Forgiveness
By Bob
Bongiovanni, MA
What does it really mean to
forgive?
Forgiveness involves two parties: A person
who feels that a debt is owed, and a person who acknowledges the existence of
the debt. Without both elements, there
can be no true forgiveness.
What is this “debt”?
Sometimes it is a physical, tangible thing
(money, etc.) More often, it is an
unfulfilled expectation (I expected you to protect me and you harmed me; I
expected you to mother me and you abused me; I expected you to be true to me
and you betrayed me). When it is true
forgiveness, the person who feels the debt is owed is willing to release the
debtor from his or her obligation.
Forgiveness thus opens the door to two types of healing. The one who forgives no longer carries the
pain of resentment that flows from unfulfilled expectation. The one who is forgiven no longer carries
the pain of guilt that flows from unfinished duty.
It all sounds so neat and tidy. How often does it really happen in this
mutual way? Very rarely. It’s usually
because one or both sides are willing and available. Sometimes, the other party is physically unavailable. A child suffers years of abuse at the hands
of her parents, and only grows strong enough to confront this situation in
adulthood, after her parents are long dead.
A man is infected with HIV after a single, anonymous encounter, with no
way to find or confront the man who infected him. Many times, one or both partners are not consciously
available. In other words, they are
unwilling to admit the existence of the debt, or they are unable or unwilling
to release themselves or the other person.
Almost always, there’s complexes involved.
Before I further describe the role of
complexes in forgiveness, I want to emphasize what complexes are and what they
are not. A complex is NOT a
diagnosis. It is not like the various
disorders listed in the DSM V — depression, schizophrenia, adjustment disorder,
and so on. Complexes are autonomous
entities within the psyche. They
compete with a person’s ego to be in control of his or her personality. People don’t really have complexes — people are
had by complexes. When a person falls
completely under the influence of a complex, they lose all of their
individuality. In a very real sense,
they cease to be who they really are. Complexes
also have a transpersonal aspect. If my
life is dominated by mother complex, it is not MY mother complex. The mother complex stalks us all, lurking in
the dark, rising to possess person after person. She is greater than me or you individually. When we suffer from her influence, we suffer
together.
That said, let’s return to the topic of
forgiveness. The main point is this: If you are under the influence of a
complex, you cannot fully forgive, nor can you be fully forgiven. Imagine someone who is under the thrall of
the father complex. He insists that
anyone who violates the law must suffer swift and severe punishment, regardless
of the circumstances involved. You
violate one of these laws, perhaps even accidentally. Can he forgive you? Probably
not, at least not in the complete sense I described before. A person under the
influence of a complex cannot use their consciousness to put the debt in
perspective. The debt is not owed to
them personally; it is owed to the complex that possesses them. If I am under the influence of the father
complex, what difference does it make to me personally that you broke a
law? The debt is not at the personal
level. You have done something to
offend the father himself, the big father who cannot be challenged. I am merely his agent.
Now, let’s think of the reverse
situation. A person under the influence
of a father complex feels that they are hopelessly flawed. They are painfully aware of every slight
flaw in their actions, and they see these minor infractions are
unforgivable. If I tell them that their
guilt is unnecessary, even laughable, do they feel truly forgiven. Probably not, because complexes cannot grant
forgiveness. They are absolute.
Suppose someone brings about harm while they
are under the thrall of a complex. Are
they automatically “off the hook?” The
devil made me do it, so I don’t really need to seek forgiveness. We are not merely clay in the hands of
complexes — though they would prefer it that way. We owe it to ourselves and to our fellow humans to resist the
influence of the complex, to maintain enough consciousness to know that our
actions are likely to cause harm and to confront, with courage, the insidious
influence of the complex. Those who do not resist the complex often do so out
of cowardice. A mother under the
influence of the negative father complex insists that her toddler be perfectly
clean and well behaved at all times.
“Don’t you dare embarrass me. If
you do, I will spank you raw. I might
even send you away to live in the orphanage.”
What’s really going on here? She
is too afraid to confront her own inadequacy.
She, herself, is hopelessly flawed and can never measure up to the
expectations of the father complex.
But, rather than face this herself, she blames it all on this little
extension of herself. Rather than beat
herself up, she beats this poor child.
Does she owe a debt to this child?
Unquestionably. Yes, confronting
the father complex might seem beyond her ability. But, that does not excuse the bruises and broken bones, much less
the years of suffering inflicted on the child by the negative mother complex
which this trauma is likely to invoke.
