Tagged: “forgiveness therapy”
Toward Serving the Homeless and Imprisoned with Forgiveness Therapy
Recent estimates in 2016 place the number of people without homes in the United States on any given night at 553,700 and worldwide at over 100 million based on the 2005 global survey done by the United Nations Human Rights (Homeless World Cup Foundation, 2019). Recent estimates from the International Center for Prison Studies (London, England) place the number of people who are imprisoned in the United States at approximately 2.2 million and worldwide at approximately 10.35 million (Walmsley, 2015), with recidivism rates in the United States being 57% after one year (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010) and 77% after five years (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005).
Such statistics show that traditional forms of rehabilitation are not working.
We recommend that researchers and mental health professionals begin to place more emphasis on adverse childhood experiences for people who are without homes or are imprisoned. Current mental health issues, possibly caused by these, might be more deeply ameliorated through Forgiveness Therapy.
Forgiveness Therapy focuses the client’s attention, not on current symptoms or behaviors, but instead asks the client to begin viewing offending other people with a much wider perspective than defining those offenders primarily by their hurtful behavior. The attempt to be good to those who are not good to the client has the paradoxical consequence of reducing anger, anxiety, and depression in the client.
Through Forgiveness Therapy applied to people without homes and those imprisoned, clinicians will have a new, empirically-verified approach for reducing the resentment that might keep people in a homeless situation and in a cycle of recidivism.
The vital next step is to begin randomized experimental and control group clinical trials of Forgiveness Therapy for people who are without homes and for those who are imprisoned when they: a) have adverse childhood experiences; b) currently are unforgiving of those who perpetrated the trauma; and c) currently are clinically compromised with excessive anger, anxiety, and/or depression.
This is an excerpt from an article recently accepted for publication:
Trauma and Healing in the Under‐Served Populations of Homelessness and Corrections: Forgiveness Therapy as an Added Component to Intervention by Mary Jacqueline Song, Lifan Yu, & Robert D. Enright (in press). Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy.
Additional References:
- Recidivism of prisoners released in 30 states in 2005: Pattern from 2005 to 2010 updated. Bureau of Justice Statistics (2005/2010).
- Global homelessness statistics. Homeless World Cup Foundation. (2019).
- World Prison Population List (Eleventh Edition). Walmsley, R. (2015).
To me it is irrational to forgive. You are saying that you are not mad when in fact you are. So, forgiveness is a shell game, a kind of illusion or magic trick in which one wishes away the anger and internal discontent and then, presto, all of this is gone. Sorry, but I can’t accept this magic trick that you call forgiving.
I think the illusion actually is your belief that forgiveness is a trick. Is it a trick when randomized experimental and control group clinical trials show that as people take the time to forgive, their anger, anxiety, and even depression can go statistically below clinical levels and remain low months or even a year after treatment? Science done well is not a shell game. I urge you to look at the science. One place to start is the book for mental health professionals, Forgiveness Therapy, by Enright and Fitzgibbons (2015, American Psychological Association).
For additional information, see Forgiveness Research.
My anger ends when I walk away from a person who is being unkind to me. So, Walk-Away Therapy is better than Forgiveness Therapy. Would you agree?
If the injustice is slight and short-lived, then walking away temporarily or even with an intent to reconnect with the person might be helpful. Yet, if the injustice is severe, then walking away tends to lead to the following: You walk away and have a temporary sense of relief. Yet, over time, the burden of carrying the effects of that injustice (frustration, resentment, and at times even hatred) is not left at the time and site of the injustice. Instead this excess emotional baggage can remain with you literally for decades. It is Forgiveness Therapy that can alleviate those burdens. Walking away under this circumstance means that you are walking with a sack of woes on your back.
For additional information, see Why Forgive?
Can being angry have positive consequences?
Yes, if the anger is short-lived and is a call to action to right a wrong. My worry, as spelled out in the book, Forgiveness Therapy, with Dr. Fitzgibbons, is anger that becomes prolonged (months or years) and intense. This can lead to a host of psychological compromises. We need to make the distinction between healthy and unhealthy anger.
For additional information, see How do I know if my anger is healthy or unhealthy?
Not Everyone Quickly Embraces Forgiveness
As we all know, a new idea can sometimes be difficult to introduce and advance. Here, for example, is the story behind Dr. Robert Enright’s very first attempt to help people in prison learn to forgive:
The year is 1985 and Dr. Enright has advanced to become a “full professor of educational psychology” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Fresh off a sabbatical leave during which he crystalized his ongoing forgiveness research strategy, the young professor learned about an organization that funded forward-looking scientific research projects so he submitted a proposal–one that would help imprisoned people learn to forgive.
Dr. Robert Enright, as a young University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Educational Psychology and founder of the International Forgiveness Institute (inset) along with a more-recent photo.
That proposal was, literally, his very first grant attempt in the science of forgiveness. Up to that point in the social sciences, there had been no journal articles ever published with an empirical emphasis on person-to-person forgiving. Dr. Enright was obviously a pioneer in that field.
The intake worker from the granting agency not only called Dr. Enright in for an interview but ended that interview by saying, “This is a great idea. I am going to rate your proposal as #1.” Thinking the grant business was going to be easier than he had thought, the applicant went back to his university office to await the inevitable check in the mail.
About a month later, Dr. Enright received a very nondescript rejection letter from the organization. Confused by the contradiction between high praise and quick rejection, he phoned the person who rated his project #1 and asked why the grant was rejected.
“Professor Enright,” the interviewer answered with disdain, “you embarrassed me! I went into the funding meeting with enthusiasm for your work but the rest of the group was incredulous and said, ‘Give Enright money to help prisoners forgive?? Why, they should be asking forgiveness from us!! Proposal rejected!!'”
While rejections obviously hurt, Dr. Enright did not give up. He fine-tuned his proposals and spent more time analyzing potential funding organizations. Since that first refusal, he has successfully generated significant dollars for his scientific research projects on forgiveness and forgiveness therapy that he has conducted in venues around the world.
Five years ago—30 years after this initial rejection—-he was approached by counselors at a men’s maximum security prison. They asked him if it might be a good idea to start a forgiveness therapy program to assist the imprisoned men to forgive those who had hurt them when they were children or adolescents.
“That sounds like a pretty good idea to me,” Dr. Enright replied, as he smiled to himself………. It only took three decades for people to catch up with the idea that learning to forgive may be an important next-step in correctional rehabilitation. That conversation now has started forgiveness therapy research programs in correctional institutions within the United States with plans to expand into Brazil, Pakistan, and possibly Israel.
Moral of the story: Sometimes good ideas are worth a 30-year wait.
