Moving Beyond Incomplete Forgiveness:
A Therapist's Perspective

The word afivhmi and its forms, most often translated "forgiveness," is always used by Jesus in the gospels in a restorative sense. Three concepts always seem to be present in the Gospel accounts: absolution, reconciliation, and restoration.

Cheryl, a mid-thirties individual in a career crisis, came to visit me. As we began to examine her immediate relationships, she seemed detached from her father and from most males. She presented extreme anger whenever she discussed her father, a lawyer, who had deserted the family when she was seven. He had moved the family across the country to take a job with a new firm and then deserted them within six months. She would make statements like "...the way he treated my mother, I wish he would get sued for everything he has.." She reported that she had forgiven him, and had even told him so, but her anger still left her feeling trapped and intimidated in her relationship with him.

When I asked her about this anger she began to close up and take a withdrawn position of guilt or shame by holding her arms close to her chest and avoiding any eye contact. I had her imagine talking with her father as if he were present during several of our sessions. As she began to express deep feelings of rejection and abuse, she would lash out at her father, then break into tears and cower, pleading with her father not to abandon her.

Cheryl was caught in a frozen position of anger and shame in this relationship. She felt the destructive impulses against her father who did not fulfill her needs as a child, but also the dissonant guilt of this fantasy destruction of her father, whom she loves and desires. Her external relationship with her father existed in a perfunctory manner by each remembering birthdays or phone calls at Christmas. Their communication was either very superficial or caught in an irrational fantasy where extreme emotions took place. She also had internalized much guilt that left her feeling either insecure and ashamed or angry and resentful in other relationships, especially with men.

My therapy with Cheryl focused on identification of and with her father as a separate individual. To achieve some differentiation and identification I had Cheryl play the role of her father in response to the rage she had expressed earlier. As Cheryl began to enact this role, she also began to see her father as a different, separated individual. Her dialogues as her father began as cold, emotionless responses, but as we explored his possible feelings the responses became more emotional and empathetic. For the first time she saw her father as a totally other person, who, even in all his past acts of rejection, was still affected by the dilapidated relationship with her. She began to experience guilt, sadness, and grief for the state of the relationship.

Finally free from the paralysis of incomplete forgiveness, reparation became possible. Her life became separated from the actions of her father. She no longer existed in this extreme state of rage and desire. She began to see her father as a distinct person with whom she could identify and to whom she could relate. He became her father rather than an internalized double bind of hate and desire. She began over the next several months to initiate a more separated and unified relationship with her father. Her forgiveness not only absolved her father from punishment, but also allowed some freedom for Cheryl from the repercussions of the inappropriate actions her father had exhibited during her life. Her father responded with remorse and sadness at how his actions had decimated their relationship.

Her initiative started the restoration process for her father and relieved her of the anger that she had projected into many relationships. Rather than a one-sided forgiveness that only provides freedom for the offended, Cheryl and her father corporately experienced the reconciling and restoring power of forgiveness.

Ron Hammer, Ph.D.
Dr. Hammer teaches graduate counseling at Eastern Mennonite University.