How Can I Forgive You?: The Courage To Forgive, the Freedom Not To (Hardcover)

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From Publishers Weekly
Abrahms Spring, a clinical psychologist, follows up her bestselling After the Affair with this new self-help manual that aims to provide a better way to forgive or not forgive others. With the assistance of her husband, and in clear, insightful writing, Abrahms Spring draws on many case studies to fully analyze four categories of forgiveness: cheap forgiveness, refusing to forgive, acceptance and genuine forgiveness. The author is convinced that morally and spiritually a person is no more required to forgive an unrepentant offender than he or she is to love him. When someone who has been truly wronged and forgives too easily (cheap forgiveness), that person is not acting in their own best interest, but rather preserving a relationship at any cost. An absolute refusal to forgive Abrahms, Spring posits, is also harmful to the injured person. Although punishing the offender may provide a sense of power, it also fosters negativity and self-isolation. The author advises that when genuine forgiveness is impossible, because the injury is too great or the offender will not apologize, a better decision than holding onto anger is to work through the injury, or acceptance. This healing process will lead to emotional resolution and the ability to move on with one's life. Genuine forgiveness, Abrahms Spring maintains, occurs when both parties negotiate a process during which the hurt person expresses his or her pain, and the offender apologizes and takes responsibility for his or her poor behavior. In the end, this is a thoughtful exposition on the nuanced role of forgiveness in relationships that goes beyond the average self-help book.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description

We have been taught that forgiveness is the only healthy, morally sound response to violation, and that it must be granted without conditions, even when the person who hurt us is unremorseful -- even when that person is dead.

In her long-awaited second book, the gifted therapist and bestselling author of After the Affair debunks these myths. Drawing on twenty-nine years as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Spring proposes a radically new, life-affirming alternative that lets us overcome the corrosive effects of hate and get on with our lives -- without forgiving. She also offers a powerful and unconventional model for genuine forgiveness -- one that asks as much of the offender as it asks of us. Forgiveness is no gratuitous gift, she argues. We can heal ourselves, but forgiveness must be earned.

How Can I Forgive You? answers such crucial questions as:

How do I forgive someone who can't or won't apologize for hurting me?

How do I reconcile with an unrepentant offender and maintain my self-respect?

If I can't forgive, how do I put the injury behind me?

Is forgiveness my job alone, requiring nothing in return?

When is forgiveness cheap, and when is it genuine?

What can the offender do to earn forgiveness?

How can I encourage the offender to seek my forgiveness?

What is self-forgiveness? How do we achieve it?

This bold and healing book offers concrete, step-by-step instructions that help us to make peace with our partner, parent, sibling, child, in-law, or friend -- and with ourselves. Penetrating and beautifully written, How Can I Forgive You? is bound to change forever the way we think about forgiveness and how we recover from intimate wounds.

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