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Dear Editors,
I read with great interest Henry Smith's thoughtful and provocative paper, Leaps of faith: Is forgiveness a useful concept? (Smith, 2008). I am flattered that Dr. Smith uses my clinical material as a point of reference for challenging the usefulness of the concept of forgiveness in psychoanalysis; however, since I had used this clinical material to establish the dynamics of forgiveness, and thereby its usefulness (Siassi, 2004), I would like to offer some clarifications concerning that material and raise certain questions à propos the theoretical issues on which we differ.
Dr. Smith considers forgiveness as no more than the outcome of good analytic work while he aptly demonstrates that it is a compromise formation. I agree with the role of compromise formation in the unfolding of forgiveness but would like to point out that unless we are talking about a conflict-free sphere of ego, every concept in psychoanalysis can be treated as a compromise formation including such concepts as love, guilt, mourning, etc. Since when, I wonder, has the ubiquity of compromise formation stopped us from fine tuning concepts which are supposed to help us better distinguish their role and function at different phases of analysis?