The Forgiving Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection [Paperback]

Robert Karen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2003

Why do we harden our hearts, even against those we want to love? Why do we find it so hard to admit being wrong? Why are the worst grudges the ones we hold against ourselves? Using movies, people in the news, and sessions from his practice, psychologist and award- winning author Robert Karen illuminates the struggle between our wish to repair our relationships on one side and our tendency to see ourselves as victims who want revenge on the other.

When we nurse our resentments, Karen says, we are acting from an insecure aspect of the self that harbors unresolved pain from childhood. But we also have a forgiving self which is not compliant or fake, but rather the strongest, most loving part of who we are. Through it, we are able to voice anger without doing damage, to acknowledge our own part in what has gone wrong, to see the flaws in ourselves and others as part of our humanity.

Karen demonstrates how we can move beyond our feelings of being wronged without betraying our legitimate anger and need for repair. The forgiving self, when we are able to locate it, brings relief from compulsive self-hatred and bitterness, and allows for a re-emergence of love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This latest book by psychologist Karen (Becoming Attached) demonstrates just how well a Western psychoanalytic approach can illuminate the true complexity of an act and attitude that traditionally gets pitched into bins marked "spiritual" or "moral"--beyond the realm of the personality. "Forgiveness is an aspect of the workings of love," Karen writes. "It can be a bridge back from hatred and alienation as well as a liberation from two kinds of hell: bitterness and victimhood on one side; guilt, shame, and self-recrimination on the other." Using details from his clinical practice and popular culture, Karen depicts how this liberating reconnection with others and with the world can occur only as we learn to reconnect with ourselves. But the price of this reconnection, he advises, is the willingness to mourn. Mourning the losses and disappointments of childhood--and voluntarily losing all the unconscious beliefs we came up with to make sense of our pain--is the price we must pay to fully connect with ourselves. True forgiveness, Karen drums home, can only be the result of serious inner work: "The forgiving self is in possession of itself." Karen's notion of our possible liberation and happiness is modest compared to many of the spiritual guides to life hitting bestseller lists, for he never ventures beyond the gratification that can be won as we gradually expand our "zone of connection." Yet this book would make a salutary companion to those more sweeping, seemingly more profound books, showing readers the real effort required for this apparently simple act, revealing anew how far and deep that effort can take us. (Jan. 16)Forecast: As nearly everyone suffers from resentment, this book could reach many readers. However, it won't appeal to those looking for instant solutions, nor to those seeking a larger spiritual or ethical context for forgiveness, and it likely won't enjoy extraordinary sales in a market that leans heavily toward spiritually fortified psychotherapy.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Regardless of a person's age, forgiveness can be one of the most difficult acts to perform. It would seem maturity would make it easier, but Dr. Karen says that as we get older, our resentments become more entrenched and forgiveness is even harder to imagine, let alone achieve. The people whom we may need to forgive can be a wide circle; it most likely includes parents, former spouses, siblings, and other relatives. Karen shows how loss (especially in early childhood) and resentment build up a wall that can make forgiveness impossible. However, Karen shows that it is possible and necessary to forgive the transgressions of ourselves and others. Marlene Chamberlain
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (July 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385488742
• ISBN-13: 978-0385488747
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #126,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Voice of Perceptive Reason, September 10, 2002

By 

Katherine Woodbury "Woody" (Portland, ME) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Forgiving Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection (Hardcover)

I found this book perceptive and personally helpful.

Robert Karen is careful, at the beginning of the book, to make clear his intentions. He is not using forgiveness as a blanket application nor is he discussing the forgiveness of great atrocities (the Holocaust, 9/11, etc.) or the forgiveness of such terrible violations as sexual, physical and verbal abuse. He is exploring, rather, forgiveness as a step towards wholeness: the recognition that people can be both lovable and infuriating, that we ourselves can be flawed and yet worthwhile. Karen is encouraging the reader to move beyond "good guy--bad guy" tags, to accept that people--our parents, ourselves--can be imperfect without being the enemy.

This acceptance and recognition, Karen makes clear, is a process. He is not advocating forgiveness as something easy or instantaneous or even, sometimes, appropriate. Forgiving, from Karen's point of view, is a dialog, whether it is a dialog with another person or with our past. The hallmark of this kind of forgiveness is honesty--to honestly admit, "This is how I feel, this is what I'm doing, this is what I experience." Karen is not interested in "fixing" problems: "Okay, I won't do, feel, experience that anymore." He is interested in illustrating the achievement of being able to say, "Okay, I feel this envy or this malice. I don't like it. That's also part of me. I'm a whole person."

Wholeness is the object of Karen's book: how to achieve personal wholeness through recognizing the potential wholeness in other people: "I can still love someone even though they are flawed." In this, Karen accesses a deep truth, call it religious or ethical or whatever (and why should religion and ethics be removed from mental health?): to try to act towards others how we would like them to act towards us.

Karen uses a number of movies, books and current events as examples. Although some of these are applicable, and they are all very interesting, these object lessons are less credible and less applicable than his therapy work and personal experiences.

Recommendation: Buy it.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Forgiving Self, March 29, 2001

By 

Didi G. (Long Island, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Forgiving Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection (Hardcover)

I've just finished reading this terrific book, and I'm ready to give it to my sister, my parents, a long list of friends and even (maybe) my ex-husband.

Robert Karen is a wonderful writer. This book is like having a conversation with your most intelligent and intuitive friend, the one who tells it to you straight and also makes you laugh through your tears.

Karen takes us to the deepest reaches and farthest frontiers of intimate relationships. Using novels and movies -- from Chaplin to Aldomovar, Shakespeare to Dostoevsky -- Karen holds up a mirror and exhibits us our universal struggles, as parents and children, siblings, friends, lovers and partners. Robert Karen is a great storyteller. This is most evident in the way he brings his own therapeutic practice to life. Moment-by-moment, he shows us his patients as they transform their disappointment, shame and rage to understanding, compassion, and love.

I can't recommend this book enough. It's a gift!

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Correting some flagrant misunderstandings by reviewers, October 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Forgiving Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection (Hardcover)

Although I rarely write reviews of books, I was compelled to do so here upon reading the review by the reader Out west. His or her claim is that Mr. Karen is mistaken in conflating mental health problems with moral immaturity. Wrong! Mr. Karen never makes the claim that those suffering mental anguish are morally *immature.* On the contrary, he claims that people can become *stronger* in their practice of the virtues, particularly forgiveness, for their own good and the good of those around them. This is an ages-old idea, going back at least to Aristotle. Neither Aristotle nor Mr. Karen are passing judgement on anyone, only claiming that all of us should be challenged to grow morally. With regard to the reader's claim that Mr. Karen has broken the rules of psychotherapy by introducing forgiveness into the inner sanctum of the profession, I have this to say: So what? Who cares? He broke the rules??!!?? Heavens, what might happen next? Penicillin was discovered by breaking the rules; the Wright brothers discovered flight by breaking the rules; Michael Jordan broke every rule of conventional basketball to give us a better way. Rule-breaking is no sin, especially for such a pragmatic science as psychotherapy when good results are obtained. Mr. Karen gets good results. Don't condemn that.