Dear Judith,

I recently read and commented on your article, “Should You Forgive Narcissists Who’ve Hurt You?” and my life has changed.  I want to thank you.

I always knew something was terribly wrong with my mother.  I’m 50, and I’ve spent my life trying to figure it out and deal with it (what an understatement!).  Your article led me to research Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  My mother, without question, has it.  She is also has Borderline Personality Disorder.  I had known about the BPD, but not the NPT.  After a lifetime of invalidation, finally I’m finding validation that what I experienced really did happen.

Your article was thoughtful and well written, and you raised the question of forgiveness in a way that made sense to me.  Looking into this issue with courage rather than with guilt and anger has helped me realize that I’m stronger than I thought I was, and that ‘healing’ has happened over the years.  I have a lot more work to do, but your article has framed this work in a remarkably positive way for me, and opened a door that I was unaware of.

I am so very grateful to you.

Linda

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I recently met a man whose wife cheated on him repeatedly. As he told me the long and circuitous story of suspicion, denial and revelation, he moved through a snake pit of emotional confusion—anger, hurt, longing, disbelief, shock. And as I watched him weep, rant, deflate in despair only to bound back in self-reproach (“how could I have been so stupid?!”), I saw that he was still in shock, in the trance of his own disappointment. He was only bodily in the office with me. Most of him was lost in the torment of his recent past and his fear about the future.

Those shock states can continue for moments, for months, for years or a lifetime. And while they have good reason for being there to start with, after the moment is past, they can become huge impediments in a person’s life.

The question I am faced with when I meet people with any kind of trauma is two-fold:

One, how to bring them out of the trance they are in and two, how to work through the suffering and move to healing.

For more on this topic, please go to Huffingtonpost.com and search Trauma, Judith Acosta.

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Psychology and fundamentalism at best have been polite opponents. In recent history, say the last 50 years, this opposition has become vigorous and often less than polite. Many churches, such as Calvary, completely eschew all mental health practitioners (whether social workers, psychiatrists or counselors) and staunchly maintain that all healing comes directly from God or prayer and that all you need in order to develop and maintain a robust mental health may be found in Scripture or a prayer session.

This rejection of psychotherapy may have been a reaction to the “I’m okay, you’re okay” generation of therapists who did very little for most people except to allay the anxieties of narcissists and sociopaths by telling them “if it feels good, it is good.”  In the eyes of both Orthodox Jews and Christians, the field of humanistic psychology took the whole program of self-improvement one giant step too far, putting man in the center of the universe, particularly his own.

Their objections were not wrong. And I say this as a holistic psychotherapist with almost 25 years of experience in the field.

I have seen far too many well-meaning therapists do little more for their patients than make them feel better about being sick. They are loath to challenge or confront negative behavior or unhealthy thinking because they fear being seen as judgmental. As a result of their tentative relationships with the truth, they fail in their relationships with their patients. They do not see what needs to be healed so the patient is left unhealed. This is truly a disservice to the patient because what it ultimately does is feed the pathology and starve the essence of the person.

I think all good and true healing flows from the same Source which means that there can be an alliance—and an important one—between the Biblical and Mental Health communities.

But only if we have an understanding of our terms and are actually seeking the same results.

(More on this topic to come.)

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While watching the news last night, scanning through both the maudlin and the manic (entertainment-style) broadcasts, I found myself surprisingly moved and tearful. It was not only the black and white footage of the toddler John Jr. that stirred me or the lip-biting eulogy Ted gave for Robert only a few years later, but by the idea of a man everyone was calling Redeemed. The youngest, silliest, funniest, most rambunctious, seared by scandal and nearly killed in serious accidents, the least likely of the Kennedy boys to succeed had proved them all wrong.

