21.1 Forgiveness
Forgiveness is spoken of by only
five of the participants in this study and is mentioned 18 times (appendix 19)
mostly in connection with forgiving ones abuser (father) and in forgiving oneself.
I include this theme here, even though it is not mentioned often, because of the
possible healing potential which lies in the reduction of guilt. Margaret explains
that she has forgiven her father who was one of the three men who abused her.
Her father has never asked her to forgive him; she says that forgiving him was
her way of getting him out of her system.
Margaret: I’ve
forgiven my father. He’s one of the three men who sexually abused me. He’s
alive today, but the others are dead. And when (.) when I remembered how he had abused me, I stopped having any contact
with him. I didn’t see him for eight years. He lives up north…I had to take the
time I needed. First I wrote to him ((waves her hand in the air)) and confronted him with what he had done.
He didn’t reply ((looks down)). He
couldn’t ask for forgiveness for something he hadn’t done. He has never talked
with me (.) about the abuse, about
what he did. But I was determined that I was going to get over it (.) that’s ok, you can say whatever you like,
you did what you did, but I’m going to be free. Forgiving is my way of getting
rid of him. If I hadn’t forgiven him, I would have had to drag him along with
me. All the hate and rage and ( ) and I’m going to be free…Now I see him as
just a man, a father, not as a criminal. So now I have a better relationship to
my father…I’ve come out of the tunnel. Put the past behind me ((pushes
something away with her hand in the air))
it doesn’t bother me anymore. What he did is his problem, but I’m finished with
it…He’s a perpetrator, but I relate to him as just a man…I accept him as he is
he is. There’s a difference between my perpetrator-father and who he is
otherwise. (.) If you understand what
I mean? (.)
Forgiveness for Margaret seems to be
to have to do with freeing herself from her abuser, getting rid of him, so she
could continue her life. In my opinion, Margaret seems also to be speaking of
reconciliation. She has accepted what has happened as something belonging to
the past, she has reflected upon what has happened and placed the responsibility
on her abuser, and accepted him for what he is. She seems to have come to an
understanding with herself to let go of hate and rage, because these emotions
are experienced as holding her back. How can Margaret forgive her abusive
father? First of all it seems that she differs between her perpetrator-father
and her father as a man. She then conceptualizes a picture of her father in her
mind, and taken a confrontation with him there. In her mind she can relate to
him as a man, not just as a perpetrator. In her mind, she can see this man as
guilty and forgive him. It might be that she still feels the perpetrator-father
as still guilty and not forgivable, but her father as a man is she someone she
in her mind now is able to relate to and forgive. Leith
and Baumeister (1998) argue that in guilt, the negative affect and remorse
remain linked to the particular action; in simple terms, one can regard someone
as a good person who has done a bad thing.
Linda has a different perspective to
forgiving her father and argues that forgiving him would mean exonerating him
of his guilt, and she believes that her father is guilty. She would accept his
apologies, but never forgive them.
Linda: I’d accept their apologies, but I’d never forgive them…If I forgave
them, then I would relieve my father of his guilt. My father is guilty…I have
never talked with him about the abuse or with anyone else in the family. But my
brother has apologized. When I came home from the hospital, he gave me a bunch
of flowers with a card he had written, asking for forgiveness. But my father
never did. He died when I was 15…My brother also abused me. The abuse was (.) pretty much the same. Umm only that my
father (.) my brother had sex with
both me and my friend. She was four years younger than me. She was six years
old when it started and I was ten. With my brother that is. It went on for
quite a few years. It was sexual intercourse and things. My father had sex with
me at that time also. He sexually abused me together with his friends…it didn’t
stop until I was 15, when he died. And with my brother I was, umm…I’m not
sure…It stopped because I told him that if he didn’t stop I’d tell our mother…Then
I started becoming psychotic. All the abuse from my father haunted me. He came
alive again. I would see him standing in front of me. I felt like he was chasing me clear up until a
few years ago ((laughs))…I was a
psychiatric patient for three years…You can’t handle it mentally ( ). Like
my father. He should have made me
feel secure, but then he just kept on abusing me.
