The Imperative of Forgiveness

Running head: The Imperative of Forgiveness

The Imperative of Forgiveness

James D Brown PO Box 5184 Napa, CA 94581 (805) 895-1828 Pacifica Graduate Institute Depth Psychology, Track J DP 923: Collective Trauma

The Imperative of Forgiveness The Imperative of Forgiveness

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina I sit as far back in the room as possible; the last row, where the diminished illumination from the bench aids in lessening my growing need to hideto shrink into nothingness. I notice how much like the pews of a church these benches aresleek, dark, and cool wood. I imagine grasping hold the smooth railing in front of me and kneeling in prayer to the secular gods who reside here; Justice chief among them. The contrast between the light ahead emanating from the bench and the shadow in which I lurk promises the possibility of emerging through this process that will most assuredly require speaking the truth of what I can remembera painful and embarrassing prospect. But truth also hides within the deeper emotions that will in kind be brought to light as proof of this pains authenticity. In pursuing the benefits of justice, one runs the risk of exposing the grief and shame that keeps us bound to that which we have lost while hope sustains our quest for recovery and a return to wholeness. The difficulty in this particular situation is the publicness of the processthe price that justice extracts for its steadfast attention. I unfold the carefully worded, hand-written paper in my breast pocket and stand ready to read my statement. I feel completely exposed and vulnerable while at the same time, the power of the truth vibrates through my body. My voice breaks the silence and at the same time, the door to a new possibility opens; one that promises forgiveness and progress. Jelin (2003) writes that experience is present past, whose events have been incorporated and can be remembered (p. 4). This present past is also bound by the individual to some expectation of what the future will be like, especially for experiences that are traumatic or spectacular in nature and which ultimately have an enormous impact on determining what one

The Imperative of Forgiveness can or cannot remember, forget, or work through as a result (p. 2). In that an injured party derives their sense of loss from a perception of a past perfect that has, post-event, turned to a shattered wholeness, maintaining loyalty to a person or object lost through a perpetration can be a primary tool for holding on to the connection which binds a person to that sense of a whole

self. Working through often requires that the repetition of actions come to eventually stand-in for the lost one and keep the survivors world oriented to a past that must be continuously reinterpreted. Without such working through, a victims actions function primarily to prevent forward movement in their life by reinforcing a sense of betrayal or weakened loyalty to the lost one when the connecting thoughts or behaviors are abandoned (pp. 6-7). My own experience with intimate partner violencesomething that I experienced as traumatic or spectacularled me, many years after, to work as a facilitator for mandated domestic violence perpetrator groups. While I consciously justified this move as a way for me to utilize my personal experience in service to altering the attitudes of those who violate the trust of their intimate relationships, I recognize now that a large part of the work for me was healing my own wounds as a victim (and at times, perpetrator) by seeing in the groups the many shadow aspects that live inside of myself. My quest was to understand how such a thing could happen in my own life and the lives of my loved ones, and through that understanding hold hope for healing and forgiveness. The tone of my many group notes seems to indicate that Ive made great progress in that direction: Batterers Group Notes, March 14, 2007. Ross checks in to group by stating that he has been feeling depressed. The situation with his divorce has been dragging on for almost a year now and he doesnt feel that they have made any progress. If anything, he feels that they have taken a step backward based on a new, less favorable proposal from his ex-wifes lawyer who wants to maximize the advantage gained by his conviction on wife battering charges. I listen carefully to the now familiar story that he weaves around his situation that pegs his ex as vindictive, the

