Tagged: “Enright Forgiveness Process Model”

The Missing Piece to the Peace Puzzle – FORGIVENESS

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is invoking unwelcome recollections of previous territorial wars, an international multidisciplinary team of researchers that has been meeting since 2014 is discovering what makes some societies more peaceful than others. One of the crucial elements for promoting peace and nonviolence, they say, is an individual’s capacity for forgiveness—a concept International Forgiveness Institute co-founder Dr. Robert Enright has been espousing for decades.

“We launched our first peace initiative in 2002 when we began teaching forgiveness education in Belfast, Northern Ireland,” Dr. Enright recalls. “I was convinced back then, and I believe even more so now, that forgiveness is the missing piece to the peace puzzle. These study results are nothing new.”

During his 35+ years of studying the virtue of forgiveness, Dr. Enright has repeatedly demonstrated that as people forgive, they become less angry, less depressed, less anxious, and more hopeful of their future. In other words, people become more peaceful within themselves, making the possibility of peace with others more likely. He outlined his grass-roots approach in this 2010 article: Forgiveness Education as a Path to Peace. Read Dr. Enright’s latest blog for Psychology Today, Forgiveness as a Missing Piece to Peace Between Ukraine and Russia.

The study results about crucial elements for peace come from a team of experts that is part of the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC⁴), a multidisciplinary research institute based at Columbia University in New York City. AC⁴ is a unit of the university’s Earth Institute which is made up of scholars spread across 35 research centers and programs encompassing more than 850 scientists, students, postdoctoral fellows and staff.

The group’s mission is to employ models and methods from complexity science (a branch of applied mathematics) to study the dynamics of peaceful societies with the goal of “revolutionizing peace and conflict resolution.” AC⁴ research has identified and studied more than 80 internally peaceful societies around the globe and identified their common characteristics including:

• abundant forgiveness reservoirs that help mitigate anger, fear, and negativity; and,
• higher levels of capacity for forgiveness that can lead to the endorsement of peace beliefs.

Working together with organizations like the United Nations (UN), the International Peace Institute, and The World Bank, AC⁴ is exploring various models (i.e., the role of forgiveness, victim memory, and reconciliation) in the actual peace process in countries like Colombia, Israel-Palestine, and Afghanistan. In the process, they are generating and promoting new practical, transdisciplinary, evidence-based approaches to peace.

Like AC⁴, the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) has also collaborated with peace-seeking organizations going as far back as 1999 when Roy Lloyd, IFI Board President, was part of a delegation led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson that traveled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia). That delegation not only gained the release of three American soldiers captured during the Kosovo Conflict but also urged Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic to accept a UN offer to establish a foreign peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

In 2014, Dr. Enright laid the foundation for “Forgiveness as a Peace Tool” at a 2-day work session hosted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in New York City. Dr. Enright, a University of Wisconsin educational psychology professor, was named to serve on a UN international “Expert Group” that was established to begin developing intervention models aimed at ending gender-based violence around the world. Three weeks later, delegates at the United Nations Peace Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, resolved that “justice and forgiveness” are essential tools in peacebuilding.

“Peace is not a goal to be reached but a way of life to be lived.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Nobel Peace Prize-winning South African Anglican cleric;
25+ years Honorary Board Member – IFI

More recently, Dr. Enright last fall negotiated the establishment of the International Forgiveness Institute’s newest partner, IFI-Pakistan. That Branch Office is housed at the Government College University Lahore (GCU-Lahore, Pakistan) and is the first of its kind in Pakistan and in Southern Asia. The unit will function in collaboration with the IFI with the mission of developing and disseminating forgiveness interventions and methodologies throughout the country.

“Because only a few psychologists have expertise in this field in Pakistan, we can now offer an accredited course teaching forgiveness psychology,” said GCU Vice Chancellor Dr. Asghar Zaidi, in announcing the partnership. “Forgiveness liberates us from anger, resentment, bitterness, and destructive behavioral patterns that are prevalent in our society.”

Dr. Enright has been working since 2016 with Dr. Iffat Batool, a GCU psychology professor, who has tirelessly pursued creation of the unit. Pakistan was one of the seven countries that conducted research and validation on Dr. Enright’s new research tool, the Enright Forgiveness Inventory-30 and several of Dr. Enright’s research tools have already been translated into Urdu, one of the two official languages of Pakistan (along with English). A request is also pending to get the publisher’s approval to translate Dr. Enright’s book 8 Keys to Forgiveness into Urdu for use with GCU’s “Forgiveness Psychology and Practice” course.

Dr. Enright is also working closely with the National Director of the Liberia Forgiveness Education Program (that the IFI established 10 years ago after the country’s civil war finally concluded) to implement forgiveness interventions that could help with reconciliation efforts between the various factions: Can Group Forgiveness in Liberia Lead to Peace? His peace efforts in other parts of the world are outlined on the IFI website at Peace Education Goals.

Learn More:

• Interactive Sustainable Peace Casual Loop Diagram (AC4 Sustainable Peace Project)
• How to Live in Peace? Mapping the Science of Sustaining Peace (American Psychologist)
• The Sustainable Peace Mapping Initiative (Columbia University)
• Contribute to the realization of sustainable peace. Support the IFI with a charitable gift.

