A Psychological Inquiry into the Meaning and Concept of Forgiveness

Jennifer Sandoval

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317206828
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book explores the psychological nature of forgiveness for both the subjective ego and what Jung called the objective psyche, or soul. Utilizing analytical, archetypal, and dialectical psychological approaches, the notion of forgiveness is traced from its archetypal and philosophical origins in Greek and Roman mythology through its birth and development in Judaic and Christian theology, to its modern functional character as self-help commodity, relationship remedy, and global necessity. Offering a deeper understanding of the concept of "true" forgiveness as a soul event, Sandoval reveals the transformative nature of forgiveness and the implications this notion has on the self and analytical psychology.

1
Introduction

A Psychological Inquiry into the Meaning and Concept of Forgiveness

The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.¹

While it was long ago when I first read these words, I am still moved by their beauty. In my imagination, the holy spot is a grassy flat area on the top of a small hill, or in a green meadow. Two people walk toward one another, arms outstretched, and surrender into a warm embrace. Maybe they are enemy kings who have laid down their arms and come to make peace after centuries of war, or siblings who have been estranged for years, finally ready to love again. To me, the image evokes the miraculous reunion of souls who, until the moment of communion, had been utterly lost to one another. Here is revealed an entirely new state of relating that had formerly been unimaginable to consciousness. In the extraordinary transformation from hatred to love, an image of the soul’s truth is revealed. Such a profound shift in perspective, which we call forgiveness, reveals the enormous power and possibility of psyche and reflects psychological transformation of the highest order.²

One’s first observation of the opening statement may well be the rarity of such an event. Why is true forgiveness so singular? The act of forgiving is simple. In its apparent sense, forgiveness would merely wipe the slate clean, clearing any past offending action between parties. Now there is nothing to avenge, no wrong to right, no debt to pay. Forgiveness would lay down a new perspective in which future relating is conditioned by something other than past suffering and grievances, offering an entirely new possibility for relationship. Whether it happens within oneself, between two people, extending to groups, races, religions, cultures, and nations—given what could be gained, especially in light of the stakes³—forgiveness would seem a very small thing to ask. Why, then, is forgiveness so rare? What makes forgiveness “impossible”?

James Hillman writes,

We must be quite clear that forgiveness is no easy matter. If the ego has been wronged, the ego cannot forgive just because it ‘should’ … The ego is kept vital by its amour-propre, its pride and honor. Even where one wants to forgive, one finds one simply can’t, because forgiveness doesn’t come from the ego.⁴

Ultimately, true forgiveness often proves an impossible task—a miracle. We can see this reality in centuries-old violence and enmity between cultures and religions. The miracle here is not the parting of the sea or the turning of water into wine. It is the miraculous transformation of enemy to brother, the astonishing journey from war to peace. This is the miracle of forgiveness, and it is an honest miracle to the ego, which has no access to such transformation on its own.

The act of forgiveness, while ‘simple,’ is simultaneously a remarkably complex and sophisticated notion. Forgiving bears the mark of a consciousness capable of what C. G. Jung often referred to as an opus contra naturam—a work against [its own] nature. True forgiveness asks the forgiving mind to willingly give up familiar and comfortable strongholds, such as justice, power, and future guarantees, forever denying recourse to the reality of a past inside of which the offense occurred. Such disarming demands are not only unnatural, but highly threatening to an ego whose primary aim is its own self-protection and survival.⁵ Because of this, forgiving is perverted into a manipulation, negotiated or refused altogether for the ego’s own advantage. True forgiving is inherently “aneconomic,” undertaken with no aim of gain for the forgiver.⁶ The ego by definition can have no real interest in, capacity for, or relationship to genuine forgiveness.

So, already, we arrive at the first of many deadlocks. After all, contradiction lies at the very heart of forgiveness. As Lucy Allais observes, “Forgiving seems to mean ceasing to blame, but if blaming means holding the perpetrator responsible, then forgiveness requires not ceasing to blame, or else there will be nothing to forgive.”⁷ Such ‘impossible’ moments of contradiction and deadlock are crucial for the dialectical expansion of consciousness to occur. Slavoj Zizek writes, “The awareness that the power of a proper act is to retroactively create its own conditions of possibility should not make us afraid to embrace what, prior to the act, appears as impossible: only in this way does our act touch the Real.”⁸ The ‘impossible’ act of forgiveness is imbued with this dialectical sensibility; when it occurs, it retroactively ‘punches a hole’ through the presiding construct of reality and reveals a moment of the Real—reflected in the phrase above as “the holiest spot on earth.” Forgiveness’s dialectical aspect is revealed in the sublated presence of its opposite (“enmity”) as a necessary condition for psychological truth (“holiness”); without prior ‘ancient hatred,’ the ‘present love’ would not be designated as ‘the holiest.’ A meaningful inquiry into a dialectical phenomenon such as forgiveness necessitates a truly psychological perspective, one that sees through the apparent (empirical or semantic) reality to the inherent logical form giving rise to it.

