Psychoanalytic Approaches to Forgiveness and Mental Health considers the role of forgiveness in mental life, concerning both forgiving and being forgiven. Each chapter addresses concepts including superego, repetition compulsion, enactment, and notions such as sacrifice, penance, justification, absolution, and contrition. The contributors consider both their professional and clinical experience and their ethical, cultural, or philosophical background when considering aspects of forgiveness and its impact on clinical practice. The book is an attempt to open the subject of forgiveness, not to reach ethical conclusions nor to formulate pious psychological behavioural axioms. It also considers the weight of feeling unforgiven and of holding the lifelong resentment or vengeful wishes of the unforgiving. Psychoanalytic Approaches to Forgiveness and Mental Health will be key reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training and for other professionals interested in the role of forgiveness in mental life. It will also be of interest to academics and students of psychoanalytic studies, philosophy and spirituality.

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.

This volume collects the state-of-the-art research on forgiveness and mental and physical health and well-being. It focuses specifically on connections between forgiveness and its health and well-being benefits. Forgiveness has been examined from a variety of perspectives, including the moral, ethical and philosophical. Ways in which to become more forgiving and evolutionary theories of revenge and forgiveness have also been investigated and proposed. However, little attention has been paid to the benefits of forgiveness. This volume offers an examination of the theory, methods and research utilized in understanding these connections. It considers trait and state forgiveness, emotional and decisional forgiveness, and interventions to promote forgiveness, all with an eye toward the positive effects of forgiveness for a victim’s health and well-being. Finally, this volume considers key moderators such as gender, race, and age, as well as, explanatory mechanisms that might mediate links between forgiveness and key outcomes.

With contributions from Hermann Beland, Franco De Masi, Hans-Jurgen Eilts, Claudia Frank, With contributions from Hermann Beland, Irma Brenman Pick, Franco De Masi, Hans-Jurgen Eilts, Claudia Frank, Angela Goyena, Carolin Haas, Wolfgang Hegener, Angela Rosenfeld, John Steiner, Riccardo Steiner, Nils F. Topfer, Klaus Wilde, and Karin Johanna Zienert-Eilts. This collection presents new insights into the life and work of Herbert Rosenfeld and his continuing influence on psychoanalytic theory and practice. It includes accounts from both personal and professional perspectives and is illustrated with 55 black and white images. Part I looks at historical perspectives and includes Karin Johanna Zienert-Eilts' excellent biography of Rosenfeld, Angela Rosenfeld's personal view of her father, Ronald Britton's discussion of the distinction between "defensive" and "destructive" narcissism, and Claudia Frank's look at the iconic figures of Kleinian thought. Part II shines a light on Rosenfeld's extensive supervisory work with a highly personal account from Riccardo Steiner about experience in Italy, Klaus Wilde on Rosenfeld's significance for German psychoanalysts, and reminiscences and afterthoughts from Angela Goyena. In the descriptions of his clinical work in Part III, Franco De Masi, Hans-Jurgen Eilts, Carolin Haas, and Nils F. Topfer demonstrate how Rosenfeld's theoretical discoveries - especially his concept of destructive narcissism - and his related clinical and technical recommendations not only continue to facilitate psychoanalytic work with difficult patients today, but also made this work possible in the first place. The final part of the book examines the sociopolitical applications of Herbert Rosenfeld's concept of destructive narcissism. It begins with a significant paper from Herbert Rosenfeld: Applying my theory of psychosis to the Nazi phenomenon. This is followed by an interview of Rosenfeld by Hermann Beland and two chapters from the editors. Wolfgang Hegener examines how Herbert Rosenfeld can help us to understand Nazi perpetrators, with a particular focus on Adolf Eichmann, and Karin Johanna Zienert-Eilts takes the lens of destructive narcissism to destructive populism to cast new light on the phenomenon. Rounded out by a bibliography of Herbert Rosenfeld's most important writings, an extensive appendix of documents, photographs and three previously unpublished letters which are of historical significance, and prefaces from Irma Brenman Pick and John Steiner, this volume is a must-read for clinicians, academics, and trainees.

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.

For psychologists and psychotherapists, the notion of forgiveness has been enjoying a substantial vogue. For their patients, it holds the promise of "moving on" and healing emotional wounds. The forgiveness of others - and of one's self - would seem to offer the kind of peace that psychotherapy alone has never been able to provide. In this volume, psychologist Sharon Lamb and 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 these questions: why is forgiveness so popular now? What exactly does it entail? When might it be appropriate for a therapist not to advise forgiveness? When is forgiveness in fact harmful? Lamb and Murphy have collected many previously-unpublished chapters by both philosophers and psychologists that examine what is at stake for those who are injured, those who injure them, and society in general when such a practice becomes commonplace. Some chapters offer cautionary tales about forgiveness therapy, while others paint complex portraits of the social, cultural, and philosophical factors that come into play with forgiveness. The value of this volume lies not only in its presentation of a nuanced view of this therapeutic trend, but also as a general critique of psychotherapy, and as a valuable testimony of the theoretical and practical possibilities in an interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophy and clinical psychology.

The book combines for the first time attachment theory, regulation attachment therapy, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma, showing how the clinical therapeutic process of "going beyond trauma" may result in forgiveness of past relationships and other reparatory practices in which self and other, both internal and external, are integrated and reconnected, opening the subject to creativity and new meaning in life. From early relational trauma to abuse and neglect, to massive social trauma such as war and genocide, the most recent psychoanalytic theories on trauma highlight the relevance of attachment on one side and intergenerational transmission of trauma on the other. The appropriate psychoanalytic treatment of traumatisation of human origin therefore needs to address the specific relational issues, trying to repair precisely the connection between self and other, thanks to the clinician's active participation in the exchange.