true forgiveness belongs to...

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CHAPTER ONE

True forgiveness belongs to psychoanalysis

From archaic fantasies of forgiveness to mature forgiveness through mentalisation

Archaic fantasies of atonement-forgiveness

We have seen how self-punishment takes place in the hope of

absolution and has its origin in the longing for love. Now I am

sure you will share my critical suspicion that the close connection

between guilt, atonement and forgiveness, so deeply rooted in our

mental life, cannot possibly owe its enormous importance simply

to the experiences of the growing child in the course of his training.

It is certainly a momentous step when the child begins to grasp

the idea of guilt and to experience the peculiar quality of the sense

of guilt. But it seems as though he were already prepared for this

experience, so as to understand straight away the next conception:

that of punishment and expiation and, above all, that of final for-

giveness. Our study of melancholia enables us actually to see into

the history of this mental structure—a history reaching back to the

primal dawn of the mind—and to lay bare the ultimate founda-

tions of experience upon which it is built. Here I may refer to a

4 FORGIVENESS IN INT IMATE RELAT IONSHIPS

conclusion which I have already suggested elsewhere [5]. Briefly

it is this: that, when the child passes from the period of suckling,

he carries with him, indelibly stamped on his mind, a sequence of

experiences which later he works over so as to form the connection:

guilt-atonement-forgiveness. (Rado, 1928, p. 425)

Almost a decade before Melanie Klein’s introduction of the concept of

reparation, Rado, in this passage, by establishing an ingrained link from

our earliest days between guilt and forgiveness through the mediation

of atonement, places the concept of forgiveness on the psychoanalytic

map and takes the first object relational paper of Freud, “Mourning and

Melancholia” (Freud, 1916), to a new height. In describing the melan-

cholic, Rado expands on Freud’s notion of the mood reversal of melan-

cholics and points out that the failure of this rebellion against the loss

of the object summons into action a new weapon for the ego, the proc-

lamation of guilt for the loss followed by remorseful self-punishment

and expiation. Hence, in an attempt to recover the lost object, the mel-

ancholic ego begs for forgiveness but this despairing cry for the love of

the object is now turned inward as the object, and its love, is transferred

to the superego. In its quest for forgiveness, the ego seeks out this love

by relying on similar childhood fantasies of self-punishment in order to

appease the parents and regain their approval. In doing so, the inwardly

drawn narcissistic ego removes itself from the realm of reality and so

begins the intrapsychic roots of the quest for forgiveness as it unfolds

in the object relational world of the child in his desperate attempt to

resume a substantial bond for his emotional survival.

Rado points out that the formation of the superego is based on the

child’s attempt to hang on to the desire of carrying within the mind

only the good parents and endowing their internal presence with the

right to condemn the ego for failure to renounce its angry impulses

toward them: “the ego loves the internalized parents just as it loves

its ‘good parents’ in reality, but it must not allow itself to hate them

like ‘bad parents’, even if they behave like ‘bad parents’” (Rado,

1928, p. 433). Accordingly, while nothing in the internal world of the

child—especially negative feelings and fantasies—goes unnoticed by

this primitively organised, unevolved, vigilant, judgmental super-

ego, when it comes to the external reality, observations contrary to its

demand must be banished. Through its verdict of repression for the ego,

the reality is met with blindness, as the ego is commanded to restrict its

TRUE FORGIVENESS BELONGS TO PSYCHOANALYS IS 5

range of awareness, with the result of a long-lasting regressive scenario

of internal distortion. Developmentally, incapable of integrative capac-

ity, every time the child is justifiably frustrated and angry at the parents,

the ego has to repress the introjections of the bad object in order to hang

on to their conscious positively charged image so that the flow of the

proverbial milk is not spoiled by their observed deficiencies/badness.

The superego as a distorted representative of the parental authority

(since it is also structured by the child’s own projected aggression) sets

off the sequence of guilt—of daring to hate and be angry with the very

same person on whom the child’s survival depends, self punishment

to compensate for the wrong (atonement), and forgiveness in order

to regain the lost love. In short, the fantasised image of the parents in

the superego, intertwined with the child’s own projection of aggres-

sion onto them (to create exaggerated fear for increased control of his id

impulses), is experienced as an unmerciful absolute presence that has

to be appeased at any rate, so that the flow of fantasised love through

forgiveness continues to provide the child with the oxygen his psyche

desperately needs for emotional survival.

Within this sequence one is faced with the inevitability of intrapsy-

chic conflict stemming from the child’s need for control and the limita-

tions of his immature ego. Wumser’s (2007) notion of the superego as

the secularisation of the idea of godhead, with an internal conscience

and unconscious presence dictating absolute demands, is a telling

description of the mythical-magical quality of this archaic world of

persecutory guilt and the necessity of self-punishment for absolution.

Consequently, the sequence of guilt, atonement, and forgiveness is an

omnipotent manoeuvre of the ego at the behest of the superego to safe-

guard a wish-fulfilling fantasy that precludes reality, a repetition com-

pulsion, unconsciously motivated and outside the realm of reality and

genuine love.

It is easy to detect the Fairbairnian ring of this conceptualisation as

one is reminded of the continued attachment of abused children soak-

ing up the badness in their masochistic attachment to abusive par-

ents. It appears that when reality has not much to offer to offset this

internal archaic solution in dealing with the conflict between love and

aggression, the real traumatic abusive parental interactions with the

child constantly reactivates and corroborates this sequence to the point

of becoming the child’s actual reality confirming his inner badness

and unworthiness of love. Therefore, the impact of the trauma is not


processed on the basis of reality and its egregiousness but, according

to this ever present archaic scenario of a hardened superego, vis-à-vis

the child’s desperate dependency needs, dictating a solution that gives

him a sense of fantasy control through self punishment. For the child,

being anchored in an abusive relationship is better than being a leaf

in the wind. Subsequently, in case of transgression from the verdict of

“thou shall not hate your parents”, the guilt stems from the wrath of

the superego for ego’s failure to keep the id reaction to parental aggres-

sion away from damaging the false image of the good parents. In these

extreme cases of massive dissociation, where the link to the object is

attacked, we encounter the abnormal superego full of hate watching the

ego from a higher place without any understanding or attempt to know,

but interested only in destroying the link between the self and the object

(O’Shaughnessy, 1999), a terrifying superego that, unlike an internal

object set to diminish anxiety, magnifies it (Money-Kyrle, 1968).

Nevertheless, what is remarkable about this “guilt-punishment-for-

giveness” pattern is its broad explanatory power for important object

relational interactions and how it serves as a bridge between the intra-

psychic and interpersonal perspectives on conflict and processing of

trauma. This sequence might be considered as the Freudian rejoinder

to a Kleinian perspective on how the internal world is populated and

organised through an inherent, irreducible link among aggression,

guilt, self-punishment, and forgiveness.

Rado describes the process of internalisation of penance and forgive-

ness as a way for the child to win the love of parents by unconsciously

producing their anticipated punishment vis-à-vis the aggressive self in

need of forgiveness. As self-punishment propelled by guilt becomes

part and parcel of infantile relation to internal objects, the close link

in the sequence of guilt, atonement, and forgiveness becomes deeply

rooted in the mind. Rado sees this drama of narcissistic turning away

from reality and replacement of external objects with internal psychic

institutions in the sequence of guilt, atonement, and forgiveness, pre-

conditioned by another sequence in the infant’s life, that of the infant

experience of “rage, hunger, drinking at the mother’s breast” (Rado,

1928). He argues that the explosive rage of a hungry infant becomes

the prototype of all other forms of aggressive reactions to frustration

and subsequently becomes the primal mechanism of self-punishment.

