PROLOGUE

The topic of forgiveness was absent in the psychoanalytic literature until the 21st century. Since 2001, however, a burgeoning body of work has appeared on the subject (Lansky, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007; Akhtar, 2002; Smith, 2002; Cavell, 2003; Gottlieb, 2004; Siassi, 2004; Horwitz; 2005; Schafer, 2005a, 2005b; Sprengnether, 2005). Forgiveness and atonement are intimately related. Forgiveness involves the letting go of a claim of injustice and damage; and atonement, the seeking of forgiveness from the other, involves the seeking for release from the negative judgment of the conscience.

Perhaps the psychoanalytic exploration of forgiveness and atonement were so late arriving on the psychoanalytic scene because the topic tends to suggest something that is antithetical to the psychoanalytic attitude, the advocacy in moral or religious terms of forbearance from retribution in responses to injustice or injury, for example, the forgiveness of Joseph with his brothers or of Jesus on the cross It would be inimical to the psychoanalytic method to consider forgiveness or atonement to be basic psychoanalytic concepts, and even more problematic to regard them to be psychoanalytic values with the implication that one should forgive or shouldatone. I see such a view as allying with one aspect of conscience against the forces of aggression and disruption of social bonds in what often is a superficial resolution of a social conflict that is accomplished without deeper integration in the psyche (see also, LaFarge, this issue.)

Such a deeper resolution includes modification of the forces, unacknowledged or hidden shame often prominent among them, which drive resentful retributive states of mind into being. It is very much within the purview of psychoanalysis to view the problem of fixation to retributive states of mind as centered around a consideration of the cost of the bearing grudges and consequences of vehement retributive states in the case of enduring unforgivene