Psychoanalytic Approaches to Forgiveness and Mental Health

Ronald Britton, Aleksandra Novakovic, Ronald Britton, Aleksandra Novakovic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781000930115
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychoanalyse

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Forgiveness and Mental Health considers the role of forgiveness in mental life, concerning both forgiving and being forgiven.

Each chapter addresses concepts including superego, repetition compulsion, enactment, and notions such as sacrifice, penance, justification, absolution, and contrition. The contributors consider both their professional and clinical experience and their ethical, cultural, or philosophical background when considering aspects of forgiveness and its impact on clinical practice. The book is an attempt to open the subject of forgiveness, not to reach ethical conclusions nor to formulate pious psychological behavioural axioms. It also considers the weight of feeling unforgiven and of holding the lifelong resentment or vengeful wishes of the unforgiving.

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Forgiveness and Mental Health will be key reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training and for other professionals interested in the role of forgiveness in mental life. It will also be of interest to academics and students of psychoanalytic studies, philosophy and spirituality.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. The lost good object regained: coexisting parts of self and the generosity of forgiveness
• 2. Forgiving as malice relented: the depressive position in action
• 3. The developmental importance of forgiveness in psychoanalysis and Buddhism
• 4. Revenge or forgiveness: The Oresteia
• 5. Cry havoc and reconciliation
• 6. Revenge and resentment in the ‘Oedipus situation’
• 7. “She waited, Kate Croy”: the villain’s tragedy: On Henry James and Forgiveness
• 8. Contessa perdono!: Mozartian sexual betrayal and forgiveness
• 9. Forgiveness work in society, institutions and large groups
• 10. Forgiveness in the recognition of actuality
• 11. In the grip of unforgiveness: Some notes on forgiveness and orientation from a German background
• 12. The unforgiving self
• Index