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lawyers as recalcitrant, the situation irresolvable, and himself as a helpless obsessive compulsive that tracks his own misery to the finest detail. Ross is meticulous with a genius for detail that, like any talent, cuts both ways. In many ways it serves him well in his life, but has also left him incapacitated in the way he deals with conflict. He seems to have trouble seeing beyond the immediate situation toward a future in which space can open enough for forgiveness to entersomething that is missing and sorely needed in the situation with his ex-wife. It strikes me that he is very lonely since he has really become disconnected from his family and friends during the process of his conviction and divorce. He seems in the grip of his depression story which he views as a life long struggle, exacerbated by the unfairness of his current situation. As a result, he once again has turned to medicating himself to get through. I think about my own struggle with depression, OCD, and anxiety. Ten years of continuous hell punctuated with cautious optimism. On reflection, I realize that I was unwilling to let go of my symptoms because they seemed like such a reasonable response to the world. I think about what turned that around for me and cant pinpoint anything in particular. I suppose its my desire for instant results which causes me to think in this direction. Lord knows, it feels at this moment that if I came up with a silver bullet for Ross, the whole room would nod their head and simply say of course. But, Im as perplexed as he is on where to go from here. All that we can do is keep talking, keep hearing and seeing each othershare in the unfairness of the situation and the hope that things might be different some day. Maybe that is the only blessing that can be had. Maybe that is all that is really needed. Hope. Often we forget that the behavior of a perpetrator also very much falls within the spectrum of human activity where evil, like good, is always a distinct possibility (GobodoMadikizela, 2003, p. 45). A perpetrator is still a human being who failed morally for whatever reason (Tutu, 1999, p. 119). Recognition of this can lead to an acknowledgement of our shared humanity with the perpetrator along with encouraging and fostering a spirit of compassion and forgiveness rather than one of revenge and retribution (p. 34). Forgiveness as a means of approaching a traumatic experience presents a challenging proposition to both the perpetrator and the survivor of the abuse. My own result was recognition of patterns in my life and the lives of those I am intimate with thatwhen unconscious and unattendedmight lead to stress or incidences of unintended inequality and eventual violence in relationship. Gobodo-Madikizela writes that it is our capacity to feel remorse for our actions that makes forgetting almost

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impossible (p. 45), otherwise we come to split off the offending behavior, action, or body part as being Other to avoid personal accountability (p. 41) or create some form of justification as a fundamental truth (p. 22). Acknowledging and eventually integrating those parts of our lives that we perceive as evil and not of us is a primary step toward regained wholeness and healing (p. 55). As an added dimension, there are often significant social indoctrinations and events of personal history that can contribute significantly to a persons path toward cruelty. Many perpetrators are being initiated at a very young age into a world of abuse and violence where they are both witnessing violence and often victimized themselves (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2003, p. 57). Most of those who survive the horrors of an abusive childhood go on to develop healthy and productive relationships, however, those less resilient have an equal chance of themselves becoming perpetrators or further victimized in their adult relationships (Dutton, 2006). GobodoMadikizela (2003) writes that we are challenged by these facts to morally struggle with this societal illness of intergenerational violence which can damage the psyche of the individual or, through no fault of their own, corrupt their psyche such that they are predisposed to becoming a morally evil person (p. 58). The law cannot hold some thing responsible for acts of violence and as such must focus on the actions of individuals and insist on personal responsibility (p. 60) as the sole measure of the apportionment of justice. The experience of trauma, however, defies the typical ways in which we think of factual information on which court systems so heavily rely. The experiences themselves are often not easily contextualized or conducive to rational frameworks of language which serve only to limit the true impact of the trauma (p. 85). Trauma is a memory lived by both victim and perpetrator whose facts become written into the heart and body of the wounded. Truth in this case is encased in wounded memory that could not

The Imperative of Forgiveness necessarily survive the rigors of the legal system (Tutu, 1999, p. 25). The symbols and language required by our judicial system also tend to favor conditions which promote retribution over forgiveness and possibilities for redemption and reconciliation (p. 118) which are moves of a more spiritual nature whose process might be viewed as sacramental rather than secular. To simply forget or move on from a traumatic incidence without engaging in forgiveness can be a form of amnesia and the continuation of the repetition of violence (p. 28). Providing

acknowledgement and a voice for the wounded psyche hits to the core of the victims identity as it is tied up in the experience of traumatic memory and helps to validate the integrity of their felt experience. A denial cuts to the core in the same and opposite way (p. 30). Paulo Freire has said that extraordinary events become traumatic primarily when they are denied a voice and the opportunity for truth, reconciliation, and forgiveness. Forgiveness recognizes the deed, its impact having been and continuing to be lived by the victim, but transcends it (GobodoMadikizela, 2003, p. 95). Justice fails miserably if it is only punitive and focuses on the chief goal of retribution and punishment for the personal act of moral failure. The punitive system of justice further serves to abstract the wronged party and the perpetrator while displaying little concern for addressing the aftermath for either. Restorative justice, on the other hand, has as its central concern the healing of damage to the psyche, redressing imbalances of power, restoration of broken relationships, rehabilitation of parties, and reintegration into community (p. 54). Healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation are the themes of restorative justice, not punishment and as such, the goals of healing are often not served within the legal system we possess today. What each of us does, writes Gobodo-Madikizela, can retard or promote, can hinder or advance, the process at the heart of the universe (p. 267). Memories can be kept alive to cultivate hatred and resentment which leads only to possible vengeance and continued violence

