You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Forgiving is both a deeply normal human activity, and yet one which may take place only rarely and with considerable difficulty. This valuable and interesting collection of essays sets out to explore the meaning of forgiveness as a state of mind and as an act. As a concept it
has not been widely discussed in the psychoanalytic culture, compared for example with envy, jealousy or resentment, and it is not easy to locate its place in its main theoretical lexicon. This is a partial absence, which the authors of this book have set out to address.
The normality and necessity of forgiveness in human lives are described early in the book by Hiroshi Amino, in his observations on the experiences of infancy. The experiences of frustration and anger are unavoidable, indeed ever-present, in infant life, as the satisfactions of mother's attention, and of the breast, are from time to time denied, and the infant feels persecuted and attacked as this happens. Mother and others who care for an infant will from time to time feel rejected or hated in turn. But mothers and babies are both frequently and easily forgiven when good feelings are restored, and it is only when a relationship is going badly that a parent finds it difficult to forgive their infant for its periods of anger or rejection, or an infant loses trust in the goodness of its parent. It is important to bear this everyday good human experience in mind when considering how difficult it can be in many other circumstances for imputed injuries to be forgiven.
This book does not set out a unified theoretical argument, proceeding to illustrate its applications to experience through deduced instances. Instead, its authors each examine the phenomenon of forgiveness, and the dispositions to exact revenge or grievance, which are its antithesis, in their own ways, with contexts of application related to their own interests and fields of expertise. Karl Figlio makes the fullest reference to previous psychoanalytic writing, and ther