and return to her
husband, compelled by a chorus of internal and external voices reminding
her of her duties to her children, the importance of loyalty and endurance,
176 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

and so forth. It is misleading to view such acts as masochistic in that they

often involve living up to moral ideals, even though the ideals invoked exact
a high price.
The positions of transgressor and victim also may be transposed in situa-
tions where group life imposes on the victim an ethic of forgiveness. Failing
to forgive, the victim may be viewed as lacking in moral virtue (Lang, 1996).
Some superego dictatesthose organized around a psychologically primitive
social order of moral absolutescan be quite ferocious, particularly those
fortified by authoritarian cultural or religious practices. The more archaic
moral order of a primitive superego plays a role in nurturing many revenge
fantasiesthose images of violent retribution that maintain a destructive
hold over psychic life long after disputes have been formally settled.
Schools of psychoanalytic thought differ in how they interpret moral con-
flict, even though they share an emphasis on the potential throughout life for
a revival of early, archaic conflicts. Freud broke with static social scientific
categories when he focused on ambivalence as the prototypical attitude of in-
fancy, explaining how a loving object of attachment may be readily trans-
formed in psychic life into an object of bitter hatred. From a Freudian per-
spective, human psychic suffering is intimately bound to the discovery of an
emotional affinity between opposite states of mind. A corollary of this view is
that healthy functioning depends on the development of capacities for man-
aging the tensions that opposing feelings arouse.
Ego psychologists in the Freudian tradition focus on drives, wishes, and
impulses and their defensive management, with particular attention to super-
ego dictates. From this perspective, many neurotic conflicts involve an exces-
sively harsh or demanding superego that may be based on identification with
powerful authority figures. Superego demands are sometimes acted out self-
destructively in excessive inhibitions and self-reproaches, and sometimes ex-
ternalized in a readiness to punish others for imagined or real transgressions.
While an unforgiving superego may be the heir of internalized social codes, it
also may be influenced by the child's internally generated anxieties over pro-
hibited desires. The Oedipus story captures many of the elements of this pro-
totypical drama, with the unconscious wish to kill off the powerful father and
the fantasy of a recaptured pleasurable union with the mother the central nar-
rative motifs.
Psychoanalyst psychologists in the object relations tradition are less apt to
see the human psyche as inherently prone to destructive reactions and are
more apt to view internal dramas centering on revenge as born of actual be-
trayals or traumas (Herman, 1992). From this perspective, a compulsive readi-
ness to forgive is a defensive response to early, insecure attachments just as is a
habitual inability to forgive. Stereotypical responses to negotiating conflict,
whether rigid or yielding, are thought to originate in crucial difficulties in
early attachments. Of particular import is the availability of parental objects,
such as the mother, in weathering the vicissitudes of infantile dependencies.
Kleinians differ from many others in the object relations tradition in
their emphasis on destructive impulses as a substrate of early human devel-
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 177

opment and a primary source of psychic instability. (See Alford, 1989;

Frosh, 1999; Segal, 1973.) While individuals suffering from character
pathologies may be particularly dominated by destructive impulses, Kleini-
ans assert that such impulses are part of the human condition more gener-
ally. Ontologically and existentially, the human infant anxiously discovers
that the mother he or she loves is one and the same mother the infant hates.
The wish to attack the "bad" motherwhat Kleinians term the infantile,
paranoid-schizoid positionis modified over time as the child is able to
integrate its own conflicting impulses and representations of this object
of attachment. Kleinians also stresses the vital and progressive function of
guilt in human experience as the child develops the capacity to make repara-
tion, both internally and externally, with the maternal object. Finding that
the mother has survived the child's rage rather than being destroyed by it,
the child is able to make integrative and creative use of aggressive currents
of the self.
A Kleinian perspective suggests a problematic instability to psychic life,
with a tendency to project destructive impulses onto others. In this sense, the
road to forgiveness may be similarly unstable, characterized by fluctuating
states and imagery rather than a unified state of mind. In resolving injurious
experiences, the yielding associated with forgiveness may awaken powerful
affects, including paranoid anxiety around being taken over by a threatening
Other. From a Kleinian perspective, working through the fantasy elements of
threatening experiences and recognizing the tendency to demonize others is
vital to a developing capacity for relatedness. The persecuting other may be a
part of the patient's own internal world, even as it occupies a position in the
external world of the patient. Pathological relationships are often character-
ized by a rigid inflexibilityby the use of the other as a repository for dis-
avowed disturbing currents in one's self. Roles of persecutor and persecuted
are often played out in a stereotypical drama, which may include the reversal
of positions at critical moments in the denouement. These positions and
their associated pathologies, however, may be part of the human condition
more generally, particularly in the tendency to demonize what is perceived to
be threatening to the self.

Resistances to Forgiving

There is a growing chorus of clinical voices, particularly in the family therapy

literature, proclaiming the mental health benefits of forgiveness (Freedman
& Enright, 1996; Ferch, 1998; Pollard, Anderson, Anderson, & Jennings,
1998). In assessing these claims, it is important to make a distinction be-
tween the transgressor as an internal objecta representation of a person or
a part of a personand the transgressor as an external "object," or presence
in the relational world. The conflict resolution literature tends to focus on the
external dimensions of the relational world, but the transgressor may occupy
a central place in the internal life of the aggrieved individual as well.
178 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

In addressing this internal dimension of grievances, both psychoanalytic

and nonpsychoanalytic clinicians have written about the psychic costs to the
victim of an excessive preoccupation with the perpetrator (Finn & Gartner,
1992; McCullough & Worthington, 1994). The perpetrator may remain the
central protagonist in the internal dramas of many victims long after the ob-
jective threat has passed. In breaking out of an internal folie a deux between
victim and perpetrator, some modification in the mental representations of
both participants is often required. As many therapists and theologians have
pointed out, the impulse to forgive a past betrayal is closely affiliated with the
desire to be delivered from a tortuous dilemma. As Berel Lang (1996) de-
scribes it, "We hope to clear our minds and feelings of anger and resentment
because of their disturbing effects on us" (p. 43).
Forgiving others also may be intimately related to self-forgiveness, partic-
ularly when object representationsinternal representations of othersare
bound up in representations of the self (Freedman & Enright, 1996). It is not
uncommon in psychotherapy for patients to discover that their outrage to-
ward their own parents finds its way into forms of self-reproach. "How may I
condemn my mother for leaving me feeling so unprotected," the patient asks
of herself, "without risking a similar judgment by my own child?"
I would like to underscore a distinction at this point between a readiness
to forgive based on anxiety, phobic dread of conflict, or other inhibitions,
and a readiness to forgive based on more integrative forms of consciousness.
But this distinction, too, is often tenuous in that various forms of readiness
may coexist in an unsteady state. Indeed, a more advanced or "mature" posi-
tion may operate as a defense against a less mature one. The patient may com-
plain about being left as a young teenager by alcoholic parents to care for
younger siblings. In the next session, this same patient returns to exonerate
her parents, explaining to the therapist how alcoholism is a disease. This ex-
planation may be true, or partially true. What the therapist must be able to
attend to, however, is the flux of self-other positions and whether some states
are more readily banished from consciousness than others.
Negative representations of others serve additional psychic functions as
well. The "bad object" representation of a parent, for example, may play a
vital role in achieving a more individuated identity or in separating from fa-
milial entanglements. It is true that psychological reliance on a "bad object"
or an enemy can be emotionally costly over time, particularly if negative
emotions, impulses, or images are habitually externalized or projected onto
this image of the other. If the internal world is constituted around a stereo-
typical, good victim/bad persecutor drama, the capacity for a flexible range
of responses to the world may be blunted. However, an emerging capacity to
rebel, to fight back, to defend more fragile aspects of the self, may rely on the
bad objects, as internally recognized enemies of the self, before more inte-
grative capacities develop. Repeatedly telling the story of childhood tor-
ments at the hands of a sadistic older sibling, for example, may be part of a
process of widening constitutive elements of the self through opposition to
powerful foes.
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 179

Working psychoanalytically, we would listen for precisely what is being

cast out by the call for forgiveness. Listening with a third ear, we might detect
the presence of concealed resistance, a refusal to concede some vital boundary
between self and other, even as the patient adopts an attitude of forgiveness.
Take, for example, a woman who discovers that her husband has had an af-
fair. She may withdraw in hurt and anger, finally consenting to couples'
counseling with her repentant husband. She expresses her painful feelings
and he his regret and desire to make reparation. While his efforts seem gen-
uine, the woman finds, however, that these acts of reparation do not modify
an underlying sense of a permanent rupture. And the pressure to forgiveto
"move on"makes her underlying resistance less accessible to consciousness.
As the months go by, she resumes the role of loving wife but finds that she is
unable to respond sexually to her husband. There is a sense in which her body
betrays some reserve of mistrust, some bastion of resistance, in spite of her
conscious belief that she has forgiven her husband.
In this case, therapeutic sermons on the benefits of forgiveness merely for-
tify the boundary of repression. How might we intervene, then, to assist this
patient? While many therapists would register the husband's affair as a minor
transgression, its psychological significance depends on a range of psychody-
namic and interpersonal factors. If the therapist urges her to relinquish her
hostility and mistrust of her husband, these domains of meaning are more
apt to move to the periphery of consciousness. The therapist must be able to
assist her in recognizing and holding conflicting states associated with her
dilemma, specifically consciousness that a part of her forgives her husband
and a part of her does not. The unforgiving self may be as vital and healthy an
aspect of psychic life as is the forgiving self. For passive, compliant individu-
als, recognizing this defiant voice within themselvesat the threshold of
what may be most audibleopens up a more vital engagement with aggres-
sion. Understanding the psychological function of this refusal to forgive re-
quires that we place the conflict in the context of recurring motifs in the pa-
tient's life narrative.
Achieving a state of forgiveness also implies that the injustice has become
part of the past, in the sense that the threat of harm no longer operates in the
real world. Yet the human capacity for memoryfor invoking the past in the
presentmakes this temporal shift a tenuous one, depending on the histori-
cal loading of the transgression. Past associations may be too potent, too
readily invoked in the present, to be overcome. Further, problems in human
affairs are often more persistent than they initially appear to be. The crisis
may pass, only to reveal a more chronic disturbance.

Degrees of Violation

Some argue that forgiveness is the foundation of cultural harmony, the basis
of social reparation (Aponte, 1998; Day, 1998). Yet the very moral per-
suasiveness of this principle readily subdues less authoritative voices. Many
I 80 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

children learn the deceptions of forgiveness early on as they submit to the

command of their parents and apologize to enemy siblings, meanwhile har-
boring hatred and plotting secret revenge. The mandate of forgiveness may
repress conflict as readily as it resolves it, leaving mutual enemies waiting for
an opportune moment to begin the struggle anew. In addressing this conflu-
ence, those writing about forgiveness often make distinctions between minor
violations and insults and more serious breaches of trust, as well as extreme
forms of human cruelty (Hargrave & Anderson, 1992; Lang, 1996; Scobie &
Scobie, 1998). Many people would not expect survivors of genocide, or even
survivors of severe childhood abuse, to forgive their perpetrators in the sense
of relieving them of guilt.
One approach is to create a continuum, with the seriousness of the viola-
tion inversely related to the magnitude of the moral claim on the aggrieved
party. The logic of the matrix is something like this:

Extreme violations--> Forgiveness unwarranted

(Forgiveness is pathological)
Minor violations-->Forgiveness warranted
(Failure to forgive is pathological)

This is a useful matrix as a general guideline. But it does not carry us very
far into the labyrinth of uncertainties that may emerge. There are many in-
stances, for example, when the logic of the psyche does not conform to such
gradients. Indeed, internal dramas centering on whether or not to forgive an
offense may have little to do with the scales of justice in some objective sense.
One of the vital contributions of psychoanalytic theory is its attentiveness to
how imperfectly internal events are correlated with external ones. There situ-
ations in which humans generate accounts of what has happened based on
fantasies, build entire cases against others on the basis of scattered evidence,
or dismiss entirely overwhelming evidence of evildoing.
Some of these distinctions are related to personality and other psycholog-
ical differences mediating the interpretation of events, whereas others are re-
lated to cultural processes. Psychological and cultural dynamics combine to
shape the narrative strategies available to therapist and client in making
sense of disturbing life events. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, for exam-
ple, sex abuse emerged as the master narrative in explaining a wide range of
female disturbances of ambiguous origins (Haaken, 1998). Probing for the
source of these disturbances often resulted in unearthing a history of child-
hood sexual abuse. Identifying incidents of abuseand the identity of
abuserswas helpful for many women in locating within the past a source
of current difficulties. But sexual abuse also emerged as a cultural "con-
tainer" for more uncertain sources of discontentment in women's lives.
Childhood sexual abuse was the one violation that women had the right to
be angry about, the one patriarchal violation that allowed women to walk
away from familial entanglements. In the United States, poverty, overwork,
burdensome child care responsibilitiesthese more mundane sources of
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 181

distress in women's livesarouse very little moral outrage. In the clinical lit-
erature and in public discourse, the dominant narrative of moral transgres-
sion and "healing" was sexual victimization of children. The question of
whether or not to forgive the perpetrator, as important as this was, obscured
the broader question of why so many female grievances were being expressed
through this singular narrative.
Just as the narratives available to therapists are embedded in the morality
tales that gain currency in the culture, so too are distinctions between normal
and abnormal reactions to life events. When listening to stories of injuries
suffered and affronts to the self, therapists make judgments about the reason-
ableness of the patient's complaints. We expect as a normal outcome of de-
velopment the capacity to absorb some degree of hurt, disappointment, and
failings on the part of others and to incorporate disturbing experiences so
that connections with others (and with ourselves, in terms of psychic struc-
tures) do not fall apart. Individuals with severe ego deficits or character
pathologies are notoriously vulnerable to minor slights or disappointments.
For those with paranoid tendencies, a series of minor incidents may become
elaborated into a conspiratorial delusional system. For the narcissist, the fail-
ure of a lover to serve as reassuring mirror may evoke rage or rejection. But
these assessments are inextricably bound to normative assumptions about
what individuals should be capable of enduring.
The capacity to absorb interpersonal tensions and disappointments and to
make reparation with others is certainly a key indicator of mental health. But
how do we decide on the threshold of what is a normative or optimal level of
forgiveness? And what problems emerge in the cultural and psychotherapeu-
tic negotiation of that threshold? There is wide agreement in the literature
that we must take into account the magnitude of the offense, with the under-
standing that some crimes may not merit release from the dispensation of for-
giveness (Keene, 1995; Lang, 1996). Extreme violence or cruelty may war-
rant extreme expulsions from the group or community. This problem takes
us into the complex realm of politics and criminal justice and to the question
of how to distinguish between rational punishments (for example, the pro-
tection of the community, the necessity of negative consequences as deter-
rents, and the rehabilitation of violators) and the more irrational arena of re-
venge. The desire for revenge carries the potential for perpetuating violence
and related trauma as victims turn the tables on their persecutors and perpet-
uate the very misery from which they seek relief.
As I suggested earlier, Kleinians stress the vulnerabilities of the psyche for
revived paranoid anxieties and for the tendency of humans to make use of
primitive psychological defenses, such as splitting and projective identifica-
tion. While individuals suffering from personality disorders may habitually
engage in this psychological splitting of the "good" and the "bad," with lim-
ited capacity to integrate conflicting dimensions of people or of relation-
ships, these same fluctuations work their way into the psychic life of less dis-
turbed individuals. More disturbed individuals may be less able to repress or
contain the disturbing currents of mental life, but these same primitive reac-
182 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

tions may be present, while less palpable, in more psychologically integrated

individuals.
When we enter the terrain of paranoid/schizoid reactions, we can see how
an emerging capacity to forgive may represent a movement toward a more
adaptive flexibility in psychic structures. The increased ability to integrate
countervailing affects and attitudes may reduce anxiety and hostility and in-
crease relatedness. But we also may confront situations where forgiveness
emerges as a defense against these same paranoid/schizoid anxieties. To "love
your enemy" may be noble, but it also may be a reaction formationthe em-
ployment of a positive affective state as a defense against a negative one.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Psychotherapists are often not sufficiently attentive to how the social and po-
litical beliefs of both therapist and patient intervene in the working through
of injurious experiences. For therapists who believe in a "just world"that
emotional suffering is generally brought on by factors under control of the
individualthe therapeutic process may focus too narrowly (and oppres-
sively) on the need for a modification in the patient's attitudes.
All human societies generate means of resolving differences, from daily
tensions and disputes to serious violations of the social order (Douglas,
1966). Practices of forgiveness include a range of circumstances in which the
aggrieved individual releases the transgressor from a state of material or
emotional indebtedness. The conditions of this release, as well as the com-
peting claims and rights that emerge, are deeply embedded in cultural prac-
tices. But cultural practices are not static. Contending forces in the society
shape the terms of the encounter and the modes of compromise that acquire
legitimacy.
Forgiveness is commonly introduced in discussions of conflict resolution
as an essential part of the process of reconciliation and is often assumed to be
a necessary condition for a successful outcome. Yet it is important to distin-
guish between forgiveness and reconciliation and to understand what each is
thought to require of participants (see Freedman & Enright, 1996; Sells and
Hargrave, 1998). Forgiveness involves a different form of what Arlie Hochs-
child (1994) calls "emotional work" than does reconciliation. We may think
of the former as an internal state and the latter as an outward or behavioral
condition. Whereas reconciliation is an interpersonal process of restoring
connection, forgiveness refers to an internal state, particularly a modifica-
tion of our attitude or emotional responses (see Scobie & Scobie, 1998). We
may be reconciled in the behavioral sense without undergoing an internal
change.
Reconciliation is an interpersonal process of negotiation, with the aim of
restoring a ruptured relationship. Forgiveness, on the other hand, suggests a
private negotiationa reconciliation of conflicting internal states. Like abso-
lution, forgiveness suggests the presence of guilt or shame as well as a rela-
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 183

tional struggle over the conditions of release from its tormenting influence.
Both intrapsychically and interpersonally, the plea for forgiveness redresses
the superegoit is an appeal for a modification in judgments, for compas-
sion, for mercy. This places the forgiver in the more powerful position in the
reconciliation process (see Freedman & Enright, 1996; Keene, 1995).
But what if the transgressor fails to seek forgiveness? Many treatises on for-
giveness stress that a repentant state is a necessary condition for both genuine
forgiveness and meaningful reconciliation (Ferch, 1998; Sells & Hargrave,
1998). Others suggest that a modification in the attitudes of the transgressor
need not be a precondition for a modification in the attitudes of the ag-
grieved (Aponte, 1998; Freedman & Enright, 1996; Finn & Gartner, 1992;
Lang, 1996). On an interpersonal level, the acknowledgment of wrongdoing
signifies a willingness to work on restoring the relationship and avoiding sit-
uations that cause pain to the aggrieved person.
Whether the focus is on the interpersonal or the intrapsychic aspects of
forgiveness, there is wide agreement in the field that issues of power must be
taken into account in any reconciliation process. Feminist therapists and po-
litical theorists have pointed out how oppression regularly masquerades in
the seductive plumage of moral ideals (Keene, 1995; Lamb, 1996; Walrond-
Skinner, 1998). Yet the power to forgive also grants the injured party some
power over the transgressor (Lang, 1996). Unlike deference, the exercising of
forgiveness is an expression of power, if only the power to release the offender
from a state of emotional indebtedness. Parents normally forgive their young
children rather than the reverse. It is not until adulthood that children ac-
quire some freedom from parental control and a sense of their own power,
perhaps over aging parents, so that the dispensation of forgiveness becomes a
question. Just as believers imbue God with the authority to forgive mortals,
the forgiver exercises power over the supplicant.
For those who are in the subjugated position, the granting of forgiveness
carries this contradictory admixture of power and powerlessness. During eras
when traditional hierarchies are being challenged, this uncertainty may be-
come pronounced. As Michel Foucault (1978) has so famously argued,
power opens up the possibility of resistance, particularly in the modern era
where the legitimacy of rulers rests on the enlistment of the ruled in negotiat-
ing the terms of control. To forgive is divine because it grants the forgiver
power over a transgressor. This may account for some of the feeling of elation
and narcissistic enlargement accompanying the granting of forgiveness
(Freedman & Enright, 1996). Descriptions of battered woman syndrome,
for example, include a sense of power that the woman experiences after a bat-
tering episode as the husband seeks forgiveness and redemption (Walker,
1981). The position of pardoning one's abuser may be organized around an
unconscious wish for power, a desire to turn the tables on injustice by assert-
ing one's moral superiority over the offender. Determining whether adopting
this state of moral superiority is masochistic or sadistic, self-defeating or em-
powering, altruistic or selfish, depends on the possibilities available in under-
standing the multiple meanings of the drama.
I 84 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

The Gender Politics of Forgiveness

The pronouncement of forgiveness is like being told the ending of a story. It

may serve as a foreclosure, a denouement, or a resolution but nonetheless it
suggests that something disturbing has happened. It is not surprising that
much of the clinical discourse on forgiveness is regarded with wariness by
those who are more concerned with giving voice to what has happened than
with making reparation. The suspicion is that the valorizing of forgiveness is
a seductive ideological cover for baser motives. As oppressed groups gain the
strength to speak up and claim new rights, including the right to disengage
from abusive relationships, the powerful rediscover the salutary virtue of
forgiveness.
I share much of this wariness, even though I believe that the capacity to
forgive is integral to many other capacities, including the self-reflective ca-
pacities of social movements. What might be learned from psychoanalytic
theory in uncovering the various conflicting motivations and psychological
dynamics of group life? Is there a productive middle ground between an
overidealization and a devaluing of forgiveness?
One way of entering into the conundrum is to begin with the experience
of victimswith those who have been injured, and particularly with those
whose complaints are more likely to be silenced by the more powerful. In ar-
guing for the benefits of forgiveness for victims, Sue Walrond-Skinner (1998)
states that "forgiveness acts as a temporary agent of empowerment because it
dramatically changes the balance of power within the relationship in some
mysterious way, shifting it initially in a straight exchange from the previously
empowered offender to the previously disempowered victim. . . . This dra-
matic exchange of power is however often such a shock that its effect is to lib-
erate both parties from their entrenched positions" (p. 16).
What is this "mysterious" effect of forgiveness that liberates both parties?
And under what conditions does forgiveness shift the balance of power in
oppressive relationships? Like many other Christian counselors in the for-
giveness literature, Walrond-Skinner embraces the idea of mystical transfor-
mation, invoking it as a means of fortifying the resolve of ambivalent partici-
pants. Reconciliation in the Christian literature tends to be understood as a
form of emotional surrendera dramatic change of heart in both the trans-
gressor and the transgressed. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, the
concept of mystical transformation may be understood as a form of magical
undoing, the hypnotic effect of a ritual or authoritative influence. From a
feminist perspective, reconciliation means addressing the conditions under
which families are able to resolve difficulties, move beyond stalemates, and
work together more cooperatively. From a feminist perspective, these condi-
tions would include confronting the double standard that permits men
greater sexual freedoms and places women in the position of bearing primary
responsibility for children, often with minimal social supports.
Walrond-Skinner (1998) goes beyond Christian pieties, however, in
grounding the process of forgiveness in a developmental framework. The
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES I 85

process of trying to reach forgiveness arouses our earliest experiences of loss,

she suggests, particularly the loss of an infantile sense of grandiose control
over the mother. The capacity to weather early losses and to make reparation
depends on how the infant navigates through early experiences of separation.
Though she cites the work of feminist relational theorists of the Stone
Center, Walrond-Skinner does not discuss the gender dynamics of forgive-
ness.2 Mothers are often at the center of our first images of betrayal, as
Walrond-Skinner suggests, but they also are at the center of our deepest rep-
resentations of reparation. While God the Father grants forgiveness in Chris-
tian theology, it is the motherboth the material mother of childhood and
the fantasy representation of herwho represents possibilities for restored
connection.
Carol Gilligan (1982), a leading relational theorist who influences the
work at the Stone Center, concludes from her own research that women ap-
proach moral conflict differently than men. Whereas men focus on an ethic of
individual rights, women are more apt to invoke an ethic of care in negotiat-
ing moral conflict. Building on Nancy Chodorow's (1978) work, Gilligan ar-
gues that female development is directed toward preserving relational ties
whereas male development is oriented toward separation from others. In soci-
eties where women are responsible for the care of children and men dominate
public life, male gender identity comes to be constructed around defensive
disidentification with the mother and a corresponding repression of depend-
ency needs. Female gender identity, on the other hand, allows for a greater in-
tegration of dependence and independence needs. This gender distinction
implies that women tend to develop more flexible ego boundaries, a deeper
capacity for relatedness, and less fear of yielding to others than do men.
One of the main criticisms of the relational theory of the Stone Center,
however, is that it downplays the costs of feminine "peace-making" and the
relational binds for women in striving for the restoration of "connection"
(Westcott, 1998). Further, relational theory does not place much emphasis
on female aggressive impulses and thus it colludes with domesticated cultural
representations of femininity. From a psychoanalytic feminist perspective, we
would want to be aware of collective defenses against female outrage and how
these same collective defenses operate in the therapeutic situation. The
woman patient may transfer cultural prohibitions against female rage onto
the therapist, enlisting the therapist in her retreat into the feminine sanctuary
of peacemaking. Alternately, the therapist may respond anxiously to a female
patient's anger, appealing to her "feminine superego." A male therapist may
come to unconsciously identify with the perpetrator, seeking relief from this
guilty position by encouraging the female patienteither overtly or subtly
to relinquish her fury.
Within the panoply of relational possibilities, the power of the forgiver
must be recognized as distinct from mere compliance or capitulation. But
we also may recognize an affinity between forgiveness and powerlessness.
Oppressed groupsthat is, those who have had less power in defending
against victimizationhave expressed the greatest wariness concerning the
186 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

valorizing of forgiveness. Much of this wariness has an adaptive basis. Ene-

mies serve vital functions for groups, just as they do for individuals. Images
of the enemy fortify group solidarity and serve as a reminder of the impor-
tance of sustained struggle. The ritual invoking of the enemy may be rational
or irrational, progressive or regressive. On the progressive side, liberation
movements must be able to project that bad onto the oppressor and recover
a sense of their own capacities. From Sisterhood Is Powerful to Black Is Beau-
tiful, the rallying calls of liberation movements are founded on a restored
sense of collective goodness. On the regressive side, however, movements
may invoke the enemy in the service of repressing conflict within the group.
The literature on abuse victimsparticularly the vast literature on sexual
abuse survivorsroutinely cautions against forgiveness (see Bass and Davis,
1988; Walker, 1989). Forgiveness is viewed as either condoning abuse or re-
peating an oppressive pattern of enlisting the victim, who is often a woman,
in taking care of the perpetrator, who is often a man. Those who promote
forgiveness as a mental health practice typically respond by pointing out that
these dynamics need not be part of the process of forgiveness. Indeed, terms
such as "pseudoforgiveness" and "conciliatory forgiveness" pervade the litera-
ture as caveats against the potential replay of these oppressive interactions.
The literature abounds with recommendations and criteria for distinguishing
between "authentic" forgiveness and various counterfeit versions.
This focus on authenticity is continuous with a longstanding Western
emphasis, particularly within the middle class, on expressive states as markers
of individual identity. With the decline of traditional practices which located
personal identity in a matrix of kinship obligations and ritualized practices,
the achievement of social identity in the bourgeois era came to rest more
heavily on the capacity to transform oneself and to master emotional states
(Hochschild, 1994).
One could say that forgiveness has been "feminized" in that it is associated
with traditional female gendered attributes, for instance, yielding, empathy,
and responsiveness to others. The feminizing of the capacity to forgive in
Western discourse is also related to the heightening of the division, particu-
larly in the nineteenth century, between private and public life (Epstein,
1981; Hoeveler, 1998). The emergence of a market economy organized
around the negotiation of impersonal contracts left domestic life as the site of
personal fulfillment and the nuclear family as an idealized sanctuary from
public life. Barbara Epstein (1981) describes the nineteenth-century "cult of
domesticity" that placed women in the position of guardians of virtue, family
togetherness, and emotional harmony. In presiding over this place of respite
from a competitive world, middle-class women became the embodiment of
unconditional love, turning the other way when confronted with the infi-
delity of husbands. Women's economic dependency granted men automatic
rights to forgiveness, even though women resisted more openly as the century
wore on.
One impact of the loosening of the economic base of the household was
that desire assumed a more central motive force in forging relational ties.
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 187

While freedom from bondage to kinship hierarchies has been one of the most
progressive developments of the modern era, this same freedom may be illu-
sory. Conservative therapists often overidealize the family, comfortable with
the split between the harshness of capitalism as the dominating ethos of pub-
lic life and the sentimental warmth of home and hearth. Like other forms of
splitting, this fantasized dichotomy does not permit genuine or "authentic"
engagement in problems in either sphere. For liberal therapists, there may be
a romanticizing of "freedom of choice," with insufficient attention to the so-
cial constraints under which choices are made. Liberal and conservative ther-
apists alike may tend to downplay broader social forces impinging on family
life, including its capacity to weather and resolve conflict.
There also are long-standing cultural scripts aligning forgiveness, as an
emotional state, with femininity. The God of the Hebrew Bible is less forgiv-
ing than is the Christian Son of God, with the latter embodying a more ac-
cepting, yielding deity. Even the Christian portrait of a forgiving Christ im-
paled on a cross, surrendering to his fate, assumes what is culturally coded as a
feminine posture. For every unforgiving Medea, there is a chorus of forgiving
Corinthian wives, ready to make adjustments for the failings of men. To for-
give may be divine, but it is also often thought of as a feminine spiritual craft.
The emergence of a contemporary discourse on forgiveness may register
cultural anxieties over the adequacy of traditional means of containing con-
flict, particularly within the family. The social movements that achieved mo-
mentum in the 1970s destabilized traditional hierarchies, particularly the pa-
triarchal control of the family. At the same time, women continue to carry
disproportionate responsibility for the emotional labor of relationships, in-
cluding the work required in yielding to the interests of others (Hochschild,
1994). One of the social consequences of feminism, then, is that women are
no longer assumed to be the loyal guardians of family togetherness. Emotion
work may still be women's work, but female resistances are changing the
terms of the contract.
From a feminist perspective, the question is not whether forgiveness is
good or bad; it is not a matter of simply calibrating the dispensary of forgive-
ness in some rational proportions to the scales of justice. The more important
issues concern the interplay of gendered positions and the range of freedom
for women in negotiating the terms of their fate. Given the standard patriar-
chal plot line, with a long-suffering wife bestowing mercy on her prodigal
husband, it is not surprising that feminists have been among the more vocal
critics of forgiveness rhetoric. Indeed, the emergence of interest in this topic
during the 1980s and 1990s may be read as a collective appeal for the "for-
giveness" of women. It is important to attend to these shifts in public dis-
course and to the dynamic interplay of female subjugation and assertions of
female authority.
One way this interplay is manifest is through renewed interest in the terms
of genuine forgiveness. Capitulation and accommodation are no longer as-
sumed to be feminine virtues, and it is not assumed that only the powerful
are in the position of granting forgiveness.
I 88 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

In coming down on the side of forgiveness and reconciliation, we are em-

phasizing the value of reintegrating transgressors into the community. As an
ethical ideal, it represents a flexible morality, grounded in acknowledgment
of weaknesses and failings as fundamental to the human condition (see Dou-
glas, 1966). If we are all "sinners saved by grace," we share a common heritage
of guilt and a shared mandate to make reparations with others. There is im-
plicit knowledge of these processes in many cultural practices, including the
emotional malignancies associated with revenge and enemy-making. Culture
equips individuals with practices for resolving disputes, including treatment
of various bilious emotional afflictions associated with the failure of such cul-
tural mechanisms.
What are the reasons for such failures? Much like neurotic symptoms, the
failure of ordinary mechanisms to achieve reparation may lay bare some un-
derlying disturbance. Cultural practices often suture over tensions and prob-
lematic differences within group life. Sometimes ritualized means of subdu-
ing tensions sustain human connection and capacities. But they also may
operate repressively, or permit the deliverance of one group at the expense of
another. Those who refuse to forgive may serve a vital social role in keeping
tensions alive so that alternatives are more apt to emerge. Without a Malcolm
X refusing to forgive the "white devils," Martin Luther King's message of non-
violence and reconciliation may not have been so persuasive. King could pray
for the salvation of racist oppressors and have mercy on their souls because the
Black Power movement threatened to bring the white devils to their knees.

