Tagged: “Dr. Robert Enright”

Regarding forgiveness, do you, personally, have any doubts about its effectiveness?

Because forgiveness is a moral virtue, as with all moral virtues such as justice and kindness, it is good in and of itself.  Therefore, I am confident that to forgive is a moral good.  Yet, I do have doubts, but not about forgiveness itself.  My doubts instead are with how people imperfectly understand what forgiveness is or have errors in trying to apply it.  For example, if a person thinks that to forgive is just to move on and forget the other person, this is not what forgiveness is.  The misunderstanding, of course, is not the fault of forgiveness itself.  As another example, if a person spends only 2 hours forgiving someone who was brutal to him when he was a child, this is an error of not taking sufficient time to forgive.  Again, this is not the fault of forgiveness itself.  So, in summary, my doubts are in human imperfection not being able to lead to an effective forgiveness response.  I have no doubts about the goodness of forgiveness itself.

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You talk about having to wait to experience emotional relief when forgiving.  What do you mean by waiting and how long does one wait?

When I use the word “wait” I mean that you are not in complete control of your emotions.  For example, if you are very angry at someone, you cannot just turn on a switch in your brain and then all of a sudden there is no more anger.  Because of this, we have to be patient as our emotions gradually change from anger or sadness or disappointment to more neutral and then possibly to more positive emotions.  There is no precise timeline for this.  You will know that the transformation is working by introspecting and seeing small changes in your anger or sadness.  As you see these small changes emerging, you can keep doing the work of forgiving and then you likely will experience larger and more positive changes in your emotions toward the one who harmed you.

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I heard that you recently published a study with your colleagues in which you helped men in prison learn to forgive.  What did you find and why did you focus on prisoners who, it seems to me, need to ask us for forgiveness because of what they did?

Rehabilitation in correctional institutions tends to focus on changing the behavior which led to the sentencing in the first place.  Yet, our research found that about 90% of 103 men whom we surveyed had considerable injustices against them when they were children or adolescents.  One gentleman was thrown out of his home by his mother when he was 10 years old.  He slept under cars at night as his bed.  So often, this kind of cruelty against children can lead to a welling up of hatred and this can lead to crime, arrest, and imprisonment.  Forgiveness Therapy allowed the men to forgive those who abused them which led to a statistically significant decrease in clinical levels of anger, anxiety, and depression to normal or near normal levels.  They also developed more empathy toward people in general.  Those in the control group, without Forgiveness Therapy, did not show this kind of improvement in their mental health, but when they then were given Forgiveness Therapy, they, too, showed similar improvement compared with the original experimental group.  Here is the reference to that research:

Yu, L., Gambaro, M., Song, J., Teslik, M., Song, M., Komoski, M.C., Wollner, B., & Enright, R.D. (2021). Forgiveness therapy in a maximum-security correctional institution: A randomized clinical trial. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy.

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Can’t I forgive simply because it is good in and of itself?  Do I really need some kind of external reason, such as helping my family or assisting the one who was unfair?  The more abstract reason, that goes well beyond physical consequences, seems to me to be an important reason for forgiving.

Yes, I agree with you.  We do not have to have, as you say, the motivation of forgiving to be the bringing about of a physical consequence such as improved family relationships or the rehabilitation of another’s behavior.  Forgiveness as a moral virtue is good in and of itself and your engaging in this moral virtue as its own end is good.  We need to keep in mind that forgiving unconditionally, for its own sake, can and often does lead to positive physical consequences (feeling better and/or a restored relationship).  As you correctly point out, one does not have to have some kind of guarantee that such physical consequences will occur before we forgive.

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My motivation to forgive is to assist the one who acted unjustly, to get her attention, to give her a chance to change.  She is not changing.  Therefore, it seems to me that I should withhold forgiving as a last-chance for her to repent and live a better life.  Isn’t this the way to go, to wait on forgiving until the other changes for the sake of that other person?

It seems to me that you are thinking in “either-or” ways rather than “both-and” ways.  This is what I mean: Yes, it is good to try to assist the other in changing unjust behavior.  You can do this assisting even after you forgive.  You can forgive from the heart, and even proclaim your forgiving to the other, and then ask for change.  Let the person know it is important that she sees her behavior as unjust and then do what she can to change that behavior.  If you wait to forgive until she changes, you may never forgive.  Now you are trapped by her choices, trapped with resentment that could last for years.

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