Examples of Forgiveness in History

Studying acts of forgiveness by others helps us learn by their example. When Abraham Lincoln forgave the South for the Civil War, he increased the chance for a healing of America’s internal wounds. Unfortunately, the anger and hatred of others, both North and South, kept this from becoming a reality and led to Lincoln’s assassination.  Jesus forgave his executioners while he was dying, realizing that they did not know what they were doing.  Pope John Paul II forgave his would-be assassin moments after he was shot.  He renewed this forgiveness by visiting his assassin in prison, but at no time did he ask that his assassin be freed from his imprisonment, an imprisonment that was a necessary and appropriate punishment for the attempted assassination.

The forgiveness of Germany and Japan by the U.S. for having started World War II has played a major role in preventing another war.  That forgiveness was cautious and step-by-step, but in a spirit of love and assistance.  The lack of forgiveness and excessive and cruel punishment of Germany by France and England after the First World War is widely held to have helped set the stage for the Second World War.

Martin Luther King, Sr. forgave those responsible for the murder of his wife and those who killed his son. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador forgave his killer with the final words, "God, have mercy on my assassins." The Maryknoll community forgave the El Salvador government for the murder of four nuns by a government death squad, but have continued both working for the poor and pursuing just punishment of the murderers.

Anger & Forgiveness in Psychiatric Therapy

At this point, a few examples of problems caused by anger might be useful.  In real-life psychiatric practice, examples of serious emotional injury due to the violent and abusive actions of others are very common.  By looking at these examples and seeing how anger and the giving up of anger work, it will be much easier to understand anger’s crippling effect. These are, of course, serious situations with extreme injury.  Nothing can make dealing with such injury easy.  However, giving up anger and directly dealing with the problem, to the extent that it was possible, made each situation much easier for the patient who had come to me for help.  The names have, of course, been changed for confidentiality reasons.

Anger In A Case Of Murder

The first case was that of a young woman Jane, whose husband had just murdered their 7-month-old child.  He had a long history of having a problem with his temper and had hit Jane almost every week.  Then, in a moment of rage, he killed their infant daughter.  He was taken to jail.  His wife was, of course, very depressed by the situation and became intensely angry at her husband.  Her depression increased to the point of becoming suicidal, resulting in her hospitalization.  The initial approach in her therapy proved unsuccessful and she became a patient of mine.  Medications and simple supportive therapy were not enough in helping her deal with her extreme hurt.  They were not helping her escape from her anger and regain her self-control.  I helped her realize that two wrongs don’t make a right.  Her husband had certainly done something far, far worse than her anger at him.  Yet, I helped her see that her anger was also a mistake and only causing her to be more depressed, pushing her into suicidal thinking.

Indeed, anger is so often a part of depression that some therapists have gone so far as to say that anger is behind all depression. This is certainly an exaggeration, but it helps to illustrate an important point.  Anger is a destructive emotion, both to the person who holds it as well as to those around that person.

Jane thought about her husband’s murder and realized that anger was an emotional and inappropriate way of thinking.  She remembered that her husband had been repeatedly beaten as a child and that this was very likely where his problem with a bad temper first started.  She came to realize that her husband was sick and needed help.  We both agreed that he had done something seriously wrong and needed to go to prison for his mistake.  Jane was still going to testify and help her husband to go to prison, not to hurt him in a spirit of revenge, but to assure that justice was done and hopefully to help him recognize the fact that he had a very serious problem.

Jane thought of the idea of writing her husband a letter.  In it she said that she realized that her being angry at him for murdering their child was a mistake.  She said that she felt sorry for him and that he was seriously ill.  She said that she hoped that he would get treatment and someday get over his problem with anger and loss of temper.  Jane still planned to divorce her husband, since she had no evidence that he had changed or would ever change.  She had no obligation to stay with him even if he did change and certainly didn’t want to.  However, she recognized him as a seriously ill person and felt sorry for him.  She also realized that he couldn’t be trusted and had much repenting and psychological work to do before he could be pardoned for his crime.

