Tagged: “forgiveness therapy”
The Visit to a Maximum Security Prison
We have begun introducing Forgiveness Therapy in prisons because our research shows this: People in prison who fill out our survey tend to show that they have been treated badly by others prior to their arrest and imprisonment. In fact, about 90% of those filling out our surveys report that they have been treated moderately to severely unjustly in childhood or adolescence. We control for what is called social desirability or “faking good.”
Traditional rehabilitation for those in prison does not focus deeply and extensively on the wounds the person suffered early in life. One man was thrown out of his home when he was 8 years old. His dining room table for years was garbage cans. His bed at night was under cars for protection. He grew up angry and took this out on others.
I visited those who had voluntarily gone through Forgiveness Therapy with my book, 8 Keys to Forgiveness. It gave them the chance to confront and overcome their anger, even rage, toward those who abused them as they were growing up.
Here are two testimonies of those who experienced this program of anger reduction through forgiveness:
Person 1: “I have been imprisoned now 6 different times. I am convinced that on my first arrest, had I read your book, 8 Keys to Forgiveness, I never would have experienced the other 5.”
Person 2: “My first imprisonment occurred when I was 12 years old. If you can find a way to give 12-year-olds Forgiveness Therapy, they will not end up as I have in maximum security prison.”
It is time to add Forgiveness Therapy to prison rehabilitation so that the anger, held for many years by some, can diminish. This then should decrease motivation to displace this unhealthy anger onto others.
Robert
FORGIVENESS: The Basic Building Block of Loving Relationships
What comes to mind when you hear someone mention the term “therapy”? Do you envision a patient lying on a couch with a therapist sitting behind and nodding sagely as the patient talks about the shortcomings of his or her life? If so, it’s time to upgrade your thinking.
Thanks to less-than-accurate portrayals in movie and television docudramas, that approach to therapy (known as psychoanalysis) is still dominant in the minds of most individuals. And while it is still practiced, it is in the minority. There are now an estimated 400 different kinds of therapy used by practitioners around the world.
That’s but one of the many mind-altering revelations in a just-published book called Introduction to Psychology by Jorden A. Cummings (Associate Professor) and Lee Sanders (Sessional Lecturer), both in the Department of Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in classical studies and current/emerging research.
Another major revelation of the new book is its focus on Positive Psychology–the study of happiness. While psychology has traditionally focused on dysfunction–people with mental illness or other issues–and how to treat it, positive psychology, in contrast, is a field that examines how ordinary people can become happier and more fulfilled–in other words, what makes life worth living.
Three Key Strengths
Within positive psychology, three key human strengths have been identified–forgiveness, gratitude and humility. While Introduction to Psychology provides meticulous coverage of those three strengths (Chapter 12.5), this post will focus on forgiveness. Here are excerpts from the book:
Forgiveness is essential to harmonious long-term relationships between individuals, whether between spouses or nations, dyads or collectives. At the level of the individual, forgiveness of self can help one achieve an inner peace as well as peace with others and with God.
“Forgiveness can be an avenue to healing. It is the basic building block of loving relationships with others.”
Introduction to Psychology
Because the potential for conflict is seemingly built into human nature, the prospects for long-term peace may seem faint. Forgiveness offers another way. If the victim can forgive the perpetrator, the relationship may be restored and possibly even saved from termination.
The essence of forgiveness is that it creates a possibility for a relationship to recover from the damage caused by the offending party’s offense. Forgiveness is thus a powerful pro-social process. It can benefit human social life by helping relationships to heal. Culligan (2002) wrote “Forgiveness may ultimately be the most powerful weapon for breaking the dreadful cycle of violence.”
“On a social level, forgiveness may be the critical element needed for world peace.”
Introduction to Psychology
Forgiveness studies demonstrate that self-forgiveness was associated with increased self-esteem, lower levels of anxiety, lower levels of depression and a more positive point of view.
In many of these studies, it was shown that people who are able to forgive are more likely to have better interpersonal functioning and therefore social support. The act of forgiveness can result in less anxiety and depression, better health outcomes, increased coping with stress, and increased closeness to God and others (Enright, 2001). ⊗
ADDENDUM:
Introduction to Psychology has been created from a combination of original content and materials compiled and adapted from several Open Educational Resources (OERs)—teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing.