Conclusions

As a morally charged concept, forgiveness evokes discourses intersecting psy-

chology, politics, philosophy, and religion. Like other dictates of conscience,
forgiveness is often cast as a moral triumph over baser human emotionsa
triumph of superego dictates over the forces of the id, mediated by the nego-
tiations of a (reasonable) ego. There are countless versions of such morality
tales in cultural lifeinsults and injuries mobilize the desire for bloody re-
venge, the satisfaction of which leads to ruination. The inability to forgive
may also be moralized as leading to a life of bitterness wherein the victim, un-
able to relinquish the black bile of memory, perpetuates his or her own state
of suffering. Indeed, appeals for forgiveness are as often directed at self-inter-
est as they are to altruistic motives.
Accepting the value and cultural necessity of forgiveness does not take us
very far, however, in understanding its myriad psychological and social mean-
ings. Therapists may benefit from reflecting on their own motivations when
they press for forgiveness. The wish for the patient to forgive may be aroused
by a guilty identification with the offender and emerge out of the desire to be
relieved from this disturbing state. From a Kleinian perspective, the therapist
may adopt a paranoid position in relation to the patient's rage, even as the pa-
tient may suffer from this same primitive anxiety that leads to a premature
 PSYCHOANALYTIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 189

rush to forgiveness. What I am suggesting is that overinvestment in reaching

a state of forgiveness may be a type of reaction formationa defense based
on turning a disturbing feeling into its opposite.
In much of the psychological literature on forgiveness, there is a tendency
toward hyperrational models of mind and psychologically naive appeals to
the mental health merits of relinquishing hostility toward past offenders. The
literature on "intentional forgetting" and "forgiveness therapy" assumes that
there is an objective reality about which all parties may agree and that the past
need not shape current responses to conflict. On an unconscious level, how-
ever, the boundaries between past and present threats are murky. Further,
identifying forgiveness as an aim of therapy may, paradoxically, make achiev-
ing it more difficult. Defenses and resistances may be difficult to explore in a
moralistic therapeutic climate.
A psychoanalytic approach would probe for the conflicting internal voices
that are readily subdued by a superego demand for forgiveness. The job of the
therapist is to enlarge the scope of awareness and to assist the patient in
"holding" countervailing parts of the self, with their associated voices and af-
fective valences. To seize upon or anoint one state of mind as the morally cor-
rect one may forge a temporary peace agreement with warring internal voices.
But such alignments may be illusory or even counterproductive. Banished
from consciousness, contrary desires often maintain a powerful hold over
psychic life.
At the level of group life, discourses on forgiveness are closely affiliated
with reparation and reconciliation. While we may benefit from distinguish-
ing between forgiveness and reconciliation, the continual reminder in the lit-
erature of the difference between the two suggests that they are, in fact, re-
lated states in interpersonal life. Forgiveness paves the way for reconciliation.
If there is a bias in the family therapy literature toward reconciliation, it may
be manifested in the preaching of the doctrine of forgiveness.
As women enter the paid workforce and resist serving as the emotional
shock absorbers in family life, anxieties abound over disintegrative forces in
family life and means of making reparation. Learning the art of forgiveness
certainly plays some role in creating a more harmonious society. For many
men, it means developing capacities to yield, to reflect on their own part in
human conflicts, and to restore connectioncapacities culturally coded as
feminine. But for countless contemporary women, sermonizing on forgive-
ness may be too much like preaching to the choir.
I am reminded of the melodrama of President Clinton asking for the na-
tion's forgiveness for his sexual "indiscretions," perhaps belatedly but most
certainly in response to American culture's propensity for sentimentality.
Men are no longer free to assume that they will be forgiven for their lapses,
but neither are women entirely free to challenge the double standard. Gender
categories are in flux, as are the terms for negotiating forgiveness and recon-
ciliation. For many men, too often love still means never having to say you're
sorry. In much of the therapeutic literature on forgiveness, it means learning
to say it genuinely.
190 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

Notes
1. Interviews of women are taken from the documentary film Diamonds, Guns,
and Rice: Sierra Leone and the Women's Peace Movement, coproduced by Janice Haaken
and Caley Haaken-Heymann, Portland State University, Portland, OR.
2. The Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies at Wellesley College
is credited with the development of self-in-relation theory. For a review, see Westcott,
1998, especially pp. 398-404.

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 ten

Forgiveness after Genocide?

Perspectives from Bosnian Youth
Joshua M.Thomas and Andrew Garrod

As we approached his hometown, our Bosnian Muslim driver and one-time

soldier Necko struggled for the English words to describe the Grim Reaper:
"When you were on your twenty-four hour shift at the front line [a quarter
mile from his house], death was right beside you, touching your shoulder, ca-
ressing your hair." Showing us his village on this day, he said, "This used to be
a normal town. This used to be a normal country. I used to be a normal man.
Now, I live on a different planet than you."
After the Nazi Holocaust, the world vowed "never again," and yet over the
last decade concentration camps have dotted the Bosnian landscape. As the
world watches on television, localized interethnic conflicts rage in places as
far-reaching as the Sudan, South Africa, Northern Ireland, and the Middle
East, as well as in other parts of the former Yugoslavia. In the midst of the
horrors of this new type of war, where women and children are among the
greatest casualties and ideologies polarize former communities, one wonders
about the potential place of forgiveness and reconciliation for both individual
coping and societal healing.
In this chapter we consider the place of forgiveness, particularly forgive-
ness counseling, in the context of Necko's "different planet," in a country
struggling to recover from civil war, displacement, physical destruction, and
genocide under the pretense of "ethnic cleansing." Some advocate forgiveness
as a universal moral good and see it as an appropriate element of psychologi-
cal therapy for victims of trauma. Others feel that crimes of systematic tor-
ture, rape, and killing are unforgivable, and that in this wholly disrupted
world, all Western notions of counseling and coping fail to apply. In this
chapter we consider not only the philosophical debates and psychological re-
search, but the real-life stories of Bosnian children and adolescents who have
lived through this kind of war. After evaluating the relevance of scholarship
regarding trauma counseling and forgiveness therapy to this kind of situa-

192
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 193

tion, we use their narrative perspectives on forgiveness and their well-devel-

oped strategies for coping during war to frame our conclusions.

Post-traumatic Stress or Human Suffering

Before considering whether forgiveness ought to be advocated to war sur-

vivors in the context of psychotherapy, we need to consider the serious debate
about whether counseling as we know it is at all appropriate as a means of aid
in recovery from war trauma. The core issue is whether there exists a univer-
sal psychological response to trauma, as the application of the clinical term
"post-traumatic stress disorder" seems to suggest, or whether a victim's re-
sponse is highly dependent on the context.
Young people especially seem to be victims of today's wars, which "are
likely to put children on the front lines because there are no real front lines,
only shifting zones of conflict" (Garbarino, Kostelny, & Dubrow, 1991,
p. 6). In Boothby's (1994) study in Mozambique, 77 percent of children
witnessed murder, 88 percent torture, and 63 percent rape or sexual abuse.
Fifty-one percent were tortured themselves, and 64 percent were abducted
from their families. Among those, many were forced to become soldiers. Po-
litical violence has so permeated society in places like South Africa and El
Salvador that it has become the new "normal" way of life in which children
mature.

Stress Syndromes

The observance of "shell shock" among soldiers in the last century's two
world wars drove recognition of "a stress disorder as a normal or predictable
response to violence" (Boothby, 1994, p. 241). The scope of this condition
expanded over time to include children and civilians in war, and then, poten-
tially, any persons who may have experienced traumatic events, ranging from
child abuse to natural disasters. The name "post-traumatic stress disorder"
(PTSD) and its attached formal criteria were added to the Diagnostic and Sta-
tistical Manual for Mental Disorders in 1980.
Studies about the applicability of post-traumatic stress disorder to those
who have lived through war conditions have yielded varied and often contra-
dictory results (Saigh, Fairbank, & Yasik, 1998) depending on the methods
used for research, which are "rarely comparable" (Arroyo & Eth, 1996).
Goldstein, Wampler, and Wise (1997), although finding that 94 percent of
the Bosnian children in their study met formal criteria for PTSD, question
"whether normal psychological categories are applicable in the midst of war"
(p. 876), since what can be considered symptoms of a disorder, such as startle
reflex or fear of going outdoors, during war may actually be adaptive strate-
gies for surviving.
Another study (Husain et al., 1998) found that although 85 percent of
children in the siege of Sarajevo experienced sniper fire, this experience was
194 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

not significantly related to development of PTSD. It was instead the disrup-

tion of basic needs, such as food and shelter, or loss of a family member that
most adversely affected children. Becker, Weine, Vojvoda, and McGlashan
(1999) studied twelve Bosnian adolescent refugees upon their arrival in the
United States and found that only four ever met PTSD criteria, three at ini-
tial evaluation only and one at the one-year follow-up test only. They found
that a stable family network was a mitigating factor for the development of
PTSD in adolescents.
In a general survey of youth's response to violence, Cairns (1996) found
that "despite exposure to the same event some child victims emerge with spe-
cific syndromes while others appear to remain totally unscathed" (p. 34).
Similarly, although Friedman and Jaranson (1994) find universal patterns in
human responses to trauma, they claim that particular manifestations will
depend on ethnocultural context, as will a determination of which responses
are normal and which are pathological in any particular situation. They sug-
gest that the general term "post-traumatic stress syndrome" (PTSS) is a "more
useful conceptual approach to the psychological impact of the refugee expe-
rience" (p. 215). Boothby (1994) also argues that, for those who have grown
up in a context of continual violence, "the term post-traumatic stress disorder
ceases to hold meaning" and instead the phrase "continuous stress syndrome"
(p. 242) more accurately describes their condition.

Efficacy of Counseling

For all these debates about terminology, the appropriateness of PTSD or

other labels is very much related to how mental health professionals conceive
of their work in areas of war. Summerfield, in his "Critique of Seven Assump-
tions behind Psychological Trauma Programmes in War-Affected Areas"
(1999), outlines many of the complexities of considering the impact of war
to be a clinical condition. He observes that in the West "medicine and psy-
chology have displaced religion as the source of explanation for the vicissi-
tudes of life, and the vocabulary of distress" (p. 1449). The language of
trauma as a psychological condition is new, with PTSD emerging only in
1980. Its unfamiliar, clinical character masks the existence of violence and
suffering, along with the native mechanisms of coping, which developed be-
fore this new language was applied to them.
In its traditional manifestation, therapy is largely an individual enterprise
between client and counselor, in line with the underlying studies of trauma
and PTSD diagnoses that assume the individual as the unit of study. At the
same time, Summerfield argues that psychological counseling programs in
war-affected areas assume a universal response to trauma of the entire popula-
tion, which, when diagnosed as a pathological condition, requires the inter-
vention of specially trained outside experts. Some psychologists fear that
telling one's story outside of a therapy session would cause "retraumatisation"
prompted their opposition to victims giving testimony at the Hague tri-
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 195

bunals and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.

The fears proved largely unfounded and, for many people, public storytelling
in the framework of justice or societal reconciliation was in fact a healing ex-
perience. For example, some Bosnian Muslim rape survivors only chose to
speak up in this context of public testimony and not therapy sessions, since
they saw the crimes committed against them as an "assault on their culture
and identity" (p. 1456) rather than only an assault on their selves.
This example illustrates for Summerfield that, in situations of "total war,"
offenses are understood not so much as committed against individuals, but
against the society itself, against the "social world embodying their history,
identity and living values and roles" (p. 1455). In addition to the individual-
istic and universal assumptions of counseling schemes, treatment models de-
veloped in "stable and affluent contexts have been applied in unstable and
impoverished settings with little success" (Boothby, 1994, p. 240). Specifi-
cally, there is a difference in impact between an isolated, traumatic event in
the midst of an otherwise stable, nontraumatic environment, and chronic ex-
periences of trauma in the midst of struggling societies (Arroyo & Eth,
1996). Simply attending to individual psychological needs may well miss the
larger cultural context.
Summerfield's critique is supported by perspectives on social recovery
gathered in a master's thesis on internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Bosnia
byTajma Kurt (1998), herself a resident of Mostar who lived through the war
and actively assisted journalists in their coverage of the front lines. Internal
displacement, or forced resettlement within one's own country, was a pri-
mary instrument of ethnic cleansing, and the war in the former Yugoslavia
saw the greatest number of IDPs since World War II. Kurt argues that, in the
midst of the need for physical and economic aid that is directed at encourag-
ing the self-support of survivors, "The core issue is the role of social aspects,
continuously targeted in conflict and yet manifesting the capacity of survivor
populations to manage their suffering, adapt and recover both collectively
and individually" (p. 27).
There are, as could be expected, also political issues involved. For Western
nations, psychological counseling programs are popular ways to respond to
foreign crises, including war, as initiating fancy-sounding new projects is a
successful means to attract international donors. However, in Bosnia this prac-
tice has occurred at the expense of reinforcing existing support structures, as
teachers and local-health care providers went unpaid, a situation that was still
true during our visit in the winter of 2000. Berima Hacam, the psychologist
who directs the Psychological Counseling Centre for Children and Parents in
East Mostar and herself an internally displaced Bosnian, writes in her work re-
port (1999) about the difficulty of finding money and time for ongoing sup-
port of children and families while she is up against the need to create and im-
plement "so many different projects" in order to secure sufficient donations.
Her work report, which includes a very low proportion of PTSD cases
only 5 out of 137 clients seenalso highlights the problem of doing
counseling with individuals who are in unstable living conditions, often
196 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

with basic material needs going unmet. She notes the turmoil created by re-
settling refugees back in their prewar communities when they have already de-
veloped life strategies and passed through developmental phases in very dif-
ferent social networks. A woman from Tuzla quoted in Kurt's 1998 study said
it plainly: "We had enough of emotional programmes. I go there and they tell
me how everything will be okay and then I go home and I have nothing to
feed my three hungry children" (p. 77). Kurt reports a feeling among IDPs of
their being the subjects of psychological tests, and that the individual counsel-
ing programs, a poor use of precious resources, can also lead to the "inappro-
priate medicalisation" of suffering and thus "obstruct the process of healing
and recovery and sometimes even inflict further psychosocial harm" (p. 29).
Western aid programs often view refugees as passive "victims," a status
that promotes poor self-esteem and dependency. The application of PTSD
and other psychological disorders to their condition undermines their self-
perception as "survivors" and "social actors, able to shape their own lives"
(Kurt, 1998, p. 29). This conflict between perceiving those affected by war as
victims or psychological "cases" in need of expert counsel, versus active sur-
vivors with their own ways of responding to distressing conditions, is the key
tension in considering the application of forgiveness therapy to a postwar
environment.

Forgiveness and Forgiveness Therapy

The developing field of forgiveness and forgiveness therapy presents a series

of challenges to those who would, in the name of peace and goodwill, wish to
advocate its use among those who have survived war. Particularly in this era
of conflicts based on ideology, ethnicity, religion, and other group affilia-
tions, forgivenessand its associated process of reconciliationmight seem
ideal methods for war recovery efforts. While in theory forgiveness may offer
an unparalleled possibility to overcome self-destructive anger and cycles of
societal violence and hatred, the current psychological models may well be
inadequate, in terms of both theoretical understanding and practical imple-
mentation, to meet the complexity of cross-cultural, postwar applications.

Defining forgiveness and Moral Judgment

As the scientific study of forgiveness is only in its nascent stages, having pre-
viously been left to the domains of religion and philosophy, there remains a
lack of consensus about how exactly to define forgiveness. Enright and
Fitzgibbons (2000), among the pioneers in the study of forgiveness and its
chief advocates for use in therapy, propose this definition: "People, upon ra-
tionally determining that they have been unfairly treated, forgive when they
willfully abandon resentment and related responses (to which they have a
right), and endeavor to respond to the wrongdoer based on the moral princi-
ple of beneficence, which may include compassion, unconditional worth,
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 197

generosity, and moral love (to which the wrongdoer, by nature of the hurtful
act or acts, has no right)" (p. 29).
Their definition becomes problematic in application to the context of
today's war. First, it assumes a very particular Christian viewpoint which re-
gards forgivenessespecially unilateral forgivenessas a more moral stand-
point than the justified anger that precedes it. But it also implies the ability to
make clear moral determinations about who is the perpetrator and who the
victim, and to discuss those roles in terms of universal rights and rationality.
How individuals in Bosnia assign blame and assume the moral right to be
able to forgive individuals and groups was one of the chief questions explored
in our research with teenagers and college students, which follows. We also
examined the problematic need for a client to assume the morally defined
role of "victim."
Enright and Fitzgibbons's requirement for clear role definition assumes
that offenses are committed as transgressions between particular known indi-
viduals or well-defined groups. Although the process of forgiveness is in-
trapsychic on the victim's part, it includes a change of attitude toward a
specific person. In war, however, the individual offenders may be forever un-
known to victims. When victims are dead, their stories may well die with
them, and others may be left unsure who is to blame. Moreover, in interethnic
conflicts, the eventual victims, such as internally displaced persons, may not
be "victims of individualized persecution, but of group abuse, mass rights vio-
lations, and general chaos" (Kurt, 1998, p. 4). Where the army or police of one
ethic group committed atrocities against the civilian population of another, it
is unclear who exactly is to blame, especially when the roles of perpetrator and
victim could be reversed in a conflict in a different geographical area.
Additionally, in societies affected by war, common definitions of rights
and rationality are often replaced by entirely different worldviews formed by
power and survival. In Bosnia, many people are unable to return to their
homes of origin either because they have been destroyed or because other
families are living in them. Although by law the original family has the
"right" to return to their own home, it is only through the exercise of politi-
cal power and influence, often mediated through international diplomats,
that one might see that right realized.
This dilemma was made clear in the response Bosnian children gave to a
fable we presented to them. This fable was one we had used in an earlier study
conducted with elementary schoolchildren in the United States. In it we
asked them to propose a solution to a problem (Johnson, 1988) where a por-
cupine, welcomed into the home of a family of moles because he had no
home in the winter, accidentally pricks the moles with his quills and then re-
fuses to leave when the moles ask him. American children who see the prob-
lem as an issue of fairness are likely to respond that the porcupine has to leave
because the house belongs to the moles, a viewpoint steeped in notions of
property rights and ownership (Garrod, Beal, & Shin, 1990). To the con-
trary, the majority of Bosnian children answer out of a desire to end the
discomfort of the group in pain and tend to argue that the moles must leave
198 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

their home because the porcupine is bigger and can hurt them. This response
reflects their experiences during the war, in which a realistic approach to
power helped facilitate survival.

Styles of Forgiveness and Prosodial Adaptation

In contrast to Enright and Fitzgibbons's (2000) morally determined defi-

nition of forgiveness, McCullough, Pargamet, and Thoresen (2000) offer a
more pragmatic approach that sees "forgiveness as intra-individual, prosocial
change toward a perceived transgressor that is situated within a specific in-
terpersonal context" (p. 9). Again, the focus is on internal change in the atti-
tude of the victim rather than on a broader social approach that is defined
under the separate label of reconciliation. In their definition of forgiveness,
the offender may merely be "perceived" and the outcome is to be "prosocial,"
blurring some of the absolute moral categories of Enright and Fitzgibbonss
scheme. Enright and Fitzgibbons also discusses forgiveness with the thera-
peutic justification that it is good for the well-being of the client, considering
forgiveness to be particularly suited to help clients become "freed from the
negative or toxic effects of their own anger" (p. 6) and "to overcome resent-
ment, bitterness, and even hatred toward people who have treated them un-
fairly and at times cruelly" (p. 4).
The question explored here, and in other chapters of this volume, is
whether those same prosocial, adaptive outcomes could develop without
undertaking forgiveness in the way defined by advocates of forgiveness ther-
apy. Enright and Fitzgibbons outline a hierarchy of six stages for conceptu-
alizing different versions of forgiveness and advise therapists to help clients
move from lower to more advanced levels. Although they later qualify their
use of these developmental stages and instead choose the term "styles" of
forgiveness, there is a normative assumption that certain understandings
are inherently better than others. This stands in conflict, however, to their
recognition that the progression as defined may not be universal "if we
eventually find differences across cultures regarding people's understanding
of forgiveness" (p. 54), Whether this schema is viewed as a hierarchy created
to manifest moral beliefs or as styles that reflect what is most adaptive
in particular contexts dramatically affects its usefulness in cross-cultural
settings.
For example, these six styles or stages parallel a Christian doctrine of for-
giveness, in which "revengeful" forgiveness is the lowest version (Style 1) and
unconditional "forgiveness as love" is its highest form (Style 6) (p. 55). Most
Bosnian adolescents approached forgiveness with a Style 5 mindset, seeing
forgiveness as "social harmony." While Enright and Fitzgibbons see this stage
as the first with any inherent moral weight, they view it as a lesser good that
is too dependent on the tangible outcomes. Style 6 is, for them, the highest
good because it deals with universal "moral love regardless of circumstances"
(p. 60), and the forgiveness becomes completely independent of anything
outside. Again, this model contains the same problems that have emerged
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 199

previously with regard to therapy, viewing the separate individual as the unit
of concern and failing to address the importance of the social context and
community life. For Bosnian children, their worldview is developed not in
the relative stability of the United States, where Enright and Fitzgibbons's
model was created and validated, but in a community where there is real con-
cern about continuing war. The possibility that sustained hatred will cause re-
newed violence, bearing tangible consequences on their lives, causes them to
consider forgiveness as a potential good.
Enright and Fitzgibbons's guidance about how to use forgiveness in psy-
chotherapy is presented in the "phase model." In it, the client moves through
four phases, from Uncovering, in which the "client gains insight into whether
and how the injustice and subsequent consequent injury have compromised
his or her life" (p. 18), through the phases of Decision and Work, to the final
phase of Deepening, when the "client finds increasing meaning in the suffer-
ing, feels more connected with others, and experiences decreased negative af-
fect and, at times, renewed purpose in life" (p. 18). Only the middle two
phases deal explicitly with deciding to forgive and working through the cog-
nitive, emotional, and spiritual issues that decision raises.
Interviews with college students in Bosnia revealed an interesting phe-
nomenon when viewed in conjunction with the phase model: many of the
students exhibited the characteristics of the Uncovering and Deepening
phases without having gone through the middle two steps in the way ex-
plained by Enright and Fitzgibbons. The particular offenses in war, when
committed in the context of long-term social upheaval, often by their nature
reflect the markers of the Uncovering phase, such as "facing permanent
change," giving up previous notions of the world as a just and safe place, and
"being aware of depleted emotional energy." Similarly, many, but not all, of
those interviewed in our study manifested signs of the Deepening phase,
such as finding meaning in suffering, recognizing the need for support struc-
tures, and identifying a purpose in life. A more thorough consideration of
these parallels may confirm the notion that individuals and groups develop
their own strategies for overcoming anger and manifest the positive charac-
teristics now associated with one definition of forgiveness. How their own
prosocial strategies relate to alternatives to forgiveness, such as reconciliation,
acceptance, and a conscious "moving on," would also be useful to study.

The Case of Mostar and Bosnia-Herzegovina

History
Sarajevan native Zlatko Dizdarevic (1993) wrote of the paradox of life in his
city under siege:
One of the faces of Sarajevo is that of a city in which one lives, works, and
dies as if in a cell; a whole city bent on survival at any cost. The other face
200 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

of Sarajevo is so incredible, in its own way, that it is hard to describe to any-

one who isn't here. The will to live, a strength gathered every morning
from God-knows-where that makes it possible to reconstruct, every day,
what was destroyed and ravaged the day before. An unrivaled sensitivity in
mending these lifelines that seem unmendable: hope, perseverance, and
faith. Everything, but everything, here has changed, and nothing is how it
used to be. You no longer walk the same streets you did before, you go new
ways, decided upon only by the imperatives of survival. You no longer sit
where you used to sit, nor sleep were you used to sleep.

Throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina, there were an estimated 1.3 million inter-

nally displaced persons, 800,000 refugees sent to other countries, 250,000
people killed, 90 percent of them civilians (Goldstein, Wampler, & Wise,
1997).
Our research was based in the city of Mostar, on the Neretva River in
Herzegovina, the more southern section of the country. Its version of the
conflict between the three warring factionsthe Muslim Bosniaks, the
Roman Catholic Croats, and the Russian Orthodox Serbsis particularly
complex. Muslim and Croatian militia successfully defended the city against
Serbian forces that invaded after Bosnia declared independence in 1992.
After only a few months of uneasy peace, however, Croatia then declared war
on Bosnia, and Mostarian neighbors turned arms on each other. For eleven
months, there was relentless bombardment that gutted buildings and pock-
marked streets and walls, tearing the city apart at its seams. Mostar is now a
city divided on multiple, profound levels.
Geographically, Bosniaks live almost exclusively on the eastern side of the
Neretva River, which divides the city in two, and in the ten-block Muslim en-
clave on the western bank. Croats inhabit the rest of the much larger western
side. Serbs mostly live elsewhere in Bosnia or hide their true identity. For-
merly grouped under the linguistic umbrella of Serbo-Croat, the different
populations of Bosnia now officially speak three different languages, with
two different alphabets.
The most important symbolic division of all, however, is the span of
empty air that crosses the Neretva River in the heart of Mostar, where its old-
est and most important bridge once defined the city's identity. Built by the
Ottoman Turks in 1566, Stari Most, or "Old Bridge," came to symbolize the
various levels of connection in Mostar. It physically linked the two sides of
the city, but also over the centuries symbolically linked the empires of Europe
and Asia, Christianity and Islam. Croatian artillery installations systemati-
cally destroyed the bridge in several hours of bombardment one clear morn-
ing in November 1993. More than any other single act during the wars in
Mostar, this destruction irrevocably tore into the multiethnic fabric that held
the city together.
Like many who committed atrocities during the wars, the Croat general
who ordered the bridge's destruction still lives in Mostar, where he owns a
restaurant on the western side. Many people live in homes deserted by their
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 201

previous owners, squatting in the abandoned properties of former neighbors

become enemies become memories. During the second war, one elderly
Bosniak couple was tortured and then murdered by their Croat neighbors.
The neighbors now live in the couple's home. Funerals were held at night be-
cause of snipers' vigilant attacks during the days. Young Muslim women were
herded into a high school to be raped, with the sounds of their screams
broadcast over speakers to the Muslim side of the front line. The stories are
endless as they are horrific.

The Sunflower

Our research on forgiveness, conducted during two visits to Mostar in the

winters of 1999 and 2000, focused on moral development in a cross-cultural
context. We interviewed more than 100 elementary school students using
the fable scenario described earlier, as well as others. The results of this study,
still in process, help to reveal the moral context in which young Bosnian chil-
dren are growing up. The remaining nationalist tensions were difficult to
conceal in these schools still segregated by ethnic group. Whereas in the Mus-
lim schools passages from the Koran were hung on the walls, in the Croat
schools hung the words of the Croatian national anthem. In Serb schools, the
Cyrillic alphabet and drawings of the flag of Serbia proper marked students'
affiliations.
The most direct research on forgiveness was gathered through interviews
with 45 high school students ranging in age from 16 to 18, drawn from all
three ethnic populations in Bosnia. We asked our participants first to respond
to hypothetical dilemmas from Kohlberg's (1981) moral reasoning inter-
views and then to identify and discuss a real-life dilemma of their own, so as
to discern moral orientation through the theory of Gilligan (1982). Finally,
we read the students a paraphrase of the conflict described in Wiesenthal's
book The Sunflower (1969). A Nazi soldier named Karl, while on his
deathbed, asked that a Jew be brought to him so that he could confess his
crimes. Simon, a Jew from a concentration camp, was brought to Karl, who
told of his role in gathering four hundred Jews into a house, setting it on fire,
and killing all who were trapped inside. Karl asked Simon to forgive him for
his crimes.
We asked the students a series of questions, beginning with whether
Simon should forgive Karl and continuing through a consideration of what
forgiveness means to them, the role of repentance and confession in forgive-
ness, whether Simon has the right to forgive Karl, whether Karl's volunteer-
ing or being ordered to kill the Jews mattered in whether he should be for-
given, and what the gains and losses are when someone asks for forgiveness or
is forgiven. The story in many ways parallels situations in the war in Bosnia in
which many of the victims are dead, and perpetrators and victims are often
divided by ethnic identity. The protocol also considers the questions of
whether individuals or groups are responsible for crimes and who is in a posi-
tion to be able to offer forgiveness.
202 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

The clearest trend in the data is that Bosnian students viewed forgiveness
in primarily interpersonal terms, not in the intrapsychic model that theorists
of forgiveness tend to offer. Of the 45 students interviewed, 29 defined for-
giveness primarily interpersonally, 9 used primarily intrapsychic terms, and 7
were equally split between the two. For one student, speaking from an in-
trapsychic orientation, forgiveness "means to open your heart to forgive
somebody and to destroy the rage that you had before." Speaking from the
more common interpersonal orientation, another student explains that if a
criminal "asks for forgiveness, everyone else can probably see he regrets his
crime, and they would be ready to forgive him in their hearts. We're living in
society and it's important that he gets this encouragement."
The first example involves only a change in attitude on the part of the for-
giver, while the second includes an exchange between perpetrator and victim,
or repentance. Its mention of encouragement and society reflects the ten-
dency of over half of the students (25) to speak about forgiveness in terms of
reconciliation, which Enright and Fitzgibbons (2000) define as "an overt, be-
havioral process of two or more people working out an existing difficulty" (p.
42). The researchers' theoretical framework sees reconciliation as a separate
process that can be, but is not necessarily, involved during forgiveness, while
Bosnian children link the two more closely. This trend may be influenced by
the wording of the question, which presumes that one person is asking an-
other for forgiveness rather than that an individual is choosing to forgive
prior to a request from the offender.
The students identified a series of factors that would influence their deci-
sion about whether Simon should forgive Karl. One group related to the in-
ternal thinking of Simon, the forgiver. That an individual is a "forgiving
type" in terms of personality was mentioned 18 times as a reason Simon
should forgive Karl, followed by having compassion for the last wish of
someone on their death bed (17 times). Another group saw forgiving as a
moral or religious good that would make the forgiver a better person (12
times). "I would forgive them," said one student, "because the crime would
be a burden on their soul. If I wouldn't forgive, I would be just like them."
A second group of factors dealt with the relationship between Simon,
Karl, and the wider community. The function of forgiveness in restoring a
damaged society was mentioned most often (10 times), followed by the po-
tential for a new relationship between forgiver and forgiven (6 times) and
the restoration of a broken peace between individuals (5 times). Citing his
religious tradition, a Muslim student reflected: "It is said in the Koran, if
somebody has done you something evil, it's better to give him something
nice than to harm him again. Because by doing it you are making a friend,
not an enemy; you are converting enemy into friend." Many of the stu-
dents' answers clearly do not fit within the story of Simon and Karl, and so
likely reflect more general views on forgiveness informed by their own life
experiences.
Most of the students saw forgiveness as conditional on some act of repen-
tance, with only 4 of the 45 advocating a unilateral approach. An honestcon-
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 203

fession was their requirement, as a symbol of the person taking responsibility

for their actions (mentioned 18 times). Another 10 refused to trust any con-
fession from the deathbed, viewing it as a selfish act only to assuage a guilty
conscience. One student clearly related it to their country's experience, saying
that "Milosevic is a liar when he apologizes."
Another group of factors influencing their decisions related to the of-
fender at the time of the crime. Defining norms for the way the world works
during war, 21 said that he should be forgiven only if he was ordered to do it,
but should not be forgiven if he chose of his own volition to commit the
crime of burning the Jews in the house. In contrast, 9 said that he should have
refused the order, believing that he had a choice about whether to kill in
either case. The magnitude and type of crime was important for 13 students,
who saw some crimes as unforgivable; one person mentioned the genocide in
Bosnia as an example. Others focused on the killer's motivations, and another
13 argued that Karl's particular war crime was, by its nature, an act of hate
that Karl must have enjoyed in order to commit. One student, though, said,
"Things are not the same in war."
The issue with which Wiesenthal most struggles in The Sunflower is
whether Simon has the right to forgive the Nazi for his crimes. Of the Bos-
nian students, 14 said yes, 6 said no, and 23 believed that Simon could only
forgive crimes on behalf of himself, not others. Among the reasons that
Simon would have the right to forgive, in their view, was the ethnic connec-
tion with "his people" (8 times) and an identification with those who suf-
fered, through similar experiences of personal suffering, loss of relatives (who
could have been among those the Nazi killed), and empathy with those
killed, since Simon could have been in their place. Those who said Simon
could never forgive explained either that only God and priests can offer for-
giveness or that certain crimes are simply too big to forgive. "You can forgive
some normal things," a student said, "like swearing, cursing, or if somebody
offends you. Normal, regular things. But killing a man, to kill a person is
something you can't forgive." Most of the students believed that Simon could
offer his own personal words of forgiveness but that human beings could not
truly forgive on behalf of others, especially others who died.
While current study of forgiveness and especially forgiveness therapy (En-
right & Fitzgibbons, 2000; McCullough, Pargament, & Thoresen, 2000) is
focused mainly on the victim's internal change of attitude, a majority of our
students thought that an offender could gain inner peace (26 times) or reli-
gious absolution (5 times) just by asking for forgiveness. The same propor-
tion believed that an offender being forgiven brought some measure of ease,
peace, and release of moral burden; another three students identified the po-
tential for renewed personal and societal relationships as among the gains of
being forgiven. Only one student raised the possibility that by being for-
given, an offender might assume license to commit the crime again.
Although there are some observable trends in these interviews, the most im-
portant insight is that individuals' views of forgiveness are wide-ranging and
complex. In the context of Bosnia, the theoretical definitions of forgiveness
204 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

as an intrapsychic process need to expand to include the societal and inter-

personal dimensions, as well as the important role of honest repentance.

Profiles of War

Issues of forgiveness also came up in our research study with university stu-
dents, who were approximately twelve years old when the first war broke out.
With them we conducted open-ended conversations about their lives and
ways of meaning-making through an abbreviated form of Fowler s (1981)
faith development interview. Their poignant stories of struggle and survival
highlight our earlier observation that responses to trauma are wide-ranging
and shaped by individual experiences and community contexts. The place of
forgiveness in their developed coping strategies and worldviews also varies
from person to person. The two consistent trends were the beliefs that suffer-
ing had made them stronger and that their nation needed to move on past
hate. Some were optimistic, others very unsure. Their words reveal sophisti-
cated understandings of war and its aftermath, blame and forgiveness, vic-
timization and survival, and their appreciation of life and "the little things."
Here we present portions of these students' first-person stories to offer in-
sights into their thinking for any who would do any kind of counseling or
humanitarian work with individuals and communities in their situation.
Alma, a twenty-year-old internally displaced Bosniak whose father was in
prison: We all drink some piece of freedom. Before the war we all had faith
because we never felt that kind of division between our state and religion
or anything else. But during the war, limits and borders were here and so I
hope that they will be overcome one day and everything will be like before.
Ivica, a. twenty-two-year-old Croat who claims the war pushed him to atheism:
I think about my two years in the war; I didn't go out anywhere. I was con-
cerned only about how to survive and what will happen tomorrow. And I
consider those two years lost. In my future life I would like to live for those
two lost years. A lot of people now are still mourning and they are poi-
soned with feelings of hate. When you see events in the war, you can't
imagine, you can't believe the killing and the dying in the war can have any
sense. You have to come in front of some judge. So for example, in Catholi-
cism, when you do something wrong, you can go to church and confess,
and that's it, you are free now, so you don't have to feel guilty anymore.
And that I don't understand.
Sead, a self-confessed atheist Bosniak who fled to Moscow in 1992 and lived
there until 1996:1 see very clearly, and I am sorry for that because I can
clearly see all the bad things. Because I won't be alive when people here
start to live in normal ways. I worry that in the future we will never be able
to live normally again here in Mostar.
Emina, a twenty-five-year-old married Bosniak whose seventeen-year-old
brother was killed by a Serb shell: I saw my brother lying dead in the street,
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 205

in front of my building. I just try to put it aside, you know. But when I
have a child, I will teach him who he is and I will teach him to respect him-
self and be careful and protect himself from Muslims, Serbs, or Croats or
anyone else who would want to hurt him. I try also to advise my mother
and father not to spend their emotions for hate, you know, that destroy
people. I don't want to hate anyone, not because I know it's fair to hate
themI know they are guilty. But I don't want to ruin my personality be-
cause of them, because of that hate. You know, religion here has a lot to do
with politics. It's sad. Because people kill each other here because "I'm
Muslim and I'm going to kill you because you are Serb." It doesn't make
sense. Actually underlying these words are, "I'm going to kill you because I
like your chair, I like your house, I like your position and I'm going to kill
you and take that." It's shameful for people to say that's religion.
Adrian, a twenty-one-year-old Bosniak who was jailed by Serbs after trying to
flee from Bihac during the war: We have a proverb, "What doesn't kill you
will make you stronger." Jail helped me look at people, and not through
their nationalitythrough their personality. Yes, I hate what happened to
me, but I cannot hate all the people generally. Because I met some people
in the jail who were just, who were good to me. They helped me survive.
Some people suffer more because some people are not prepared enough for
it, and they are not prepared to accept those things in that moment, and
when you accept something you actually have a part of that solution. I
wouldn't be the person I am today without those experiences. I would ac-
tually be a person who suffers, without those experiences.
Edin, a twenty-year-old Bosniak who fled to Croatia for three years during the
war and now aspires to be a judge: Nationality or background doesn't tell me
much about men. You must meet that man, talk to him, and after that you
will find out what he is like.
Marijan, a twenty-two-year-old Croat who became a refugee at the age of thir-
teen in Croatia, where he felt "hated": At present here in Bosnia, everyone
would say "I'm a Croat or I'm a Serb, Muslim." It's stupid. We are stuck
and that's the big thing I don't want to deal out. The last thing I would say
is I'm a Croat. I'm a Bosnian. I want to live every day, I want to live to-
morrow, and I want to remember. You have to adjust your attitudes, your
perspective to this country, this situation, which is terrible. You're on the
edge of existence. . . . When you don't have money to buy some bread,
milk, I don't know . . . all of your beliefs and attitudes and values come into
question. When you are financially situated, you can have values and atti-
tudes and whatever.
Lejla, a twenty-two-year-old Bosniak from Tuzla, who fled with her sister first
to Slovenia and then to Germany, where they stayed two years: What the hell
is this? It's hell actually. My country, my country just started fighting.
Why? There was a lot of "why?" questions going through my head. You
just accept it. I do not live in fear. What the hell. We die, everyone. You
206 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

accept that you cannot eat bananas, you cannot go to the theater, you can-
not go to movies and have dinner out, you cannot go abroad. . . . You don't
have any opportunities, but you have to be satisfied with that, you just
continue. It's hard in the beginning, but you continue and live and it's
harder to live your life with grenades like that. It's military actions all
around you and you follow the front lines. . . . You hear lots of war stories,
terrible stories. It's a way of living.

Amir, a twenty-four-year-old Bosniak interned in a concentration camp dur-

ing the war: I cannot compare the nice things that are happening to me
now, and what happened to me in the past. These are like two different
lives. Every good thing, there is a little of bad, and in every bad thing, there
is a little of good. When humans understand life in that way, nothing bad
can happen to them. They cannot be compared. I'm thinking like, when I
die I'll be reborn again.

Ana, a twenty-two-year-old Croat whose family split up and spent part of the
war period in Croatia, part in Vienna: So we returned to Mostar, and the
second war began . . . and it was a terrible period, because I am a Croat and
most of my friends are Muslim, and because I live in a neighborhood
where mostly Muslims were living. And then I left all my friends, because
they had to leave West Mostar. . . . You know how it feels, when you are a
victim of the war for one year, and then your people, your nation become
armed, attackers. And from news, from different media, you find out
what's happening to Croats in middle Bosnia. So it was kind of a period
when I didn't hate anybody, but a period when I hated myself. I hated my-
self for being there, for living here. To love your people, to love your na-
tion, to respect others as much as you love yours, that feeling is actually
what this country needs and what every country needs. Can you imagine
that people that you spent all your childhood with, they just leave you. . . .
You know that something might happen to them, and you know that your
people, your nation, is doing that. But one nation didn't do that. People
were doing this, crazy people. They were not normal. The things that they
were doing were not normal.

Emir, a twenty-year-old Bosniak who fled to Croatia with his sister in the first
war but lived through the second war in Mostar: During the war, there was
nobody here. It was always dark, even in the middle of the day, it was al-
ways . . . it was always shooting, it was always death around us. Grenades
were falling down, and fourteen men and women were killed at that time.
I was ten meters in front of them. Fourteen. Fourteen people died. There
was one pregnant woman, three or four children, they were just sitting in
front of the building. In the war we tried to help anyone, because we didn't
have anything. Because of war we were together, we can help each other,
we can make it until the end of the war. Even if we thought that the war
would never stop. We didn't feel so afraid when there was shooting all
around and when the grenades fell around you. It was normal. But when it
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 207

stopped for half an hour, for fifteen minutes, twenty . . . when it stops, it's
not normal. It's not normal to be quiet. At that time you were scared. Why
did it stop? What are they preparing? What are they going to do?"
Antun, a twenty-five-year-old Croat raised in Sarajevo, who was forced to join
the Croat army at the age of seventeen and is currently a driver and part-time
university student: Because of war I lost my tears, my ability to cry. It hap-
pened in May of 1993 in Sarajevo after one of the first mass slaughters. I
went to a party at some friends' in the neighborhood. They were all sitting
around crying because that was the first real picture of the world, the first
time we actually realized by looking at the main street of our city covered
with blood and the pieces of bodies that we actually realized what this was
all about. There are individuals and there are groups. I would say . . . it
might sound humiliating, but there are humans and there are others. As a
soldier I was killing as many enemies as possible. But that was the black
and white during the war. You were not thinking about the possibility that
at the other side was a friend of yours. It was like a computer game. I felt
that it's a game. I, of course, have seen ours and enemy soldiers killed, but
I never had any feelings about it. It was like a score. It was something that
I was simply not understanding, and I just became part of the crowd. It's
like mass hypnosis. You feel others around you because you're all together,
because there are shells coming.

Conclusions

Although each of these narrative excerpts is shaped by very particular experi-

ences during and after the war, there are several representative trends. Most
significantly, no one seems to be espousing hate and revenge. The speakers
recognize the disastrous consequences hate and nationalist rhetoric caused
during the war, and they fear its return. Their attitude to the future of their
country is hopefulness mixed with worry that the conflict may not really be
over. One of our interpreters was confident that if the international military
force were to leave, there would again be war.
Throughout the interviews, in which students talked extensively about of-
fenses committed during war and how they have dealt with them, there is lit-
tle mention either of forgiveness or of the justified anger that some critics of
forgiveness therapy tend to advocate. Instead, their points of view are shaped
by harsh reality, in which the lines between normal and abnormal are con-
fused. They recognize that suffering has formed them into wiser, stronger
human beings with a clearer perspective on the world. They look beyond eth-
nic origin in evaluating persons, resist nationalist rhetoric, and refuse to buy
into the stereotypes that vilify the supposed enemy. They have been shown
mercy by members of groups who have also done them harm. They believe
that greed is the true motive for violence committed under the guise of reli-
gion. They reject religious practices such as the Roman Catholic sacrament of
208 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

confession as a travesty to justice and sanction for further violence. They have
friends of other ethnic groups and mourn that their own people are commit-
ting crimes against them. They have changed their mental attitudes in order
to survive, and they question the relevance of former religious beliefs and val-
ues to their situation. They have seen war destroy the humanity of individu-
als and turn them into instruments of killing.
As we write this chapter, the situation of Bosnia remains unresolved. Con-
flicts in the Balkans continue in Kosovo and Macedonia, nationalist political
parties protest their exclusion from government by international overseers,
certain regions refuse to turn over indicted war criminals to tribunals in The
Hague, and a forced multiethnic government presides over a still-segregated
country just beginning the process of returning ethnic minorities to their pre-
war homes.

What Future for Bosnia?

As the voices from Bosnian youth make clear, traumas of today's "total war"
are not isolated, well-defined incidents inflicted on individuals in the midst
of otherwise stable environments. Instead, chronic violence, material depri-
vation, and total disruption of their society caused them to adapt new ways of
coping with the demands of survival. These ways of psychological coping de-
veloped during the war deserve further study as they relate to forgiveness
counseling. Bosnian youth refuse to let anger rule their lives or hate have
power over them. They accept what happened to them and wish to move on,
but they do not let go of negative attitudes toward the actual perpetrators of
violence or in any way mitigate their guilt and responsibility. They hope for
justice but reject revenge. The exact process by which people move from an
offense committed against them to this kind of psychological equilibrium
needs to be examined not only in light of traditional notions of mental
health, but also what is adaptive in their cultural, economic, and political
context.
Over and over, Bosnian youth spoke about a vast fracture between their
earlier, normal life and what they learned to be during the war. It is a chasm
which many feel can never be truly mended, and despite a desire to return to
the normal existence of their previous life, they fear this might be impossible.
From the siege of Sarajevo, writer Zlatko Dizdarevic (1993) reflects on this
change in terms of forgiveness:
They have destroyed our city, and no doubt they'll keep on ravaging what
remains. But if I know my people, one day they'll be forgiven, though we
will never forget what they have done. But what we'll neither forgive nor
forget is that they have broken what is best in us; they have taught us to
hate. They have made us become what we never wereand that is why,
though they will be forgiven, we'll find it difficult to do so. It will be diffi-
cult for this ravaged Bosnia to return to what it used to be, with the people
 FORGIVENESS AFTER GENOCIDE? 209

that we have become. And yet the way it used to be was the only way we
knew. (p. 34)

The potential role of forgiveness in postwar societies exists not in individ-

ual psychological therapy sessions but in collective exercises of reconciliation
to restore the social fabric of communities. Simply returning refugees and
internally displaced people to their former communities will not ensure
friendly relationships or an absence of conflict, and even intrapsychic for-
giveness has little benefit to communities without a simultaneous change in
behavior. The full range of factors promoting social restoration remains un-
clear, but several students mentioned justice as an important element. The
international community believed that without the responsible individuals
being brought to justice by an outside entity for crimes against humanity, the
society would resort to assigning collective blame to ethnic groups and take
revenge in further conflict. The International Criminal Tribunal for former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established in The Hague by the United Nations to
bring indicted war criminals to justice. Punishment of the instigators of vio-
lence and hatredthose who caused society to defy normalcymay make it
easier for ordinary individuals to forgive one another. On the other hand, the
tribunal has had a part in further dividing the nation along ethnic lines and
fueling support of nationalist politicians, with various groups feeling dispro-
portionately persecuted by the international community.
In his book, No Future without Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu
(2000), once the chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commis-
sion, asserts that there could have been no peaceful future for South Africa
without a process of truth-telling and restorative justice, of collective forgive-
ness and a common commitment to move toward reconciliation. Rejecting
punitive judgments, the South Africans found a third way between demands
for revenge and the feigned forgetting of general amnesty. Their experience
depended on a commitment of local leaders on all sides to the African belief
in ubuntu, an understanding of fundamental human nature rooted in the
shared spiritual traditions of their culture.
Whether either or both of these models will lead to sustained peace and
human dignity remains unclear. Forgiveness and, perhaps more importantly,
reconciliation continue to be attractive philosophical ideals to heal the disas-
trous consequences of today's war. At the same time, the resilience strategies
societies have developed and their significant resistance to trauma counseling
in general makes advocating forgiveness in psychotherapy to war "victims" a
more complicated notion. We have much yet to learn from the stories of ac-
tive survivors like the youth of Bosnia about how to support their own ways
of community healing in a country turned upside-down.

Note
We would like to thank Tajma Kurt and Murray McCullough for their assistance with
interview arrangements in Mostar. We would also like to thank our many interpreters
210 CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS

for the two years of the study and Mike Evans, Bill Jaeger, Jay Davis, Phuoc Le, Brent
Knopf, and Almin Hodzic for help with data collection. Support for the research was
provided by the Ethics Institute and the Dickey Endowment at Dartmouth College.

References

Arroyo, William, & Spencer Eth (1996). Post-traumatic stress disorder and other
stress reactions. In R. Apfel (Ed.), Minefields in their hearts (pp. 52-74). New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Becker, Daniel F., Stevan M. Weine, Dolores Vojvoda, & Thomas H. McGlashan
(1999). Case series: PTSD symptoms in adolescent survivors of "ethnic cleans-
ing." Results from a 1-year follow-up. Journal of the American Academy of Child
and Adolescent Psychiatry, 38(6), 775-781.
Boothby, Neil (1994). Trauma and violence among refugee children. In A. J.
Marsella, T. Bornemann, S. Ekblad, & J. Orley (Eds.), Amidst peril and pain:
The mental health and well-being of the world's refugees (pp. 239259). Wash-
ington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.
Cairns, Ed (1996). Children and political violence. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
Dizdarevic, Zlatko (1993). Sarejevo: A warjournal. New York: Fromm International.
Enright, Robert D., & Richard P. Fitzgibbons (2000). Helping clients forgive: An em-
pirical guide for resolving anger and restoring hope. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association Press.
Fowler, James W. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the
questfor meaning. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Friedman, Matthew, & James Jaranson (1994). The applicability of the post-trau-
matic stress disorder concept to refugees. In A. J. Marsella, T. Bornemann, S. Ek-
blad, & J. Orley (Eds.), Amidst peril and pain: The mental health and well-being
of the world's refugees (pp. 207-228). Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association Press.
Garbarino, James, Kathleen Kostelny, & Nancy Dubrow (1991). Not a place to be a
child: Growing up in a war zone. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Garrod, Andrew, Carole R. Beal, & Patrick Shin (1990). The development of moral
orientation in elementary school children. Sex Roles, 22, 1227.
Gilligan, Carol (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's develop-
ment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Goldstein, Richard D., Nina S. Wampler, & Paul H. Wise (1997). War experiences
and distress symptoms of Bosnian children. Journal of Pediatrics, 100, 873878.
Hacam, Berima (1999). Work Report 01/01-12/31/1999. (Available from the Psy-
chological Counseling Centre for Children and Parents, Mostar, Herzegovina.)
Husain, Syed A., Jyotsna Nair, William Holcomb, John C. Reid, Victor Vargas, and
Satish S. Nair (1998). Stress reactions of children and adolescents in war and
siege conditions. American Journal of Psychiatry, 155(12), 17181719.
Johnston, Kay (1988). Adolescents' solutions to dilemma in fables: Two moral orien-
tations, two problem-solving strategies. In C. Gilligan, J. Ward, J. Taylor, & B.
Bardige (Eds.), Mapping the moral domain (pp. 4971). Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Kohlberg, Lawrence (1981). Essays on moral development, vol. 1: The philosophy of
moral development. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
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Kurt, Tajma (1998). What future for the internally displaced persons: With special refer-
ences to Tuzla Region, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Unpublished masters thesis, Univer-
sity of York, England.
McCullough, Michael E., Kenneth Pargament, & Carl E. Thoresen (2000). The psy-
chology of forgiveness: History, conceptual issues, and overview. In M. E. Mc-
Cullough, K. Pargament, & C. E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness: Theory, research,
and practice (pp. 1-14). New York: Guilford Press.
Saigh, Philip A., John A. Fairbank, & Anastasia E. Yasik (1998). War-related post-
traumatic stress disorder among children and adolescents. In T. W. Miller (Ed.),
Children of trauma. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
Summerfield, Derek (1999). Critique of seven assumptions behind psychological
trauma programmes in war-affected areas. Social Science Medicine, 48, 1449
1462.
Tutu, Desmond M. (2000). No future without forgiveness. New York: Doubleday.
Wiesenthal, Simon (1969). The sunflower. New York: Schocken Books.
This page intentionally left blank
Part IV

PERPETRATORS AND
FORGIVENESS
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 eleven

Forgiveness and Effective Agency

Norman S. Care

In what follows I explore one of the main dimensions of the moral practice of
forgiveness. My interest is in what might be called the forward-looking di-
mension of that complex practice. In this dimension what is at issue is not the
backward-looking response to past wrongdoing involved in the victim's act of
forgiveness, but, rather, the possibility of "release" for the wrongdoer from
the moral-emotional pain associated with the awareness of his or her wrong-
doing, and thus the prospect of the renewal of energy for projects and the re-
sponsible conduct associated with effective human agency.
I assume that the practice of forgiveness has this forward-looking dimen-
sion. This assumption reflects my thought that our moral form of life wants
full effective agency for, as it were, people of good will. So my discussion does
not concern or rely on points made with moral monsters or other extreme fig-
ures in mind. Ordinary decent peopleeven very good peoplemake mis-
takes or commit wrongs from time to time, and in these cases the peace of
mind and self-confidence needed for effective agency may be diminished or
lost. Forgivenessby others, by oneselfcan help restore that peace of mind
and self-confidence. It is in that way that the practice is forward-looking rel-
ative to the one who makes mistakes or commits wrongdoing.
The backward-looking and forward-looking dimensions are uneasily re-
lated in the moral practice of forgiveness in ordinary life. The restoration of
effective agency should not be cheapened by false or hollow expressions of
forgiveness, and it should not be denied by self-centered refusals of forgive-
ness. To some extent, it seems our agency, when diminished by our own
recognition of our own wrongdoing, is harnessed to the capacity of others to
"forgive and forget." Something similar may be true of our chances for self-
respect: in certain contexts, for instance, achievement-oriented sections of
life, our self-respect may be more dependent than we wish on the views of
others concerning our projects and conduct.2
Further, my discussion is preoccupied with the apparent logical fact about
the practice of forgiveness that other-forgiveness is not sufficient for self-

215
2 I6 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

forgiveness. If you forgive me my past wrongdoing or corrupt attitudes, and

your forgiveness is sound, that is, you have good reasons for giving it, I have
repented and (if possible) made amends, and circumstances permit it without
distortions in the judgments about wrongdoing or corruption involved, then
presumably I may legitimately have the "release" thus offered by you.3 But
our experience indicates that in some cases forgiveness by others, even when
sound, is not enough for me to forgive myself. Self-forgiveness seems un-
available even when other-forgiveness is permitted and, in fact, given. How
this complexity is to be understood, and whether, in particular, the failure of
self-forgiveness may be legitimately remaindered beyond other-forgiveness
(without becoming mere self-indulgence), will be exploredwithin, again,
the main interest of the discussion in the forward-looking dimension of the
practice of forgiveness.