This is a sequence of aggressive protest against the torments of hun-

ger that is nevertheless followed, unfailingly, by a blissful experience


of gratification at the breast; therefore, the repeated experience of this

sequence provides the child with another experience—that of forgiving

love and, certainly, of the very first experience of hope. Through her life

sustaining function, impervious to the child’s aggression, the mother

offers hope in reality, and, in contrast to his unforgiving internal world

dominated by an archaic superego, communicates the prospect of a for-

giving world, the antithesis of his tormented internal world of frustra-

tion and helplessness. This sequence of extreme frustration for the frail

ego of the child followed by a blissful experience in reality is responsible

for mitigating the egregious effect of fantasy guilt, fantasy atonement,

and illusions of forgiveness.

Whereas the primitive wish for forgiveness through any means,

including self-punishment, is rooted in the cycle of guilt and atonement,

the repeat experience of hunger and rage, followed by the gratifying

experience of satiation at the breast, transforms the aggression of the

child, as well as the interaction between mother and child, into an expe-

rience that not only fulfils his biological needs but, just as importantly,

his psychological wellbeing through a loving bond that contains and

metabolises his anger, meets his wish for security, trust, and warmth,

and satisfies his relational and narcissistic longings. Most importantly,

the repeat experience of reappearance of the mother and the blissful

experience at the breast that Rado calls alimentary orgasm (the pre-

cursor of genital orgasm) in response to the child’s torment of hun-

ger, heralds the experience of hope not only for his biological survival

but for a new emotional capacity to mitigate the brutal cycle of guilt-

self-punishment-forgiveness orchestrated by his sadistic superego. The

holding, containing, loving, and forgiving presence of the mother, end-

ing the child’s suffering rather than retaliating, becomes a model in real-

ity of a new sequence of hope-genuine love-true forgiveness, nowhere

better symbolised than in the eternal image of the child at the mother’s

breast, as in the Madonna and child, a radiant symbol of forgiving love

and hope of absolution, a powerful construct in the higher layers of the

mental life of humanity that is cogently articulated by Rado.

Since the psyche’s impotent search for atonement and forgiveness in

a primitive fashion is as old as the experience of guilt, like any infantile

fantasy of emotional survival this powerful sequence becomes ingrained

in the mind and, in times of crisis and threats of loss, it becomes an ever-

present regressed fantasy of redemption. The long-lasting, flagrant, and

destructive impact and repercussion of this phenomenon is observable


at many levels of development, not least in one’s ability to integrate the

good and the bad aspects of the self and the object, the compromise of

the synthetic ability of the ego interfering with self and other under-

standing (through empathy), one’s ability to create meaning by mak-

ing the incomprehensible comprehensible, in short, the mentalisation

capacity of the ego.

The implication of the foregoing for the intrapsychic and interper-

sonal dynamics of the concept of forgiveness in psychoanalysis is clear:

namely, that, in the earliest stages of development, the fate of the intro-

jection and projection of the child’s aggression is contingent upon the

overall balance of the caretaking environment as a forgiving/under-

standing or chaotic presence in the formation of the child’s intrapsy-

chic experience of forgiveness. The question is whether the unconscious

sequence of guilt, punishment, forgiveness wins the day and dominates

the intrapsychic world of the child or the repeat experience of mater-

nal availability, in another sequence of hunger and rage followed by

hope and satiation in reality, offsets its impact. It is in this crucible that,

through the maternal perpetual presence, the child can counteract the

internal drama with a reality-based succession of hope-love-forgive-

ness, that is, hope for an end to the suffering (initially hunger), love for

being understood and not retaliated against, and forgiveness as the seal

to protect the bond on which the child’s emotional as well as biologi-

cal needs rely. In short, the vicissitudes of forgiveness are intrinsically

linked with the development and analysis of the superego.

Considering that regardless of degree, we all carry the residue of this

early archaic unforgiving superego with a need for self punishment

perpetuated by the mechanisms of projection and introjections and

the self-fulfilling scenario of shame and guilt, the psychoanalytic field

becomes the arena through which the unconscious, incomprehensible

operation of the relentless cycle of guilt-atonement-forgiveness can be

transformed into a cycle of hope-love-and genuine forgiveness of self

and others. Through the uncovering of the ravages of the antiquated

but timeless mode of relating to self and others, the roots of the state

of unforgiveness as the result of the operation of primitive and purely

narcissistic defences can also unravel.

While the unevolved sequence of guilt-atonement-forgiveness is

intrinsically linked to the archaic, barely evolved sadistic superego,

the development of a forgiving attitude is the hallmark of an evolved

benign adult superego and the possibility of this evolution in its most


thorough and genuine fashion falls in the domain of psychoanalysis.

The intense interactions within the transference-countertransference

field, as well as the extra-transferential work on past traumatisation

and conflicts, allow access to hope and forgiveness, first manifested in

the softening of the superego on the model of the tolerant and accepting

analyst. Only then can the patient, within the context of being heard,

understood, and witnessed, access and process old defences to over-

come his psychic investment in maintaining false representations. As he

develops a more balanced assessment of self and others and becomes

less preoccupied with egotistical and narcissistic demands of his ego

ideal, he finds access to the hope that the world is not as unforgiving as

his fantasies, and he will be able to conjure up, and increasingly rely on,

the symbolic image of the mother’s perpetual presence and sustenance

that validates the new sequence of hope-love-forgiveness; that is, posi-

tive developmental experiences become more accessible and no longer

repressed under massive primitive defences. Nowhere other than in the

domain of psychoanalysis, can one experience the unique and powerful

setting that is conducive to deep comprehension and full grasp of the

interplay of the web of the dialectic relationship between the omnipo-

tence of responsibility and powerlessness. Thus, the evolution of self-

forgiveness and its impact on forgiveness of others is contingent upon

the evolution of the superego.

Atonement as repetition compulsion

In the following vignette, the imprint and perpetual reverberation of

the guilt-atonement-forgiveness of the archaic mind, reinforced by an

unprocessed traumatic event related to parental failure, is evident. The

role of the psychoanalytic method of inquiry is the main outlet of dis-

covery and understanding of the ravages of early, far-reaching impres-

sions that shape self-perception and of object relationships that lead to

forgiveness.

In the second year of three times a week analysis, Ms. M, a depressed

married woman in her late thirties, started the session by criticising her-

self. Her history included a series of careers which, after experiencing

remarkable success, she abandoned because she was “burned out”. In

the most recent five years, however, she has been at home raising her

children. Now, with both children on the same school schedule, she felt

pressured to consider employment to improve the family’s financial


situation. As she tried to figure out a new career, she was at a loss to

think of anything that she’d be good at, despite her business savvy and

successful work history. She felt paralysed and kept berating herself

for not having the commitment and the discipline of her older brother,

who had both a successful career and a productive life. By comparison,

she felt that her life was wasted; she was unable to appreciate herself or

her work and had lost all confidence in her potential. As she continued

disparaging herself, I asked her about her relentless self-deprecation

and what appeared to be a perverse need to strip herself of any posi-

tive attributes, and added that she seemed at home with this negative

evaluation of herself. She suddenly blurted out: “If all your life you

were perceived and treated as a murderer and you had to live with that

identity, there wouldn’t be much to feel positive about!” She proceeded

to share a traumatic story that had not surfaced at any point in our work

up to that moment.