One can imagine the impact of that letter on her husband.  It probably shocked him.  He probably had a hard time at first understanding why his wife wasn’t angry at him.  The letter very likely made him think about himself.  It probably started to help him realize that he was indeed a very sick man.  If Jane had written him an angry letter, the opposite would like have happened.  He probably would have responded in an angry fashion, throwing her letter on the floor, and shifting the responsibility for the murder onto Jane.  He would very likely have retaliated with more anger and said that she had made him angry, that she had made him kill their child.

There is a very important lesson here.  Something typical occurs when you attack someone verbally in a spirit of anger.  The other person rarely listens to what you are trying to say. Instead, he will focus on your anger, not on his own wrongdoing.  Your anger distracts the other person from really looking at what he has done.  It instead focuses his attention on your attack. Your anger makes it much easier for him not to look at his own behavior and study his own responsibility.  Your anger results in the very opposite of what you wanted to happen.

What happened to Jane was very positive.  She was able to totally give up her anger towards her husband for the murder of their child.  She felt a great load of anger and depression lifted from her shoulders.  She was, of course, still depressed due to losing her younger child, but was handling that hurt much better.  She was able to return home and care for her 2-year-old child, instead of wanting to kill herself.  She was able to go home feeling that she had done the right thing.  She had many difficult times ahead of her, but by giving up her anger she was now in control of her life instead of being ruled by her emotions.

Anger In A Case of Child Sexual Abuse

A second case of mine dealing with intense injury was that of Barbara, a black woman from St. Louis. Her case was very sad and full of emotional pain. Her husband had become abusive and irresponsible, causing their separation. He had visitation privileges with their 3-year-old daughter.  Barbara became more and more troubled when her daughter would return from visitation. She became suspicious that her daughter was being abused sexually by her husband. As her suspicion mounted, she tried to get the court and a social service worker with the Department of Children and Family Services to intervene, but initially she was not successful due to lack of evidence. Her father, a Christian minister, even asked her to protest more quietly because he was afraid that the controversy would have a negative effect on his congregation and his ministry. In the midst of all of this, Barbara’s father, still married to her mother, propositioned a 20-year-old woman friend of Barbara. By the time Barbara came to me she was seriously hurt, had gotten very angry at both her husband and her father, was depressed, and seriously suicidal.

After hospitalizing her, I helped her understand the mistake that she was making by being angry. I helped her to realize that her anger and hatred was crippling her and seriously aggravating her situation. Probably thanks to her personal background, she was open to what I was saying and was able to grasp its meaning. She was able to step back and realize that both her husband and her father were sick men in need of help. Unfortunately, there was not much she could do with her husband, since successfully pressing charges was made impossible by the very young age of her child, i.e. the child’s inability to successfully testify in court. There was little doubt that abuse had occurred since venereal disease had been cultured from her daughter’s vagina. This evidence had already allowed her to restrict her husband to only short visitations supervised by a social worker. She realized that her husband was very sick, that he should not to be trusted, and that it was unlikely he would repent. She was, however, able to give up her anger towards him and think about how to deal with the situation sensibly rather than in a spirit of revenge.

Barbara became much stronger once she had given up her anger. She was able to return to St. Louis and face her father. Gently and in the spirit of love, she confronted her father with his wrongful refusal to help her when she was most in need. He recognized the wrongs that he had done and sincerely apologized. She was once again able to secure her father’s support, something that she very much needed. She decided that moving to California was probably the best thing to do to get herself and her daughter away from her sexually abusive husband. Although the court officially told her not to leave the area, I thought the facts of the case were strong enough that it seemed a reasonable thing to do. She was not at all angry in making this decision, which helped reassure her and me that it was probably a sensible thing to do. Another important point in dealing with difficult situations, one which I always recommend to my clients, is never to make a decision while you are angry. I repeatedly tell them to get control first of themselves. First, realize that your anger is a mistake that you have to correct so that you can think clearly about your situation.

Anger causes people to make many wrong decisions which they later regret. It clouds their judgment. That leads to my next two cases, cases that almost led to divorce. Here again, I like to stress to my patients, never get divorced while you are angry. First, get control of yourself, take a look at the situation and then decide what to do.