Despite being expelled for Harvard for cheating, he was re-admitted, ran for Senator of Massachusetts and won. As Joyce Carol Oates, in her op-ed piece on Kennedy, said, “Like George Bush, another spoiled younger brother of a well-to-do and influential family whose subsequent success in politics had little to do with his own evident talent, intelligence, or ambition, Ted Kennedy was groomed for public office despite dubious qualifications.”

With the scandals, the expulsions and the media circuses behind him, Teddy seemed to have turned a corner, remaking himself as an idealistic, serious, passionate campaigner for the downtrodden. And he did his homework. He fought tirelessly for civil rights, for the disabled, for health care, and voting reform. His legislative history and his constancy to the cause truly speak for themselves.

Redemption?
My question, however: Is that Redemption? Or is that politics?

Everyone was talking about how he had turned it around after Chappaquiddick, that he had “refashioned” himself after that despicable debacle in which he drunkenly drove his car off a small bridge and left the young woman he was with in the passenger seat to die while he went home to call his lawyer. But with the help of one of the most influential families in our country’s history, he was given the prosecutorial equivalent of a slap on the wrist and a hearty pat on the back. No one heard any more about it. He didn’t even have to sweep it under the rug. In pure Fitzgerald form, he had other people clean up after him. He went on to brighter pastures.

So, where is the redemption?

What Does Redemption Mean
The word redemption is used primarily in theology to represent an “element of salvation that broadly means the deliverance from sin.” (Wikipedia) In English, the word refers to the “repurchasing” or buying back, a throw-back to the Old Testament where it referred to the ransom of slaves (Exodus 21:8).

In all of these interpretations, redemption refers to both deliverance from sin (and therefore a reconciliation with God) and a release from captivity (which, to many, is the same as being separated from God and trapped in sin).

There are two forms of redemption: between man and man (social/justice/personal) and between God and man. What is required for redemption to take place is not all that different from a spiritual or personal reconciliation. There must be an admission of sin (or guilt), a humble request for forgiveness, an effort to change one’s behavior, and a rectification (a “ransom” so to speak) for the injustice committed, if that is at all possible.

We can only speak here to the first form of redemption (the social/interpersonal one). What God truly requires of Ted Kennedy—or any of us—is beyond the limits of my understanding.

So let us address the first form—the social redemption, the cause of justice (for which he was so famous all these years), and the interpersonal rectification.

What Did Ted Really Do?
Was there rectification? If there was, it was certainly not reported in the media. There were no public accountings, no humbling, no ransom. Ms. Kopechne was gone and her family was left with that emptiness and pain.

The truth is, we may never know. What went on behind the scenes between the two families will probably always remain between the two families.

Did he change his ways?

Well, he certainly seemed to get more serious in his legislative dealings. He certainly accomplished what many consider to be great things for the American citizenry. Is that the ransom?

This is what Joyce Carol Oates had to say about it:

Yet if one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?
The poet John Berryman once wondered: "Is wickedness soluble in art?". One might rephrase, in a vocabulary more suitable for our politicized era: "Is wickedness soluble in good deeds?"
This paradox lies at the heart of so much of public life: individuals of dubious character and cruel deeds may redeem themselves in selfless actions. Fidelity to a personal code of morality would seem to fade in significance as the public sphere, like an enormous sun, blinds us to all else.

That is one of the most disturbing distortions of the meaning of redemption I have ever heard. But it sounds good, doesn’t it? And isn’t that what American politics and the media are about—the spin? If you just pretend it never happened, call it a misstep or a miscalculation, but you send flowers afterwards, all will be forgiven.

In my work as a psychotherapist and homeopath, I have seen all sorts of pathologies—from the severely wounded to the mildly abraded. In almost every case there is a need for forgiveness and reconciliation, whether that is from others or from oneself or both. There is a time when an accounting is needed, when the man or woman in pain must stand not before me for banal reassurances, but before the Creator or (in their minds or in actuality) before the person they had offended and make it right. From there, they are able to move to forgiveness, and ultimately, to freedom and joy.

