Psychoanalytic Approaches to Forgiveness and Mental Health - Paperback

by Ronald Britton (Editor), Aleksandra Novakovic (Editor)

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Forgiveness and Mental Health considers the role of forgiveness in mental life, concerning both forgiving and being forgiven.

Each chapter addresses concepts including superego, repetition compulsion, enactment, and notions such as sacrifice, penance, justification, absolution, and contrition. The contributors consider both their professional and clinical experience and their ethical, cultural, or philosophical background when considering aspects of forgiveness and its impact on clinical practice. The book is an attempt to open the subject of forgiveness, not to reach ethical conclusions nor to formulate pious psychological behavioural axioms. It also considers the weight of feeling unforgiven and of holding the lifelong resentment or vengeful wishes of the unforgiving.

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Forgiveness and Mental Health will be key reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training and for other professionals interested in the role of forgiveness in mental life. It will also be of interest to academics and students of psychoanalytic studies, philosophy and spirituality.

Author Biography

Ronald Britton is a training and supervising analyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society. He first trained as a doctor, and as a child psychiatrist; he was chair of the Department of Children and Parents at the Tavistock Clinic, where he was involved in treatment of deprived children and their parents. This experience was influential to his psychoanalytic thinking where he maintains the importance of 'childhood' as a formative experience.

Aleksandra Novakovic is a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytic Association and a group analyst. She was consultant clinical psychologist, joint head of the Inpatient & Community Psychology Service, and she worked with patients with severe mental health problems and facilitated staff groups for mental health teams. She worked at Tavistock Relationships and supervised on the Reflective Practice Course at IGA.