When M was about two or three years old, on one occasion her father,

who had a habit of hiking in the woods, brought home two baby rabbits

that apparently had lost their mother and were abandoned. He gave

one to M and the other one to her older brother. M was so enamoured

by the cuteness and cuddliness of the rabbit that in her excitement she

literally squeezed the rabbit to death. When the little rabbit stopped

moving and breathing, all of a sudden her family rushed to it and told

her that she had killed the rabbit. Her older brother called her stupid

and kept yelling, “You killed the poor rabbit.” As she looked at the life-

less unresponsive body of the rabbit as her father took it away, she was

shocked and confused about what had just happened. Her parents did

not say much, but her brother relentlessly badgered her. When his rab-

bit died some time later, he lashed out at M again for being responsible

for this new death, saying his rabbit died of lovesickness and loneliness

after what she had done. He never forgot this episode and made sure

M did not forget it either. As much as she fought her brother, she could

not help but believe everything he had said about her and felt terribly

guilty about the “double murder” that she, in her heart, believed she

had committed. She came to see herself as someone stupid and danger-

ous whose love, instead of soothing, could kill. Not only did the parents

not seem to care or show any concern about M’s state of mind follow-

ing this trauma, but her mother found the story quite funny and, on

different occasions, for many years shared it with friends and relatives.

For added effect, she did not hesitate to mention another accident that


occurred around the same time, that of her “klutzy daughter” stepping

on a turtle and crushing its shell, thinking it was a stone. M saw this as

a constant reminder of her dangerous stupidity and clumsiness, and it

further sealed her shame and guilt-ridden image of herself as an animal

killer.

Feeling dismayed by M’s terribly painful experience at such a young

age and at the total insensitivity with which she was treated, I remarked:

“Your mother with her relentless recounting of the story trivialised

your truly painful experience of guilt and shame. Perhaps by not shar-

ing it with me until now you were seeking respite from it, but maybe

despite your extreme remorse over what had happened, a part of you

has joined your mother in trivialising its impact on you.” M started

experiencing her anger and asked, “Why didn’t they watch me? Why

did they let me squeeze her to death? Why didn’t they stop me and

take it away? What were they thinking? Why wouldn’t they stop my

brother from calling me a murderer, never letting me forget?” Then she

asked, “Isn’t this emblematic of everything else they neglected to do as

parents? Who would be so insensitive? In fact, I wonder if my mom let

me kill the rabbit so she would be rid of it. She did not like animals in

the house.”

As I listened to her, I was also very cognisant of the fact that through-

out her childhood and adolescence, M had become a child of nature,

wandering in the wild and always bringing home little birds with bro-

ken wings or abandoned baby animals in need of care. Indeed, she had

told me that she was known in her neighbourhood as the little animal

doctor to whom all the other kids would bring their pets. Unfortunately,

her ambition to become a veterinarian had failed because she lacked

the necessary discipline and commitment. I was very much familiar

with this positive side of her that she had shared with me and, up till

now, had seen it as a loving peculiarity of hers, without any awareness

of how it had come about and that it might have had defensive pur-

poses. So I reminded her of this and wondered how she understood it.

Ignoring my hint, and without making any connection to her trauma,

she elaborated on her extreme care of animals. She mentioned that at

times she would go out of her way, staying up all night to bottle-feed

an injured baby animal, for instance. She described the extreme self-

sacrificing way she expected herself to provide for every damaged ani-

mal and the relentlessness with which she would be on the lookout to

find and heal vulnerable, sick, and injured animals. I said: “Sounds as if


you want to remind both of us how much you tried to compensate and

how hard you have tried to expiate your guilt. Perhaps you want me

to witness your saving of lives so that you won’t continue the torment

of branding yourself as a murderer.” She got tearful and exclaimed:

“I was trying to muffle my brother’s vicious voice, but it had become

my own.” I suggested: “And by embracing all the hardship that would

cast you as a life-saving ‘saint’ you tried to reverse and undo the mur-

derer identity that you had assigned to yourself.” She agreed, and then

remembered another memory that would explain how she became “the

patron saint of animals”.

Sometime after the rabbit incident, her father came home with a little

bird that could not fly, and gave it to her. She tried to take care of it in

the most gentle and attentive way, feeding and watching it till it could

fly again, and she felt good about it. From then on she was always on

the lookout for sick animals and was totally fearless about what kind

of animal she’d run into. I interpreted that she must have felt her father

wanted to give her a chance to change her bad feelings about what had

happened and to communicate he still trusted the goodness of her love,

and wanted to convince her of it also. She agreed and wondered why

she still could not feel good about herself. I suggested: “Despite that

kind gesture, neither parent took any responsibility for what had hap-

pened nor explained to you that it was an accident and not your fault

but theirs for not protecting and watching out for you while you had

the custody of the little rabbit.” Later, she came to understand that, in

the absence of this affirmation or a meaningful explanation of what had

happened, while her brother’s accusations continued none of her own

hard work to rid herself of the identity of a murderer could diminish her

guilt nor the harshness with which she judged herself. So I suggested

her child’s mind figured out a solution to expiate her guilt by entering

into a mode of relentless atonement to reverse her self-perception and

prove she was not bad, though without any conviction. M sighed and

exclaimed: “No escape!”

In the following weeks, despite these revelations, her anxiety and

lack of confidence in herself regarding the prospect of work continued.

Suddenly, I remembered a peculiarity of M’s in regard to her past careers,

one which we had not quite been able to make sense of. It hit me that in

her adult life, as in her childhood, M’s careers consisted of various care-

providing professions in which she had excelled; however, she always

gave so much of herself that she burned out and quit because of some


injury, exhaustion, or over exertion. She went overboard in providing

her services but was never able to consider her limits or prioritise her

activities, her wellbeing, and her needs. For instance, in her last very

successful career as a chiropractor, she had an overfull scheduled which

required her to work long hours. Because of her extreme devotion to her

patients, she was unable to say no to any of their unreasonable requests,

continued to ignore her body pains, and eventually injured her shoul-

ders so badly that at the height of her successful practice, she could no

longer continue doing what she did with the same pace and vigour

without exacerbating her condition. Rather than hire another profes-

sional to assist her, she decided to close the business, because no one

else would have given her all to the patients. Injured and disappointed

about losing her profession, her loving clients, and a lucrative business,

she never billed the thousands of dollars that her clients owed. Years

later M ran into a former client who questioned why she had not been

billed and volunteered to send a cheque; E refused.

Although, in the past, we had gone over her reckless way of end-

ing the business, her understanding was that it came from identifica-

tion with her father who had a frivolous attitude to money and did not

value it. Now, in light of her childhood and adolescent history, I drew

her attention to this episode once again and wondered anew about

her thoughts. She was quick to see the parallel between her childhood

saint-like behaviour, selflessly saving animals’ lives, and her selfless, in

fact masochistic, behaviour as an adult care provider. She said she felt

compelled to do the extra work and could not say no, no matter how

absurd the request. In retrospect, she realised that once she committed

herself to her clients, it did not cross her mind to say no to anything;

she erased herself and her needs from the relationship and blindly

responded to every whim of her clients. She added, “If I had to suffer

to make someone feel better, even to the point that I could not move

my arm, I would, and in the end if I had no choice but to quit, let it be.