Redemption is joy, but it’s also serious business. It is good deeds, as Oates points out, but becoming a “new man” (which is really what Redemption is) is also humility and rectification for the offense itself. I don’t know if a metaphorical bouquet of flowers quite does the job.

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And that is true on the most concrete level. But there are other levels, ones which we have been debating for a couple of weeks, now. What is forgiveness? What does it depend on? What impact does it have on Justice and vice versa? And what about Truth?  How does that affect both the nature of forgiveness and our ability to extend or receive it?

She has said that forgiveness is a phenomenon that by definition must be relegated to the personal. I have implied that it may be offered on a larger scale, e.g., nation to nation. Thus far, we have agreed to disagree.

Recently she sent me this excerpt from an article by Father Schall:

"But it all depends on the willingness of the one who caused the injustices to repent and ask forgiveness. This is the divine limit. God cannot create man free and then take it away and leave the same being in existence. If this forgiveness is not in some way asked, even God can do nothing but pursue justice…"

So, I wrote back explaining my sense that there is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation although the latter cannot happen without the former. In order to reconcile with another person, or nation-to-nation, there must be a formal humbling, a repentance, a request for forgiveness. This is basic common sense. You can't reconcile with someone who's still intent upon harming you. And you can't "make nice" (diplomatic reconciliation) with a nation-state whose mission it is to annhilate your nation-state.

However…forgiveness is another matter. It does not need the reconciliation to take place. Forgiveness, as I have come to define it (mostly by virtue of my work with victims of trauma) is a letting go, a release of hatred, resentment, hurt, and rage. And it can occur without any hope of reconciliation with the perpetrator. Indeed, where there is recovery (of any kind–abuse, alcoholism, abandonment, etc…), there is forgiveness. I told her that we can exact justice (as opposed to revenge) or set limits or hold people accountable for their behavior and still forgive them.

In fact, if we are to remain sane and attempt to grow in some relationship with God, it is absolutely necessary.

She is absolutely right when she says that someone who is to be forgiven must ask for forgiveness and mean it sincerely. Recently Michael Vick, the sociopath who beat and brutalized and killed puppies for entertainment and money, had  a press conference and publicly "apologized." He smiled and glittered throughout the entire scandalous waste of our time. He adored the attention, delighted in every camera turned his way. The reporter interviewing him at some time during the mini-documentary nodded his head with a solemnity that was either pure show or pure stupidity. I've been a psychotherapist for more than twenty years and I've learned to read faces fairly well. There was no doubt that the man neither wanted forgiveness nor felt in any way repentant. There was no doubt that he merited serious consequences for his behavior. (Far more, in my opinion, than he got.) And there was no doubt that justic was poorly served. Can we be reconciled with a man like that? No. Is he trustworthy? No. Would I leave a full-grown dog in his presence, no less a puppy? Never. Ultimately, should I forgive him even if he never asks for it and never deserves it?

I think so.

Why?

Because it heals us. Because it keeps us  just and prevents us from taking out our rage on someone like him and calling it "justice" instead of the vengeance that it really is. Because it brings us just one step closer to what God has called us to do, to love more like Him.

I have a hard time with it, especially with sociopaths like Vick. I'd like to see people like that shipped off to the farthest asteroid and left there. But I also know that wishing him ejected into the vacuum of space is a dark part of me speaking, clammoring for some way to let off steam and pain. It never helps. It doesn't bring back anything or anyone that was lost and chips away at our own souls in a way so subtle we don't recognize the damage until it is too late.

I want to state clearly that I am not a pascifist. I wish I were that evolved, but truly I love being alive and I would be willing to fight to stay that way. And God help the brute who tried to hurt my dogs. I know I would be hard to restrain. I believe strongly, though, that forgiveness does not necessitate the laying down of arms or the passive submission to a bully.

What it might mean, what I hope it means, is that we can be pure of heart even when we do what is necessary in this world. And if that means removing an imminent threat so lives are saved, so be it.

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