Correcting Forgiveness Misconceptions and Distortions

Misconceptions and distortions are nothing new to most professionals—particularly to the professionals who employ forgiveness interventions and forgiveness therapy. Since the first empirically based study on person-to-person forgiveness was published in the social sciences (Enright et al., 1989), there has been vigorous debate on exactly what forgiveness is and is not.

That debate has generally been positive and helpful in the overall evolution of forgiveness from a simple concept (and primarily a religious credo) to a vitally important mental health approach for many people who have been victimized. At the same time, there still are a few in the mental health professions who are criticizing forgiveness with some good points but also with some errors.

Those who dispense misinformation about forgiveness prevent many individuals from
choosing forgiveness when they could truly benefit from deep emotional recovery.

Dr. Robert Enright

Dr. Enright, co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) and the man labeled “the forgiveness trailblazer” by Time magazine, has been using scientific research methods to study forgiveness for more than 35 years. Whenever he learns about an inaccurate or erroneous premise that is being circulated, he tries to address it head-on. That’s exactly what he did just this week by factually countering an essay published on Feb. 20 in Psychology Today.

The essay, “Why Forgiveness Isn’t Required in Trauma Recovery,” was written by a Chicago psychotherapist who is also a speaker and author. While acknowledging that “I’ve witnessed the benefits of forgiveness for many of my clients,” the author’s main contention is that “forgiveness is potentially problematic when incorporated into trauma treatment.” 

While Dr. Enright says he has heard all those erroneous assertions before, he quickly drafted his own essay providing fact-based and true-to-life counter arguments for each of the claims. His goal in doing so, he says, was not to heavily criticize, but instead “to protect the integrity of a genuine process of forgiveness, free of confusions of what forgiveness is and is not.”

Dr. Enright’s critique of the original essay was published on Feb. 26 by Psychology Today. While the publication gave his clarifying discourse the same title as the original Feb. 20 article, it added a significant subtitle, “Why Forgiveness Isn’t Required in Trauma Recovery: Published misconceptions of forgiveness may discourage people from trying it.”

The blog essay by “the father of forgiveness research” (the title bestowed on Dr. Enright by The Christian Science Monitor) provides 5 succinct and factual responses to the original article’s 5 contentions. It also clarifies two points on which he agrees with the article: 1) “forgiveness after unjust behaviors is not necessarily for everyone;” and, 2) “as a moral virtue, forgiveness never ever should be forced onto anyone.”

Dr. Enright is no stranger to Psychology Today. In fact, in the past 5 years he has penned nearly 100 blog essays as part of his own dedicated column for the publication’s website called “The Forgiving Life.” Those blog posts have been accessed online more than a million times–an average of 548 times per day since he began writing them.

According to Dr. Enright, he will continue his efforts to provide information to Psychology Today readers and he will continue to clarify points when there appear to be misunderstandings about forgiveness and forgiveness therapy so that both therapists and clients can make informed decisions.

LEARN MORE:

• Read the original article: “Why Forgiveness Isn’t Required in Trauma Recovery”
• Read Dr. Enright’s critique of that article: “Published Misconceptions of Forgiveness May Discourage People from Trying It”
• View Dr. Enright’s “Top Ten Psychology Today Blogs”
• Access all of Dr. Enright’s “Psychology Today Blogs“

Don’t you think that forgiving other people is inappropriate in some circumstances?  For example, when family members put pressure on a person to forgive, this places an excessive burden on the victim, especially when this person is not at all ready to forgive. I charge forgiveness with the crime of too much pressure when the person is not ready.

Forgiveness is not the culprit in your example.  When people put pressure on another person to forgive, then the problem lies with those so pressuring.  Forgiveness itself has nothing to do with such pressure. Forgiveness never ever should be forced onto anyone. Forgiveness is innocent of the charges.

Can a person “fake himself out” into thinking that there was an injustice when there was no injustice?

To help you ascertain whether or not a person acted unfairly toward you, consider asking yourself these questions:

1. What was the action? Do you usually consider this action to be wrong?  For example, murder in any culture is wrong.
2. What is the person’s intention? Did the person mean to do wrong?  Even if the person had no intention to do wrong, might the action itself lead to bad consequences at times?  An example is texting on one’s cellphone while driving a car.  The one who is texting is not intending to hurt others, but the action itself of inattention could lead to dire consequences.  Therefore, the action without intention to harm still is wrong.
3. What are the circumstances for the other whom you are considering? For example, was the person sick that day and so was impatient, which typically is not the case for this person?  Were there pressures on the person that you did not see?  Again, as with our point 2 above, having a good excuse still does not exonerate the person from the conclusion that there was an injustice that did occur.

As you take into account the action, the intention, and the circumstance of the other person’s behavior, this may help you in determining whether or not there was a genuine injustice.

Do you think that forgiving is fuller when the other apologizes?

I do think that the other’s apology can aid the one forgiving to actually forgive more quickly.  Yet, there is much more to the practice of forgiving than the other person’s apology.  This idea of “fullness” depends on many issues such as these: a) how deeply the forgiver understands what forgiveness is and is not; b) how much practice the forgiver has had in forgiving those who have been unjust; c) how deeply angry or sad the forgiver is right now (in other words, the forgiver may need more time); and, d) how sincere the apology seems to be from the forgiver’s viewpoint.  There is more to forgiving than these four issues, but my point is to say that apologies by themselves do not always lead to “fuller” forgiveness.