Perspectives On Forgiveness

This interdisciplinary, empirical and theoretical approach to forgiveness and revenge considers the roles of truth, restitution and ritual in the promotion of forgiveness and deterrence of revenge in multiple contexts.

In Practicing Forgiveness, the author reviews the contextual and cultural aspects of forgiveness with stories, humor, clinical examples, research, and empirical findings while examining the influence of environment and religion. The content is presented in such a way so as to serve as a resource to both professional mental health providers (who can benefit from the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of working with clients through the forgivenessprocess) and lay readers (who can benefit from the processing and self-help components of the book).

The meaning of ‘forgiveness’ and its role within restorative justice are highly contested. This book offers analysis from practical and academic perspectives within Christian theology, against a rich canvas of related concepts, including victimhood, sin, love, and vulnerability. Critical friends of restorative justice, the authors argue that forgiveness – whether as journey or act, unilateral or mutual, conditional or unconditional – is necessary to achieving a fully restorative resolution to acts of harm. They also suggest that Christianity, with its meaning-giving metanarrative of restoration, and preference for communitarian approaches to justice, may have epistemic value for evaluating and even deepening the theory and practice of restorative justice.

Offering a definitive overview of a vital aspect of human experience, this unique volume will help forgiveness researchers of the present and future to steer a more coordinated and scientifically productive course. It serves as an insightful and informative resource for a broad interdisciplinary audience of clinicians, researchers, educators, and students.

Psychologist Sharon Lamb & philosopher Jeffrie Murphy argue that forgiveness has been accepted as a therapeutic strategy without serious, critical examination. They intend this volume to be a closer, critical look at some of the questions the topic raises.

The first comprehensive philosophical book on forgiveness in both its interpersonal and political contexts.

How can one overcome deeply-held resentment so as to resume or establish a bond with a traumatizing person, mindful that the experience of the self is rooted in the very intimate relationships from which such trauma arose? This book centres on the challenge of forgiveness and recovery from trauma in intimate relationships as viewed psychodynamically in the clinical context. Traumas inflicted by intimates, especially by parents, differ from transgressions and betrayals-however legitimately traumatizing-committed in less psychically-rooted relationships. While some betrayals are in fact not forgivable, what is at issue when parents or other intimates betray is the inevitable yearning for reunion: a wish whose potential fulfillment raises the spectre of re-traumatization and humiliation and is thus fraught with risk.

In our culture the belief that "To err is human, to forgive divine," is so prevalent that few of us question its wisdom. But do we ever completely forgive those who have betrayed us? Aren't some actions unforgivable? Can we achieve closure and healing without forgiving? Drawing on more than two decades of work as a practicing psychotherapist, more than fifty indepth interviews, and sterling research into the concept of forgiveness in our society, Dr. Jeanne Safer challenges popular opinion with her own searching answers to these and other questions. The result is a penetrating look at what is often a lonely, and perhaps unnecessary, struggle to forgive those who have hurt us the most and an illuminating examination of how to determine whether forgiveness is, indeed, the best path to take--and why, often, it is not.