The Problematic

The practical problem in the dimension of the practice of forgiveness I am in-

terested in might be experienced as the problem of restoring agencythat
agency that includes peace of mind and self-confidence when these have
been, as it were, "challenged" by one's awareness of one's own serious mistakes
or wrongdoing. Such awareness leaves a moral-emotional aftermath that di-
minishes or reduces agency by disrupting peace of mind and weakening self-
confidence. Here are some notes and stipulations for my discussion of this fa-
miliar practical "problematic."
First, for this discussion I will consider the practice of forgiveness to be a
possibility in the event of awareness of serious mistakes as well as recognized
wrongdoing. Such mistakes might be those incurred when complicated pro-
cedures are in process, for example, in a medical setting; they might also be
those involving problematic judgments made in the workplace when re-
sponses are surrounded by a penumbra involving urgency, pressures from col-
leagues, and uncertainty. Mistakes are not always moral wrongs, but they can
be in some cases objects of forgiveness.
Second, I will not attempt to detail here the make-up of the practice of
forgiveness. As a practice it has structure and rules giving context and mean-
ing to gestures and phrases, and emotional color to relationships. But I will
not attempt to say how it differs from other nearby practices, such as pardon-
ing or excusing. For this discussion it is more important to note that we are
not all equally adept in participating in the practice of forgiveness. This is no
surprise, of course. Something of the same is true for other practices, such as
the practices of promising and friendship (and pardoning and excusing). It is
probably a general truth that if P is a practice, there will be people who are at
different competence levels relative to P. Just as we are not all up to speed on
being competent promisers, or in being friends, so we don't always give or re-
ceive forgiveness "rightly" (as Aristotle might say). Some of us don't have for-
giveness know-how toward others or, indeed, ourselves.
 FORGIVENESS AND EFFECTIVE AGENCY 217

In fact, there are some obvious hazards attending participation in the prac-
tice of forgiveness. I will assume here that as a decent person one wants in
general to be a forgiving person, as one wants in general to be a courteous
person, and to be capable of compassion in certain contexts as well. But there
are episodic judgment pitfalls: just as one can go wrong in being courteous,
or in offering compassion, so one can be in certain cases too forgiving, or too
ready to forgive (call it "hasty forgiving"), or one can be excessively reluctant
to forgive (call it "ungenerosity").
And, too, the lack of connection between other-forgiveness and self-for-
giveness can be complicated in certain ways: as, for example, when the self-
forgiveness that occurs when other-forgiveness is not justified is really arro-
gance. More salient for this discussion is the case in which other-forgiveness
is justified, but self-forgiveness is still not available. After all, if you forgive me
what I have done, presumably you have some reasons for doing so; and since
reasonsor, anyhow, legitimate reasonsare (on a familiar view) considera-
tions that a detached or objective person could have or recognize, I could
have them, too; but, clearly, our experience is that the forgiveness that comes
to us from others is not always "enough" for us to forgive ourselves. One ex-
planation that comes to mind is that I am suspicious of your reasons, so that
I think that the reasons on the basis of which you forgive me are essentially
calculations of future benefits, and have little or nothing to do with the sub-
stance of what I did, namely, that which makes a forgiveness problem arise in
the first place. Another explanation comes to mind, one that brings estimates
of self-worth into the picture: Your forgiveness of me might be based on a
washed-out view of yourself. You don't want me to be bothered by the terri-
ble thing I did to you. You think (about yourself), "I'm not worth it."
Third, let me ask: is the "problem of the restoration of agency" something
that can be discussed? After all, people may differ from one another on how
internally strong they are, how they bear up under pressure, what it takes for
something to get to them, and so on. Someone might think that these are
matters for individuals to work out, but not phenomena that can be captured
in a theory or wrapped in a general account or a "policy" to be followed. My
thought here is that doubtless there is something to individual differences in
people; but these, I think, do not preclude learning something from engaging
ethical issues in an orderly way. In any case, what is at stake here is not just
"how one appears to others" on the confidence front (for example, as the
much-admired or much-hated "decisive surgeon"), or even how one appears
to oneself (one can deceive oneself as well as others). The issue here is ulti-
mately the effectiveness of one's agency, that is, the effectiveness of one's ca-
pacity to control the content in one's life, including facing up to the next
challenge that comes along in one's workplace or personal life. It concerns
how far we can be, within realistic limits, masters of our fates, and, when we
cannot in certain circumstances be masters, then how far we can be reason-
able and constructive strategists when our circumstances go against us.
Finally, let me note that what can challenge effective agency (including,
again, peace of mind and a measure of self-confidence) is not one thing or a
21 8 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

small variety of things. There are many things that can "shake" a person (if
not you, then another person) in a way that draws down and diminishes the
elements of effective agency, and thus makes it difficult for a person to move
forward in ways that may be required in the workplace or personal life. The
absence or withholding of forgiveness can be one of these challenges to
agency. In Letter to His Father Franz Kafka makes clear that he does notand
cannotforgive his father's treatment of him in childhood. One wonders
how far this unforgiveness affected the father's life.4 Mozart's father could not
forgive Mozart's marrying Constanzaa woman "beneath him," according
to the father. One wonders how far the unforgiveness diminished peace of
mind for Mozart, despite his astonishing musical productivity. Rousseau, ap-
parently, never could rid himself of the memory of his cruelty to a young ser-
vant girl, as recorded in The Confessions (in order to get rid of it) and then re-
turned to at the end of his life in The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. 5 One
wonders again how in this case the self-unforgiveness affected agencyand,
indeed, personalityin Rousseau's case.
Medical contexts provide settings for cases involving mistakes to which
the possibility of forgiveness seems relevant but which are not aptly thought
about as instances of moral wrongdoing.6 The physician botches a surgery
and disfigures a person for life. Perhaps he or she amputates the wrong limb,
but there are only procedural snafus in the background rather than violations
of moral principle. Whatever the background, in such cases there is no gen-
uine way to set things right. Apologies and money are hollow. The practice of
forgiveness gets pushed to one of its limits. There are, after all, unforgivable
actsand genocide is not the only example.
In another case the doctor in family practice sees an alcoholic through
detoxification and then finds that no affordable follow-up treatment pro-
gram is available (for insurance will no longer covers it); but then the doctor
must release the patient from the hospital, worried whether the patient will
attempt Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and, in general, uncertain about
whether he or she has "done enough" to see to the patient's safety and health
in a responsible way. In such cases there are very great risks of misjudgment.
In the follow-up arena, when has one "done enough"? One can botch follow-
up just as one can botch surgery.
These are straightforward enough as illustrative cases. Let me, though, for
this discussion, put before us another sort of caseone involving the physi-
cian in the "penumbra" around a case involving a treatment situation espe-
cially complicated by urgency and family pressures, and still other factors, in-
cluding political and quasi-moral elements that enter into decision making in
tense situations. The case sketched in what follows is drawn from Abraham
Verghese's book, My Own Country.7
Bobby Keller called me in the office as I was about to leave for home.
He sounded shrill and alarmed.
"Doc? Ed is very sick! He is very, very short of breath and running a
fever. A hundred and three. Dr. Verghese, he's turning blue on me."
 FORGIVENESS AND EFFECTIVE AGENCY 219

"Bobby, call the emergency ambulance servicetell them to bring you

to the Johnson City Medical Center." . . .
I was at the Medical Center well ahead of the ambulance. Soon it came
roaring in, all its lights flashing. When the back door opened, I peeked in:
Ed's eyes were rolled back in his head, and he was covered with a fine sheen
of sweat. . . .
Bobby . . . was on the verge of fainting.
"Don't put him on no machines, whatever you do," Bobby begged me.
"Please, no machines."
"Why?"
"Because that's what he told me. He doesn't want it."
"When did he tell you? Just now?"
"No. A long time ago."
"Did he put it in writing? Does he have a living will?"
"No. . . ."
In the emergency room, I stabilized Ed as best I could. . . . Time was
running out.
Ed was moaning and muttering incomprehensibly. . . . I had only a few
minutes before I had to either breathe for him, or let him go. I needed
more guidance from Bobby as to Ed's wishes. . . .
I hurried outside.
Bobby and three other men and one woman were near the ambulance
entrance, smoking. . . . Bobby Keller, still trembling, introduced me to
Ed's brothers, all younger than Ed. . . .
I addressed the brothers: "Ed is very sick. A few months ago we found
out he has AIDS . . . . Now he has a bad pneumonia from the AIDS. I need
to put him on a breathing machine in the next few minutes or he will die.
. . . But Bobby tells me that Ed has expressed a desire not to be put on the
machine." . . .
The family was clear-eyed, trying to stay calm. . . . I felt they were fond
of their oldest brother, though perhaps disapproving of his relationship
with Bobby.
"We need to discuss this," the older brother said.
"We have no time, I need to go right back in," I said.
[The family caucused, and came back.]
"We want for you to do everything you can. Put him on the breathing
machine, if you have to."
At this a little wail came out of Bobby Keller. . . .
The oldest brother spoke again. His tone was matter-of-fact and deter-
mined:
"We are his family. We are legally responsible for him. We want you to
do everything for him."
We are his family. I watched Bobby's face crumble as he suddenly be-
came a mere observer with no legal right to determine the fate of the man
he had loved since he was seven years old. He was finally . . . an outsider.
220 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

I took him aside and said, "Bobby, I have to go on. There is no way for
me not to at this point. . . .
I rushed back in. Ed looked worse. As I went through the ritual of
gowning and masking . . . it struck me that the entire situation had been in
my power to dictate. All I had to do was to come out and say that the pneu-
monia did not look good, that it looked like the end. I mentioned the res-
pirator, I offered it as an option. I could have just kept quiet. I had, when
it came down to the final moment, given Ed's brothers the power of fam-
ily. Not Bobby.
But there was no time to look back now. . . .
[A few hours later] a furious Code Blue was in progress [but to no
avail].
Bobby Keller and the Maupin family were in the quiet room. It was
very difficult for me to go in there and tell them Ed had died. Bobby cried.
. . . Ed's brothers covered their eyes or turned their heads away from me.
The eldest came over and shook my hand and thanked me. Bobby came
out with, "Praise the Lord, his suffering is over," and walked alone toward
the door. . . .
I thought of funerals I had been to in Johnson City where the grieving
widow was escorted to the memorial service by friends and family. Tears
and hugs, happy memories, casseroles and condolences. Who would com-
fort Bobby Keller, I wondered.

This case illustrates, I take it, how judgment can be affected in the urgency
of circumstances. Notice again Verghese's remark, that "all I had to do was to
come out and say that the pneumonia did not look good, that it looked like
the end. I mentioned the respirator, I offered it as an option. I could have just
kept quiet. I had, when it came down to the final moment, given Ed's broth-
ers the power of family. Not Bobby. But there was no time to look back now."
But there may, of course, be time later to look back. And that is where the
danger usually is. One begins to rethink and second-think one's judgment;
one begins to doubt one's judgment; one begins to want to go back and do
things a different way. And I take it to be ordinary human experience in cases
of this kindnot unique to physicians and their workthat one can begin
to question one's judgment, and in doing so come to jeopardize what comes
next in one's work, or even one's life. One may come to be "stuck" with a
problematic event in one's own historyan event that remains embedded in
one's past whether or not anyone else ever gives it attention. One seems stuck
with the pain of guilt or shame, and begins to doubt one's competence; and
thus, diminished agency makes engaging or negotiating the next cases diffi-
cult or impossible.
Here again the earlier point about individual differences in people be-
comes important. You may find that your friend is stuck with a problematic
event in his or her past, and be relieved that you are not similarly stuck. You
may find, in line with the fashionable "modularity thesis" in contemporary
philosophy of mind, that your friend is vulnerable to being bothered by his or
 FORGIVENESS AND EFFECTIVE AGENCY 221

her past in ways that you are not.8 For if the self is "modular," that is, if it is
not a unity or a univocal competence, but is instead a set or cluster of ele-
ments (dispositions, competencies, abilities, susceptibilities) the precise in-
gredients of which may very well be different from person to personif this
is so, then we are not all the same in our vulnerabilities. Genetics may be in-
volved. Heavy social conditioning may be involved. In the end you may or
may not understand your friend very well in this respect. Sometimes we are
baffled by people who apparently have problems in living their lives that we
do not have. In some cases we manage to be understanding to some extent;
too often, in my view, we end up impatient with and irritated by people who
have difficulties we do not have.
Another even darker point. One cannot always tell how far one is oneself
able to do x, or withstand pressure y, or rise to challenge z. I may be shy, and
think (with my friends, if I have any) that I ought to get past that, but I may
in fact be constitutionally shy, in which case the degree to which I am "stuck"
with shyness is for all practical purposes outside the power of my will; and I,
as well as my friends, may do me damage by urging me to "get past" my shy-
ness. Similarly, I may be vulnerable to loss of self-confidence, and think that
I ought to get past that, but I may in fact be constitutionally vulnerable in
this respect, in which case my getting past the vulnerability, and all that goes
with it, is outside the power of my will.
On this view we are not all in command of our agency in the way our or-
dinary thinking about persons as rational beings may suggest we ought to be,
and this plays havoc with how far we hold others and ourselves to account for
what happensin, for example, urgent difficult circumstancesand, ac-
cordingly, with how far we suffer, tolerate, or are embarrassed by the problem
of the restoration of agency, involving, as it does, the elements of peace of
mind and self-confidence, that I began with.

Strategies for Recovery

Suppose, then, we recognize the restoration-of-agency problem for the com-

plicated thing it can be. What follows? Are there strategies for recovery for
someone whose agency is diminished by the remaindered sense of fault
mistake fault or moral faultin what happened at an earlier point in life?9
What can be said about the restoration of effective agency in a person who
"does wrong" to another person, genuinely repents, and seeks ways to make
amends (if any exist)? What can be said about the restoration of effective
agency in a skilled physician who finds his or her professional life spattered
not by the pain of awareness of deliberate wrongdoing but simply by negative
emotional pain attending problematic judgments made in tense, cluttered
circumstances? What is the role of forgiveness, by others and by oneself, in the
restoration of agency? Even if forgiveness cannot (logically) guarantee "recov-
ery," can we have reasonable expectations that it can contribute toward the re-
gaining of effective agency on the part of the person to whom it is offered?
222 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

I should say at once that I don't have slick new answers to such questions,
and I don't trust the pop-psychological answers I am aware of. In what fol-
lows I will discuss an interesting response to a problem like the restoration
problem I have outlined above. This involves a response developed by Clau-
dia Card to issues of recovery of agency in cases of child abuse and political
oppression.10 But before turning to Professor Card's views let me make cer-
tain observations.
First I need to observe how lame (in my opinion) the ordinary responses to
this problem seem to be. You may urge your friend or yourself when pained
by an awareness of mistake or wrongdoing to "disclose and apologize" and
then "forget it and go on." But we all know that at any rate the latter part of
this advice is not followable by just anyoneand one sometimes suspects
that those who can follow it, those who can easily jettison problematic
chunks of the past, are not fully serious people. You may urge your friend or
yourself to excuse or somehow reinterpret the past so that a judgment made
back then can be something other than wrong. But, again, the revisionist
strategy is not promising, at least not among those who are seriously caught
up in moral pain over what happened and are thus stuck with the decent per-
son's typical respect for truth. In some cases the negative interpretation (that
is, the judgment made back then was wrong) may simply be true, and then
excusing, rationalizing, and revising are forms of fraud.
A second observation concerns the important "variable" of self-knowledge
relative to the reality of the restoration problem, or at any rate relative to how
seriously the problem may be taken in real life. Despite the popular view that
one knows oneself better than anyone else does, I think self-knowledge is not
always in place, and is, in fact, very hard to come by. I may be shy but not
know that I am constitutionally shy; I may have a drinking problem but not
know that I am what AA calls a "real alcoholic" (and thus stuck with a consti-
tutional vulnerability). I may think of myself as self-confident, but not realize
that I am arrogant. I may be unsure of how smart or talented I am, but sim-
ply not know how to give myself the morale-boosting pep talk that others can
administer to themselves. It may be that such failures or distortions in self-
knowledge are among the obstacles in the way of strategies for recovery being
simple or very general in application.11
A third observation is that in theoretical settings it is tempting to ap-
proach the restoration issue in a way that counsels generosity. After all, the
thought comes to mind that in the cases in question hereagain, cases not of
moral monsters performing evil acts, but of ordinary decent people who have
made mistakes or "done wrong" (and are sorry)morality surely seeks the
restoration of agency in such people. That is, morality does not ask or permit
diminished agency to stay diminishedforever, or even for extended but
limited periods of time.12 There is more to this point than merely "wishing a
person well." It may be that in cases in which forgiveness makes sense there is
a moral permission, and perhaps in some cases even an obligation, for it to be
offered. For what is at stake, when one speaks of the restoration of agency, is
in effect the restoration of moral personalitythat "end in itself" that Kant-
 FORGIVENESS AND EFFECTIVE AGENCY 223

ian ethics finds to be the most precious of moral goods. And if that is what is
at stake in cases of the sort we consider here, then indeed it might seem natu-
ral for theorists to suppose that generosity may play a role, or even lead the
way, in our thinking about recovery.13
But I think the generosity imperative should be treated with caution, for
even when as we take the restoration problem seriously, cases come to mind
in which generosity would not, in the real world, be advised, or even be safe.
In some cases a person's makeup involves the dominance of depression, ad-
diction, disorder, or simply low self-esteem, and our hearts go out to such a
person and we want to encourage recovery. In other cases, a persons makeup
involves the dominance of anger, viciousness, very powerful ego and aggres-
sion, and self-protection requires, in our lives with such a person (even when
one is oneself such a person, and self-forgiveness is a possibility), something
other than the actions that usually go with generosity. Even if we are different
from one another, it doesn't follow that we or others are helpless, unthreaten-
ing, or eager to change.
The final observation on this list is the gloomy one that the life of anyone
(not just physicians or other "professionals") who tries to live in the world
rather than on its margins is a no-win life in this matter of challenges to ef-
fective agency. One will find oneself in urgent, complicated dilemma-like cir-
cumstances in which one will be stampeded, yet be required to "decide." It
doesn't follow from that, though, that what one decides doesn't matter, or
that what one decides, even at the highest level of responsibility and consci-
entiousness, will be morally okay when one reviews the situation in the quiet
of the night. Perhaps some lives are more vulnerable to challenges to agency
than others. But, so I suspect, there is such vulnerability in human lives in
general, and thus the role of forgiveness in the recovery of agency is hardly of
interest to only a few.

The Integrity Project

Some of the salient features of Claudia Card's view about recovery when
agency is diminished by child abuse or political oppression are these.
First, it makes sense, in her view, to speak of a person becoming a responsi-
ble agent. Here she writes, with Dewey in mind, that we are not born re-
sponsible but "at most with potentialities for becoming so, realizable to a
greater or lesser extent with luck and hard work" (p. 24).14 So Card's concep-
tion of responsible agency is a degree notion. I assume that the "becoming" in
question, then, can go either way: one may be "more" or "less" a responsible
agent today than at some earlier point in one's history.
Second, Card describes her account as elucidating "the agent's forward-
looking perspective" (p. 24). She is not concerned with the backward-look-
ing perspective of the moral observer or judge and thus is not chiefly con-
cerned with "attributions of responsibility for what has already been done or
occurred" (p. 25).15 Her account does not purport to be a completely general
224 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

characterization of individual responsibility or of the agent's perspective. It is

targeted on resistance to oppression or overcoming abuse, and the "agents"
she has in mind are those whose "background stories" include "bad moral
luck" in the form of a "history of child abuse" or a "heritage of oppression"
(p.24). 16
Third, relationships are important to an exposition of Card's conception
in two ways. On the negative side, "Early unchosen relationships with signif-
icant others" (p. 33) may be involved in the abuse suffered or the oppression
endured and hence be, as it were, negative moral-luck "givens" in the history
of the individual agent. On the positive side, relationships with others can
function to support the individual's efforts to develop the self-esteem re-
quired to resist oppression and overcome abuse.
Finally, within the framework thus provided, to become a responsible
agent is (as I will put it) to undertake and follow through on an "integrity
project." Card is careful to distinguish an integrity project from (what I will
call) an "autonomy project." To develop autonomy is, for Card, by and large
"to develop boundaries between ourselves and our environments" (p. 24). It
is a "separating" of sorts (pp. 47-48). The integrity project, however, is not
a matter of separating, but, rather, a matter of developing "reliability and
bases for self-esteem," and for these "interpersonal relationships can be crit-
ical" (p. 24). How is this to be understood? Integrity, for Card, involves
"basic commitments and values" (p. 30). She writes, "Integrityliterally,
wholeness, completeness, undividednessinvolves considerations of con-
sistency, coherence, and commitment, while autonomy involves considera-
tions of dependence and independence" (p. 32). In line with Lynne McFall's
discussion of integrity, Card writes that integrity requires of the agent the
development of "an identity to which basic moral values and commitments
are central" (p. 32).17 And luck, she points out, "enters at several points" (p.
33). "Since some of our most deeply ingrained values and traits begin in
early unchosen relationships with significant others, we may have difficult
work to find their roots, assess them realistically, and come up with a tolera-
bly coherent set" (p. 33).
This seems the heart of the integrity project to me. Becoming a responsi-
ble agent is finally finding one's roots, assessing them realistically, and coming
up with a "tolerably coherent set" of values and commitments. Thus, in "tak-
ing responsibility for ourselves," we "participate in constructing our own
identities, and thus in constructing some of the conditions of our own in-
tegrity" (p. 32). Becoming a responsible agent, then, may indeed be hard
work.18 The cases of child abuse and oppression are apt for this point. Here
one's "roots" may be fragmented, garbled, and painful to sort out, and assess-
ing them "realistically" may be a major project in itself (and, in my opinion,
not always a feasible one). Beyond this matter of understanding one's roots,
"coming up with a tolerably coherent set of values and commitments" may be
a further major project of formidable proportions.
Card does not minimize the difficulty. She likens the integrity project for
an individual to the efforts of the membership of a community to come to-
 FORGIVENESS AND EFFECTIVE AGENCY 225

gether to resist oppression. Just as the membership of a community might be

at odds within itself, so an individual victim of abuse may be internally at
odds within himself or herself. Card's helpful discussion of "dysfunctional
multiples" offers a striking characterization of how a person may be "frag-
mented" or "scattered" on the inside.
At a certain point Card's analysis of the situation for victims of abuse be-
gins to take on an air of exhortation and appeal-to-action that is appropriate,
I think, to the subject. If taking responsibility is made complicated by the
luck-damage of oppression and abuse, we are assured that "the character and
values of the oppressed change drastically in the process of liberation." Vic-
tims are urged to gear up and act: "Resistance can come only from within"
(p. 41). The oppressed and the abused have "responsibilities of their own to
peers and descendants" and must turn themselves into "survivors" rather than
"victims" (p. 41). To do this one must achieve the integration that allows one
to "cease complicity in one's own oppression or in maintaining one's own dis-
tress" (p. 46). That is, one must achieve what is called "internal bonding"
within oneselfa "reconciling" of one's different values, perceptions, and
commitments (p. 46). In fact, to this end autonomy (in the meaning earlier
specified) may play an instrumental role, for against a "hostile environment,"
separation may be necessary "for healing and growth" (p. 48). If indeed the
acquisition of integrity can in the multiples case have "a life or death impor-
tance," even in less extreme cases it is "important to morale and to the possi-
bility of self-esteem and pride" (p. 46).
There is thus rather a Nietzschean dimension to Card's discussion here.19
To undertake the integrity project is to attempt to overcome one's circum-
stances by a transfiguration of oneself from "victim" to "survivor." And,
counter to the view that one's capacity for morally responsible agency is
threatened by the factors of negative luck (abuse, oppression), Card argues in-
stead that that capacity offers, via the energizing notion of taking responsibil-
ity, the prospect of change in, and even command of, one's life. Appreciation
of luck, then, does not leave one skeptical of the value of morality; it instead
transforms any such skepticism into a regard for morality as a conceptual fa-
cilitation of positive change in the life of the agent. Morality, via the idea of
taking responsibility, presents the means by which to seize one's life. One may
indeed, on this view, recover from victimization.

Comment

My first thought about Card's discussion is in effect a worry about how seri-
ously her view takes the specter of constitutive luck suggested by the modular-
ity thesis mentioned above, relative to her discussion's positive estimate of the
strength of the capacity for morally responsible agency. The integrity project
supposes a self affected by the results of a history of oppression or abuse but
not necessarily constituted by those results. Thus, those negative results can,
in principle, be overcome through the development of integrity. Card notes
 226 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

at the end that our luck may be "to have to, or not to have to, work hard or
self-consciously" (p. 48) to cultivate the internal bonds at the heart of the in-
tegrity she wants victims to develop.
But my attachment to the modularity thesis leads me to worry about con-
stitutive luck at a deeper level. Can the self suffering a history of abuse or op-
pression not only be affected by the history's results but in fact constituted by
them? Can it be my constitutive-luck fate not "to have to" but, in fact, to be
unable to "work hard or self-consciously" at the integrity project Card out-
lines as an avenue of recovery from victimization?
Two passages in Card's discussion seem to allow constitutive luck at the
deeper level. Early in the discussion she mentions, without elaboration, "a
basic lack of justice in our ability to be moral" (p. 29, italics added). And later
she writes, "To determine whether it makes sense to hold an agent responsi-
ble, we need to know whether that agent's luck made the development or
maintenance of integrity impossible or impossibly difficult" (p. 33).20 These
passagesespecially the secondseem to acknowledge that luck can be at
the deeper level, that is, it can be of the sort that structures rather than "in-
fluences" the will.
Whether constitutive luck can be at the deeper level is an important mat-
ter philosophically, I think, for what is at stake are two different concep-
tions of the individual agent, and beyond that the character of our moral-
psychological responses to others and ourselves. On one conception, will is
prior to luck factors; the latter may be heavy in their influence, but in prin-
ciple they may be overcome. It thus makes sense for the individual to un-
dertake recovery from victimization in the manner suggested by Professor
Card's integrity project. On the other conception, some luck factors may be
prior to the will, in the sense that they structure it (they are built into it)
rather than influence it. These factors are true "givens"necessities of the
willfor the agent.21 And, depending what these factors are, it may or may
not make sense for the individual agent to undertake the integrity project
Card has in mind.
As I said above, Card's "multiples" model suggests a victim of abuse whose
self is fragmented or scattered. Will might be intact (though diminished in
strength) in this case, but the properties of the will are in disarray. The sug-
gested program of recovery is an integrity project cultivating "internal bond-
ing," and thus the development of a sort of moral core allowing at least "co-
operation" among the values and commitments present in the self (p. 47). In
contrast, the other conception of the agent just characterized allows us to
imagine a victim of abuseor indeed a victim of problematic judgment (as
in the Verghese case), or even a remorseful perpetrator of unintentional
wrongdoingwho is, in fact, stuck with regret, fear, resentment, self-pity, or
some combination of theseperhaps a whole cluster of negative emotions,
the whole mass of feeling laced with depression. The result may be a steady
state of brooding despair, or generalized apprehension, that is quite paralyz-
ing to thought and action. I am aware that this mass of feelingthis form of
emotional sensibilitymay indeed be, as the mental health professionals say,
 FORGIVENESS AND EFFECTIVE AGENCY 227

"ego-syntonic," and thus be temperament-defining "to" as well as "of" the

individual.
I suggest, then, that one's will can come to be structured by such feeling,
and that, in effect, one can be powerless over it. In William James's great
meaning-of-life essays collected in The Will to Believe, his view sometimes ap-
pears to be that many of us, beneath the layers of ideology, are of "optimistic
natural temperament," and this view helps support James's appeals to the le-
gitimacy of "passional nature" in serious life decisions when rationality is in-
conclusive. But even James seems to allow that a person's natural tempera-
ment might instead be "pessimistic," and thus carry with it the bleak moral
psychology of the negative sort described above.22 I believe, given my own
experience plus contact with others, that there certainly is something like
"pessimistic natural temperament."23 And my further thoughts are simply
(1) that such temperament may be "constitutional," and (2) that such tem-
perament, that is, temperament constituted pessimistic, can be the residue of
abuse and oppression, or even of the realizations of mistakes or recognitions
of wrongdoing that are at issue in this discussion of forgiveness.