The Psychological Difference

The main concern of a psychological inquiry into any subject matter is the nature of the subject matter’s relation to consciousness at large, or what Jung called the objective psyche, or “soul.” The surprise here may be that psychology is not primarily concerned with people’s thoughts and behavior (i.e., psychology is not to be confused with anthropology, sociology, or behavioral science). Rather, psychology is concerned with consciousness per se!—which happens to make its appearance via individuals’ thoughts and behavior. The seemingly subtle shift in focus is the defining feature of a non-ego or depth psychology. The difference between the subjective psyche or ego on the one hand and the objective psyche or soul on the other is what Wolfgang Gieg-erich calls the psychological difference. It is the awareness of this difference that characterizes a perspective as “psychological” in nature. A truly psychological inquiry takes into account consciousness in its objective, abstract, or “soul” form. When the psychological difference goes unrecognized, ignored, or neglected in favor of a strictly localized,⁹ empirical, or subjective view, the inquiry veers into unpsychological territory. Psychology must be, as Jung put it, psychology “with soul”—or it fails to be psychology at all.

At once we are faced with the crucial question, what is soul?¹⁰ As the intangible essence of consciousness itself, a concrete definition of soul by its nature is elusive. Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology, describes it in this way:

[Soul is] a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment—and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.¹¹

For Hillman, soul is what makes meaning possible and deepens events into experiences that move us. Soul is communicated in love and is the aspect of human imagination that expands consciousness. We feel soul in the delight of a child, in our lover’s eyes, and in the depths of our sorrow. Individuation is given by a life in which we become who we are, in alignment with soul. Forgiveness, as imagined from this perspective, occurs in the “gap” recognized between doer and deed, in the middle ground. Forgiveness enables the ‘dis-lodging’ so to speak of identicalness with the position of doer or deed; forgiveness occurs in the domain of pure reflected consciousness, thereby qualifying as an act of “soul-making.”

Taking into consideration the profound and undeniable historical movements in consciousness from Plato to Descartes to Hegel, we are obliged to acknowledge that the soul no longer holds to its classical ideal as a metaphysical entity that a person has, nor does it exist as a substantial mystical essence found in nature, gods, or God. While still referred to in religious terms or popularized in new-age spiritual circles, to speak of a substantive “soul” as a reality in the twenty-first century is dismissed as antiquated or sentimental; it is fair to say that “the soul” has become obsolete, if not disappeared altogether.¹² Soul no longer appears to us in substantiated form in any sense and in effect “vanishes” in our attempts to concretize or materialize it.¹³ The modern soul has “released” all literal form, in a sense shedding “the mythical garments in which [it] had hitherto been cloaked,”¹⁴ having returned to itself in its unmediated logical form as absolute negativity, or that which human subjectivity is. This movement of “disrobing” or releasing consciousness from constrictive semantic signifiers into its emancipated form as pure process aligns with forgiving as a liberating movement, a release and freeing of both forgiver and forgiven into an experience in which a deeper ‘truth’ of the relationship, which was there along, is yet newly acquired.

One may correctly argue that the underlying truth of a phenomenon such as forgiveness is not apparent in its abstract or universal notion as such but rather in its very real expression as an intimate act between two human beings. Psychologically, what we are witnessing in the act of forgiveness is an extraordinary moment of unity between the objective and subjective domains of consciousness, what Hegel called “concrete universality.” Such a moment does not merely depict the relationship of the particular to the universal, but rather is a moment in which the soul relates directly to itself. This self-actualization of the soul occurs vis-à-vis human beings. As Hegel observed, “it is in the finite consciousness that the process of knowing spirit’s essence takes place and that the divine self-consciousness thus arises. Out of the foaming ferment of finitude, spirit rises up fragrantly.”¹⁵ It is from mortal and ordinary life that the divine fragrance of forgiveness arises.

Why Study Forgiveness?

Much has been written about forgiveness. Bookstores are flooded with self-help books advocating the practice, offering testimonials, and giving various step-by-step methods of how to forgive others and oneself. The phenomenon has received increasing attention in the field of psychology, with numerous studies devoted to analyzing how forgiveness happens, testing differing theoretical models of how to achieve forgiveness, and measuring predictive, co-occurring, and resulting physiological, emotional, behavioral changes in those who forgive. However, the elusive question of how forgiveness is achieved, much less what forgiveness actually is, has yet to be definitively answered.¹⁶

While there appears to be a renewed interest in forgiveness in certain arenas, we must also acknowledge that in contemporary culture at large, forgiveness is dismissed as passé, a sentimental or merely political and empty gesture. Forgiving adds a layer of unnecessary subjectivity to what otherwise would be a simple mistake to be righted. No “forgiveness” needed, only adjustment: a mere course correction. For example, what would have formerly been a stunning plea of Pope Francis to the gay community—“We Christians should ask forgiveness from them”—now rings somewhat hollow....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A Brief History of Forgiveness
• 3 Defining Forgiveness
• 4 Forgiveness in the Face of the Unforgivable
• 5 Forgiveness and the Self
• 6 The Logic of Forgiveness
• Index