I had no hope of being better, felt like a bad seed and felt nothing could

change that.” It seemed here that M had lost her connection to the real

object, very much reminiscent of Freud’s (1924) valuable observation

on moral masochism: “The suffering itself is what matters; whether it

is decreed by someone who is loved or by someone who is indifferent

is of no importance. It may even be caused by impersonal powers or

circumstances; the true masochist always turns his cheek whenever he

has a chance of receiving a blow” (p. 165).


Unfortunately, the expectation to be saint-like deprived M of her

natural joy of a profession she was good at and excelled in. Once she

could no longer fulfil the demands of her harsh superego to perpetuate

her saint-like devotion for the purpose of pushing back the murderer

identity, she had no reason or motivation to continue her lucrative busi-

ness. In the end, no longer able to continue this fantasy, like a martyr,

she abandoned and deprived herself of what she was owed and what

was justly hers. This motivation behind her work, namely, a perverse

need to appease the guilt-evoking superego through self punishment

rather than a realistic attempt of the ego to take in the fruits of her hard

work and allow it to enter into her competent self-representation, was

very telling. In other words, the drive to prove the goodness of her heal-

ing touch became the only priority and it deprived her of being able

to enjoy her success with a sense of pride and meaningfulness. This

would have seemed unholy, unsaintly, and not in line with the uncon-

scious motivation behind her life’s purpose; therefore, once she could

no longer physically sustain the punishing activities, not only the abil-

ity, but the wish to adjust her business to her needs, was absent. Pride

in what she had created and protection of her business/herself were

forbidden. It would have been selfish and not saint-like. Her self-treat-

ment, as well as the way she conducted her business, carried a hint

of trivialisation parallel with, and in identification with, her mother’s

trivialisation of her and her trauma.

With this understanding of the unconscious motivation behind her

profession, that is, to achieve mastery over her trauma (by proving that

she was a professional healer as opposed to a clumsy killer) rather than

accomplish success for her well-being in the world, I interpreted her

current anxiety about the prospect of a new career that would no longer

offer the same opportunity for self punishment because her injuries

would prohibit her from going overboard. Not being able to rely on her

driven quality to succeed, she was at a loss to figure out what to do, that

is, how to find a motivation for work unrelated to her trauma and how

to feel at peace with success. She continued to argue that she could still

give it her all and that she would be great at what she did but that, even

if she ignored her injury, how was she going to manage her family?

I wondered why she still felt she had to give it her all. She responded

that she did not know any other way—an answer that set the path for

a long exploration of her unforgiving superego so that she could bet-

ter understand having turned her own rage at her brother and mother


against herself in order to maintain her martyrdom and saint-like self

representation. She remembered proudly that in early adolescence she

had finally gotten fed up and smacked her brother so hard in the face

that he finally stopped attacking her. As she remembered the look of

surprise and shock in his face, she realised how much she had indirectly

welcomed and encouraged his aggression; she could have stopped it

sooner. She felt both empowered and sad about this episode, and for the

first time she could own her aggression and understand the meaning of

turning her aggression against herself, a sad defence that had infested

every aspect of her relationship with herself and the world. The mourn-

ing process for the tragedy that had warped her self-representation

into someone stupid and destructive began as she could better own

and admit her rage. This gradually led to a more normalised relation-

ship with her aggression, as her need for martyrdom and saint-like

self-representation slowly diminished.

Discussion

Rosen (2009) cogently remarks that in atonement there is a compli-

mentary identification with the victim; that is, the aggressor, seeking

atonement, is subjecting himself to a fantasy of revenge on behalf of

the aggressed to ease his guilt. Naming this an “identification with the

aggressed”—a counterpart to Anna Freud’s (1937) notion of “identifi-

cation with the aggressor”—Rosen simultaneously highlights a con-

cordant identification with the aggressed in which the atoner joins his

victim in his suffering, which represents the psyche’s primitive attempt

to repair the harm through at-one-ment. Thus, in her concordant iden-

tification with the aggressed M felt compelled to spend all her time and

energy rescuing, repairing, or restoring any damaged or hurt animal or

person that would fit her traumatic scenario; and in her complimentary

identification with the aggressed, with a primitive belief that her suf-

fering was the vehicle of her victim’s restoration, she subjected herself

to the imagined vengeful fantasy of the aggressed by selflessly push-

ing herself to extremes of neglect and suffering in her self-sacrificing

ways vis-à-vis others. M’s lifelong unconscious attempt at atonement

resembles Rosen’s analogy of atonement in its most primitive format,

the infant’s craving for the restoration of the mother’s life-sustaining

breast that was damaged and destroyed by her greed and voracity and

could now destroy her.


When there is no meaningful attempt to make sense of trauma, no

amount of good intentions or repetitious acts of atonement can change

the ingrained negative self-perception; therefore, there is no possibility

of genuine forgiveness. In this case, the vicious accusations of a harsh

superego operated in quite the same way as the vicious accusations

of M’s brother. In the absence of any other voice—that of reason, real-

ity, explanation, and assumption of adult responsibility—M was stuck

with this negative unconscious identity instilled in her by an unproc-

essed trauma. Her self-representation was thus tainted and warped by

an event she could not comprehend, let alone process, on her own. Yet,

the painful affect remained fresh and reactivated through the cycle of

guilt, atonement, and forgiveness in every situation her psyche could

use to reproduce a scenario in which she could reverse her guilty self,

not to an innocent self but to a self that needed punishment for an event

never realistically assessed or forgiven. Under such circumstances,

with the tit for tat mentality of a child, fantasies of supplication—as in

prayers or actions involving some kind of self-punishment, self-denial,

or attempt at reversal in exact proportion, that is, saint for murderer—

become the vehicle of expiation of guilt and atonement, a vicious cycle

of compulsive repetition that does not provide any long-lasting relief,

much less a path toward genuine self-forgiveness. Without an ability

to make sense of events, the guilt is only a tool in the service of the

superego that creates a culture of sadism exerting its omnipotent con-

trol over the self through self-punishment for failure. In fact, this self-

punishment is acting out of fantasised parental aggression and an effort

to appease their sadism, and only through it can the child find some

relief to safeguard an imagined bond with her parents. As Freud (1930)

often observed, the degree of the harshness of the superego does not

correspond and is not proportionate to the actual parents’ harshness;

this was true in the case of M. Her parents did not attack or punish her,

but neither did they do anything to stop or reprimand her accusative

brother, and for M’s infantile psyche he was the voice and the agent of

the parents. It did not take long for this to become the voice of her own

superego. M had to go through a lifetime of repetition, never believing

in her own goodness nor, more importantly, in the goodness of her love

and her acts of love.

When attempts at atonement are meant to alleviate a guilt that is

never understood, they can only temporarily provide a sense of relief.