Prospects for Recovery

Suppose, then, that one is stuck with "pessimistic" temperament in the way,
or at the level, I have just mentioned. Is "recovery" possible? Is there some
way of restoring effective agency, including the peace of mind and self-confi-
dence that we may suppose morality wants for moral agents? Perhaps there is
a sort of recovery possible. But it may not take the form of the integrity proj-
ect that Professor Card recommends. There is such a thing, I think, as learn-
ing to live with one's constitutive luck. But this "learning-to-live-with" will
not be a matter of integrating value-and-commitment fragments as it is in the
case of the victims of abuse or oppression for whom Card's "multiples" model
is apt. It will perhaps be more a matter of understanding one's fate in the
lotteries of nature and social contingency (including one's own history with
personal relationships), and then accepting it for what it is, and then design-
ingor re-designinga life for oneself that sends one in some other direc-
tion, or at least does not ask one to do the impossible. In the cases I have in
mind, the results of one's history of abuse or oppression, or one's awareness of
one's mistakes or wrongdoing, are not, as it were, present to one's will as items
to be challenged and overcome; rather, they are in one's will, and they struc-
ture one's moral-emotional psychology ab initio.
Are there people whose shyness is constitutional? On the view I am ex-
ploring it is a possibility that the answer is "yes." And it is cruel to insist with
a constitutionally shy person that he or she "overcome" shyness. Are the peo-
ple who get called "alcoholics" really only "problem drinkers," or perhaps
what Fingarette calls "heavy drinkers,"24 or are they indeed (what AA calls)
"real alcoholics," that is, people who cannot drink safely no matter how hard
they try to control themselves? On the view I am exploring, there are real
 228 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

alcoholicsand the worst thing one can do for them, or to them, is to try to
teach them to drink "safely" (whatever that could mean). In a similar way,
and despite the strange sound of the question, I need to ask, are there victims
of abuse whose constitutive luck is such that they cannot "do" the integrity
project Professor Card outlines for them? I think the answer must again be
"yes" on the view I am exploring. And, again, it would be a form of cruelty to
such people to urge upon them a recovery program that their nature pre-
cludes. On the model I have in mind, the self "stuck" with the mass of feeling
including anger, fear, resentment, and so onthat is, the person for whom
such a state is both systemic and ego-syntonic, is not a person who can re-
spond to the energizing, morale-lifting strategies of common sense, religion,
or front-line psychologystrategies, I rush to say, that have indeed been
helpful and even inspiring to those not constituted in the same way. And all
this, it perhaps goes without saying, I would apply to cases in which people
are aware of mistakes they have made, or wrongdoing they have unwittingly
committed, and are in the aftermath of their awarenesses diminished in the
negative constitutional way I have called attention to. For these people for-
giveness by others may be ineffective regarding the restoration of effective
agency, and self-forgiveness may be a sort of practical impossibility.
I do not wish to be misunderstood, and I do not wish to exaggerate. I am
not proposing that all shy people be treated as constitutionally shy, or that all
drunks be considered real alcoholics, or that all existential nihilists be seen as
systemically depressed, or that all those who procrastinate, lack discipline, or
exhibit paranoia be viewed as constitutionally so. And I am not proposing
that forgiveness is futile, or should not be offered, or that self-forgiveness
should not be urged upon those one cares about. On the question, "how does
one tell whether J is x or constitutionally x?" I have nothing to say (here).25
Still a further point is that those who are constitutionally a certain way may
not in fact remain that way forever. There are cases in which one's depression
"lifts," for exampleor one's phobias weaken, or one's absorption in one's
own past diminishes. This "just happens," sometimes slowly, sometimes
rather quickly. How this works is not, I think, well understood. Indeed, it
may be that the very effort of "stepping back" from oneself enough to bring
into view certain constitutive-luck factors about oneself is some sort of step
toward their becoming "influences" rather than "structures" of one's will. But
there is, in my view, no guarantee that understanding oneself will provide
power over oneself in this moral-emotional arena.

Concluding Thought

My exploration of the problem of the restoration of effective agency yields a

result that is gloomy in part. If J has made a mistake that results in serious
damage to S, or done something very damaging to S that is in fact morally
wrong, then awareness of the mistake or the wrongdoing may affect / in a
way that reduces or diminishes agency, that is, it disrupts the peace of mind
 FORGIVENESS AND EFFECTIVE AGENCY 229

and self-confidence that J must have to carry on his or her personal life or life
in the workplace. If we assume that morality wants J's agency restored, and
that the conditions that morality imposes upon restoration (repentance,
amends, and so on) have been satisfied, then we may engage in forgiveness of
/, and urge self-forgiveness upon /, as part of the encouragement of recovery
of agency. The point that my discussion leaves us with is that there is no rea-
son in logic or practical fact to suppose that other-forgiveness will contribute
to recovery, or that self-forgiveness will be possible for j. If j were "master of
his or her fate" in the manner that suggests control of the will, perhaps the
practices of other-forgiveness and self-forgiveness could be more promising
relative to the restoration of agency. But, so it seems to me, the fact that neg-
ative emotional experience in some cases comes to structure the will, and not
merely stand as a property of it, suggests that all bets are off regarding the ex-
pectations we may have, relative to the restoration of agency, of the practices
of other-forgiveness and self-forgiveness. One's agency may be reduced or di-
minished by abuse in childhood, or political oppression, or awareness of how
one's mistakes affected others, or recognition of one's own wrongdoing, or in
any number of other ways. When forgiveness (by others or oneself) does con-
tribute to the restoration of agency, it does so by lifting a burden, by amelio-
ratingnot abolishing or "revising"the pain generated by one's awareness
of one's mistakes or moral wrongdoing and reflected in loss of confidence and
disruption of peace of mind. But for those sensitive to moralitythose de-
cent people who take seriously their stake in their own moral historyfor-
giveness may or may not have its ameliorating effect. One may or may not be
able to recover from the reduced or diminished agency one is left with.

Notes
1. I am intrigued by the moral ranking Maureen Dowd ascribes to President
Clinton and "the unforgiving and hypocritical behavior of Henry Hyde, Bob Barr
and their lynch mob," namely that "it is worse to refuse to forgive than to need for-
giveness." In "The Great Empathy Basks in the Glow," (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, 28
January 1999, 11-B.
2. John Rawls claims that self-respect has as one of its bases the respect of, as it
were, selected othersin particular, "finding our person and deeds appreciated and
confirmed by others who are likewise esteemed and their association enjoyed." Cf.
A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1971), 440.
3. For discussion of the connections between forgiveness and repentance, see Jef-
frie G. Murphy's essay, "Freedom and Resentment," in Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean
Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
and Joram Graf Haber, Forgiveness (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991), es-
pecially the introduction and ch. 5.
4. Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father (New York: Schocken Books, 1966). The let-
ter itself was never given to the father, as I understand the history, but I suspect the
father was aware of the unforgiveness.
5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions, trans. J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1954), Book 2, 86-89; Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans., preface,
230 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

notes, and interpretive essay, Charles Butterworth (New York: Harper Colophon,
1982), "Fourth Walk," 43-44.
6. I have benefited from an article titled "Morally Managing Medical Mistakes"
by Martin L. Smith and Heidi P. Forster (Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 9
[2000]: 38-53). How "medical mistakes" are dealt with is, of course, a problem for
institutions (hospitals, medical schools, and insurance companies) as well as for indi-
vidual physicians. In my discussion I do not venture into the policy issues for institu-
tions. Smith and Forster do, as does Charles L. Bosk's Forgive and Remember
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
7. Abraham Verghese, My Own Country (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994),
177-84.
8. I make use of the modularity thesis about the makeup of the self in Living with
One's Past: Personal Fates and Moral Pain (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
1996), especially chapters 3, 4, and 5.
9. I suggested a "general structure" for recovery strategies in chapter 2 of Living
with One's Past (in the section titled "Ethical Theory and Recovery"). What follows
assumes that account and does not modify it.
10. Claudia Card, The Unnatural Lottery (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1996), Chapter 2, "Responsibility and Moral Luck."
11. I think physicians ought to have exercises in self-knowledge built into their
medical educationthough I will not try to suggest here how such forms of educa-
tion could or ought to be constructed.
12. There is an interesting issue lurking here which I will note but not be able to
explore: if one does wrong or makes a serious mistake, and one suffers negative emo-
tional pain, for how long must one endure such pain? In most cases punishments for
legal wrongs have limits. Are there limits on moral-emotional suffering? Can one suf-
fer moral-emotional pain for too long? Is one blameworthy if one's moral-emotional
suffering ends "too soon"?
13. In a way that seems to me appropriate to the notion of generosity, Bill Wil-
son, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, wrote in his powerful commentary on
the Twelve Steps, "Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are to
some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true
tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means." Wilson, Twelve Steps
and Twelve Traditions (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1952,
1953,1981), 92.
14. The page numbers in parentheses refer to chapter 2, "Responsibility and
Moral Luck," in Card, The Unnatural Lottery.
15. For an early discussion distinguishing these different perspectives on our
moral life, see Stuart Hampshire's "Fallacies in Moral Philosophy," in Mind 58,
(1949), reprinted in Joseph Margolis, ed., Contemporary Ethical Theory (New York:
Random House, 1966).
16. The helpful term "background stories" is used in Gary Watson, "Responsibil-
ity and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme," in Ferdinand Schoe-
man, ed., Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1987).
17. Lynne McFall, "Integrity," Ethics, 98 (October 1987).
18. For Claudia Card, the integrity project for victims of abuse or oppression
may involve "constructing identity." William F. May's book on medical ethics, The
Patient's Ordeal (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991),
concerns recovery from catastrophic or devastating illness (for example, for a burn
 FORGIVENESS AND EFFECTIVE AGENCY 231

victim). For May, recovery in cases of this extreme kind may also involve the con-
structionor, indeed, reconstructionof identity.
19. See Card's remarks (at p. 130) in her lengthy review of Eva Feder Kittay and
Diana T. Meyers, eds., Women and Moral Theory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Little-
field, 1987), in Ethics 99 (October 1988).
20. Card adds at this point, "To determine whether it is justifiable to hold an
agent responsible, we may also need to know how that agent's luck compares with
that of those who would hold the agent responsible." The Unnatural Lottery, 33.
21. See Harry Frankfurt's discussion of "necessities of the will" in his essay, "Ra-
tionality and the Unthinkable," in The Importance of What We Care About (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
22. William James, The Will to believe (New York: Dover, 1956), 82-83, 88, 171.
Also see 100-101.
23. I do not wish to exaggerate the powers of such evidence, but I am charmed by
Jeffrie G. Murphy's remarks about invoking experience: "I do not know what other
test to apply. . . . I do not see how one can profitably discuss these issues in the ab-
stract," in "Jean Hampton on Immorality, Self-Hatred, and Self-Forgiveness," Philo-
sophical Studies 89 (1998).
24. Fingarette, Heavy Drinking (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
25. In ch. 4 of Living with One's Past, I discuss how one is to "live with others"
when this epistemological difficulty is taken into account.
 twelve

Earning Forgiveness:The Story of a

Perpetrator, Katherine Ann Power
Janet Landmon

On September 23, 1970, Katherine Ann Power, age 20, was a "good Catholic
girl," an honors student at Brandeisand a member of a group of five who
were robbing the State Street Bank & Trust Company in Brighton, Massa-
chusetts. Power was driving the getaway switch car. In the parlance of the day,
the group was "liberating funds" from a "collaborationist establishment" to
support the movement against the Vietnam War. Power did not know it until
later, but one of the group, ex-convict William Gilday, had stayed behind at
the bank and shot and killed Boston police officer and father of nine, Walter
Schroeder. Under the state's felony murder law, because all five were engaged
in a felony when someone was killed, all five could be charged with murder.
Power went underground for twenty-three years. She remained on the
FBI's Ten Most Wanted list longer than any other woman in history. Finally,
in September 1993, she gave herself up, waived her right to a trial, pleaded
guilty to manslaughter, and began serving an 8- to 12-year prison sentence at
the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham. She completed
her sentence and was released from prison on October 2, 1999. In this chap-
ter, I analyze Katherine Power's efforts to earn forgiveness.
The present analysis is part of an in-depth case study I have been conduct-
ing since 1995 on the transformation of the regrets of Katherine Power. I
view Power's story as in large part a story of the ethical force of emotion, par-
ticularly the disparagingly named "negative" emotions of regret, remorse, and
guilt (e.g., Landman, 1987a, 1987b, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2001). As I have ar-
gued elsewhere (Landman, 2001), regrets like Power's, for having done seri-
ous harm to someone else, require more than the interior work of self-reflec-
tion and feeling that takes place in what Ryle has called "the secret grotto of
the head" (cited in Geertz, 1973, p. 362). Power's regrets demanded rela-
tional modes of remedial work (Goffman, 1972) as wellpublic confession
(to society in general, and to the family of Power's victim, specifically); and
acceptance of society's public penance, namely, incarceration in a "peniten-
tiary" (Landman, 1999; Landman, 2001). Here I explore the recently bur-

232
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHER1NE ANN POWER 233

geoning body of scholarship on forgiveness to investigate Power's process of

earning forgiveness, both from society and from her specific victims.
For my investigations of the transformation of Katherine Power's regrets I
have relied on narrative psychology, or more broadly, narratology (e.g., Bal,
1997; Bruner, 1986; Cohler, 1982; Coles, 1989; Frank, 1995; Gergen &
Gergen, 1986; Linde, 1993; McAdams, 1987; McAdams, 1993; McAdams,
Josselson, & Lieblich, 2001; Rosenwald & Ochberg, 1992; Sarbin, 1986).
Central to the narrative perspective is the idea that "identity is a life story
[told] . . . in order to provide [the individual's] life with unity or purpose
and in order to articulate a meaningful niche in the psychosocial world"
(McAdams, 1987, p. 5). The story I relate here is a story of a momentous
change in the identity of Katherine Powerfrom Woman-Warrior-against-
War to Wbman-of-Peace. The question I address is whether, in this transfor-
mation of identity, Power has also earned forgiveness.
Power's narrative of forgiveness is based on these sources: (1) an audio-
recorded four-hour interview I conducted with Power in prison in August
1995; (2) a televised interview of Power produced by a Boston-area cable sta-
tion in April 1998 (Ahearn, 1998), just after she withdrew her request for
"early" parole; (3) Power's talk (1999b) entitled "My Journey to Nonvio-
lence," which she gave at Babson College on October 5, 1999; (4) Power's
own writings on the topics (1998b, 1999a, 1999c), which she produced in
prison and which she gave me for use in this analysis; (5) post visit notes that
I took immediately after numerous conversations I had with Power in prison
between 1996 and two days before her release on October 2, 1999; and
(6) newspaper and other journalistic accounts of relevant events.

Earning Forgiveness

What Is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness has proved difficult to pin down conceptually, and so far no def-
initional consensus has emerged among scholars of forgiveness (McCul-
lough, Parmagent, & Thoresen, 2000, p. 7). Of course, forgiveness involves a
change in thinking. As Hampton points out, each of the three biblical He-
brew words meaning forgiveness highlights a cognitive element of the experi-
ence: (1) kipper, to cover [the sin]; (2) nasa, to lift up, to carry away [the sin];
and (3) salach, to let go [of one's sense of victimization] (Murphy & Hamp-
ton, 1988, p. 37).
For me, however, the conceptualizations are most defensible in which the
centrally defining feature is emotionalnamely, the cessation of resentment
toward someone who has harmed (e.g., Downie, 1965; Ewing, 1970; Hughes,
1975; Lamb, 1996; Moore, 1989; Murphy, in Murphy & Hampton, 1988;
Smedes, 1984).
In the Christian perspective dominant in American culture, resentment
is typically assumed to be a vice. Philosopher Jeffrie Murphy, however,
234 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

distinguishes between the malicious or spiteful sentiment, which he agrees is

irrational and immoral, and the retributive sentiment, which he argues may
be rational and moral (Murphy & Hampton, 1988). Jean Hampton agrees
that there could be a "legitimate retributive sentiment" (Murphy & Hamp-
ton, 1988, p. 164). Following Murphy and Hampton, philosopher Joram
Haber offers the following analysis of how resentment might be a virtue: "A
person who is self-respecting and who cares about the moral law will care
about people (herself included) who are the objects of moral judgment, and
she will express this care in the form of resentment when she is the object of
moral injury" (1991, pp. 72-73).
As Haber points out, resentment, or indignation at having been mis-
treated, functions positively as "a defense of self-respect" (p. 79). In The
Trouble with Blame (1996), clinical psychologist Sharon Lamb applies this
insight to the domain of psychotherapy, arguing that it can be salutary for
victims to experience more resentment and to assume less of the blame than
they often do.
Examples of legitimate retributive resentment include the angry feelings
of a rape victim toward her unrepentant attacker or those of a Holocaust sur-
vivor toward the Nazi commandant of the death camp he barely survived
(Murphy, in Murphy & Hampton, 1988). With respect to such victims who
experience resentment and who want the perpetrator punished (that is, who
experience retributive resentment), Murphy adds that he would find it "inde-
cently insensitive and presumptuous had anyone charged them with the vice
of failing to forgive and love their enemies" (p. 92). I agree.
Forgiveness is always a gift from one harmed to his harmdoer, not a right,
a point that Minow expresses well in the following passage:
Observers of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission note
that although many who were victimized are prepared to forgive or rec-
oncile with public officers and government officials from the apartheid
regime, the survivors recoil when perpetrators greet victims with open
arms and handshakes. In these cases, forgiveness is assumed, rather than
granted. A survivor might think, "should you not wait for me to stretch out
my hand to you, when I'm ready?" . . . Forgiveness is a power held by the
victimized, not a right to be claimed. (1998, p. 17)
Forgiveness, then, is a "change of heart" entailing ceasing to resent some-
one who has harmed you. (Hampton, in Murphy & Hampton, 1988, p. 42).
Some scholars (e.g., Hampton in Murphy & Hampton, 1988; McCullough,
Pargament, & Thoresen, 2000; Smedes, 1984) argue that full-fledged for-
giveness requires more than the victim's arriving at a state of indifference,
more than "letting go of the negative"; it also entails "embracing the positive"
(McCullough et al., 2000, p. 302). According to Smedes, for instance, the
change of heart that defines forgiveness "has begun when you recall those
who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well" (1984, p. 30).
Similarly, for some scholars (e.g., Hampton, in Murphy & Hampton,
1988; North, 1998; Pawlikowski, in Wiesenthal, 1998; Worthington,
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 235

Sandage, & Berry, 2000), the normal terminus of forgiveness is reconciliation,

defined as the restoration of an "amicable relationship" with the offender
(Hampton, in Murphy & Hampton, 1998, p. 37; italics added). For others,
reconciliation is less stringently defined as at minimum the "'civil' relation-
ship that prevails between strangers in a human community" (Murphy, in
Murphy & Hampton, 1988, p. 37). However, even some scholars who define
reconciliation as the normal terminus of forgiveness acknowledge that there
are exceptions to this rule, such as the situation of a battered wife, who may
forgive her husband, but still leave and divorce him because he cannot be
trusted not to harm her again (Hampton, in Murphy & Hampton, 1988,
p. 85n 34). For such reasons, I am more persuaded by those who view
forgiveness as entailing the less stringent version of reconciliation in which
victim and harmdoer attain a civil, but not necessarily an amicable, relation-
ship (McCullough, Pargament, & Thoresen, 2000; Murphy, in Murphy &
Hampton 1988; Scobie & Scobie, 1998).
Certainly, forgiveness is an inherently interpersonal, or relational matter
(Arendt, 1958; McCullough, Pargament & Thoresen, 2000; Exline &
Baumeister, 2000; Gordon, Baucom, & Snyder, 2000; Tavuchis, 1991). It is
a change of heart on the part of one person, the one harmed, directed at an-
other person, the one who has done the harm.
Finally, it is important to recognize that forgiveness is a process. Genuine
forgiveness of a harm of any consequence cannot be arrived at instantly,
merely through fiat, or an act of the will (Haber, 1991; Horsbrugh, 1974; Sco-
bie & Scobie, 1998). Even though a particular individual may want to proffer
an immediate, willed forgiveness, the human psyche simply does not work
this way. In addition, when the transgression has produced mortal damage, as
in the case at hand, forgiveness will "normally" be a "long and often painful
process" (Scobie & Scobie, 1998, p. 396). Indeed, forgiveness that is too
quickly granted may be suspected as a symptom of premature closure (Minow,
1998, p. 24), low self-worth (Davenport, 1991; Lamb, 1996), defensive de-
nial, or reaction formationa "reaction against or an undoing of the feeling
that she [the victim] is too bad and very guilty" (Lamb, 1996, p. 162).
Robert Enright and the Human Development Study Group at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin have schematized forgiveness as a four-phase process
(Enright, Freedman, & Rique, 1998, p. 53):
1. Uncovery: self-awareness and self-interrogation.
2. Decision making: making the decision to undergo the work of offering
forgiveness.
3. Work: reframtng, or coming to understand the perpetrator in his con-
text.
4. Outcome or Deepening: achieving a new sense of meaning, purpose,
identity.
In general, I disagree with Enright and his colleagues in their claim that
forgiveness does not typically require remorse or repentance from the wrong-
doer. I do, however, find other elements of their conceptualization useful.
236 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

Reframing, for instance, is a crucial cognitive element of the process by which

a victim comes to forgive the perpetrator. Reframing entails coming to view
the perpetrator in context, understanding the perpetrator as an individual
with a particular personal history and particular external pressures that were
impinging on him or her at the time of the offense. In essence, reframing is a
process of attempting to understand the perpetrator as a whole, not only as he
or she is defined by the transgression. Reframing is built on a base of empa-
thy. However, it does not excuse or condone the wrong, and it does not deny
the offender's personal responsibility for the wrong.
Just as in the dominant Christian perspective resentment is typically as-
sumed to be a vice, in the same tradition forgiveness is typically assumed to
be a virtue. Recently, however, some scholars, in particular Jeffrie Murphy
(e.g., Murphy & Hampton, 1988, 1998), have argued both that resentment
can be a virtue and that forgiveness can sometimes, perhaps often, be a vice.1
Minow agrees, pointing out how the institution of the legal trial represents a
mechanism for making our way between two dangers, namely, "vengeance
and forgiveness . . . [in that] it cools vengeance into retribution . . . and . . .
steers clear of forgiveness" (1998, p. 26). Hampton disagrees in general that
forgiveness is a danger to be avoided, but acknowledges that sometimes
rarely, she believesit is morally appropriate to withhold forgiveness, "in
particular, when too much of the offender is 'morally dead'" (Murphy &
Hampton, 1988, p. 153).
When is forgiveness, then, not a vice but a virtue? In general, I concur with
those who argue that forgiveness is a virtue when it is "done for a moral reason,"
not merely, for instance, for one's own peace of mind (Murphy, in Murphy &
Hampton, 1988, p. 24). What is a "moral reason" to forgive a wrongdoer? Ac-
cording to Haber, the offenders repentance is the only morally relevant reason
to forgive. Indeed, "In the absence of repentance, forgiveness amounts to little
more than condonation of wrongdoing" (Haber, 1991, p. 90).

What Forgiveness Is Not

Forgiveness is not forgetting. I assert this in opposition to those few scholars

who construe forgiveness as entailing a kind of forgetting that comes from a
"conscious decision by the victim not to remember the justifiable claim for
recompense or revenge" (e.g., Scobie & Scobie, 1998, p. 375). I agree with
those who eschew trying to forget a serious harm done to oneself in order to
protect oneself and perhaps the perpetrator, as well, from the emotional dis-
tress entailed in remembering (Murphy, in Murphy & Hampton, 1988, p.
23). Such a strategy is otherwise known as a defense mechanism (Freud, A.,
1936). Defense mechanisms, though, are best used as short-term "Band-
aids" to help injured people through a bad patch. Defensive forgetting does
nothing to heal the underlying wound and is not a long-term solution.
Empirical research on individuals' efforts not to remember distressing
matters (e.g., Roemer & Borkovec, 1994; Pennebaker, 1993, 1997; Wegner,
1994a & b; Wegner, et al.) supports the skepticism of certain perceptive the-
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 237

orists such as Minow (1998). Efforts to forget or ignore unwanted thoughts

and feelings by an act of the will simply do not work; in fact, they often pro-
duce a rebound effect (Wegner, 1994a & b; Wegner et al., 1987). So with
political theorist Donald Shriver, I say, "Remember and forgive" (1995, p. 7),
and with Polish philosopher and dissident Adam Michnik, "Amnesty with-
out amnesia" (1994, p. 29).
Forgiveness is not excusing, that is, judging that an act was wrong but that
the wrongdoer was not responsible for it, as is appropriate with the legally in-
sane (Haber, 1991; McCullough, Pargament, & Thoresen, 2000; in Murphy
& Hampton, 1988). If a wrongdoer is not responsible for the wrong, there is
no one to forgive.
Forgiveness is not justifying (McCullough et al., 2000; Murphy, 1988) or
condoning (Haber, 1991; Hampton, in Murphy & Hampton, 1988). Con-
doning is what we do when we "turn a blind eye" to an offense (Scobie &
Scobie, 1998, p. 378), that is, judge that the wrong was warranted, not im-
moral (Murphy & Hampton, 1988). If the act is justified, then there is noth-
ing to forgive.
Finally, forgiveness does not necessarily entail mercy, that is, exempting
a harmdoer from atonement, restitution, or punishment (Haber, 1991;
Minow, 1998; Murphy & Hampton, 1988). In Hampton's words, "Like for-
giveness, mercy is a gift to which the wrongdoer never has a right" (Murphy
& Hampton, 1988, p. 159, italics in original). We can forgive someone and
still judge that she needs to make atonement, accept a penalty, or both.
The fact that forgiveness, reconciliation, and punishment can rationally
coexist demonstrates that forgiveness does not require mercy. Hampton illus-
trates this view, with what she rightly characterizes as a "remarkable practice"
in colonial New England, in which a criminal who was sentenced to hang,
but who repented, was welcomed back into the community with a "reconcil-
iation feast in his honor, . . . followed] up ... by hanging him the next day!"
(Murphy & Hampton, 1988, p. 158).

What Constitutes "Earning" Forgiveness?