If nothing else, she should have evaluated the choice to have children
if she knew she was vulnerable to brutality under the influence of father
complex.
Other times, those who do not resist the
complex are being self-indulgent. I go
out tonight and meet an incredibly attractive man. The sexual attraction is immediate and intense. We dance with the god of ecstasy,
surrendering to that instinctual sexual impulse that is so hard to resist. I then go home to my long-term partner, who
trusts me to be emotionally and physically monogamous with him. Perhaps I even infect him with HIV, because
he trusted me to be safe with others so we don’t have to use protection with
each other. Do I owe him a debt? Once again, unquestionably. My flirtation with Dionysus, irresistible as
it may have seemed last night, was resistible.
I should have evaluated my choice to be in a monogamous relationship if
I knew that the god of ecstasy held such sway over my personality.
Ultimately, in these circumstances, you
forgive someone for being too weak and too unconscious. The child forgives the mother for succumbing
too easy to the father complex. The
child does NOT forgive the father complex.
Complexes cannot and should not be forgiven. They are the psychic equivalent of cancer. That father complex wanted that child broken,
perhaps even dead, and that kind of evil is not to be forgiven. But the mother can be forgiven for
succumbing. Perhaps, after enough work
by the mother and the child, both can even come to realize that they have been
both been victimized by father complex.
But that comes much later in the process.
If a person is completely under the influence
of the complex, they neither seek forgiveness nor can they give it. The mother feels she was justified in giving
discipline. If the child approaches her
with a message of forgiveness, she will reply, “How dare you even insinuate
that I did something wrong.” Perhaps
years later she will emerge from the complex and feel remorse, or perhaps she
will go to the grave as a pawn of the father complex. Then, the child must do something very difficult: understand fully the nature of the debt even
though the debtor refuses to understand.
Confront and integrate whatever lesson the father complex brought into
her life as a child and as an adult.
And never fully finish the process of forgiving her mother, who could
not do her part of the process (that is, acknowledging the debt she owes to the
child.)
In preparing for this talk, I did a bit of
research. Listen to the following quotes
by Susan Forward, all of which appear on page 189 of her book Toxic Parents:
ü
“The more I
thought about it, the more I realized that this absolution [forgiveness] was
really another form of denial: ‘If I forgive you, we can pretend that what
happened wasn't so terrible.’ I came to realize that this aspect of forgiveness
was actually preventing a lot of people from getting on with their lives.”
ü
"Responsibility
can go only one of two places: outward, onto the people who have hurt you, or
inward, into yourself. So you may forgive your parents but end up hating yourself
all the more in exchange."
ü
“Clients all
too often discovered that the empty promise of forgiveness had merely set them
up for bitter disappointment. Some of them experienced a rush of well-being,
but it didn't last because nothing had really changed in the way they felt or
in their family interactions.”
These quotes raise an interesting question:
Can forgiveness actual be premature, even damaging? Once again, I think complexes are interfering with the
forgiveness process. Under the constant pressure of a complex, a person can
lose all expectation of being treated with dignity. Since they no longer know when they are being abused, they
believe they deserve all that they get.
“Poor dad, all he ever knew was abuse from his own parents, how could he
do better with me? I was a pretty
rambunctious kid. I did lots to deserve the punishment I got. He did the best he could.” This comes very close to forgiving the
complex along with the human vehicle used by the complex. There’s something
else here, as well. One-sided
forgiveness — without the other person admitting that they are culpable — can
feel deceptively releasing for the short term.
I lose a bit of my resentment when I forgive you, even if the other
person doesn’t reciprocate. But, it’s
an incomplete forgiveness, and probably short-lived, if the deeper work remains
undone. Namely, that you affirm your
own dignity as a human being who deserves to be treated better. And that you were oppressed by a complex,
operating through a weak human being, who owes you a debt. Only then can you forgive meaningfully.
In that sense, I think Susan Forward makes a
very instructive assertion: that responsibility turned inward turns into
self-hatred. At the end of this process, certainly not at the beginning, a
final truth often emerges. At some
level, you cooperated with the complex, allowed it to continue its
oppression. Some lesson was there for
YOU to learn, whether you were the injured party or the person inflicting the
injury.
This same dynamic plays itself out on the
broader social level as well as the personal level. When worlds collide — black and white, gay and straight, male and
female, youth and adult — it is usually because these worlds have been impacted
differently by complexes, especially the negative father. And, in such cases, the entire history of
struggle must be considered when examining what is interfering with
forgiveness.