Compared to commercial textbooks and other commercial resources, OERs are: free to access, free to reuse, free to revise, free to remix, and free to redistribute.
This provides opportunities for instructors and learners to shape course content and meet the needs of specific learning contexts. Teachers and students become learners together, and content becomes a dynamic, always changing category to be engaged rather than a stable set of facts to be mastered.
This is called Open Pedagogy–the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it. This dynamic, often called Open Education, is transforming lifelong learning in the process.
LEARN MORE:
- Click here to download the entire 1,064-page Introduction to Psychology.
- Click her to download other Open Educational Resources and Courses.
- Click here to discover the 10 Types of Psychologists.
- Click here to watch a TED Talk called The New Era of Positive Psychology by Martin Seligman, often called “the founder of Positive Psychology.”
Rage Reduction Through Forgiveness Education
By Dr. Robert Enright and Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons
After massacres in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, in which 29 people died, President Donald Trump made a number of sensible recommendations to address violence and mass murders in the United States. He has been criticized for not calling for stricter gun controls but his words went to the heart of this crisis of hatred and violence:
“We must recognize that the Internet has provided a dangerous avenue to radicalize disturbed minds and perform demented acts. We must shine light on the dark recesses of the Internet, and stop mass murders before they start. . . We cannot allow ourselves to feel powerless. We can and will stop this evil contagion. In that task, we must honor the sacred memory of those we have lost by acting as one people.” (Read the Full Text Here.)
Below are our proposals for aspects of a comprehensive federal plan consistent with the President’s ideas. They are based on our combined 70 years of experience in research, education, and clinical work in uncovering and initiating treatment protocols in schools and in mental health treatment for excessive anger (or what psychiatrists call “irritability”).
Anger-reduction programs. The mental health field needs to develop protocols to identify individuals at risk for severe irritability and violent impulses. Next, empirically-verified treatment plans should be initiated for reducing intense anger and rage. Programs like this are rare in the mental health field.
A Secret Service report published last month, “Mass Attacks in Public Spaces,” found that 67 percent of the suspects displayed symptoms of mental illness or emotional disturbance. In 93 percent, the suspects had a history of threats or other troubling communications.
The mental health field needs to recognize that the training and ongoing education of health professionals has not been strong regarding the identification and treatment of irritability and violent impulses. So it is no surprise that the mass murderers of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Lakeland, and Columbine had not been treated for their anger. We need training programs. They could be part of required Continuing Education credits for state licensure for psychiatrists, psychologists, and the other physicians who prescribe roughly 80 percent of psychiatric medications.
Our book, Forgiveness Therapy: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope, published by the American Psychological Association, can be one such training tool for mental health professionals. Forgiveness has been empirically verified to reduce unhealthy anger.
Education in schools. Education programs in schools could uncover and teach youth how to resolve intense anger and desires for revenge that lead to a sense of pleasure in expressing violent acts against others. Dr. Enright has worked to establish scientifically-supported programs for reducing anger in youth through forgiveness education curricula (from pre-kindergarten through grade 12). These educational guides have been sought by educators in over 30 countries. Dr Enright’s books, Forgiveness Is a Choice, The Forgiving Life, and 8 Keys to Forgiveness, can be used as anger-reduction tools with older high school students, college students, and adults.
Teach respect for persons. A key development for forgiveness education is a new perspective on humanity: all have inherent worth, even those who act unfairly. In other words, these programs not only reduce anger, and thus eliminate a major motivation to hurt others, but also engender a sense of respect for persons.
This combination of reduced irritability and a new perception of the worth of all could go a long way in reducing rage and thus in reducing mass shootings.
Regulate violent video games. Violent video-gaming and media violence have played a role in the behavior of mass murders. A continual exposure to gaming that denigrates others in a virtual environment is a sure way of damaging respect for persons. Such “games” have courageously been identified by the President as factors in the epidemic of violence. Rather than teaching the importance of mastering anger without hurting others (character education), some games support the expression of rage and violence.