In her at-one-ment, that is, her shared identification with her victim,


M’s preoccupation was mainly assuaging her guilt by taking revenge

against herself on behalf of her victim (Rosen, 2009). What is compro-

mised in atonement is the ability to take in the good of one’s actions

as part of one’s identity, self-representation, and self-definition. The

prolonged period of repeating good acts that are forbidden to sink in

and enter into one’s self-definition, creates a pervasive sense of impo-

tence that permeates the whole sense of self. In the case of M, not only

was she unable to take in the healer identity, she also had difficulty in

genuinely believing in her talent as a businesswoman. Thus, her whole

self-perception was tainted by the inhibitions of the superego to find

anything good about herself. This is in line with the primitive black

and white perception of the archaic superego, invested in maintain-

ing a primitively warped negative self-representation that justifies its

omnipotent control and aggression. M’s superego was impervious to

change because the meanings and comprehensions necessary for its

gradual softening were missing. Within a paranoid-schizoid splitting

and polarisation, where self and object constancy is shaky, the ability

to hang on to the good and the bad, that is, to tolerate ambivalence,

is missing. Once M had branded herself with the identity of a mur-

derer, she could not reconcile her life-saving activities with this rigid

superego definition of herself. What was remarkable in the case of M

was how much her attempt at atonement paralleled sublimation. The

problem, though, was that there was a driven quality in what she did.

The goodness of her actions did not register long enough to change her

negative self-perception, because her true motivations for doing good

remained unconscious. Sublimation works only when we come from a

place of better conscious self-understanding and are no longer in the

grip of a harsh superego set on stripping away the goodness from any

act of kindness through omnipotent denial.

M’s moral masochism and the psychoanalytic course

The child, as he or she gets older—and, later, the adult—may attempt

mastery by repeating or causing repetition of the traumatic event in

controlled and modified form, thus creating painful experiences that

could become masochistic traits. M’s continuous attempts at mastery,

from childhood through adolescence and adulthood, by creating cer-

tain roles and, later, professions to reverse the full impact of her trauma

and its related guilt, operated through various versions of self-denial


in her attempt at atonement for the possibility of self-forgiveness. The

early influences of Catholicism and her namesake, a saint with whom

she shared her birthday, provided her child’s mind with a perfect atone-

ment scenario of reversing the “devil murderer” self-representation into

a “life giving healer-saint” image worthy of her namesake. These influ-

ences further intensified her masochistic solution. For the rest of her life

her heroic, albeit driven, attempts at saving lives assuaged her uncon-

scious sense of guilt through complete reversal of her self-representation.

Then, through redemption, she could uphold a fantasy image of herself

congruent with her godlike expectations.

What is of interest in the case of M is that while the traumatic event

and her reactions to it remained quite conscious in her mind, somehow

their significance in shaping her personality was disavowed. In other

words, the connection between her actions and the wish to expiate the

sense of guilt in the aftermath of the incident went underground. It

appeared the incident as an isolated action made her feel like a murderer

and also validated her guilt and fear of her aggression and hostility in

such a way that her murderous wishes, especially toward her badgering,

jealous older brother, were no longer safe, even in fantasy, because they

could really kill. Consequently, she had developed a certain passivity

toward her brother’s verbal and, at times, physical attacks; instead of

anger and revenge her submissiveness became another defence against

her guilt feelings so that she could convince herself that she was not the

aggressor and all the cruelty resided in her brother, which was her way

of appeasing her superego and expiating her guilt for her own uncon-

scious forbidden sadistic wishes.

Obviously, the act of squeezing the rabbit to death was, itself, indica-

tive of a powerful fusion of her aggression with her libidinal wishes.

Despite the fact that as a child she was not morally responsible, psy-

chologically she felt responsible for this expression of tenderness that

was so mixed and linked to aggression. Thus, there were a number of

unconscious motives and functions behind her masochistic traits with

which she had to come to terms, not least of which were the narcissistic

aspects of the saint-like expectations of innocence she had of herself

and the projection of guilt to others, especially to her hostile and, at

times, sadistic brother.

The analysis demonstrated to the patient that her suffering was

not in spite of herself, but on the contrary, it was self-induced as a

way of turning the sadism back upon herself because of her fear of


destructiveness lest it be carried out in life. Furthermore, she had to

gain insight into the unconscious aggressive, provocative, and exhibi-

tionistic elements of her saint-like activities in the service of her moral

superiority, the narcissistic components of her investment in her maso-

chistic behavior. The task of analysis for M was to reduce her infantile

omnipotent need to maintain her saintly identity and learn how this

was a failed attempt to prove her magical control of her environment

through martyrdom. Furthermore, she needed to realise she would not

lose control if she stopped acting masochistically nor would she find

herself at the mercy of the environment with which she did not know

how to cope. For instance, she felt paralysed to find a new motivation,

unrelated to her trauma, to engage in an employment. Although M’s

masochistic traits were triggered and magnified by her actual trauma,

as Freud (1924) remarked, masochism is a ubiquitous phenomenon and

some degree or trace of it is to be found in everyone, since it is a normal

characteristic of the human personality and a component of superego

formation and functioning. In short, the difference between the normal

and the masochistic character is one of degree rather than kind.

The archaic superego and the Talion principle: the roots of unforgiveness

As long as the omnipotent, mad part of the controlling primitive con-

science is in charge, observations are skewed in the direction of justify-

ing the culture of hatred and the primitive tit for tat demand for justice.

The Talion principle of the archaic superego demands an exact measure

of ego self-esteem raising, in the present, in exact proportion to the pain

of earlier deprivation and humiliation. The following case describes

a patient who was more conscious of his disappointment in himself

than was the previous patient. He quite consciously could not let go

of his adolescent disappointment of failing to procure for himself the

same fame as his hero, with whom he shared parallel life circumstances.

His hardened disappointment in himself, and in the world which had

failed to provide him with an exactly proportionate superiority to undo

his childhood and adolescent inferiority, was systemic. Simultane-

ously, until he began analysis, he mindlessly dismissed his remarkable

accomplishments because he failed to realise he had built his adoles-

cent dreams upon a powerful, unmodified idealisation impervious to

nuanced understanding.


This patient, Mr. T, a talented writer, who discovered his literary

abilities in early adolescence, became fascinated with the writings of

Jack London because he could identify with his self-education, poverty,

socialist ideology, and fatherlessness (his father, as did London’s, also

abandoned him at an early age). Just as London realised his ticket out

of poverty was his writing, very early on in adolescence T began to

expect the same for himself; however, when, in late adolescence, his first

attempts at selling his short stories failed and he realised that, unlike

Jack London, he could not pull himself out of poverty with his writing,

he gave up his passion for story writing altogether. He chose a profes-

sion that was more practical for him and lucrative, though one in which

his writing talents helped him reach the pinnacle of his career. Never-

theless, when he began analysis in his late fifties, he felt mediocre. Early

exploration revealed that his adolescent fascination and idealisation of

Jack London had continued and, in the constant, unrealistic comparison

of himself to London, he felt small and inferior. The implication of this

self-effacement was that he had failed to overcome his sense of child-

hood inferiority and deprivation with the superiority that would have

come with fame. This fame would have brought him out of his state of

invisibility and insignificance, something that Jack London had been

able to achieve for himself through his exceptional writing skills. It did

not help that his doting mother kept reminding him of the prophecy of

the fortune-teller who had told her that her son was destined to become

larger than life. He had failed to realise the prophecy and could not

satisfy his mother’s overinvestment in him.

For a long time in the analysis T lamented that his passion for writ-

ing did not match his talent the way Jack London’s had. How could it

be that everything about the two of them was so similar but London

became famous, and was able to annul his childhood legacy of humili-

ation and fatherlessness through his worldwide recognition, and the

other had failed? Now, faced with dashed hopes of recognition, he felt

defeated and doomed to invisibility for the rest of his life.