In my onion, victims should not be
expected to forgive their perpetrators because of the reasons given by Linda
her. Forgiveness might then be conceived as taken guilt from the perpetrator.
If forgiveness is given nevertheless, it should be given on the grounds
Margaret gives above, as a statement which makes it possible to let go of hate
and rage in order to live ones life forward and not in the past. Linda says
that her father never felt guilt or shame because he abused her throughout her
childhood. Only Linda knows that he is guilty. If someone feels guilt about
having hurt another person, it would seem odd if they did not feel some shame
as well, because their actions would have threatened their perception of the
kind of person they were, and their perception of how others would judge them.
According to Tangney, Fee,
Reinsmith, Boone and Lee (1999), an individual’s ability to forgive depends on
contextual variables related to the specific transgression and to a more
enduring general propensity to forgive. The role of shame and guilt in the process
of forgiving has, according to Konstam, Chernoff and Deveney (2001), remained
relatively unexplored. To their knowledge, only Tangney et al. (1999) have addressed
the relationship between forgiving shame and guilt and the distinction between
the two constructs of shame and guilt. When feeling shame, an individual
focuses on the entire self. A failure in behavior is experienced as reflecting
an enduring deficiency within the self. The person who feels shame feels
worthless and powerless. In contrast, when an individual feels guilty, the main
focus is on the faulty behavior. According to Leith
and Baumeister (1998) and Tangney (1994), guilt is associated with an increased
understanding of perspective taking, an ability that strengthens and maintains
close relationships and has adaptive functions. Tangney et al. (1999) argue
that shame-prone individuals were relatively unforgiving of both themselves and
others. Shame seems to provoke irrational anger as well as the externalization
of blame, a defence used to guard against feelings of shame (Tangney 1995;
Tangney et al. 1999; Tangney et al. 1996).
Knut believes that self-forgiveness
was important for his healing process; it gave him the option of not having to
feel hate any more.
Knut: My healing process had to do with forgiving myself. I gave myself the
opportunity (.) of umm not having to
feel guilt or hate towards my transgressor.
It seems that for some victims of
sexual abuse, guilt and shame are interwoven, and being able to heal ones shame
may involve first healing ones guilt. If a person is convinced of being guilty
for some part of the abuse, it may be useless just to say to that person that
the guilt is irrational and believe that the feeling of guilt will therefore disappear.
For some it will be more helpful to do as Knut and forgive oneself. This gave
him the opportunity to let go of the feelings of guilt and hatred he had
towards his perpetrator, and as with Margaret above, makes it possible to live
a better life through a healing process. Fisher and Exline (2006) have carried
out a study of self-forgiveness in a sample of 138 undergraduate students.
Their results suggest that if people are to grow from the process of
self-forgiveness, they must honestly face and grapple with their misdeeds. The
acceptance of responsibility, particularly if coupled with a sense that
self-forgiveness requires effort, predicts pro-social responses. Forgiveness is
both interpersonal (forgiving others) and intra-psychic (forgiving oneself).
Enright and Zell (1989) argue that it takes time and involves choice. Forgiving
is not to be equated with forgetting, pardoning, condoning, excusing, or
denying the offence. Enright and the Human Development Study Group (1991)
define forgiveness as a willingness to abandon one’s right to resentment,
negative judgement, and indifferent behavior. Forgiveness also includes
fostering undeserved compassion, generosity, and perhaps even love for the perpetrator.
Areas of disagreement include the relationship between forgiveness and
reconciliation (Freedmann 1998), whether forgiveness is a necessary component
of personal growth (Hargrave and Sells 1997), and whether one must feel love
and compassion toward the offender in order to forgive (Denton and Martin
1998).
In this section, I have focused on
forgiveness even though the topic was not discussed often. The roles that shame
and guilt play in the process of forgiving seem to have remained relatively
unexplored. Margaret and Knut say above that forgiveness played a role in the
healing process, but Linda believes that forgiving her abuser would mean exonerating
him of his guilt. This is not something she can do or even wants to do. I will
now turn to the subject of mothers and investigate what the participants say
about the relation between mothers and shame.
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