Racial and ethnic conflict illustrates this
point. Suppose I interact with an
African American and say or do something that ignites their anger. They accuse me of racial prejudice. I insist that I have done nothing wrong, or
did so accidentally, and I try to convince them they should forgive me. They say, “You white people have been doing
this to us for five hundred years.”
What’s going on here? There’s
two levels, at least. My insistence of innocence
does, in fact, disregard five hundred years of pain that has flowed from the
negative father, anointing white people the masters of the world and enslaving
all other people. All of us — white and
black — must deal with this history.
Whatever it is that happened, it constellated five hundred years of pain
born of one of the nastiest complexes in human history. This pain will not disappear because I come
up with some rational defense or insistence that my actions were
inadvertent. In fact, this approach may
reflect that the white person is dominated by the master side of the
master/slave negative father dynamic.
What can be done? First, acknowledge
that there is the personal level and the complex level going on at the same
time. The complex level is, in fact,
much more volatile. If disregarded, it
will consume both you and the other person in a struggle to the death.
A personal request for forgiveness will help,
but it will not completely heal the complex level of this struggle. How does one entire segment of our community
ask another segment for forgiveness, not just for current wounds but for
hundreds or thousands of years of forgiveness?
Perhaps simple ritual offers one answer. I once attended a meeting where a racial/ethnic struggle had
brought the process to a standstill. A
very earnest young woman finally stood up, in tears, and sobbed, “I don’t know
what my people did, but I apologize for all of them.” Everyone in the room rolled their eyes. She did not have the permission or credibility to make this huge
apology. The only thing that changed
the dynamic was when a Native American participant moved to the back of the
room and silently began burning sage.
This was an official government meeting, full of public health
professionals, who had never seen anything like this. This simple action changed everything. This Native American, Ron St. Pierre, was blessing all of
us. It was if the smoke of the sage
reminded us that a poison was in the air, manipulating us into accusation and
counter-accusation, fueling the fires of hatred. We lost Ron to AIDS three years ago, but all of us remember that
day, and it continues to heal us. It
opened us up to understand that forgiveness must accommodate a complex and a
history.
Another part of the answer is to do our own
work to figure out how we project shadow onto entire other groups of
people. As Jungians, our obligation is to
withdraw shadow projections, acknowledge the role of complexes, and avoid
intractable positions that always flow from our refusal to do this. Forgiveness cannot move forward when
positions are intractable.
Forgiveness is one of the key aspects of
religion, especially Christianity. In
most Christian theology, God is perfect and we are flawed. How do we approach God to forgive us for our
sins? That’s the central question of
Christianity, in many respects.
Jung, of course, added a new dynamic to this
question. Jung teaches that God has
both a positive and negative side, which are in unconscious conflict. We have been graced by God’s positive side,
but we are also constantly threatened with God’s negative side. The answer is: by undertaking the difficult
path of individuation, human beings move toward wholeness and generate
consciousness. When humans do this, the
consciousness of God increases, and the volatility of God’s dual nature will
lessen over time.
Jung’s insight, in itself, sheds light on the
question of divine forgiveness. The
guilt and fear of divine retribution flows from the assumption that all
perfection comes from God and all imperfection is our fault. In fact, mistakes that we courageously and
completely examine will point the way
to the next challenge in our individuation.
This is, in fact, quite compatible with the teachings of Jesus. He draws our attention to forgiving one
another, and even tells his apostles that when they forgive one another it
produces forgiveness in heaven, which we might call the unconscious.
For people who aren’t up to the task of
individuation, the Catholics actually have an alternative answer. Through the sacrament of confession, a
priest “stands in” for God. Ideally,
the penitent leaves the confessional feeling that full, two-sided forgiveness
has occurred. God has truly forgiven
them, through the person of the priest.
So, ritual forgiveness can be effective.
There is one unforgivable sin mentioned in
the Bible: the sin against the Holy Spirit.
Many have speculated what this sin is, mostly out of the fear of having
committed it. I have my own theory. For me, the Holy Spirit represents the
abiding presence of the Self in each one of us, our impulse to individuate, to
become more fully who we really are. In
that sense, the only sin that is unforgivable is the sin of ignoring our
destiny and denying the Self that critical opportunity to experience
consciousness and grow toward wholeness.
I also believe that the very essence of my uniqueness, that I have made
manifest in this life, remains intact within the Self when I die. If I have done little or nothing in my life
to make this happen, very little or none of me will remain when I die. I will simply cease to exist.