My patient’s exposure in adolescence to the writing of Jack London,

just as he started recognising his own talent, added to the facts of

London’s background of fatherlessness and poverty, resonated with

him and evoked in him a strong wish, confident expectations, and hope

that in the future there would be justice for him as well. Just as Jack

London was not forsaken by the gods, T became confident his future

would hold no less promise of success and fame and a square resolution


of his unjust childhood. In his adolescent mind, to have some wishes

gratified and some not, was in no way acceptable. He wanted all his

dreams fulfilled, fame and success achieved through his passion and

gift for writing. Anything else would be a travesty of justice. Through

identification with his hero in his mind he had solid proof that his feel-

ings of invisibility would be short-lived; he would be showered with

adulation and admiration through his stories. For a short while, this

strong identification with Jack London gave him so much hope that he

became a very hard-working writer, producing many short stories for

publication. The rejection of his work made him realise, with extreme

disappointment, humiliation, and mortification, that he was no Jack

London. His naïveté in thinking he was, felt like a double whammy—

like “what a fool I was to imagine my talent was worth anything, let

alone thinking that I could hold a candle to Jack London”—leading to a

reversal from over-evaluation to devaluation to the point of worthless-

ness. He was angry with himself and deeply disappointed in the world,

so much so that he never tried his hand at story-writing again. Badly

bruised by shame and disappointment, his decision to completely give

up fiction-writing became his way of protecting himself from further

humiliation. The many impressive intellectual writings related to his

profession were undermined, both in an attempt to express his anger

for doing something that had not met his expectations and to avoid the

shame of being a “writer manqué”.

There was no sense of gratitude for all the success his talent brought

him. When it came to assessing the trajectory of his life, from his hum-

ble beginnings to his present upper class status, the reality that, like his

hero, he had in great part educated himself through his avid reading,

put himself through school with hard work, and reached significant

professional and financial success, counted for nothing. In his mind,

fame was the panacea for his childhood circumstances. Nothing other

than becoming a celebrity like Jack London could lift him high enough

or remedy his sense of insignificance. He only gave his achievements

lip service and continued to bemoan that he was an obscure figure of

no distinction, who would leave neither his mark on the world nor his

imprint in people’s minds.

As I listened to his disparaging account of his work, totally eclipsed

by the fame of his hero, I drew his attention to two points—the relation-

ship between his need to be in people’s minds and his childhood devoid

of a father who could keep him in his mind. The profound psychological


significance of an absent father who could neither see him nor give him

a sense of visibility by having him in his mind, the mind of a hero for

a little boy, gradually became more tangible. He became able to link

this trauma, of not being seen by a father, to his thirst to be seen by

the whole world as a way of solving his existential problem of invis-

ibility. Furthermore, the burden of his mother’s greed, present in her

constant reminders that he was destined for great deeds, that he carried

throughout his life, became more palpable. He could see how he had

been operating from the perspective of a little boy who was eternally in

search of an exact compensation, a quick-fix solution for his childhood

deprivation, in order to restore his broken ego. He came to see how his

exacting superego was demanding justice for what he had endured in

childhood in a very specific way—the Jack London way of receiving

supposedly everything.

The role of greed as a reaction to extreme deprivation, and how

this greed was spoiling all his other accomplishments, along with the

absence of gratitude for what was available, which he demonstrated

by trivialising his many realistic achievements, took centre stage in our

work. He became able to articulate the unbearable sense of humilia-

tion he experienced as a boy with no father to see, admire, or genu-

inely love him, thus making him feel visible. It became clear that the

realisation of this legitimate expectation would have given his life a

meaningful quality, but its failure caused T to make strong demands

for a proportionate quantitative compensation in the form of world-

wide recognition through fame. He gradually realised, in this concrete,

relentless, and unrealistic demand of his ego ideal, that he had failed to

pay attention to the toll this pain of invisibility had taken on his psyche.

Instead of listening to his pain, which was magnified by a strong ado-

lescent wish to fix it, followed by superego attacks for his failure, he had

blinded himself to the toll his actual childhood deprivations had taken

on him. By fixating on his failure to resolve his childhood deprivations

through great deeds, he realised how with his unforgiving attitude he

had turned his anger on himself.

Through self-denigration, T had also avoided acknowledging

his anger and hostility toward a mother that he both loved for her

sacrifices and hated for burdening and setting him up for failure with

her own egotistical demands. By hiding behind his bitterness and dis-

appointment he was actually evading the impact of the real tragedy

of childhood, that is, his loss of empathy for himself in his relentless


demand to shine both for himself and for his mother. In short, the true

loneliness of his childhood, the sense of worthlessness, insignificance,

invisibility, had all come together to define him without any grain of

compassion; thus, no amount of accomplishment could change this pun-

ishing attitude that functioned in a closed loop of anger, guilt, and self-

punishment without mercy or forgiveness. Without any compassionate

understanding of his unbearable childhood suffering, he had evaded

his pathetic self-perception through an angry orientation to the world.

As he came to understand these dynamics for the first time, T was

eager to listen to how the expectation of a just world was masking an

underlying dynamic of envy. Now he was able to sieve through his many

painful memories and could share with me his extreme envy of little

boys with their loving fathers, which had made him feel both humili-

ated and furious for what they had and he didn’t. On the one hand he

hated them for what they had and he did not and on the other he hated

them for highlighting his deprivation. His impotent rage would mani-

fest in his ill wishes for them, wanting the dyad to drop dead, leaving

him feel guilty, more pathetic, angry, and humiliated. His envy knew

only one solution: destroy what he could not have since the hope of

having what they had was impossible without his birthright of being

anchored in a father/son relationship. This reality was unbearable for

his fledgling ego. T realized that it was this sense of envy, grown out of

many repeat similar situations, that had put the stamp of shame and

invisibility on him. He sought to mend that through his fantasy of fame,

the fame that would make everybody else envious of him—a tit for tat

solution of evoking envy in all those who had made him desperately

and helplessly envious of their blissful relationship with their fathers.

Little did his blind unconscious know that this would not give him

the father that he desperately needed and could not have. It was this

realisation that paved the way for another round of mourning for the

father he never had and made him consider that he had no choice but to

accept that reality since no amount of fame and adulation could make

up for what he had missed in childhood. He realised that to reverse

envy by evoking it in others would keep him in a state of disconnect

from himself and from all those who could potentially give him some-

thing qualitatively meaningful. Being locked in this retaliatory solution

to his situation proved to deprive him of the quality relationship that

he had once longed for with a loving father, one which he could now

experience in other relationships.


He realised that his unconscious solution—of making others as

envious as, or even more so than, he had been, through fame—was

shallow and empty in comparison to the experience of sorrow so deep

within himself. Now he wanted to extend that to others through mean-

ingful bonds. He could see how his former mindless quest for quantity

instead of quality destroyed everything good he had offered himself

through his hard work and talent, and how he had trivialised every-

thing worthwhile that the world had offered him.

Neither he nor the world felt empty or disappointing as his ability

to accept the real handouts from the world, including his accomplish-

ments and his prosperous life and talents, genuinely began to emerge.