One day in a Ukrainian concentration camp in the 1940s, a young SS soldier,

Karl, called for a Jew to be brought to his deathbed. Simon Wiesenthal was
the Jew who happened to be brought to the bedside of the dying Nazi. There
the SS man asked Wiesenthal to grant him forgiveness for the atrocities that
he had committed against Jews. After relating a particularly horrific crime in
which he had participated, the dying SS soldier said to Wiesenthal: "I want to
die in peace, and so I need . . . I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg
forgiveness from him. . . ." (Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 54). Wiesenthal suffered
the dying Nazi to unburden himself, but he could not grant him forgiveness.
He relates this agonizing incident in a book called The Sunflower (1998) and
asks how others would have acted.
Book Two of The Sunflower, "The Symposium," consists of the responses
of 53 distinguished and thoughtful individuals to Wiesenthal's tortured
238 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

question, what should have been done in this situation. I begin with these
words of Henry James Cargas, a Catholic theologian of the Holocaust: "For-
giveness is not something we may depend on others for. We must somehow
earn it. Deathbed conversions are dramatic but in many instances they are too
easy. If God chooses to forgive Karl, that's God's affair. Simon Wiesenthal
could not, I cannot. For me, Karl dies unforgiven. God have mercy on my
soul" (Cargas, in Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 125, first set of italics added; second
set in the original).

How Then Is Forgiveness to Be Earned?

Scholars have only recently begun to spell out what exacdy might need to
occur during the process by which a perpetrator comes to earn forgiveness.
Elaborating on the model of forgiveness specified by Enright and his col-
leagues, philosopher Joanna North has proposed a nine-stage process by
which perpetrators might ideally earn forgiveness (North, 1998, p. 30). In
this section of the chapter, I review North's model in conjunction with cer-
tain insights into this issue found in The Sunflower. Taken together, these
sources prove useful in illuminating the process by which Katherine Power
went about earning forgiveness.

Stage / In North's model, the first step is when the wrongdoer "recognizes
that he has done wrong . . . [and] recognizes the injured party's right to pun-
ish" (North, 1998, p. 30).

Stage 2 Next, the wrongdoer "experiences other-oriented regret or remorse

for the wrong" (North, 1998, p. 30). These other-oriented feelings are distin-
guished from self-concern and self-pity (p. 32).
In The Sunflower, Nechama Tec, Holocaust survivor and writer, notes how
the dying SS man evidenced far greater self-pity than pity for his victims:
The dying man burdens the Jew with a request that he knows is unreason-
able. Selfish, self-centered, the dying Nazi dwells on his own personal suf-
fering. Feeling utterly sorry for himself, he says: " . . . those Jews died
quickly, they did not suffer as I dothough they were not as guilty as I
am" . . . He does not even see that the Jews he murdered were innocent vic-
tims, guilty of no transgression at all. Even on his deathbed he seems to be
denying to the Jews their humanity. And it is the mans self-indulgence
which propels him to impose an additional burden on a concentration
camp inmate who is sentenced to death [i.e., Wiesenthal]. (Tec, in Wiesen-
thal, 1998, p. 258)
Joshua Rubenstein of Amnesty International further articulates the nature
of this burden, arguing that the dying Nazi's act amounted to another injury:
"[The SS man's] dying wish to beg forgiveness from a scared, vulnerable Jew-
ish prisoner was as much an act of callous egotism as it was a misguided act of
contrition" (Rubenstein, in Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 240).
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 239

Lamb provides a convincing illustration of the difference between the

stance of two different perpetrators interested in forgivenessa self-oriented
perpetrator (like the dying Nazi) and an other-oriented perpetrator: "Instead
of begging for forgiveness, a perpetrator might plead with a victim, 'How can
I take care of you? Can I pay for your therapy? Is there anything you need to
know from me . . . ? What can I do to help?'" (1996, p. 163).

Stage 3 Next, the wrongdoer "resolves to reform, [and] undergoes a process

of reframing in regard to himself" (North, 1998, p. 30). For the perpetrator
of a wrong, the process of reframing involves a difficult process of self-exami-
nation and self-interrogation. This process might include the perpetrator's an-
alyzing his "motivations" for the offense, "understanding the context of its oc-
currence, and analyz[ing] his own character and developmental history" (p.
32) with regard to their possible contributions to his offense.
According to North, Stages 1-3 comprise the process of repentancea
three-part process that includes the cognitive aspect of "recognizing that he
has done wrong"; the emotional response of regret and remorse, or being
sorry for having harmed the victim(s); and the behavioral process of deter-
mining to reform himself and to make amends where possible (North, 1998,
p. 30). As North notes, this process of repentance is a "morally regenerative"
process (p. 32).
With respect to the element of making amends, many of the Christian
and Jewish theologians who responded to Wiesenthal's troubled question
about forgiveness in The Sunflower agree that in their respective religions
"forgiveness requires both atonement and restitution" (Heschel, in Wiesen-
thal, 1998, p. 172). For instance, Episcopal priest Matthew Fox, writes:
"Simon, summoned as a priest-confessor, let the man speak his heart. Some
sins are too big for forgiveness, even for priests. Public penance is required. This
man [the dying Nazi] received no public penance" (Fox, in Wiesenthal, 1998,
p. 145, emphasis added).
Writer Hans Habe goes further, arguing that it would have been wrong for
Wiesenthal to have forgiven the Nazi, because to forgive a murderer who has
done no penance is to make oneself complicit in the murder(s): "We cannot
forgive murderersso long as the murder is not atoned for. . . . The free will
given to a man does not merely grant him the choice between committing a
murderous deed or refraining from it. It is also a part of man's free will
whether he allows justice to takes its course or whether he dispenses with it.
An amnesty granted to an unpunished murderer is a form of complicity in
the crime" (Habe, in Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 160-161).
Nigerian Nobel laureate in literature Wole Soyinka has expressed serious
reservations about the fact that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in
South Africa has dispensed with the "principle of restitution" (1999, p. 9).
He argues that perpetrators have an obligation to atone. What is needed, ac-
cording to Soyinka, is the following "healing . . . trilogy: Truth, Reparations,
and Reconciliation" (1999, p. 92, italics added).
In sum, repentance without atonement is not true repentance.
240 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

Stage 4 The wrongdoer "recognizes some measure of self-improvement"

(North, 1998, p. 30), and begins the process of self-forgiveness. As North
points out, however, "self-forgiveness ought not to be accomplished too
quickly if one is not to be suspected of insincerity" (p. 34).
At this stage, the process of reframing has allowed the wrongdoer "at least
in part, to forgive himself" (North, 1998, p. 32). That is, the wrongdoer has
come to see himself both as someone "who already has some moral worth de-
spite the wrong which he has committed and, at the same time, [as someone
who determines] to become more worthy of . . . respect and esteem" (p. 32).
None other than Albert Speer, Hitler's minister of armaments from 1942
to 1945, argues that not even public penance may suffice for the self-forgive-
ness of sins as enormous as his. Speer writes this in The Sunflower. "Even after
twenty years of imprisonment in Spandau, I can never forgive myself. . . . My
moral guilt [which Speer distinguishes from his legal guilt] is not subject to
the statute of limitations, it cannot be erased in my lifetime" (Speer, in
Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 245). Clearly, self-forgiveness is a particularly problem-
atic element of the process by which a perpetrator may earn forgiveness, as I
discuss below.

Stage 5 The wrongdoer desires forgiveness from the injured party. At this
point the perpetrator has allowed his feelings of unworthiness and self-
loathing to moderate enough "to allow himself to accept forgiveness if it is of-
fered" (North, 1998, p. 32).

Stage 6 The wrongdoer "asks the injured party for forgiveness" (North,
1998, p. 30). Certainly the dying Nazi discussed in The Sunflower was self-
centered and cruel in his request of Wiesenthal, but at least he was not so
prideful as to imagine that he had the ability to grant himself forgiveness. His
request implicitly supports Hannah Arendt's assertion, "No one can forgive
himself. . . . [F]orgiving... enacted in solitude and isolation remains without
reality" (1958, p. 237, cited in Tavuchis, 1991, p. 47). Here Tavuchis elabo-
rates on Arendt's assertion of the relational nature of forgiveness:
Interior probing, interrogation, and anguish are not enough to restore an
offender to a state of social grace or put things right. This is so ... because
they tend to resolve themselves into a circular monologue that quickly
reaches its psychodynamic and discursive limits and then is forced back
upon itself in tedious and fruitless repetition. Until these inchoate feelings
and ruminations surface, purged of all traces of self-pity and, most impor-
tant, articulated in the presence of the offended other, they serve only as
soliloquies with little or no consequence or meaning. (1991, pp. 120121)
A wholly private self-forgiveness is an unearned forgiveness.

Stage 7 The wrongdoer has achieved "some measure of self-forgiveness,"

and awaits the response of the injured party (North, 1998, p. 30). When,
however, the injured party has been murdered by the perpetrator, as in the
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 241

cases examined here and in The Sunflower, this part of the process of "earn-
ing" forgiveness becomes more complicated. Tzvetan Todorov, professor and
writer on moral life in the concentration camps, articulates the idea that is
perhaps repeated more often than any other in The Sunflowerthat Wiesen-
thal could not speak for the dead victims: "One cannot forgive by proxy any
more than one can be a victim by association" (Todorov, in Wiesenthal,
1998, p. 265). It is as poet and playwright John Dryden wrote in The Con-
quest of Granada, "Forgiveness to the injured doth belong."

Stage 8 If the injured party offers forgiveness, then the wrongdoer "accepts
the offer of forgiveness . . . [and her/his] self-esteem [is] restored, at least par-
tially" (1988, p. 30). North identifies two different ways that this part of the
process might occur. First, the wrongdoer may be capable of accepting the
offer of forgiveness because he has already achieved enough self-forgiveness
that he feels worthy of forgiveness. Alternatively, "the recognition of the in-
jured party's willingness to forgive completes the wrongdoer's attempt to
build his. . . self-esteem" (North, 1998, p. 33).
North compellingly portrays the psychological logic of this reverse se-
quence, writing that "the wrongdoer in effect says, 'I can forgive myself now
because you have forgiven me. In your eyes I am worthy, and I accept and
adopt your perspective when I look at myself. If you can find it in yourself to
give me this gift, then I must try to see myself as worthy of accepting it'"
(1998, p. 33).

Stage 9 Finally, the wrongdoer "has overcome his negative feelings of self-
hatred or disapproval. Reconciliation [is] now achieved or possible" (North,
1998, p. 30). In the end, if not full-blown reconciliation, "at least some mea-
sure of interpersonal harmony" has been achieved (p. 33).
John T. Pawlikowski, a Catholic priest and professor of social ethics, is
among those for whom reconciliation is a defining feature of forgiveness, the
"public form" of forgiveness. Yet in The Sunflower he points out that the
dying Nazi was in effect asking Wiesenthal for instant reconciliation, a con-
tradiction in terms:
The public form of forgiveness is reconciliation. And this is of necessity a
much longer, more complex process. . . . Reconciliation entails several
stages: repentance, contrition, acceptance of responsibility, healing, and
finally reunion. [These stages] cannot be traversed quickly. They require
demonstrated changes that go beyond the merely verbal. . . . In my judg-
ment, Wiesenthal was correct in withholding such reconciliation, for it
would have provided the man with what theologian Paul Tillich referred to
as "cheap grace." (Pawlikowski, in Wiesenthal, 1998, p. 221)
The preceding analysis clarifies why and how both offering and earning
forgiveness is such "difficult, moral work" (Enright, Freedman, & Rique,
1998, p. 51). Both are active processes requiring considerable time and con-
siderable ethical, emotional, and relational work.
242 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

What follows is my analysis of Katherine Power's process of attempting to

earn forgiveness. I have grounded my examination largely in North's theoret-
ical framework, along with relevant insights from The Sunflower. I quote ex-
tensively from relevant portions of Power's narratives in order to allow read-
ers to see for themselves the raw narrative data on which my analysis is based.

Earning Forgiveness in Katherine Power's Narrative

The Process of Repentance

On Monday, April 5, 1998, in a special one-hour edition of a Boston-area

cable TV program, "Murphy's Law," attorney Bob Ahearn [BA] conducted a
prison interview with Katherine Power [KP]. It was shown on Milton (Mas-
sachusetts) Community Television, Channel 3. The following is a brief ex-
cerpt from the transcription of that interview, in which Power discusses some
of the precursors to her arriving at last at the decision to cease her life as a
fugitive and give herself up.
BA: You had to live with that [knowledge of her part in the crime] for
23 years . . . It must've worn on you mentally.
KP: It did. It certainly did. The shame [italics added] particularly was a
source of, certainly, depression in my life and also a kind of self-punish-
ment. . . . I felt really undeserving. But in a sense, you could say I tried to
forget what I'd done in my life. I tried to put it away. But you know, we just
can't forget. The real work is we have to incorporate it [the crime] into who
we are. We have to take it into the future of our lives and say: So what does
that mean? What do you have to do? (Ahearn, 1998)
While she was a fugitive, Power was sincerely trying to live her life, in her
own words, "as an act of contrition" (Franks, 1994, p. 54) for the death of
Walter Schroeder. At the same time, she was also taking a shame-induced
"just-can-I-please-just-not-look" stance toward her crime (Ahearn, 1998,
April 5). Her decision to give herself up marked the turning point at which
she also gave up the futile attempt to forget her crime. The concept of "un-
covering" proposed by Enright and his colleagues (Enright, North, & Tutu,
1998) describes this micronarrative well, in that Power shows here a high de-
gree of self-awareness, and literally, self-interrogation. Here Power is asking
herself what exactly it would mean for her to do "the real work" of incorpo-
rating the crime into her identity, her life story, her life. North's framework
serves as a conceptual roadmap to help us systematically address Power's self-
interrogations.

Stage I : Recognizing and publicly acknowledging the crime and the victims' right to see
her punished From the instant Power had learned that someone had been
killed in the bank robbery, she had recognized that she had done wrong.
Partly out of shame, it took 23 years for her to take the next stepor at least
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERfNE ANN POWER 243

to act on itnamely, to recognize the injured parties' right to have her pun-
ished on their terms. The following is an excerpt of an essay Power wrote
while in prison, entitled "Out of Shame: Receiving Forgiveness." Here she
describes the continuing role of shame in her surrender to the law enforce-
ment system on September 15, 1993:
Murder is a hard word to hear about yourself. At 6:30 in the morning in
the Boston College Law School parking lot, after apologizing if he was too
rough in cuffing me, Boston Police Department Lt. Tim Murray looked
me in the eye and read me the charges on my 23-year-old arrest warrant.
When he came to the word murder, it was as if he had punched me in the
solar plexus, hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I turned my face,
as if I could turn away the accusation.
Three weeks later, robed in his official ceremonial black, Judge Robert
Banks glared down from his high bench, his face twisted, spittle flying. He
hurled that same word at me as he sentenced me to eight-to-twelve years in
prison and a twenty-year probation that carried the threat of a life sen-
tence. I could not turn away. (Power, 1999c)
When Power surrendered, she issued a brief written public statement.
This represents another micronarrative offering us a window into how she
was then construing her identity as former radical, long-time fugitive, and
soon-to-be convict. I include here the entire text of Katherine Power's surren-
der statement:
I am surrendering to authorities today to answer charges that arise from a
series of acts 23 years ago. I am here to plead guilty to these charges, and I
am prepared to accept whatever consequences the legal system will impose.
Those who know me now, and those who reflect on my two decades of
life as an apparently exemplary citizen, will wonder how someone such as
myself could commit such outrageously illegal acts. The answer lies in the
deep and violent crisis that the Vietnam War created in our land. At that
time, the law was being broken everywhere: at the very top, where an in-
transigent President defied international law as well as the express inten-
tions of Congress; in Government services, where Daniel Ellsberg leaked
the Pentagon Papers in the hope that citizen scrutiny could hasten an end
to the war; among the clergy, where priests and nuns destroyed draft
records; in neighborhoods, where young men defied the draft.
The illegal acts that I committed arose, not from any desire for personal
gain, but from a deep philosophical and spiritual commitment that if a
wrong exists, one must take active steps to stop it, regardless of the conse-
quences to oneself in comfort or security. Although at the time those ac-
tions seemed the correct course, they were in fact naive and unthinking.
My intention was never to damage any human life by my acts, and there
is no accusation that I was directly responsible for the death of Walter
Schroeder. His death was shocking to me, and I have had to examine my
conscience and accept any responsibility I have for events that led to it.
244 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

In response, I have lived my life as something of a penitent, ever seeking

to grow as a person of peace. I have much company on this path, including
many Vietnam veterans who have reflected on their actions in the war and
on the lives that were damaged as a result.
Leaving my son, my husband, and my friends to enter prison is not
easy. But I know that I must answer this accusation from the past, in order
to live with full authenticity in the present. A lifelong, untreated condition
of endogenous clinical depression has prevented my taking this step be-
fore. Experiencing life without that distorting lens, I am now learning to
live with openness and truth, rather than shame and hiddenness.
I have deeply regretted the repeated separations caused by my status as
fugitive. I invite past friends and associates to forgive my absence, and to
renew their acquaintance with me. I will accept with grace the ordeal ahead,
and I will return to my community prepared to continue a life of connec-
tion, service, and joy. (Statement of Vietnam War-Era Fugitive, 1993)
In this statement Power publicly announces her decision to undertake the
work of earning forgiveness. And not under her own terms only, but under
the terms dictated by society: "I am here to plead guilty to these charges, and
I am prepared to accept whatever consequences the legal system will impose."
The terms dictated by society included a sentence of 8 to 12 years in prison
plus 20 years of probation. From within North's (1998) theoretical frame-
work, then, Power had at this point completed both tasks entailed in Stage 1
of the process of earning forgiveness: recognizing and publicly acknowledg-
ing her crime and her victims' right to see her punished.

Stage 2: The perpetrator experiences genuine remorse There is evidence in her

surrender statement that Power had, for the 23 years while she was a fugitive,
suffered enormous regret and remorse for her crime:
His [Walter Schroeder's] death was shocking to me, and I have had to ex-
amine my conscience and accept any responsibility I have for events that
led to it. In response, I have lived my life as something of a penitent.

As I see it, though Power was experiencing and expressing genuine re-
morse at the time of her surrender, a deepening in the other-orientation
(North, 1998) of her remorse took place in prison. This is evidenced, for in-
stance, in an essay entitled "In a Convict's Heart," which she wrote in No-
vember 1998five years after her surrenderas part of a college course she
was taking while in prison:

Remorse is a turning of the heart. It cannot be compelled. It is achieved

only in a state of exquisite vulnerability. To feel terrible regret and sorrow,
to face everything you are, have been, must be, is like cutting clean through
your flesh, all the way to the bone. . . .
Yet remorse is a powerful transformative experience. It is an essential
step in the process by which one who has done violence to the spirit or
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 245

body of another redeems him- or herself from the self-hating isolation of

shame ("I am my worst acts"). Remorse hurts more than any suffering that
can be imposed from the outside. Remorse is relational. It engages the for-
merly anti-social in a network of support for behavioral change.
My own remorse was achieved in spite of, not because of, my experi-
ences at the hands of the Department of Corrections. Where the Depart-
ment of Corrections (DOC) projected onto me monstrousness, strangers
as well as friends expressed their vision of me as a whole and mostly decent
person who had erred badly, and in doing so, had hurt people terribly.
Where the DOC promised lifelong condemnation as an outcast, my
friends and former neighbors and business associates promised full social
redemption. To protect myself from lacerating shame, a shame that made
me feel as if I should die, a shame the DOC would have defined as my
whole experience at its hands, I was closed. I was able to open thanks to the
presence of genuinely confidential and non-invasive therapy and the
Catholic chaplaincy. Together, they provided an unconditionally loving,
forgiving, yet expectant-of-change cosmology and community. They prof-
fered the invitation to turn toward wholeness as a sacred obligation to my-
self. Through them, I found the courage to face the people whose pain I
had caused and express my sorrow for it. (Power, 1998b)

In this essay, in contrast to the surrender statement, we see specific evi-

dence of other-orientation in Power's remorse. Here Power refers to her re-
morse for having "done violence to the spirit [and] body of another"; she
speaks of having found in prison "the courage to face the people whose pain I
had caused and express my sorrow for it." Finally, she acknowledges the need
for victims to see the remorse that itself constitutes a very real element of a
perpetrator's punishment: "Victims of violence who witness it report feeling
a satisfaction of their hunger for punishment and a sense of recovered safety"
(Power, 1998b). "Remorse is relational." If there was room for doubt about
the genuineness of Power's remorse (as in Stage 2 of North's framework) at
the time of her surrender, certainly as her time in prison advanced, Power left
little doubt about it.

Stage 3: Reform and refraining As for the repentance posited by North as the
"morally regenerative" heart of the process of earning forgiveness, here is how
Power describes the difficult inner work she engaged in while in prison:
I began the wrenchingly painful work of looking at myself as a person who
really had done something that bad: gone to war, picked up the gun,
robbed a bank, destroyed a life, wrecked a family. The first step was just to
stay in the presence of that knowledge. I remember sitting on the floor of
the Suffolk County Jail [at her surrender] in tears, asking Steven Black
one of my attorneys and a Vietnam vet decorated for the killing, one by
one, of more than one hundred Vietnamese, most of them probably civil-
ians, acts that he later came to regard as abominablehow he had done it.
246 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

"How do you know that about yourself, and survive? How do you call
yourself human, and worthy of life, of the respect of your fellow human
beings?" Not an accusation, not a judgment, an entreaty. His answer: "I try
to remember what I also am, besides that." (Power, 1999b)

When Power had asked Steven Black how he was able to look at himself
as a person "who really had done something that bad"and survive, she was
asking for help in the process of self-examination and self-knowledge that is
central to Stage 3 of North's framework for how a perpetrator might come to
earn forgiveness. When a perpetrator is open to this process, metaphorically
akin to "cutting clean through your flesh, all the way to the bone" (Power,
1998b), the time that he or she has in abundance in prison can facilitate the
process, as explained by Rokach: "Time in jail appears to provide them [in-
mates] with the conditions to engage in reflection and acceptance of their
alienation and to attend organized religious services" (1997, p. 270). As we
shall see, Katherine Power seems to have made the best possible use of both
of these conditions.

Power's Parole Statement

After our prison visit of Friday, February 6, 1998, I wrote in my notebook
that Power had told me that earlier that day she had handed in her seven-
and-a-half-page statement to the parole board. She felt that she had finally
done the searing work of taking on full responsibility and expressing full and
unreserved remorseno more of the "yes buts" that had marred her surren-
der statement.
Following is an extended excerpt from that parole statement, which she
delivered before the Massachusetts Parole Board on March 6, 1998. I include
the statement nearly in its entirety, again, to give the reader access to the raw
narrative data on which I base the present analysis.

I want to make it clear that my offenses include not only the events of
1970, when Walter Schroeder was killed during a bank robbery, but also
my 23-year flight from justice and my defensive posture at the time of my
surrender. I particularly want to acknowledge that the Schroeder family
have been victims of my actions in each of these three phases.
Phase I: The robbery and murder. In the summer and fall of 1970 I was
guilty of a series of ethical failures, compulsive rebelliousness, and wrong
thinking, that resulted in the robbery of the State Street Bank in Brighton
and the murder of Walter Schroeder. I know now that my actions were
misguided, hurtful, and indefensible. As I review for you the thoughts and
feelings that led me to that event, I must emphasize that 1 intend no justi-
fication or defense of any of them. I write about these ideas and feelings in
order to show that I recognize them, and having recognized them, I have
rejected them. . . .
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 247

That summer, 1 was in unbearable pain over the suffering caused by the
war in Viet Nam. The war, and its seemingly unstoppable momentum,
evoked a blinding rage. . . . I convinced myself that it was all right to act on
it. We were arrogant in our confidence in our moral righteousness, and in
our certainty that it was pure evil that we opposed. I decided that I would
try to do acts of sabotage against the war effort. . . . Stanley Bond asked me
to join a "revolutionary action" group he was forming. I agreed. It seemed
like what I had been looking for.
. . . We were drenched with dangerous romanticism and saw ourselves
as noble warriors for a great cause. We thought there was glamour in gun-
toting violence. Everything had escalated far beyond what I had originally
pictured myself doing, but I did not find the courage or the presence of
mind to leave. . . .
I remember clearly and with deep shame the moment when I realized
that some of the people in the group were dangerous in their willingness to
use criminal violence, and decided to stay anyway. I thought that I would
learn from them, then leave. (On the day of my surrender and arrest, Spe-
cial Agent Kathleen Brannigan of the FBI said to me, "You should have
known better.") It is exactly because I should have known better, should
have known that there is no such thing as "a little bit violent," should have
known that if you go around with guns someone is going to get hurt or
killed, that I am responsible in the death of Walter Schroeder.
. . . We were all in agreement that we would finance the groups activi-
ties by bank robbery. We all deferred to Stanley Bond's planning the details
and assigning the roles in the September 23 robbery.
At about 10:00 that morning I was parked in the "switch" car about one
half mile from the State Street Bank. Bond, Valeri, and Saxe went into the
bank and held it up at gunpoint. Gilday was supposed to stand watch
across the street. Bond, Valeri, and Saxe met me at the switch car and we
returned to the apartment. There, we heard on the radio that a police offi-
cer had been shot in the back by a gunman. (We assumed it was Gilday.) I
was shocked and angry. But mostly I was sickeningly, shamefully aware
that in my immature, romantic, and stupid quest to feel that I was putting
my life on the line for a cause, some real personsomeone who loved his
life and was loved in itwas killed.
In preparing for this hearing I have had a glimpse of the life of the
Brighton community where Walter Schroeder grew up, lived, and worked.
I have learned that he was able to plan his patrol so that he could drive past
his mother's house, where she watched for him from the front porch, and
waved. I now know that she was watching from the porch as his partner
drove him, mortally wounded, from the bank to the hospital. I have seen
how my act tore a hole in the lives of a whole group of people, of family,
friends, neighbors, and fellow officers. I know it is late, and far too little,
but today I offer again my sincere and humble apologies to those people.
[ . . . After the crime,] Saxe, Bond, and I had left Boston and become
fugitives.
248 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

Phase 2: Flight from justice. Thus began the second phase of my offense: liv-
ing as a fugitive, denying justice to the victims of my crime, refusing to an-
swer for my actions to legitimate authorities. I justified this refusal by a
combination of terrible shame and continuation of the compulsive rebel-
liousness in which I denied that there is such a thing as a legitimate au-
thority. Shame, of course, can be both convenient and morally sleazy, since
it takes into account only the feelings of the wrongdoer, and not those of
the victims of the wrong.
It is true that I tried to reform my life during this period. . . . My re-
morse and sorrow over Walter Schroeder's death did dominate my inner
life and drive me to re-establish sound ethical standards. It broke through
the enchantment of zealous self-righteousness and allowed me to put care-
ful treatment of and right relations with people back into the center of my
moral vision. I grew up, into the understanding that the hard work of liv-
ing peacefully, not the simplistic glory of war, is the only possible response
to the pain of what is around us. It looked as though I had found a place in
decent society after all. But it was a fraudulent place because of what it
failed to account for, namely, my debt to justice and to the family of Wal-
ter Schroeder.
...
I was lying to my son, about my life and about his own family. He did
not deserve to be deprived of the family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and
cousins of which he was a part, and they of him. He was approaching ado-
lescence, that time of life when parents owe their children the honest sto-
ries of their lives. I knew that he was learning the values I modeled to him.
Did I really want to teach him to lie about and bury his mistakes?
My refusal to accept public responsibility for my actions had serious
consequences for my mental health. Self-disgust, guilt and the feeling that
I was an irredeemable monster caused a depression which ultimately
threatened my life and provoked me to seek professional help. I knew that
this inner conflict could not be resolved by therapy and that I would have
to come forth and accept the legal consequences for those acts, including
going to prison.
Phase 3: The surrender process. I meant my surrender to communicate my
deep remorse for what I had done. I meant my guilty plea to be an un-
equivocal admission of responsibility. And yet the Schroeder family and
their community were robbed of justice by the way I was presented on my
surrender. At the moment when they should have been unequivocally
identified as the victims of a terrible loss, press attention was lavished on
the story of my family's loss and hardships.
I am sorry for that injury, and I want to acknowledge my part in bring-
ing it about. I contributed to it by my posture of defensiveness, by the way
that I called attention to my "limited" legal responsibility and not to the
enormity of what my human responsibility was forthat on a September
morning Officer Walter Schroeder said goodbye for the day to whoever in
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 249

his family was awake, that he went out conscientiously to do his job; that
he never came home. That he would never come home again: that he
would never again come home at the end of a shift with sore feet and an
aching back to hear about his children's days. That he would not watch
proudly as his children one by one graduated high school and made their
way in the world of work, some of them following in his own profession;
that Marie Schroeder, his wife, and Clare, Paul, Erin, and his other chil-
dren would ever after wake up in the morning with that hole in their lives,
the place where his love and his fears and his advice and his stories and his
whole alive being belong. . . .
My work in prison has been to peel off the layers of that defensiveness,
to get to the point where I could look squarely into the pained accusing
faces of the victims of my crime and say, "I was wrong. I was wrong all
along. Before God I am sorry. I will always be so sorry."
First, I had to stop turning away (conveniently) from my own acts in
shame, had to sit unflinchingly in the presence of the reality that because of
my acts another human being was dead. Then, I had to be willing to look
deeply at my distorted relationships with authority, the source of my
thinking that living as a fugitive was somehow an all right thing to do. I
had to find and reject the source of the "Yes, but . . ." that the Schroeders
heard from me every time I talked about my criminal acts. (Power, 1998a)
Surely this statement of Power's illustrates something like the Platonic
ideal of the self-examination and self-interrogation characteristic of Stage 3 of
a perpetrator's process of earning forgiveness, according to North (1998).
In her initial surrender statement, Power had produced a valid account of
her legal responsibility: "My intention was never to damage any human life
by my acts, and there is no accusation that I was directly responsible for the
death of Walter Schroeder." After all, she was not in the bank with a gun, and
she had no idea that Gilday had shot Schroeder until it was too late. Never-
theless, it is in her parole statement that for the first time Power accepts full
human responsibility for the death of Walter Schroeder, writing:
I should have known better, should have known that there is no such thing
as "a little bit violent," should have known that if you go around with guns
someone is going to get hurt or killed, that I am responsible in the death of
Walter Schroeder. (Power, 1998a)
Power made this point with eloquent brevity in a talk entitled "My Jour-
ney to Nonviolence" (an educational talk not open to the public), which she
delivered in Glavin Chapel at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on
October 5, 1999, three days after having completed her prison sentence. She
was discussing how in 1970 she had gotten caught up in the romance of vio-
lence, of "going to war against war." The problem with that, Power said, is
that whenever we go to war, "someone's father dies" (1999b).
Whatever Power's intentions, some had read her surrender statement not
only as deficient in its acceptance of personal responsibility, but as one big
250 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