We need Federal laws. Youth are not allowed into movie theaters for X-rated fare. This should be the case with video games, which should be lawfully kept from youth when judged to have content that demonstrates and even encourages excessive anger. Parents should teach their children how to resolve their anger without harming others and should prohibit violent games in their homes. Violent games must have a warning that they could promote uncontrollable anger.
What about the guns? The President has identified essential issues that need to be addressed on the federal level to end the epidemic of massacres by individuals with severe, largely unrecognized and untreated, psychological problems.
While it is essential to try to keep guns out of the hands of those prone to act on their hatred, more important is the establishment of new anger control programs which will make for a safer America.♥
Robert Enright, Ph.D., is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Board Member of the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc.
Rick Fitzgibbons, MD, is a psychiatrist in Conshohocken, PA. They are joint recipients of the 2019 Expanded Reason Award, presented by the University Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid) in collaboration with the Vatican Foundation Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.
This blog originally appeared on the MercatorNet.com website on August 14, 2019.
Forgiveness Therapy Provides Quality of Life Benefits to Terminally-Ill Cancer Patients
Dr. Robert Enright and Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons Receive 2019 International Research Award
Two members of the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) Board of Directors have been selected to receive an international award recognizing their Forgiveness Therapy research. Dr. Robert Enright, founder of the IFI, and Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, MD, Director of the Institute for Marital Healing just outside Philadelphia, PA, have been named the 2019 recipients of the Expanded Reason Award.
The prestigious award is presented annually by the University Francisco de Vitoria (Madrid, Spain) in collaboration with the Vatican Foundation Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (Rome, Italy) “to recognize and encourage innovation in scientific research and academic programs.”
Recipients (only two researchers are selected worldwide each year) are determined by an international panel of seven judges who examine books and journal articles to ascertain who across the globe is conducting innovative and exceptional research that cuts across the social sciences. The award criteria includes the challenge of establishing a dialogue of particular sciences with philosophy and theology in line with the thought of Pope Benedict XVI who led the Catholic Church from 2005 – 2013.
Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons
Drs. Enright and Fitzgibbons co-authored the book Forgiveness Therapy: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. The book, published by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2015, signifies that Forgiveness Therapy is now rightfully taking its place alongside such historically accepted therapies as Psychoanalysis, Humanistic Psychotherapy, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Forgiveness Therapy is actually a new and updated version of a previous book by Drs. Enright and Fitzgibbons, Helping Clients Forgive, that was published in 2000, also by the APA. The new 358-page volume helps clinicians learn how to recognize when forgiveness is an appropriate client goal and provides concrete methods for working forgiveness into therapy with individuals, couples and families. It is grounded in theology, philosophy, psychiatry, education and the social scientific method.
Dr. Fitzgibbons is a long-time research associate of Dr. Enright’s. Trained in psychiatry, he has worked with hundreds of couples over the past 40 years. His book, Habits for a Healthy 
Marriage: A Handbook for Catholic Couples, is available at Amazon.com.
Dr. Robert Enright
Dr. Enright, in addition to founding the IFI 25 years ago, has been a professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education’s highly-regarded Department of Educational Psychology since 1978. He is the author or editor of seven books and more than 150 publications on social development and the psychology of forgiveness. He pioneered forgiveness therapy and developed an early intervention to promote forgiveness–the 20-step “Process Model of Forgiving.”
Both Dr. Fitzgibbons and Dr. Enright have been invited to attend and formally accept their awards at the Expanded Reason Awards Ceremony on Sept. 19, 2019 at the University Francisco de Vitoria in Madrid.
The Expanded Reason Awards recognize extraordinary teachers and researchers.
The Awards Ceremony is part of the 3-day International Expanded Reason Congress in Madrid that brings together university researchers and teachers from all over the world. The Congress seeks to deepen the dialogue among science, philosophy, and theology through presentations, roundtable discussions, and workshops. Dr. Fitzgibbons and Dr. Enright will be outlining the concepts behind their winning project in a talk that will also be published in the official proceedings of the Congress.♥