Anger In Divorce Cases

Divorce is one of the most common major stresses seen in mental health treatment today. Although there are many causes of divorce, anger and its verbal and physical violence are clearly the leading factors. Anger can cause little hurts to grow into big ones and cause big hurts to overwhelm a marriage. One case from my practice was that of Bill. Bill had a long history of getting angry when hurt by others, but he was also a loving and caring person who never hit his wife and rarely got into arguments.

At times anger can blow small things way out of proportion and lead to dire consequences. Indeed, one research study of serious marital violence reported that one-third of all serious marital violence started with minor arguments that were so small that neither person could remember what they were arguing about!  In Bill’s case, it all started with a letter to his wife Sally from her sister. He walked up to her while she was reading the letter and she put it away. He became suspicious that she was trying to hide something from him. He became a little irritated and demanded to see the letter. Sally became hurt by his unreasonable lack of trust. There had never been secrets in the marriage, but she thought he was overreacting since she was only reading a letter from her sister. One thing led to another with each person getting more and more hurt and angry. Sally decided she couldn’t take it any more and moved out, not to get divorced, but just to get away for a while.

Unfortunately, Bill became increasingly jealous and more and more angry.  He imagined that Sally was having an intense relationship with one of the men with whom she worked.  Instead of calmly and lovingly resolving their problems, they allowed anger to drive them further apart. It was at this point that Bill came to me seeking counseling.

Initially, I was not successful enough at helping Bill to get control of his emotions.  Although he did make an effort, he kept getting angry at the little hurts that were occurring in their relationship.  Instead of matters being resolved, they kept getting worse.  Anger tends to drive people apart, instead of allowing them to resolve their problems.  Bill’s marriage got to the point where he was planning to file the divorce papers with the court within several days.  I was finally able to get Bill in control of himself enough for him to invite Sally out to dinner to calmly talk over the situation.  After a long and non-angry talk, things improved dramatically.  Within days, the divorce proceedings had been dropped and Bill and Sally were back together.  This whole affair may sound silly on their part and indeed it was.  However, it is amazing how destructive a little anger can become.

Anger in Divorce, Case #2

A second case of near divorce again illustrates the importance of not making decisions while angry and also how anger blocks dealing with other problems.  Helen, a woman of forty, was brought to me by her husband because she had become very angry and depressed.  She was very upset upon finding out that her husband had had an affair.  She alternatively wanted to get a divorce or commit suicide or both.  Her husband was very sorry for what he had done and wanted to save the marriage.  However, Helen seethed in anger and was unable to decide what to do.  I told her that she should first get over her anger and get herself under control before deciding whether to seek a divorce.  I told her she really couldn’t make a decision that she could be confident was the right one as long as she was angry.

In counseling Helen worked on this problem and was finally able to give up her anger after several weeks of therapy.  She still couldn’t make a decision on divorce, but did recognize that her husband sincerely regretted what he had done and was trying hard to make up for it.  She then recognized that she had also been getting angry about lots of little things in her life that were totally unrelated to her marriage.  She worked on these, too, and experienced a considerable increase in her ability to deal with frustration.  She found that she was becoming more and more happy with life.  She had always had a major problem with pre-menstrual pain and would get more angry during the premenstrual period.  After learning not to get angry with all of the little frustrations in her life, she found that she was able to handle her pre-menstrual distress much better.  Medications had never been of benefit in her case.  Now she found that she was able to deal with the pain much better and no longer became angry and irritable.

Finally, after about three months, Helen decided not to divorce her husband.  Their marriage did very well until a year later when her husband talked her into "swinging."  Wanting to please him, she agreed, but on the condition that he would not "run around on her."  They did have sexual relations with one couple, but one thing led to another.  Her husband broke his promise and secretly picked up a girl at a bar.

