Helping Clients Forgive: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope [Hardcover]

First, it is the fruit of many years of multidisciplinary reflection on an extensive review of both practical (clinical and pastoral) and theoretical sources. The conceptual understanding of forgiveness is based on an extensive review of both the social (e.g., psychology and sociology) and speculative (philosophy and theology) sciences.

Second, Helping Clients Forgive fits into and expands the broader and better known clinical approaches to the management and resolution of anger and to overcoming emotional trauma. The book describes how "forgiveness" may be an effective, and sometimes indispensable, means for dealing with anger when awareness, understanding, assertive expression, or sublimation of the anger have proven inadequate for resolving it.

Third, I found the book insightfully reviews research about anger as a cause or co-morbid difficulty of a wide range of DSM-IV disorders. Whether a clinician ever encourages a client- or a client attempts- to use forgiveness to try to resolve the anger associated with these conditions, I think that this knowledge about the prevalence of anger associated with so many problems presented by clients is invaluable.

Fourth, many clients have a religious world-view and tend to view forgiveness as a moral duty- and sometimes an anxious compulsion. I think that reading Helping Clients Forgive will enable clinicians (pastors, et al.) to respect their clients' values and worldview while explaining what emotional and other psychological factors make it difficult to forgive, and even more important, how to forgive. I think that the phases of forgiveness and the ways of forgiving during each phase will help guide a religious client's efforts to forgive and to relieve any inauthentic guilt about lingering resentment despite past efforts to forgive.

Fifth, the authors write with intellectual humility about a process that offers significant benefits, yet is commonly long, uncomfortable and sometimes paradoxical. Enright and Fitzgibbons write about when and how forgiveness is possible. They acknowledge that while an empathic understanding of and beneficence toward the "offender" may be the ultimate outcome, the forgiveness process may and often must begin with the self-interested need to overcome the personal costs of repressed or suppressed resentment.

For me, the discussions on helping clients understand what healthy or authentic anger is, and even more what forgiveness is not, are especially insightful. For example, victims of emotional trauma or long-term offenses can be reassured by learning that forgiveness does not mean unassertively tolerating another's irrational anger or attempting to reconcile or otherwise trust past offenders who remain insensitive and unmotivated to changing their offensive behavior. Forgiveness may lead to reconciliation with one's offender, but one may forgive and free oneself from the emotional consequences of the offense even if one's offender is unwilling or unable to seek or accept forgiveness.

And sixth, researchers and more empirical-minded clinicians will find invaluable a careful reading of the chapters which detail the results of Enright's two decades of empirical research on these phases. As does any competent report of current research, Enright and Fitzgibbons also propose an agenda for future research, including the study of how offenders are affected by being forgiven.

After reading Helping Clients Forgive, I found myself wishing that a companion book for non-professionals would be written. I was delighted to discover that Robert Enright has written a sequel for clients' called: Forgiveness is a Choice (APA Books, 2001). I understand better the forgiveness process described by Enright and Fitzgibbons in Helping after having read the didactic material- and having worked through some of the related self-reflection questions- present in Enright's more recent book. The additional material in Choice on how an offender appropriately may seek to be forgiven was particularly welcome.

Philip M. Sutton, Ph.D. South Bend, IN

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews   Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink Comment Comment

I noticed nothing in the work touching on my own field (Christian ethics) that even seems questionable. And, of course, psychological evidence that forgiveness is conducive to mental health is perfectly harmonious with Christian moral teaching that calls for love of enemies and forgiveness.

The fact that this fine work was published, not by some commercial press, but by the American Pscyhological Association commends it to serious readers.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews   Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink Comment Comment

Those suffering from excessive, overbearing and abusive relationships (either parents, spouses or friends) would find the book especially warm and engaging. The chapter on describing the ideas and benefits of "forgiveness therapy" are well-written. The chapters on detailing case studys on the application of "forgiveness therapy" are the most interesting. The authors detail forgiveness in eating disorders, forgiveness in depression, forgivenss in anxiety disorders, forgiveness in family relationships, etc.

Essentially this book provides a framework for recovery where others, such as Alice Miller, don't do. Ms. Miller would learn a lot from reading this book.

Overall, congratulations on a fine book. I commend the two authors wholeheartedly!

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews   Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink Comment Comment