Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Psychological Pathways to Conflict Transformation and Peace Building

ISBN-13: 9781441901804 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 306 str.

Ani Kalayjian; Raymond F. Paloutzian

Opis

We all long for peace within ourselves, families, communities, countries, and throughout the world. We wonder what we can do about the multitude of con?icts currently wreaking havoc across the globe and the continuous reports of violence in communities as well as within families. Most of the time, we contemplate solutions beyond our reach, and overlook a powerful tool that is at our disposal: forgiveness. As a genocide survivor, I know something about it. As the genocide unfolded in Rwanda in 1994, I was devastated by what I believed to be the inevitable deaths of my loved ones. The news that my parents and my seven siblings had indeed been killed was simply unbearable. Anger and bitterness became my daily companions. Likewise, I continued to wonder how the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda could possibly reconcile after one of the most horrendous genocides of the 20th century. It was not until I came to understand the notion of forgiveness that I was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Common wisdom suggests that forgiveness comes after a perpetrator makes a genuine apology. This wisdom informs us that in the aftermath of a wrongdoing, the offender must acknowledge the wrong he or she has done, express remorse, express an apology, commit to never repeating said harm, and make reparations to theextentpossible.Onlythencanthevictimforgiveandagreetoneverseekrevenge.

Recenzje

From the reviews: "This book is full of insights and analyses that help the reader to apply forgiveness and reconciliation to any interpersonal or international conflict. ... This is not just another academic book about an obscure topic, namely, psychology and peacebuilding, but a truly useful handbook on getting beyond war and violence. ... This fundamentally practical and needed book adds ... essential to the literature by defending the value of the harder road." (Michael Funk Deckard, Metapsychology Online Reviews, Vol. 14 (21), May, 2010)

Spis treści

- The Role of Forgiveness in Human Affiars: Integrative Themes.- An Integrative, Systemic Framework for Forgiveness and Reconciliation.- Forgiveness Ethics and the Views of Five World Religions.- The Bullet and the Disease: The Psychology of Meaning in Forgiveness-Nonforgiveness.- Mending Tears in the Social Fabric via Reconciliation and Forgiveness.- Changing Childhood Trauma into Forgiveness.- The Alternative of Dialogic Intelligence in Trauma Therapy.- Promoting Forgiveness Through Restorative Conferencing.- Forgiveness on a Deeper Leel: Healing Trans-Generational Trauma.- A Black Perspective on Interractial and Interethnic Forgiveness in the U.S.- The India-Pakistan Partition: Sequaelae of Unresolved Political Conflicts and their Resolution.- Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Unresolved Conflicts: The Case of Darfur.- The Meaning of Forgive when the Trauma Continues: A Case Study from Armenia.- Repentance and Forgiveness, Pillars of Genuine Reconciliation -- A View from Rwanda.- Forgiveness in Unresolved and Denied Mass Trauma.- An International Perspective: Teaching Forgiveness and Building Peace in Divided Societies.- Political Forgiveness and International Affairs.- Dialogue Processes at the Intergroup Level.- Forgiveness: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

O autorze

Dr. Anie Kalayjian is a professor of psychology at Fordham University. She is also President of the Association for Disaster and Mass Trauma Studies and the Armenian American Society for Studies on Stress and Genocide. Dr. Kalayjian has been involved at the United Nations for the past fifteen years, where she works with several departments focusing on human rights, women, and mental health.

Dr. Raymond F. Paloutzian received his doctoral degree from Claremont Graduate School and has been a professor of experimental and social psychology at Westmont College, Santa Barbara since 1981. He has been a visiting professor teaching psychology of religion at Stanford University and Guest Professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the Western Psychological Association, and has served as President of APA Division 36 (Psychology & Religion). He is currently the editor of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.

Blurb

Anger, hatred, resentment, grudges—when the products of conflict smolder for years, decades, or centuries, the idea of peace may seem elusive and unrealistic. At the same time, people and societies need to move beyond these negative traumatic effects so they can heal. Forgiveness and Reconciliation explores in depth two different yet essential components of this peace-building process.

Unlike most books on the subject, which tend to focus on the individual’s development of forgiveness from a single perspective, Forgiveness and Reconciliation reaches across the spectrum of approaches—socio-psychological, biopsychological, therapeutic, developmental, and spiritual among them—to offer examples of intervention at the individual, community, generational, and national levels. This inclusiveness (and a range of real-world illustrations from U.S. race relations to the Armenian genocide) gives readers access to not only the core issues of forgiveness and the dialogic nature of reconciliation, but also the intersecting psychological and social processes involved as they affect all participants in conflict.

Highlights of the coverage:

• Reconciliation efforts in Rwanda, Darfur, India, and Pakistan.
• Restorative conferencing and its role in fostering forgiveness.
• Lessons in empathy and repentance from lifers in prison.
• Promoting reconciliation through arts and the media.
• The potential for forgiveness despite revisionism, denial, and continued injustice.
• Reconciliation in the divided society.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation breaks new ground as a volume that will enhance the work of social and peace psychologists, students and researchers in intergroup and international relations, and peace and conflict studies.