What was your biggest surprise when you started to do research on forgiveness therapy?

I would say the biggest surprise was how effective forgiveness therapy is in the context of very deep trauma caused by other people’s unfairness.  Forgiveness therapy seems to be even more effective in reducing clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression than other models of psychotherapy that preceded forgiveness therapy within the social sciences.  As just one example, the Freedman and Enright (1996) study showed that incest survivors, upon forgiving, went from clinical levels of depression to non-depressed status and this continued at the one-year follow-up.  The reference to this work is as follows:

Freedman, S. R., & Enright, R. D. (1996).  Forgiveness as an intervention goal with incest survivors.  Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(5), 983-992.

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