"Yes, but." Yes, I am guilty in the death of Walter Schroederbut my legal

responsibility is limited, as I did not pull the trigger of the gun that killed
him. Yes, I committed outrageously illegal acts during the summer of 1970
but so did many other people during that time, including nuns, priests, and
the U.S. government. Yes, I am guilty of having avoided facing my legal re-
sponsibility for 23 yearsbut it was due to clinical depression.
In her parole statement of 1998, Power clearly distinguishes between self-
justification (all those "Yes, but"s) and self-examination of the context of her
crimeaccording to North, another necessary step in Stage 3 of a perpetra-
tor's process of earning forgiveness (North, 1998):
As I review for you the thoughts and feelings that led me to that event, I
must emphasize that I intend no justification or defense of any of them. I
write about these ideas and feelings in order to show that I recognize them,
and having recognized them, I have rejected them. (Power, 1998a)
Already in the second sentence of her parole statement, Power shows the
kind of other-oriented remorse that North claims is a necessary aspect of gen-
uine repentance. Her profound concern with the suffering she has caused her
(living) victims, the Schroeder family, is evident, for example, when she says:
"I particularly want to acknowledge that the Schroeder family have been vic-
tims of my actions in each of these three phases." Regarding her 23-year-long
flight, in her 1998 parole statement Power is now acknowledging its damag-
ing consequences not only for herself as a moral agent"refusing to answer
for my actions to legitimate authorities"but also for others. Speaking di-
rectly to the Schroeder family at the parole hearing, she apologizes for the fact
that her flight from justice had "denfied] justice to the victims of my crime."
Finally, Power expresses her regret to the Schroeder family for the manner in
which her surrender was conducted, which put the spotlight on her rather
than on her victims. During the years she had spent in prison to that point,
Power had in fact occupied herself less and less with her own plight, and more
and more with that of her victims.
As I describe more fully elsewhere (Landman, 2001), when she first began
serving her sentence, Power had been quite angry with the Massachusetts
Department of Corrections for having reneged on their presurrender agree-
ment with her in which she was to be permitted to serve her sentence in Ore-
gon. If she had been imprisoned in Oregon, where her son and husband con-
tinued to live the family's life of voluntary poverty, they could have visited
her far more frequently than they could in Massachusetts. As it was, their vis-
its were rare and usually made possible by the financial support of friends.
But at some point in the five years in prison during which I regularly visited
her, Power told me that her having been incarcerated near Boston was one of
the best things that had happened to her. Why? Because there she was con-
fronted through local newspaper and TV accounts with the concrete details
of the damage done to the Schroeder family. By 1998, Power's sympathy
with her victims is gut-wrenchingly specific, as in this excerpt from her pa-
role statement:
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 25 I

I am sorry. . . that on a September morning Officer Walter Schroeder said

goodbye for the day to whoever in his family was awake, that he went out
conscientiously to do his job; that he never came home. That he would
never come home again: that he would never again come home at the end
of a shift with sore feet and an aching back to hear about his children's
days. That he would not watch proudly as his children one by one gradu-
ated high school and made their way in the world of work, some of them
following in his own profession; that Marie Schroeder, his wife, and
Clare, Paul, Erin, and his other children would ever after wake up in the
morning with that hole in their lives, the place where his love and his fears
and his advice and his stories and his whole alive being belong. (Power,
1998a)

In her parole statement, Power also analyzes with extraordinary openness

certain personal deficiencies that led to her crime, another element of Stage 3
of a perpetrator's process of earning forgiveness identified by North (1998).
She refers to herself as being at the time of the crime "guilty of a series of eth-
ical failures," and as a person characterized by "compulsive rebelliousness,"
"wrong thinking," "moral righteousness," "zealous self-righteousness," "dan-
gerous romanticism," immaturity, and stupidity.
Finally, Power applies her considerable articulateness to the task of spelling
out what exactly might go on inside a perpetrator who is doing the devastating
work of the undefended self-examination and self-interrogation required in
Stage 3 (North, 1998):
My work in prison has been to peel off the layers of that defensiveness, to
get to the point where I could look squarely into the pained accusing faces
of the victims of my crime and say, "I was wrong. I was wrong all along. Be-
fore God I am sorry. I will always be so sorry."
First, I had to stop turning away (conveniently) from my own acts in
shame, had to sit unflinchingly in the presence of the reality that because of
my acts another human being was dead. Then, I had to be willing to look
deeply at my distorted relationships with authority. The source of my
thinking that living as a fugitive was somehow an all right thing to do. I
had to find and reject the source of the "Yes, but . . ." that the Schroeders
heard from me every time I talked about my criminal acts (Power, 1998a)
The Boston Globe editorial that appeared the day after Power's parole hear-
ing, and which was entitled "A Greater Power," concluded with words of
praise for Power: "Katherine Power deserves her punishment. But her state-
ment to the Parole Board should be posted in classrooms, government of-
fices, living rooms, boardrooms, hospitals, churches, and everywhere people
need reminding of their ability to wreak ruin through a single misdeed, and
the power of redemption" ("A Greater Power," 1998).
Arguably, the greatness of spirit manifest in Power's parole statement had
its roots in her preprison character. But it took five years of painful self-ex-
amination in prison to come into its fullness.
252 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

Stage 4: The perpetrator begins the process of self-forgiveness Katherine Power has
done considerable thinking about the process of self-forgiveness that North
posits as the fourth stage in a perpetrator's path toward earning the forgive-
ness of others. Some of that thinking entails her recognition of how vital it is
to have the support and forgiveness of other people in this lacerating part of
the process. She states in her essay, "Forgive Us Our Trespasses," which she
wrote in prison during the summer of 1999, "For months I worked at it [her
parole statement of remorse], . . . supported by all the peopletherapist,
family, friendswho valued the imperfect wholeness of who I am" (Power,
1999a).
In another essay, "Out of Shame: Receiving Forgiveness," Power writes
about the vital importance of her family's forgiveness. She makes the point by
contrasting the messages she received from two men in black: Judge Banks,
the judge who sentenced her, and her uncle Ted, a priest. Power elaborated on
this contrast in her Babson College talk. She described how at her sentencing
Judge Banks, looking down upon her with conspicuous venom from a raised
platform, had painted a picture of Power as "irredeemable," and "a monster."
However, in the back of the courtroom, sitting on the same level as Power,
were her family, including a second black-robed man:
. . . my Uncle Ted, the priest. And he had already written to me in the jail
where I was being held before sentencing. And with some of the saddest
words I've ever read, he said: "Dear Katherine, Remember me? I'm your
Uncle Ted." And I thought how in this all-embracing love . . . they [her
family] brought to me the invitation to full redemption, the unquestioning
waiting for me to come back home, where I belonged. With all of my his-
tory, with all of my wildness, I had a place at their table . . . I was waited for.
(Power, 1999b)
The immediate and unconditional forgiveness of her family, as repre-
sented here by her Uncle Ted, played an essential role in her developing the
ability to forgive herself.
Power's narrative shows that the act of a perpetrator's receiving unearned
forgiveness from someone else may actually precede and initiate the process of
earning forgiveness. A number of theorists (e.g., Exline & Baumeister, 2000;
Hampton, in Murphy & Hampton, 1988), including North herself (see
Stage 8 above), have anticipated this part of the process. Hampton's descrip-
tion of the thinking of a wrongdoer who is offered unasked-for forgiveness
appears applicable to Katherine Power:
"If he can see enough in me to welcome me back, then maybe I am not
such a hideous person after all." This might be the first step towards com-
ing to like himself again and renewing a commitment to morality. . . . It
[forgiveness] may enable wrongdoers to forgive themselves by showing
them that there is still enough decency in them to warrant renewed associ-
ation with them. It may save them from the hell of self-loathing. (Murphy
& Hampton, 1988, p. 87)
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 253

As for the position of those moral philosophers who argue that the only
moral reason to forgive someone is the repentance of the transgressor (e.g.,
Haber, 1991; Murphy, 1998), perhaps families can be forgiven if they exempt
themselves from this stringent criterion. After all, as Robert Frost told us so
eloquently in "The Death of the Hired Man," "Home is the place where,
when you have to go there, They have to take you in."
But there is the other side of the coin of self-forgiveness that none of the
theorists had anticipated, but that Power's narrative reveals to us: namely, the
dependence of self-forgiveness on the act of forgiving others. Power elabo-
rates this insight in her essay "Forgive Us Our Trespasses":
I knew that the spiritual, social and emotional work of the parole process
would be to stand completely undefended before all my acts in the pres-
ence of those to whom I was obligated to do so. This company included
the parole board, members of the Schroeder family, and myself. It was aw-
fully hard going. For months I worked at it, challenged by the attorney
whom I think of as my coach, supported by all the peopletherapist, fam-
ily, friendswho valued the imperfect wholeness of who I am. I overcame
shame, embarrassment, terror, and aversion only to find my way blocked
by anger and resentment, the final " Yes, but"
"Yes, butwhat about the monstrous acts of murder, declared illegal by
the World court, that made up the Vietnam War? Why am I accountable
and those perpetrators are not?"
"Yes, butwhat about the Plea Agreement that promised I would be
able to serve my time in Oregon close to my family, but which the govern-
ment of Massachusetts had made it clear they had no intention of honor-
ing? Why should I act in good faith when the state did not?"
"Yes, butwhat about the drug lords who buy their way out of prison
by forfeiting a few assets to the prosecutor's office while people I know here
serve mandatory ten-year sentences for their small-time end of the dirty
business? Or the man who was arrested for beating his wife to death, his
second serious battering offense, and then released on $5000 bail?"
I could have gone on and on. The wrongs are real; the people who are
injured by them feel as close as family to me. And yet these apparent truths
sat like boulders along a path I had to traverse if I were to achieve that other
truth, the acceptance of my own responsibility, upon which my acceptance
of forgiveness rests. Logic could not budge them. Thinking about justice
only made them more immovable. The breakthrough came from an unex-
pected quarter, which only afterwards was obvious in its inevitability.
I think of Catholicism as the religion of my elders and ancestors rather
than as my own. Damaged by its untruths and abuses of power, I never-
theless recognize that its prayers and practices hold some truths I can arrive
at in no other way. As a result, I have attended Mass sporadically during
my years in prison.
There is a moment in the liturgy where the whole congregationin
this case, a couple of hundred of my fellow inmates and a handful of
254 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

volunteers from the outsidejoin hands and pray the Our Father. Irreli-
gious near-agnostic that I am, I still recognize the power of a community
joining its voices in desire and intention, and I try to join not only in the
words but in an attempt to find what really is in the prayer.
And so hundreds of times I have said fervently but with no particular
agenda the words, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us. ..." As I sat at the desk in my prison cell, blocked and knowing
it, those words spoke themselves in my mind, and I was through. I forgave.
I forgave my father for his rage and my mother for her passivity. I for-
gave my period of history for its rapacity, forgave the generals, the jailers,
the Johns. For one holy moment I could see (as the theologian Walter
Wink invites us to see) all that is as having been created in infinite love,
then inevitably fallen, yet ever worthy of redemption. And I saw myself for
the first time not as monstrous and shameful in my failures, but as a
humanaccountable, forgivable. I could say without reservation to peo-
ple I had injured, "I did that. I see that I hurt you. I was wrong. I am so
sorry." (Power, 1999a)

Jean Hampton explained the logic of the relationship between forgiving

others and forgiving oneself as follows: "To the extent that we reflect on how
the evidence of our own actions indicates a poor state of character, then if we
would wish for a more generous reading of our character in spite of those ac-
tions, we should respect others' wish that we be generous with them. . . . How
can one who is unable to forgive the sins of others forgive his own sins?"
(Murphy & Hampton 1988, p. 156). The experience that Power so elo-
quently articulates in "Forgive Us Our Trespasses" supports Hampton's hy-
pothesis while illustrating the excruciating specificity that is required.
I suspect that Power is not the only wrongdoer whose self-forgiveness was
built both upon her beingforgiven by others, as well as her forgiving others. It
is at these very points that the offender is liberated from shame, defensive-
ness, and resentment and is enabled to express full and genuine remorse to
those she has harmed.

Stage 5: The perpetrator desires forgiveness from the injured parties As we have
seen, immediately upon her surrender Power was given wholehearted for-
giveness by her own familypeople she had abandoned for the 23 years she
had lived as a fugitive. But of course her wrongdoing had victimized another
large Catholic family as well, the wife and nine children of Walter Schroeder.
I asked Power in our first (tape-recorded) conversation in prison in August of
1995, two years after her surrender, what she was then hoping for from the
Schroeder family. Without missing a beat, she responded that she had no
right to ask anything of them: "I felt obligated to offer restitution. I did, and
I have their answer, a refusal. I will always be open to any kind of reconcilia-
tion. But it would be out of line for me to say to them that I need. . . any-
thing; it would be out of line for me to say that they should. . . anything. I
need to be respectful of them" (emphases and pauses are Power's).
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 255

This seems fitting and just. Unlike the dying Nazi who summoned Simon
Wiesenthal to his bedside to ask forgiveness, Katherine Power has the de-
cency to recognize that for a harmdoer to expect or demand forgiveness from
the injured would be to inflict another form of harm.
Still, she is only human, and she would have been overjoyed to have been
offered forgiveness from the Schroeders. From the beginning, though, the
Schroeders had rejected Powers requests that they join her in working toward
reconciliation with a priest victim-perpetrator mediator. Later, she came to
view the parole hearing of March 1998 primarily as an opportunity to be
present in the same room with the Schroeder family. She was determined not
to waste that opportunity.
Power speaks of these hopes of hers for the parole hearing in "Forgive Us
Our Trespasses." There she writes that she had entered into the hearing
process hoping that the words of her parole statement might finally convince
the Schroeder family of her remorse and might therefore give them some
measure of solace: "Perhaps now that I could so deeply, truly say it, they could
hear it and receive comfort" (italics added). But during the hearing she discov-
ered an obstacle to that goal; for the family, "the fact that my words of apol-
ogy were coupled with a request to be released from prison on parole tainted
them" (Power, 1999a). For this significant chapter of Power's narrative, let us
go with her inside that room in which the parole hearing took place.

Inside the Parole Hearing

Power [KP] described the events of her parole hearing in the Murphy's Law
interview with Bob Ahearn [BA] just one month (April 5, 1998) after that
hearing.

BA: I want you to give the people watching the show a sense of what
happened [in the parole hearing] and how that went. It was just April
[1998], I believe.
KP: Right. I had been preparing for it for 3 months. This was my first
parole eligibility. And it was kind of shockingly early because I had earned
good time.
...
I participated in educational and work and whatever other activities are
available for earned good time. And so it was almost a year before I
would've otherwise been eligible for parole that my eligibility date came
up. And I really didn't think that I was gonna get parole. And of course I
wanted desperately to go home; there's nobody in prison who doesn't want
desperately to go home. So I decided I would approach it as an open-ended
process. But it was extraordinarily painful. What you have to do when you
appear before parole is that you have to talk aboutwhat you did.
BA: Right. And re-live it again.
KP: You really do. You have to be bareand radically honest. And I was
writing the statement that I had to write for them, and it was excruciating.
256 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

And I said: Why am I doing this? I don't even have to do this. People aren't
even gonna let me go. Why am I doing that? And every time I got to that
point, I said: Well, this is my only opportunity to be in the same room with
the Schroeder family.
BA: Right.
KP: And show them my human face, not mediated by a reporter. . . .
And I decided that I had to go through with the hearing no matter how
painful it was and no matter that it would be extremely unlikely that I
would be granted parole.
BA: Right.
KP: So I went into the hearing and I was questioned for about two
hours by members of the parole board. And I could just feel that it wasn't
about what was supposed to happen yet; it just wasn't happeningthat I
had come there to say something and it just wasn't being said yet.
Next, Power explained, she read her parole statement. In the interview, she
describes what occurred after that:
The next part of the hearing is that I sat on the side, and members of the
Schroeder family talked to the parole board. And I sat on the side of that
room with a really open heart and listened to people talk about their loss
and their pain. I would say that I opened myself deliberately to the suffer-
ing because that's an obligation you have if you've hurt someone. And I
want to say that these are all outside of what I think of as legal obligations.
These are human obligations. I don't think they can be compelled by a De-
partment of Corrections or a justice system. I think they can be invited and
encouraged and freely given. That they're human responsibilities.
BA: OK.
KP: And so I just sat there and I was struck by how very much like me
the people in that family were.
BA: Sure.
KP: That two of the brothers could've been my neighbors or people that
I worked with, people who were customers in my restaurant. I mean, they
were. And that there was enmity between us because I had hurt them felt
just cosmically wrong. The language I have for it comes from the writings
of Howard Zehr about restorative justice: that crime, or any kind of vio-
lence, violence hurts people. And something is torn. Something that ought
to be right, which is that people are well with each other, is made horribly
wrong. They have terrible losses, and they are deeply hurt, and that can't
ever be taken away, or what I would think of as fixed. But it can be made
betterby some restoring acts. And that includes me hurtingfor how they
feel, really feeling it, and knowing that I caused it. And the irony here is
that of course the more human, the more prosocial you are, the more you
really will feel how terribly wrong it is to bring suffering into the life of
other people.
BA: Right. . . . you wanted obviously to let them know . . . the feelings
that you had, the remorse you felt for the family and everything else, and
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 257

there was a kind of extraordinary act that you did at the parole hearing I
wanted you to explain.
KP: Yes. It was clear to me from some of the family members' state-
ments to the parole board that they didn't really believe what I was say-
ingbecause it was attached to my request to be paroled and go home to
my family. And it became really clear to me that as long as those two things
were joined, the communication that I intended to make was not going to
be complete.
And so after they spoke, then I returned to face the parole board and
was allowed to speak again, and so I said at that time that it was really clear
to me that my intended outcome wasn't happening yetwhich is that
these people would know that I know that I hurt them and that I feel really
bad about that, and that I acknowledge how terribly wrong how I acted
was, and that if they couldn't believe that statement because it was con-
nected to my request for parole, then I would withdraw my request for pa-
role. (Ahearn, 1998)

We are fortunate to have not only Power's words to the parole board and
not only Power's description of her acts during the hearing, but also a num-
ber of independent descriptions of what transpired in that room on March 6,
1998. The Boston Globe described the sequence of events that led Power to
withdraw her request for parole as follows:
An hour after making her apology, Power sat in her closed parole hearing
on Thursday night [March 6, 1998] as Clare Schroeder, daughter of the
Boston police offer who was her victim, said, "It is only very recently that
Ms. Power has expressed her remorse . . . in an unreserved and unqualified
manner. Anyone in her position, reasonably intelligent and faced with the
possibility of gaining parole, would express similar sentiments." Soon after
hearing her motives questioned, Power tearfully asked to withdraw her pa-
role request, letting her words of contrition remain untainted by self-inter-
est. (Canellos, 1998, March 7)
The New York Times wrote the day after Power's hearing that her act of
withdrawing her request for parole had left the people in the hearing room
"stunned" (Goldberg, 1998, March 7). The Boston Herald was more specific,
quoting Clare Schroeder as saying that when Power withdrew her parole re-
quest, "There were several seconds worth of silence . . . [as a] quiet . . . hung
over the hearing room . . . No one expected that [Power's waiver of her right
to parole]" (Ford, 1998, March 7).
How then did the Schroeder family respond to Power's act? Erin
Schroeder (like more than one of her siblings, a Boston police officer) told
the Boston Globe immediately after the hearing, "I was very happy and I was
very surprised . . . It wasn't what I expected. I have to say I respect it" (Canel-
los, 1998, March 6).
Clare Schroeder agreed, telling the Boston Globe that she felt good about
the parole hearing and describing it as "a valuable experience for all of us.
258 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

Katherine got a chance to see and hear the impact of her crime on other peo-
ple and I got a window on her personality that I hadn't seen before" (Canel-
los, 1998, March 7).
Finally, Clare Schroeder told the New York Times, "I respect what she did
. . . And I think it must have been an extremely difficult thing for her to have
done. From a personal point of view I think she did the right thing, and I ap-
preciate that . . . I think that Katherine is sincere . . . I think what we heard
last night was an unqualified acceptance of responsibility and apology that I
have not felt in her statements in the past" (Goldberg, 1998, March 7).
Perhaps not a full-fledged statement of forgiveness, but something close.

According to North (1998), Stage 5 of the process by which a perpetrator

earns forgiveness entails the perpetrator's coming to desire forgiveness from
her victims. Then in Stage 6, the perpetrator asks for forgiveness, and in Stage
7 waits for the response of her victims. In Power's case, there were victims at
both the interpersonal and the societal levels. On the day she surrendered,
Power formally asked her society what it would require of her to earn forgive-
ness (Stage 6). On October 2, 1999, the day she completed her prison sen-
tence, Power had earned societal forgiveness.
The process has operated differently, however, at the interpersonal level.
Upon her surrender, without waiting to be asked, Power's family gave her
their forgiveness. With regard to the Schroeders, however, because of Power's
sensitivity to them and her conviction that she has no right to ask or expect
anything from them, that part of her story does not fit the rubric of these last
four stages of Norths framework.

Stages 8 and 9: The perpetrator accepts the victims' forgiveness, and victim/perpetrator
reconciliation occurs Again, the Saturday late in 1999 that Katherine Power
completed her prison sentence, she had earned and accepted the forgiveness
of her society. But, contrary to North's hypothesized Stages 8 and 9, at this
point Katherine Power has not been offered the gifts of interpersonal forgive-
ness or reconciliation from the Schroeder family, her specific victims. Again,
she accepts this painful state of affairs, as she explained in the Murphy's Law
interview a month after the parole hearing: "A person who's harmed other
people has no right to expect anything from them in the way of forgiveness. If
we achieve non-enmity, I will feel that we are all very fortunate. . . . What I
hope for is that their hurt has been touched as much as it can be touched by
anything I'm able to do to right what I've done" (Ahearn, 1998).
Immediately before Power uttered these words, the interviewer, Bob
Ahearn [BA], had repeated to Power [KP] some rather unforgiving senti-
ments that Clare Schroeder had uttered on his show after Power's parole hear-
ing, and then asked Power what she would wish to say to Clare Schroeder if
she were present then:

BA: I had Clare Schroeder on this show. She was running for Gover-
nor's Council. I asked her this question. If you could say anything to
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 259

Katherine Power, what would you say? And her answer was, if I remember,
she goes: I don't know. Our lives went two separate ways; we really have
nothing in common. And that was about the end of it. Now I wanted to
ask you the same question. If you could look right at the Schroeder family
in a room, what would you tell them? What would you say to them?
KP: What I said in the room in parole. . . . I would say it again. That I
know I hurt them in their life and I am deeply, deeply sorry for that. And
my awareness of that has transformed me as a person. That when I leave
prison, my social debt, my legal debt, will be discharged. But the changed
person I am goes with me for all of my life. (Ahearn, 1998)

Clearly, Power has used her years in prison to engage in a profound

process of reflection on issues such as regret, responsibility, and forgiveness.
She seems to have done all she could to try to comfort the Schroeder family
with her unequivocal expressions of remorse and responsibility. That her ef-
forts have not to date been crowned with the fullness of forgiveness, as they
might have been in an ideal world, is not, I suspect, all that unusual. In-
deed, Power's experience ought to lead us to understand that the realization
of the last stages of North's nine-stage sequence is probably too much for
most wrongdoers to hope forespecially when the damage is as dire as
someone's death.

Conclusions

The process of systematically applying a high-quality theoretical model to

Katherine Power's narrative has had a number of benefits. For one thing,
North's theory lends structure to Power's narrative. Second, North's model
clarifies for us why the process of an offender's earning forgiveness is unlikely
to completely succeed. With its nine (count 'em) stages, there are simply so
many places where something can go wrong.
In turn, Katherine Power's narrative both enriches and problematizes the
theory. Power's story enriches North's theory by, for example, foregrounding
the emphatically relational character of the process by which an offender
might go about earning forgiveness. Power's story highlights the fact that
whenever someone commits a crime (or even a noncriminal transgression),
she has damaged not only society in the abstract, but almost always another
person, a family, and a community as well.
Again, it is as Hannah Arendt stated, "No one can forgive himself . . . for-
giving . . . enacted in solitude and isolation remains without reality" (1958, p.
237, cited in Tavuchis, 1991, p. 47). Elaborating on Arendt's assertion,
Tavuchis spells out why forgiveness must be a relational process: "interior
probing, interrogation, and anguish are not enough to restore an offender to a
state of social grace or put things right. . . . Until these inchoate feelings and
ruminations surface, purged of all traces of self-pity and, most important, ar-
ticulated in the presence of the offended other, they serve only as soliloquies with
260 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

little or no consequence or meaning" (1991, pp. 120-121, italics added).