Gradually—after going through unabashed, and relatively guilt—free

expression of reasonable and unreasonable anger toward all those who

had let him down, and, transferentially, toward me—his self-punishing

ways yielded to a more forgiving attitude toward himself, intimate

others, and the world in general. The transformation of his purposeless

unconscious guilt into a constructive conscious one, set to address the

pain rather than torment the self through self-punishment, coincided

with another round of mourning. Through the process of mourning,

he could suffer the pain and not simply feel it. It was no longer a pain

that was only expressed through angry protest that camouflaged the

actual suffering of his childhood self. His suffering was a re-experienc-

ing of the actual suffering of his fatherless boyhood; he experienced

a newfound capacity for genuine empathy for himself. Paradoxically,

his capacity to bear suffering through boldly facing and recognising

not only the reality of his trauma but its many fantastic elaborations

leading to defences that masked his losses, brought him out of pain.

As his attachment to painful affect subsided, he emerged from a state

of unforgiveness. Compassion brought him out of what he considered

a pathetic existence, and now he could gradually become the architect

of his fate.

Transformation of archaic fantasies of atonement-forgiveness to genuine wish for forgiveness

It is within the purview of psychoanalysis that one can create condi-

tions leading to a deep understanding of unprocessed trauma. The act

of listening, sharing, naming, witnessing, and making the incompre-

hensible comprehensible within an empathic, holding, and containing


atmosphere provides the necessary conditions for the emergence of

the truth about oneself, as one’s curiosity about the self broadens per-

spective and counteracts the judgmental closures that restrict under-

standing. The individual is thus able to extricate himself from the

never-ending repetitious cycle of raw guilt, invoked by the archaic

superego, by self-punishment, and by pseudo-temporary relief from

an unforgiving superego. The revisiting and the re-contextualisation

of the trauma, and the creation of meanings, facilitate genuine self-

forgiveness, along with gradual erasure of the negative identity that

has been stamped in the aftermath of childhood trauma. Such process-

ing of traumatic pain can activate the earliest vestiges of hope/genu-

ine love/true forgiveness, reminiscent of the buried experience of the

child at the breast. The analyst’s holding and containing function, as

well as her interpretations of the patient’s motive behind his transfer-

ential aggression, food for psyche run parallel to the child’s experience

of nutrition, safety, and warmth at the mother’s breast, offsetting his

fantasies of retaliation and punishment. As dependency in the trans-

ference on the analyst becomes acceptable, the burgeoning experience

of hope for finding quality in the relationship, as modelled by the tol-

erating, forgiving attitude of the analyst, facilitates the abandonment

of the paranoid-schizoid position. This is the gradual manifestation of

the Kleinian depressive position in which there is a more mature con-

scious experience of guilt for past attacks on the analyst. It is within

this Kleinian perspective that the notion of guilt changes meaning and

becomes an expression of a developmental progress: namely, the abil-

ity to care for the other and invest in the value of the relationship,

thus bringing the individual out of the rigid vicious circle of guilt-

atonement-forgiveness and offering the possibility of hope, love, and

forgiveness. A prolonged period of hatred in response to relentless

childhood frustration and trauma, and the subsequent reliance on

primitive defences of splitting, omnipotent control, and projective

identifications—the hallmark of the paranoid-schizoid position—

shatters the experience of hope and the possibility of forgiveness, just

as the predominance of hatred and its related defences destroys one’s

relationship to reality. Unconscious purposeless guilt wreaks havoc

through self-punishment, and the subsequent culture of hatred pre-

vents the conscious experience of a guilt borne out of concern for one-

self and the other and with the possibility of repair and the restoration

of the broken pieces of the relationship.


Forgiveness, when it entails a harsh superego operating in a culture

of hatred, is no longer a value-laden concept. Reaching the capacity

to forgive is simply a psychological accomplishment of developing a

realistic relationship to our emotions and understanding their embed-

dedness in human frailties and vulnerabilities. Forgiveness is about

coming to terms with our inherent imperfections, and doing that

equips us with the possibility of better understanding ourselves and

the world. Only when we replace the fantasy of absolute divine perfec-

tion with the reality of our humble flawed humanity, can we calibrate

the degree of our self-criticism through the ensuing ability to let go of

the belligerence and its associated guilt. The subsequent emergence of

a forgiving attitude makes room for realistic expectations conducive to

the possibility of mentalisation, which could not occur under condi-

tions of constant, angry self-scrutiny and preoccupation with judgment.

Self-understanding rooted in the maternal empathic attunement and

intuitive reading of one’s emotions, and facilitated by forgiveness, is

possible only through the recreation of an internal loving atmosphere

and commitment to curiosity and to the discovery of the truth about

oneself and the world.

From a Kleinian perspective, the progression to the depressive posi-

tion endows the individual with the gradual ability to integrate love

and hate, to see the whole object, and to develop a new capacity for

object relationship whereby the persecutory anxiety gives way to

depressive anxiety and concern for the wellbeing of the object. Within

this new position, this awareness of the other and concern for his or her

well-being propels the individual toward reparation and protection of

the object from his own aggression, envy, and greed. Reparation is the

result of a more mature superego, capable of gratitude toward the object

while accepting dependency on it. It is the fruit of the maternal process-

ing of the child’s anger—later taken over by the analyst—which breaks

through the child’s cycle of projection and introjections of aggression,

and allows the guilt to be tolerated rather than acted upon through self-

punishment or through the evocation of guilt in others. Thus, unlike

a Freudian conceptualisation of guilt as a regression and a neurotic

phenomenon, from a Kleinian perspective the experience of guilt—that

is, conscious guilt—and the ability to tolerate it, is the hallmark of the

depressive position and is a developmental accomplishment.

Carveth (2006) challenges the Freudian conceptualisation of

unconscious guilt leading to self-punishment and points out that the


self-punishment associated with guilt is more in line with guilt evasion,

that is, a defence against tolerating guilt. He points out that, since we

are more inclined to repress, rather than have the strength of character

and the sense of mastery to consciously suppress our impulses, we are

susceptible to the return of disguised repressed aggressiveness, propel-

ling the superego to turn against the ego instead of the object, the mani-

festation of which is various forms of self-punishment, including moral

masochism. Carveth argues that Freud’s equation of the unconscious

need for punishment with an unconscious sense of guilt, ignores the

defensive nature of self-reproach. He compares this perspective on guilt

with Melanie Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position. Within this position,

he argues that as a result of the child’s aggression and experience of

envy and greed, the paramount experience of the child is persecutory

anxiety and not unconscious guilt vis-à-vis the object.

So, how could these two contradictory perspectives be reconciled?

I agree with Carveth, and with many Kleinians, that conscious guilt

involves genuine effort at reparation out of love and concern for the

object, whereas self punishment, associated with unconscious guilt,

evades such a possibility for narcissistic reasons, as self-beating

becomes a way of managing repressed aggression. Carveth calls, felici-

tously, the Freudian unconscious guilt associated with self-punishment,

pseudo-guilt, since it has no bearing on reparation of the damage done

to the object. Along the same lines, Bion (1962) remarks that this guilt

is meaningless since it does not lend itself to any constructive activity.

However, from either a Freudian or a Kleinian view, guilt or forgive-

ness, in their primitive, as well as mature forms, are intrinsically linked

together despite the fact that one is regressive and the other progressive.

The Freudian view of self-punishment as a result of unconscious guilt

versus the Kleinian consideration that in the depressive position true

guilt is consciously tolerated and not cut short with self-punishment

translates into the difference between the constellation of operating in

fantasy with extreme narcissism, self absorption, and paranoia—oblit-

erating the reality with primitive closed-loop defences—and emerg-

ing from the loop through engagement with the reality of the object

relationship.