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(p. 103). But, if energies are directed toward understanding and the transcendence of events than memory can serve to also heal (p. 117). Practicing forgiveness means abandoning the right for revenge, payback, or getting even. However, as a process, the act of forgiveness liberates the victim from either utilizing the tools of the perpetrator to extract their justice or locking themselves into the violators whim to confess or repent their actions (p. 273). Although confession and reparation are an important element of the healing continuum, they are not a requirement of the forgiving act. As the primary gate keeper of the perpetrators redemption and reentry into the human community, the victim is able to either choose to continue in a state of revenge or in one of forgiveness. By choosing forgiveness, the victim in fact exacts a reified type of revenge by rising above the events and releasing their power and hold. Through forgiveness, one further declares a faith in the future and in the capacity of the wrongdoer to chart a new course for them selves that will lead to a different, more positive outcome and not to more of the same. As a major part of the traumatic event, the perpetrator will endeavor to exclude the victim from inclusion in the framework of their personal moral obligations (Tutu, 1999, p. 128). The victim, through the process of forgiveness, is often able to reclaim their place in the moral framework of the perpetrator and, more significantly, reject the objectified role placed upon them by their victimizer and resurrect the lost one sacrificed in the traumatic event through a narrative of truth. Remorse on the part of the perpetrator as well helps in transform[ing] the image of victim as object to victim as human once again while providing additional mortar for sealing the cracks that have been created in the psyche (pp. 129-130). Such remorse must be free of any explanation or justification with a goal of maximizing the perpetrators understanding of the impact that the trauma has had on the victim and the damage caused by their offense. This

The Imperative of Forgiveness means that the perpetrator must be in a state where they desire to be forgiven, just as the victim

must desire to forgive. This can occur only when the perpetrator has accepted full accountability for their actions and remorse has led them to exhibit some outward sign that invites the victims forgiveness (p. 98). To be able to perform, states Gobodo-Madikizela (2003, p. 99), an apology has to name the deed, acknowledge wrong doing, and recognize the pain of the victim. Such an apology conveys a sense of regret and deeply felt remorse and may inspire the empathy needed to draw out the victim. Empathy is the natural response to another person who is in pain and if the pain of the perpetrator is sincere, empathy is what they will elicit from the victim for their remorse. (p. 100). True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the pain, the abuse, the degradation, the truth. Dealing with the reality of the situation is the only way to bring real healing as long as it does not at the same time seek to condone the actions of the perpetrator (Tutu, 1999, p. 270-271). Spurious reconciliation can only bring spurious healing, writes Tutu. As such, the process of forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation must take the situation seriously and not minimize it in any way so as to draw out the unpleasant and repressed memories, confront them, and eventually integrate them as part of the victims complete experience. Forgiveness also must try to bring the perpetrators experience into a similar understanding so that they can gain the empathy which leads to forgiveness. This looks like understanding the influences, pressures, and conditions that might have wounded a perpetrator and damaged their psyche enough to enable them to abuse another (Tutu, 1999, p. 273). It is the victim who is in the place to offer the gift of forgiveness that the perpetrator can only come to appropriate through remorse and confession of their wrong. Empathy as a way of being requires recognition of self in other and other in self as identification. If one maintains anger and

The Imperative of Forgiveness resentment toward their antagonizer, then one maintains a distance from the violent aspect of human behavior and even their our own proclivity toward violence, while creating the illusion that the human race can somehow bar entrance of such evil into the human community by rejecting or incarcerating individual perpetrators (p. 127). To forgive is ultimately to also