Helen could read her husband’s eyes and knew right away that he had cheated on her. However, this time she calmly went and spoke to the woman about how the woman had wronged her.  Helen then confronted her husband in a similar gentle but serious manner.  This time he sought therapy, something he had denied needing the first time.  Her calm, but firm protest made him realize that he had a serious problem himself in controlling his own sexual drive.  After he was in therapy for a prolonged period of time, Helen decided to give him one more chance.  He had finally faced and been treated for the problem that had threatened their marriage in the first place.

Anger in a Case of Incest

In one of my cases, a mother’s anger at her own father for incest that had occurred 30 years earlier almost led her to kill her own son.  My patient, Mary, was a good mother and worker, quite active in her church’s Bible society, but she also had a problem controlling her temper because of her pent up anger.  Her father had abused her from the age of 9 to 18.  She had kept it a secret all those years.  She would visit her mother and father every week for the next 30 years, but never asked her father to apologize for his past abusive behavior.  Her 25-year-old son was married and had a still more serious problem with explosive temper.  One evening he took his 18-year-old sister out to a bar drinking.  His sister didn’t go home that night and Mary drove off to the bar at 6 A.M. to find out what had happened to her daughter.

Mary’s daughter passed her mother going the other way.  Mary turned her car around and followed her daughter home.  Her daughter explained that she had gotten drunk and slept in the car so as not to have an accident driving home.  The truth was that she had gone home with a young man but didn’t want her mother to know.  Her mother became furious that her son had left her daughter in a situation in which Mary thought her daughter could have been raped.  Mary took her husband’s revolver and left to drive to her son’s house to teach him a lesson.  Fortunately, the daughter called the police who apprehended Mary and brought her to the hospital.  After some help from counseling for her anger and depression, Mary made rapid progress.  She realized that her anger at her father was serving no good, was a mistake, and had been preventing her from dealing with her own problems.  In the hospital at my urging she wrote a kind, but serious letter to her father protesting his years of abuse and informing him that he owed her a sincere apology for the sexual abuse that had occurred many years earlier. Mary’s recovery was helped out even more when her father called and apologized about one week after she was discharged.  Over the next two months, she worked on other much more minor areas where anger had been hampering her effectiveness in life.  She became much more effective in dealing with a conflict situation at church and also helped to start to turn her misguided son around.  The anger and resentment of 30 years that almost resulted in the death of her son had been worked through and eliminated by thinking and dealing more sensibly with a very painful event.

Mary did relapse into anger some time later and was going off to kill herself.  Her husband could tell what was happening from her tone of voice, found her, and took her to her minister. The minister finally helped her to give up the last of her anger that had come so close to destroying her life.  After that Mary became an amazingly calm and strong person able to handle virtually any situation. Mary had finally freed herself from over 30 years of hurt and destructive anger.

Anger In A Case of Rape

Even when a woman has been raped, anger is destructive and makes it more difficult to deal with such a brutal event.  A 21-year-old single mother was raped by a man who had previously raped at least two other women, but had gotten away with it.  When she came to me she was extremely depressed, suicidal, and afraid to continue pressing charges.  Not surprisingly, she was very angry at her rapist.  In helping her deal with her hurt in therapy, one step was helping her to get past the anger.  She had initially obtained help from a local domestic violence program.  While the program’s support was proving valuable, one misguided counselor was advising her to get still more angry at her rapist.  This was not helping my patient and she was only getting more and more depressed.

In our counseling, she found that by giving up the anger, she was much more successful at testifying against her rapist in court and helping him to go to prison, where he desperately needed to be.  She held up during the court process despite repeated harassment from the defense lawyer in the courtroom and from the family of the rapist at her waitress job and on the street.  By not being angry on the stand and instead helping the judge and jury to focus on the pain that she had suffered from the rape, she proved to be a better witness. Sometimes, angry witnesses will cause insensitive jurors to think that maybe the woman had egged on the rape, as if that were possible.  My patient managed to make it through the grueling process, even though she didn’t get the police protection that she deserved.  She was able to hold up under harassment from the rapist’s angry family.  She was able to move to another city and start up a new life, injured but not destroyed, and proud that she had been able to regain her own self-control and dignity. Her rapist was finally sent to prison and hopefully will learn the error of his ways.