Powers story supports Tavuchis's insight that a crucial element of an offender's
task is to articulate her regret and remorse"in the presence of the offended."
Power's narrative makes manifest how the "deepening" of the process of
earning forgiveness (Enright, Freedman, & Rique, 1998, p. 53), too, is based
on relational processes. These relational processes, as lived by Power, included
doing excruciating work with a therapist; reconnecting with the Catholic
theology of confession, reparation, and forgiveness; and making personal ef-
forts to meet her felt obligation to her victims to make things as right as she
could (Zehr, 1995).
On the other hand, Katherine Power came to know that for a criminal of-
fender forgiveness cannot be either a purely intrapsychic or even a purely in-
terpersonal matter; it has to be socially authorized. Power had to give up her
defensive posture toward a punitive, shaming criminal justice system and ac-
knowledge that private self-forgiveness is a contradiction in terms. To earn
society's forgiveness, she had to submit herself to society's definition of what
would constitute meaningful amendsnamely, doing her penance in a "pen-
itentiary." Power has now earned the forgiveness of her society by having
completed the prison sentence it assigned her. Her societal exile is over.
Purely interpersonal conceptualizations of forgiveness, such as North's, tend
to neglect the larger societal ramifications.
Besides fleshing out the importance of the interpersonal dimension and
contributing the idea of the societal dimension of the task required of a per-
petrator who hopes to earn forgiveness, Power's narrative problematizes the
theoretical model in at least three other ways.
First, Power's narrative demonstrates that self forgiveness is a more com-
plex process than articulated in North's model. Self-forgiveness may follow
rather than precede (unasked-for) forgiveness by others. More unexpectedly,
Power's narrative shows that self-forgiveness may depend on the perpetrator's
first forgiving significant others.
Second, Power has given us compelling reasons to question the wisdom of
Stages 6 and 7 of North's model, in which the perpetrator explicitly asks her
victims for forgiveness. As Power points out, to ask or expect forgiveness from
one's victims can be to add insult to injury.
Third, Power's narrative reveals the limits of reconciliation not fully ac-
knowledged in a theoretical model that culminates in reconciliation. Power
contributes the hard-won and sad wisdom that an amicableeven a civil
relationship between a harmdoer and her victims is in many cases too much
to expect. As she has said, Power will consider herself and the Schroeders very
fortunate if they are able to achieve a state of "non-enmity." On this count,
Powers narrative is consistent with the less stringent, perhaps less naive, con-
ceptions of reconciliation posited by a number of scholars (e.g., McCullough,
Pargament, & Thoresen, 2000; Murphy, in Murphy & Hampton, 1988;
Scobie & Scobie, 1998).
In her novel, Ceremony, Leslie Marmon-Silko writes this about the power
of narrative: "I will tell you something about stories. . . . / They aren't just en-
 THE STORY OF A PERPETRATOR, KATHERINE ANN POWER 261

tertainment./Don't be fooled. / They are all we have, you see/all we have to

fight off/illness and death" (1977, p. 2). I would argue that Katherine Power's
story shines as a model of the process of fighting off ethical illness, a model of
ethical development.
The narrative perspective reminds us too that identity is a story (McAdams,
1987). I conclude, then, by asking what Power's comprehensively revised
narrative tells us about her present postfugitive, postprison identity.
Some would interpret Power's narrative as a story of a radical new begin-
ning, a story of a marked break with "the damaging legacy of the past" (Sco-
bie & Scobie, 1998, p. 397). For example, no longer does Katherine Power
conceive of herself as she did at age 20 as Woman-Warrior-against-War. By
age 50, Power had earned a new identity as Woman-of-Peace. I would argue,
however, that Powers new identity is more about integration with, rather than
a break with, her past. Power herself views her narrative trajectory in this less
discontinuous way, as seen, for example, in this statement: "You could say I
tried to forget what I'd done in my life. . . . But you know, we just can't forget.
The real work is to incorporate it into who we are" (Ahearn, 1998). Power has
earned through her surrender, confession, and public reparation the oppor-
tunity toagain, in her words, "continue to reconstruct her self as whole"
(personal communication, May 18, 2000; italics added). With her recon-
structed life narrative, Power has earned back her right to the original identity
she was reaching for in her youth in such a tragically misguided way. Always
she was a seeker of peace.
By now I have related Power's story to a number of disparate audiences, and
in doing so I have witnessed how intensely her story resonates. I have come to
believe that so many people respond so warmly to Power's story in part be-
cause we all hear it as wrongdoersfor who of us is not a wrongdoer? In this
fiercely punitive culture of ours, Power's story is profoundly moving because it
is a story about the redemptive possibility of wrongdoers to earn an identity
that is wholeadmirable and imperfect, accountable and forgiven.

Notes
Correspondence may be addressed to Janet Landman, History & Society Division,
Hollister 319, Babson College, Wellesley, MA 02457. Preparation of this chapter was
supported by a Spring 2000 course release granted by the Board of Research of Bab-
son College. I am also grateful to Sharon Lamb for a critical reading of an earlier ver-
sion of this manuscript. Most of all, I thank Katherine Power for her unfailing open-
ness and generosity in working with me on this project, including responding to
more than one draft of this chapter.

1. At the same time, Murphy acknowledges that there is "social and personal dan-
ger" in feelings of retributive hatred, danger that might be "minimized if these feel-
ingsinstead of being ignoredare institutionalized" (Murphy & Hampton, 1988,
p. 92). He suggests that presentencing statements represent a positive example of in-
stitutionalizing these feelings.
262 PERPETRATORS AND FORGIVENESS

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 Index
absolution, 90, 91, 97, 102, 182
abuse, 5, 27, 28
agency response and, 222-28
authentic guilt and, 49
forgiveness and, 43, 46-48, 89-90,
103-4, 127-28, 163, 180, 183,
186
gender politics and, 184-88
perpetuation of, 25, 85, 167, 181, 186
victim reactions to, 15960
of women, 155, 156, 163-64, 180-81
See also battered women; rape
accident, 2223
Affinito, Mona Gustafson, 11-12,
88-109
African Americans, 10, 186, 188
age, forgiveness and, 32, 57, 67
agency, 220-21
intent and, 22-23, 60
in psychotherapy, 113, 116-18, 124,
129
recovery by offender, 215-29, 250
recovery by victim, 159
self-forgiveness and, 132-33
women's cultural status and, 156
Ahearn, Brian, 242, 256-57, 258
alcoholics, 27, 163, 166, 167, 218,
227-28
ambivalence, 162, 167, 168, 176, 188
amends, 59, 123-24, 157, 239
American Mental Health Counselors As-
sociation study, 5966
265
anger, 2023
appropriate, 21-22, 23, 31, 90, 92,
166
differing views of, 8, 9, 72, 157, 160
forgiveness therapy effect on, 72, 156,
157, 160
gender differences and, 66
group, 166
letting go of, 56
management of, 33
misplaced, 21-23, 86
as overreaction, 78
overwhelming, 159
understanding and, 28-29, 32
variant releases for, 160
voicing of, 1034
women and, 10, 12, 156, 159-65, 168,
185
anxiety, 9, 46, 54, 56, 72, 73, 125, 158,
160
misplaced generalizing and, 79-80
apology, 5, 26-27, 56, 144-45, 160, 165,
167-68, 250, 257
Arendt, Hannah, 240, 259
Aristotle, 21, 23, 29, 35-36n.2
arrogance, 141-43, 217
attitudes, 23-35, 64-65, 68, 98-100,
118,182
Augustine, St., 24, 28, 46-47, 129
Austin, J. L, 17, 19, 20-21, 27, 84
autonomy project, 224-25
Azmitia, Margarita, 57, 66, 67
266 INDEX
battered women, 5, 167-68, 235
refraining by, 85
self-protection and, 126
social ego and, 175-76
unrepentant abuser and, 155, 156, 167
victim role and, 164
battered women's syndrome, 46, 163,
183
Baumeister, Roy E, 6, 57, 59, 167
benevolence, 3, 148, 150, 157
Berlin, Isaiah, 29, 35
blame, 27, 90-91, 97-98, 109
Bosnian war survivors and, 197, 209
of self, 5, 81-82
of victim, 105,164,234
Bosnian war, 10, 12, 192-209
Buber, Martin, 43, 49
Buddhism, 65, 129
Butler, Bishop Joseph, 19-20, 22, 23, 24,
34,36n.2,44, 117
Card, Claudia, 222, 223-27, 228
Care, Norman S., 12-13, 160, 215-29
carelessness, 36n.2
Cargas, Henry James, 238
caring, 25, 98, 163, 166,185
Casarjian, Robin, 90, 102
Catholicism, 102, 253-54, 260
Ceremony (Marmon-Silko), 260-61
Chernoff, M., 57, 66-67
child abuse. See abuse
children
Bosnian war and, 193, 197-209
forgiveness by, 32, 57, 180
forgiveness of, 183
Christianity, 97-102, 141
earning forgiveness and, 239
forgiveness counselors and, 184-85
forgiveness stages and, 198
resentment and, 233, 236
turning other cheek and, 46, 99-100,
144
unilateral forgiveness and, 10, 19,
35n.l, 43, 46, 47, 51n.8,101,102,
119, 127, 161, 187, 197
Clinton, Bill, 189, 229n.l
cognitive theories, 34, 7, 43, 136, 173,
236
community vs. individual, 12, 101-3
degrees of violation and, 179-82
distribution of responsibility and,
172-73
earning forgiveness and, 232-61
forgiveness as gift to, 16162
forgiveness repercussions and, 165-67,
198-99, 259, 260
gender theories and, 185, 186
mercy and, 107
psychoanalytic theory and, 174
psychotherapeutic goal and, 156
reconciliation benefits, 188
war survivor perspectives, 195209
compassion
forgiveness as, 55, 56, 76, 92, 157,168,
172,202
social benefits of, 161, 162, 183
women and, 12, 166, 167
compensation, 123-24, 140, 143-44
condoning, 6, 12,55,83,91
confession, 102, 201, 202-3, 208
public, 232, 248, 259-60
conflict resolution, 173, 177, 182-83,
185
constitutive luck, 226, 227, 228
context, 9-10, 67, 100, 155-90
psychoanalysis and, 172-90
reframing and, 83-84, 236
war survivors and, 193-209
women's forgiveness and, 10, 12,
155-68
cost/benefit analysis, 106, 136-51
counselors/therapists
context and, 100
feminine anger and, 185
forgiveness decision and, 912, 50,
66-67, 89-90, 103-9, 158, 184-85
forgiveness definition for, 9293
forgiveness research with, 11, 5469
forgiveness training needs, 68-69
goal of, 114
religiosity level of, 58-59, 184-85
social/political beliefs and, 182
See also forgiveness therapy; psychother-
apy; therapist-client relationship
Course in Miracles, A, 101
crimes against humanity, 155, 195, 209
criminal justice system, 9697, 236, 260
Croats, 200, 201
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 3, 4
cultural context. See context

Darrow, Clarence, 50-51
death penalty, 96, 97
defenses, 161, 176, 189,236
denial, 6, 55, 138, 161, 235
Denton, RoyT., 55, 57-58, 68
deontological arguments, 49-50,
128-33
depression, 46, 56, 72, 73, 102, 125, 138,
158, 160, 228
Derksen, Wilma, 95, 103
Descartes, Rene, 30, 31
determinism, 10-11, 18-21, 27, 29
Deveney, Sara, 57, 6667
DiBlasio, Frederick A., 56, 58-59, 68,
157
Dizdarevic, Zlatko, 199-200, 208-9
dogmatism, 4243
Dorfman, Ariel, 160
double standard, 184, 189
Dowd, Maureen, 229n.l
drive psychology, 176
Dryden, John, 241
duty, 48, 102, 119, 127, 140
Eastern religions, 65, 68
Eichmann, Adolph, 50
emotional relief, 93, 108, 160, 164
emotions
acceptability of, 5, 119-20
control over, 31
misplaced, 86
responsibility for, 159
in self-forgiveness, 122-23
See also negative emotions
empathy, 57, 67, 69, 162, 203, 236
enemy, function of, 186
Enright, Robert D., 4, 6-11, 41, 43-50,
55, 62-63, 67, 73, 76, 79, 82, 86,
88,91,92,103,108,125-26,
156-57, 160,238,242
forgiveness definition, 92, 19697
reconciliation definition, 202
See also forgiveness therapy
ethics, 18, 138-51, 155, 181, 185, 188
evil, 49, 50
excuses, 6, 18-21, 23, 55, 157, 237
refraining and, 83-84, 85-86
unrepentant wrongdoer and, 156
Exline, Julie Juola, 6, 59, 167
explanations, 18-19,27-28
INDEX 267
family
intergenerational forgiveness and, 218
unconditional forgiveness by, 252-53,
254,258
of victim, 95-97,103, 248-59
women and, 163, 186-87, 189
See also abuse; incest
family therapy, 177, 189
fear, 54, 78-80, 90
feminism, 10, 163, 183-85, 187
fiduciary relationships, 113, 114, 116,
122, 124
Fisher, Eugene, 100, 155
Fitzgibbons, Richard P., 4, 6, 8, 77, 86,
88, 91, 103, 108, 156-57, 196-97,
198,199,202
Focus Partnering, 145-51
forgetting
as defense, 161
forgiveness vs., 55, 57, 91, 236
as forgiving, 6, 31-33, 66, 215, 222
intentional, 189,236-37
forgiveness
alternatives, 8-9, 12, 143-51, 199
appropriate, 12526
arguments against, 22-23, 44, 54, 82,
138-39, 155-56,164,184
arguments for, 25-26, 34, 72, 93,
108-9, 125-31, 158, 164, 184
characterization, 73-76, 236-37
components, 6263
definitions of, 6-7, 55, 90-93,103,
157,196-97,198,202, 233-34
earning, 237-61
feminization of, 173, 186
four models of, 56-57
as gift, 7,11, 19, 47, 67, 76-78,157,
161-62, 234
internal preparation for, 11621, 165
philosophical counseling and, 41-52
practical problems of, 216-21
as process, not end, 104, 235
reconciliation vs. See reconciliation
triad components, 43-50
unconditional. See unilateral forgive-
ness
withholding of, 137-38,218
"forgiveness" letter, 105-6
forgiveness therapy, 56, 10, 7286,
156-61
268 INDEX
forgiveness therapy (continued)
counseling model, 103-8
critiques of, 73-82, 86-86, 189, 199
definition of forgiveness, 92-93
genocide and, 12, 192-93, 196, 203
outcomes of, 46, 72-73, 85,158
phase or stage model, 3, 7-8, 11, 12,
56, 57,63,77-78, 83-86, 156-57,
160,198-99,235
women victims and, 156
Forward, Susan, 90, 91
Foucault, Michel, 183
Foundation for Inner Peace, 109n.3
Fox, Matthew, 239
Frankfurt, Harry, 25, 27
Freedman, Suzanne R., 6, 9, 56, 62-63,
76,82,157,160
freewill, 18
Freud, Sigmund, 5, 34, 42, 89,114, 176
Gandhi, Mohandas, 26, 34
Garrod, Andrew, 12, 192-209
gender
forgiveness inclination and, 57-62,
66-67, 69,162-63,166
forgiveness politics and, 184-88
See also women
generosity, 67, 92, 140, 148, 150,
222-23
genocide, 12, 25, 49, 180, 192-209, 218.
See also Holocaust
Gilligan, Carol, 7, 162, 185, 201
grace, 35n.l, 188
guilt, 5, 54, 57,177, 182-83,188
blame and, 98
burden of, 52n.l3
inappropriate, 105
judgment and, 97, 98-101
moral vs. legal, 240
neurotic vs. authentic, 43, 49
self-forgiveness and, 121-22
victim feelings of, 92
Haaken, Janice, 12, 164, 172-90
Haber, Joram Graf, 44, 234, 236
Hacam, Berima, 195-96
Hampton, Jean, 4, 42, 233, 234,236,
237, 254
happiness, 3, 9, 42, 114
Hargrave, Terry D., 55, 91
Harrington, Anne K., 11, 54-69
healing, 8, 12, 21, 72, 73, 104, 141,
95
Heine, Heinrich, 24-25
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 22-23
Holmgren, Margaret, 10, 12, 44, 45, 46,
112-36
Holocaust, 10, 48-49,101, 155, 165,
201-4, 234, 237-39
humanistic psychology, 4, 5
Hume, David, 18, 36n.5
hurt feelings, 66, 92, 104, 181
identity
construction of, 230-3In. 18, 261
narrative perspective on, 233
See also self
incest, 45, 54, 56,116,160, 165, 168
indignation, 22, 33, 34,234
individual differences, 202, 220-21,
227
integrity project, 223-27, 228
intention, 22-23, 24, 30, 31, 56
intentional forgetting, 189, 236-37
Islam, 10, 65, 100, 200, 201, 202
James, William, 227
Jampolsky, Gerald G., 97, 101
Jesus, 99, 100, 161, 187
Judaism, 10, 47, 99-102, 187, 239. See
also Holocaust
judgment, 97-101
justice, 4, 12, 88, 90-103, 150, 209
justifications, 20-21, 237
Kamprath, Nancy A., 57, 66, 67
Kant, Immanuel, 18, 117, 140, 151,
222-23
Klein, Melanie, 36n.5, 176-77, 181,
188-89
Kohlberg, Lawrence, 7, 201
Konstam, Varda, 11, 54-69
Krog, Antjie, 90-91, 103
Kurt, Tajma, 195-96
Lamb, Sharon, 3-13, 81, 155-68, 234,
239
Landman, Janet, 1213, 23261
letting go, 32, 56, 157, 164, 234
Linnet, Jakob, 57, 66, 67

Lombardo, Nancy B. Emerson, 11, 54-69
love, 19, 101, 175
forgiveness as, 49, 50-51, 55-57, 72,
92, 157, 168, 198
for others over self, 140-41
social benefits of, 161
luck factors, 80, 226, 227, 228
Marmon-Silko, Leslie, 26061
Martin, Michael W., 55, 57-58, 68
Marx, Fern, 11,54-69
Marx, Karl, 46, 89
May, William E, 230-3 In. 18
McCullough, Michael E., 4, 5, 7, 9, 59,
158, 163
medical mistakes, 21819
Meister, Robert, 34, 36n.6
memory, 179, 236-37
Mengele, Joseph, 48-49
mental health, 12, 181, 248
definition of, 114-15
as forgiveness benefit, 156-59, 177,
186, 189
gender conformity and, 164
mental illness, 25, 27-28
mercy, 4, 100-101, 107-8, 237
Minow, Martha, 234, 236, 237
misplaced generalizing, 79-80
mistakes, 22, 216, 218-19
modularity thesis, 220-21, 225, 226
moral development, 66, 129
Bosnian youth and, 197-98, 201-4
gender differences, 185
moral ends, 5, 8, 42, 114-15, 188,
222-23
moral superiority, 183
motives, 7, 27, 84, 158, 162, 184
"moving on," 26, 199, 220-21, 222
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 218
murder, 95-98, 102, 103, 192, 232-61
Murphy, Jeffrie G., 2n.3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11,
19-20, 23, 24, 26, 35n.l, 41-52,
90, 103, 108, 112, 114, 118, 119,
125, 126, 127, 134, 163, 231n.23,
233-34, 236
Muslims. See Islam
My Own Country (Verghese), 218-20
Nagel, Thomas, 36n.4
narratology, 233, 242-61
INDEX 269
Nazis, 20, 43, 49, 100, 106, 107, 165,
192, 234
deathbed forgiveness plea, 155, 201-4,
237-40
negative emotions, 3, 8, 56, 120, 162,
168, 232
Neu, Jerome, 10-11, 17-35
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 50, 82, 163
nonrepentant wrongdoer. See wrongdoer,
unrepentant
North, Joanna, 56, 79, 158-59, 238-42,
244, 246, 249-52, 258-60
object relations theory, 174, 176-77, 178,
181-82
offender. See wrongdoer
offense. See wrong/wrongdoing
oppressed groups. See context
Ozick, Cynthia, 49
pardon, 55, 156, 157, 162, 167, 183
Pargament, Kenneth I., 5, 7
patient-physician relationship, 11314
peace of mind, 101, 102, 131, 155, 160,
215, 216, 227
penance, 102, 232, 239, 240, 248,
259-60
perpetrator. See wrongdoer
pessimistic natural temperament, 227
philosophical counseling, 41-52, 114
positive psychology, 3
post-traumatic stress disorder, 8,
193-96
power, 9, 82, 126-27, 142, 163-65,
183-85
Power, Katherine Ann, 13, 232-33,
243-61
Prager, Dennis, 98-99
process models, 56, 235, 242-46, 249,
259-60
Proctor, Judith H., 56, 58, 59, 157
Protestantism, 64, 102
provocation, 32-33
pseudo-forgiveness, 7, 163, 164, 186
psychoanalysis, 5, 12, 65, 172-90
psychodynamic psychology, 65
psychotherapy
attitude changes from, 28
Bosnian war trauma and, 12, 19496
directive vs. humanistic, 4-5
270 INDEX
psychotherapy (continued)
forgiveness issues and, 6, 11, 6667,
88-109, 112-36, 139, 156, 158
goals of, 114, 124-34, 156
philosophical, 41-52
psychoanalysis vs., 172-73
See also counselors/therapists; forgive-
ness therapy
public penance, 232, 239, 240, 248,
259-60
public testimony, 195, 248
Puka, Bill, 12, 136-51
punishment, 12, 56, 237
criteria for, 93-95, 105-7
"eye for eye" dictum, 99
mercy option, 1078
as price of forgiveness, 36n.5, 243, 244
revenge vs., 94
of war criminals, 209
Radial, Kenneth C., 4, 7, 9
Ralph (case), 47-48, 90, 103-4, 127-28
rape, 5, 9, 61, 78-79, 164, 168, 192
Bosnian genocide and, 193, 195, 201
legitimate resentment and, 234
victim blame and, 164
rationality, 42, 44, 197
Rawls, John, 22, 23, 45, 229n.2
reaction formation, 182, 189, 235
Reagan, Ronald, 100
reconciliation, 91, 148-49, 199
definition of, 235
forgiveness vs., 55, 182-83, 188, 189,
202, 235, 237, 241
limits of, 259, 260
war survivors and, 202, 209
reframing, 3, 67, 69, 83-86, 236, 239,
240
regret, 232, 233
expression of, 12324, 260
relational theory, 185
relationships
forgiveness benefits, 58
forgiveness ill effects, 138
forgiveness inappropriateness, 92-93
mental health indicators in, 181
trust betrayal and, 34, 140
women as keepers of, 12, 162-63,
166-67, 175-76, 184-86, 189
See also family
religion, 4, 6-7, 10, 98-100, 202
Bosnian war and, 200, 207-8
self-respect and, 45, 118
therapist and, 58-59, 184-85
See also Christianity; Islam; Judaism
remorse, 54, 155, 157, 167-68, 244-45,
248-52
articulation of, 260
reparation, 5, 12, 36n.5, 168, 188, 189
repentance, 5, 11, 26, 56, 134, 201, 202,
229n.3, 237, 253
atonement and, 239
Christian view of, 98-99
as forgiveness condition, 10, 46, 47,
48-50, 98, 128-29, 183, 202,
236
process of, 242-46, 249
See also wrongdoer, unrepentant
resentment, 8, 11, 19-28, 31, 33, 72, 75,
92, 117, 150, 157
appropriate, 22, 23, 48, 90, 163, 168,
234
Christian view of, 233, 236
love vs., 50-51, 56
overreaction and, 78
self-respect and, 44, 45, 112, 118,
125
respect, 117, 118, 125
responsibility, 27, 155, 165-66, 172-73
absolution of, 90
authentic guilt and, 50
for beliefs, 31
confession and, 203
deontological vs. teleological view of,
49-50
determinism and, 21, 27
for emotions, 159
excuses and, 18-20, 85-86, 237
free will and, 18
legal vs. moral, 249-50
self-forgiveness and, 122
therapist-client relationship and, 115
two faces of, 35
victim's acceptance of, 105
wrongdoer's acceptance of, 248
restitution, 56, 121, 122-24, 239
restorative justice, 95-96, 167-68, 209,
256
retributive justice, 4, 49-50, 93-95, 108,
130, 151, 234

revenge, 56, 106,158, 236
arguments for, 8, 10, 11-12, 48-49,
151
gender differences and, 66
punishment vs., 94
retribution and, 93-94, 209
as right decision, 11-12
self-perpetuating, 93, 107, 108, 181,
207
Richards, Norvin, 11, 72-86
rights, 102, 163, 165, 185, 197
Rique, Julio, 6, 9, 56, 62-63, 73, 76, 82,
157
Rokach, Ami, 246
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 218
Ryle, Gilbert, 30, 232
Sartre, Jean Paul, 31
Schroeder, Claire, 257-59
Schroeder, Walter, 13, 232, 242-49,
256-60
Schurer, Jennifer, 11, 54-69
scientific literature, 54, 55-59
self
community vs., 1013
true vs. false, 30-31
unforgiving vs. forgiving, 179
self-blame, 5, 81-82
self-esteem, 125, 138, 156
Focus Partnering and, 147-48
forgiveness therapy and, 72, 73, 158
self-forgiveness and, 122
See also self-respect
self-esteem movement, 102
self-exploitation, 13941
self-forgiveness, 98, 121-24, 131-33
earning, 240, 252, 253, 260
healing from, 8, 21
internal preparation for, 11617
nature of wrong and, 112
other-forgiveness and, 13, 34-35, 178,
215-17, 240-41, 254
punishment criteria and, 107
receipt of, 49-50
as relational, 259, 260
self-help, 4, 156-58, 161-62, 165-66
selfishness, 140-41
self-respect, 8, 11, 13, 44-46
appropriate anger and, 22
bases of, 229n.2
INDEX 271
forgiveness compromising, 126-31,
163, 164
forgiveness increasing, 56, 72, 125
resentment and, 44, 45, 112, 118, 125,
234
therapist-client relationship and,
117-19
self-righteousness, 26, 158
self-sacrifice, 91, 98
Seligman, Martin, 3-4
Serbs, 200, 201
shame, 52n.l3, 57, 67, 182, 242-43
victim feelings of, 92, 104
Shriver, Donald, 93, 108, 237
Siegel, Bernie, 101
Sierra Leone, 17273
sin, 143, 155, 188
repentance of, 98-99
sinner vs., 24, 28, 30, 31, 46-47,
128-31, 132-33
Smedes, Lewis B., 89, 97, 99, 101, 234
smugness, 14243
social ego, 175-76
Socrates, 25, 30, 36n.3
South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, 90-91, 103, 167, 195,
209, 234, 239
Soyinka, Wole, 239
Speer, Albert, 240
Spinoza, Baruch de, 28-29, 31, 32
splitting, 181-82, 187
Stael, Madame de, 17, 35
Stone Center, 185
Strawson, Peter, 19, 44, 163
substance abusers, 54, 58, 61
forgiveness of, 89-90
Summerfield, Derek, 194-95
Sunflower, TMWiesenthal), 155, 201-4,
237-42
superego, 175-76, 182, 183, 185, 188,
189
Tavris, Carol, 8, 163
Tavuchis, Nicholas, 240, 259-60
Templeton Foundation, 89
therapist-client relationship, 112-16, 118,
122, 124, 128-31
therapy. See counselors/therapists; forgive-
ness therapy; psychotherapy
Thomas, Joshua M., 12, 192-209
272 INDEX
Tillich, Paul, 99
trust, 34, 114, 140, 167
Tutu, Bishop Desmond, 91, 93, 107, 209
unconscious processes, 173-74, 189
understanding, 17-35, 83-85, 127, 236
unilateral forgiveness, 8, 57, 198
arguments against, 45-52, 125-26
as Christian virtue. See Christianity
definition of, 6-7, 157-58
determinism and, 19
by family, 252-53, 254, 258
repentance incentive and, 134
society and, 16162, 16566
unrepentant wrongdoer. See wrongdoer,
unrepentant
vengeance. See revenge
Verghese, Abraham, 218-20
victimology, 4, 125, 126, 140
women and, 164-66, 180-81, 186
VOMA (Victim Offenders Mediation As-
sociation), 95, 106
Walrond-Skinner, Sue, 184-85
war situations, 172-73, 192-209
Weisel, Elie, 49
Wiesenthal, Simon, 106, 155, 201-4,
237-42
Wilson, A. N., 52n.l3
Wink, Walter, 99, 254
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 3031
women, 10, 12, 81, 155-68, 180-81, 189
psychoanalytic theory and, 175-77,
184-88
See also battered women; feminism;
gender
Worthington, Everett L., Jr., 4, 7, 9, 158,
163
wrong/wrongdoing, 20-28, 45, 91-93
addressing, 116-17, 126, 127
continuum of, 20-21, 179-82, 180
data gathering and, 104-5
mistake vs., 216
non-recognition of, 122
normal vs. abnormal reactions to, 181
obsession with, 79, 158-60,178
provocation and, 3233
randomness of, 81
response to, 104, 118-21
symbolic, 44
unforgivable, 18, 91, 112, 180-81,
192-93, 203, 218
voicing of, 103-4
wrongdoer, 215-61
act separated from, 24-25, 28, 30, 31,
46-47, 128-33, 161
agency recovery, 215-19, 250
authentic guilt of, 43, 49
"begging for forgiveness" by, 167, 183
change of heart and, 24, 168
compassion/love for, 55, 56, 76, 92,
157,168,172,202
earning forgiveness by, 232-61, 23842
forgiveness therapy and, 73-76, 160
interaction with, 36n.5
objective view of, 127
pity for, 34
reframing by, 239, 240
reframing of, 67, 83-85, 236
repentance by, 11, 26, 134, 236
understanding of, 30-31, 83-85, 127,
236
unrepentant, 25, 109, 125, 128-29,
155-57,161,162,167,168,183
See also self-forgiveness
Zehr, Howard, 96-97, 256