confront the potential for evil in everyone as compassion for the perpetrator brings us all together to share at a single table of humanity (p. 123). Engaging in a dialogue with a perpetrator, either real or imaginal, begins to peal away the faade of justifications and get at the underlying contradiction that sometimes exists between our stated morality and our actual actions (p. 120). To be human is to belong and to live harmoniously in community in which self interest may require acts of forgiveness as a path toward the greater good (p. 31) and an enhancement of our overall sense of humanity for all (p.165). Without forgiveness as part of the social formula, the future can become dictated through only traumatic events. Huston reminds us that trust always contains the seeds of its own betrayal (p. 114) and responsibility is about understanding how or why we set up the conditions for betrayal in relationships. We see in the two dominant Western myths of duplicity, Adam and Even, Christ and Judas, that the experience of betrayal brings with it an opportunity for developing a reflective consciousness and transcendence. However, the benefit is often at the expense of great suffering. Suffering it seems has always been our path to redemption and the restorative process. Betrayals are opportunities for psychic growth as we become open and available to the entire spectrum of the human experience. What can fall out of this experience if we are able to heal through the process is a greater capacity for love. On the other hand, what commonly emerges from the experience for the less fortunate is a heart that is harder and more calcified when the healing process fails to deliver what is needed. Frankl (1959, p. 42) writes that in moments of our

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most intense suffering, it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all that is the most intolerable. These things must cause us to lose our reason else we have none to lose he says (p. 40). In these moments, he continues, we are operating under a provisional existence in which retrospective thinking keeps us stuck in the past (p. 92) and we must transition our thinking from what we may have always expected from life to one in which we ask, what does life expect from us (p. 98). Our Judeo-Christian American culture has for the most part intertwined the concepts of mercy and justice (Flanigan, 1992, p. 10) so closely that whenever mercy is not forthcoming in violent situations in which humans inevitably need to make things right through the process of forgiveness, then rightness takes the form of justice as punishmenta path that leads only to further suffering. A society which operates on the precept of punitive justice exercised through the tools of power and control is a diseased society in which internal dynamics no longer succeed in creating new structures and is inescapably unable to be transformed into anything new (Memi, 1965, pp. 98-99). As such, the oppressed will unavoidably fight back using the same techniques of thought and methods of combat because it is what they invariably understand from experience (p. 129). Through the pursuit of vengeance, we further fail to hold a vision for a more compassionate world, inclusive and just, while continuing to reject the wounded humanity of the perpetrator when we only seek to punish (Morales, 1998, p. 112). In following the urge to punish, we refuse consideration that we ourselves are also capable of the same, thus perpetuating a world in which some of us are better and more deserving (p. 113)a move the inevitably costs us the commitment to making a world in which all people are of value, everyone redeemable, thus worthy of our understanding and love. The challenge to the current punitive structure of rehabilitation for perpetratorsa system that approaches diversity of

The Imperative of Forgiveness personal experience anchored in culture and family history from a corrective standpoint and seeks to normalize the person to a set of standard, dominant behaviorsis to substitute an

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appreciative posture that recognizes deviance or other difficulties as meaningful expressions of not only personal, but collective social problems (Mazer, n.d., p. 5-6). The emotional turmoil and stages of grief that a victim lives through after a traumatic event provides a sense of continuity to their imagined whole self, a nostalgic sense of paradise lost and the loss of the loved one taken by the traumatic act. Memorialized as well in this persistent, but hateful affect is the victims bond to the perpetrator (Tutu, 1999, p. 264) and the perpetrators morality. Once the victim is willing to let go of their desire for past continuity and accept their new life as it currently exits with the traumatic affect, they are more able to allow forgiveness to enter. It is then that they may be able transform emotional ties to the people and situation involved in the traumatic event and possibly, from there forward, form new, more life affirming connections (p. 97). The person whose identity becomes enveloped in their emotional attachments to a trauma will maintain that mode of being unless there is a reasonable substitute for them to constellate around instead. Forgiveness is a choice that the victim makes to let go of their identity of resentment, anger, and grief and release the events, people, and beliefs that are bonded to them through that identity.

The Imperative of Forgiveness References Dutton, D. 2006. Rethinking domestic violence. Vancouver: UBC Press. Flanigan, B. (1992). Forgiving the unforgivable. NY: McMillan Frankl, V. (1959/1984). Mans search for meaning. NY: Washington Square Press Gobodo-Madikizela, P. 2003. A human being died that night. NY: Houghton Mifflin. Huston, J. 1997. The search for the beloved. New York: Tarcher Mazer, D.B. Ecopsychology and psychopathology: Contributions of a nature-based psychology for understanding human problems. Unpublished manuscript. Morales, L. 1998. Medicine stories: History, culture and the politics of integrity. Cambridge: South End Press. Tutu, D. 1999. No future without forgiveness. NY: Doubleday.

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