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What is forgiveness? What does it have to do with psychoanalysis? What are the conditions forgiveness demands? What are its psychic uses? What obstructs it? What is the difference between forgetting and forgiving? What remains unforgivable? Ronald Britton and Aleksandra Novakovic bring together 12 remarkably provocative essays from psychoanalytic thinkers in this edited volume that open up this crucial subject. In the book, forgiveness—or its lack thereof—plays itself out in differing contexts—especially in literature, music and group practices. “Forgiveness,” Karl Figlio writes
is difficult to pin down because it is so commonly used for appeasing all types of disrupted equanimity between people, whether by debt, assault or dishonour. Perhaps as a result, there is a tendency to speak of obstructions to forgiving- a state of unforgivingness, which one might relinquish, commonly expressed as “letting go.” (p. 147)
Figlio points out that while the conscious world is causal, based on metaphors of doing something, such as “releasing the grip on a rope”; “the unconscious is ambivalent, embracing simultaneous, conflicted beliefs and relationships based on identifications rather than entailment” (p. 146).
Is forgiveness an idea psychoanalysis borrowed from Christianity, from Buddhism, or other discourses? In his engaging essay on Mozart's opera “Contessa perdono!” (pp. 114-128), Francis Grier sums up the debates as they exist: “Smith…asserts that it is a non-psychoanalytic term, a kind of Christianising, distorting import” (p. 116). It is a very compelling line of argument that draws strength from David Millar's allusion to the 1966 work of John Hick. Hick studied the 100 years or so after Jesus was executed violently. The responses may be seen to constitute a majority report (Latin tradition) and a minority report (Greek tradition). Interestingly, the majority report sees catastrophic loss as a consequence of our ancestors' “blameworthy disobedience.” Millar writes: “In this