As the newfound ability for love and caring for the object emerges,

the dependency on the object is accepted. Just as the paranoidschiz-

oid position can co-exist with the depressive position through-

out one’s life, one might also shift from experiencing unconscious


pseudo—guilt (Carveth, 2006) and self-punishment, the expression

of aggression that cannot exit the closed system in the service of

pseudo-forgiveness to experiencing genuine purposeful guilt which

can make a real difference through reparation and a genuine wish

for restoration of the relationship through forgiveness. What Klein

(1937) calls reparation—the closest term to forgiveness—is a cer-

tain accomplishment in the quality of object relationship whereby

awareness of the other and one’s impact on the object are promi-

nent considerations, and diminished self-preoccupation gives way

to concern for others. One’s own needs and selfish interests become

secondary to the protection of the relationship and to safeguarding

the object; therefore, attachment needs trump the pleasure principle.

Klein’s conceptualisation of positions, rather than stages, is help-

ful because she is invoking the quality of object relationships that

is not fixed and which, under the impact of injuries and trauma,

goes through the vicissitudes of hatred, regression, and reparation

in all stages of life; it is not just limited to the developmental stages.

Carveth (2006) refers to Grinberg’s (1964) characterisation of the guilt

associated with self-torment as persecutory guilt, evident in the

paranoid-schizoid position, contrasts it with depressive guilt in the

depressive position, and points out how the former defends against

the unbearable guilt of the depressive position. He insists that bear-

ing guilt consciously, without evasiveness, through self-punishment,

is the beginning of the capacity to forgive. With respect to hopeful

expectation as one of the precursors of forgiveness and a forgiving

attitude Schafer (1999) demonstrates how extreme disappointment

could be used defensively against attachment perceived as depend-

ency, and thus deprive the individual of generosity, forgiveness,

and love of the other as mistrust and fear of betrayal pervade the

relationship.

The benign superego and the forgiving attitude

If it is really the super-ego which, in humour, speaks such kindly

words of comfort to the intimidated ego, this will teach us that we

have still a great deal to learn about the nature of the super-ego … .

And finally, if the super-ego tries, by means of humour, to console

the ego and protect it from suffering, this does not contradict its

origin in the parental agency. (Freud, 1927, p. 166)


In this passage Freud introduces us for the first time to the benign,

amiable, and friendly side of the superego, in charge of comforting,

soothing, protecting, and consoling the individual, a far cry from the

severe regulating agency that, through criticism, harsh judgment, and

guilt evocation, frightens the ego into behaving and refraining from

yielding to pleasure-seeking impulses, while policing transgressions.

As Freud points out, these soothing, comforting functions of the super-

ego are the products of parental agency, that is, reflections of the best in

parental identifications and testaments to their loving attitudes, chief

among them their tolerance and resilience vis-à-vis the child’s aggres-

sion; in short, the totality of their attitudes and actions that translate

into tolerance and a forgiving attitude. The need to be loved is inter-

twined with the need to be forgiven. That is especially true in the love

of self. Without some degree of self-forgiveness, that is, the softening of

the superego, a loving orientation to oneself and others cannot be sus-

tained. Forgiveness of the self prepares the individual to become able to

genuinely experience the wish to forgive others.

Because of a clinical focus on patients’ disturbances, psychoanalysis

has relatively little to say about the benign aspects of human nature.

For instance, the focus on the superego as the seat of aggression, and

its harsh toll on the functioning of the patient, constitutes the bulk of

analytic work and only occasionally admits the contributions of ego

ideal as the seat of aspirations, pride, cultural legacies, and a guide

to patients’ benignity. It is only in the aftermath of our work that the

evolution of the ego ideal is assessed, retrospectively, to determine the

analytic success. Nevertheless, these amiable aspects of the superego,

embodied in the ego ideals, are just as human as the instinctual life

and are the counterbalance to the motivational forces behind aggres-

sive instincts. For instance, the emergence of a softer superego, by pri-

oritising the object over selfish interest and by toning down the attacks

and criticism of the superego, frees up the potential in ego ideal to

value genuineness, because then it is possible to give up the false

self that heretofore was in charge of covering up the shameful angry

self. With the diminution of shame there is less self-torment, more self-

acceptance, and a forgiving attitude all in the interest of attachment

and relational concerns. Therefore, forgiveness is, in fact, a manifesta-

tion of this benignity of the superego and the by-product of the evo-

lution of ego ideal along with the ability to love and to being loved.

Nevertheless, the potential for the contribution of evolved ego ideals


on the way to psychological transformation have not been centre stage

in psychoanalysis.

Salman Akhtar (2009) provides a refreshingly new voice in the

psychoanalytic landscape when he considers human goodness, that is,

the motivation to be good, as part and parcel of psychoanalytic explora-

tions. He cites Silberer (1914), who considers concepts describing human

goodness, such as humility, gratitude, reparation, empathy, care, gen-

erativity, etc., as having life-enhancing, world-enriching, “anagogic”

qualities that “sustain love, meaning, relatedness and legacy” (2009,

Good Feelings, p. xxxii). Furthermore, by revisiting the contribution of a

number of analysts, including Winnicott, Klein, Bion, and Erickson in

tackling this subject, he remarks that a concept such as generativity is at

a higher level of abstraction than genital primacy. For instance, he high-

lights the important motivational force for self-preservation in Freud’s

life instinct as a barrier against self-destructiveness and points to Bion’s

implication of human goodness in his notion of truthfulness and the

human capacity to have faith. To those who object to these postulations

of human goodness in psychoanalysis because they only represent a

good outcome of a successful analysis, and are simply an indication

of healthy development regardless of its good or bad cadence, he con-

tends that these are, indeed, developmental accomplishments but they

are not free of ethical implications. The concept of forgiveness falls into

the category of good feelings and is embedded in the benign aspects of

the superego, enriched by positive parental introjects with their loving

and tolerant functions; despite its ethical implications, forgiveness is

also motivated by the ego’s need to be loving and loved.

For the child, feeling compromised because of all the defensive meas-

ures that are products of an insecure attachment, the damping down of

his feelings or the giving up of curiosity for security is unforgivable.

Parents come to be perceived as contributing to an emotional paraly-

sis that will compromise the child in every step of his life. Depend-

ing on the degree of its impact on development, this is an unforgivable

crime, considering that something has gone terribly wrong in the order

of things, namely, that the parents in charge of the child’s thriving and

growth have turned against him and he cannot give up his depend-

ency on them. I rely on Greenacre’s (1967) definition of traumatic con-

ditions: “Any conditions which seem definitely unfavorable, noxious,

or drastically injurious to the development of the young individual”

(p. 277). Simultaneously, if the benign aspects of the superego develop


out of identification with the protective, caring, and loving aspects of

the same injurious caregivers, and if the patient’s identification with

the superego of the parents also includes the amiable qualities of their

superego, then the developmental failures leave the patient with such a

narcissistic rage and grudge that the accessibility to these positive iden-

tifications is blocked under a blanket of repression, since they contradict

the omnipotent, mad superego that is set to justify the hatred and anger.

If the patient is able to gradually repair his losses and thwarted abilities

in analysis, then these benign identifications no longer need to be disa-

vowed. With this awareness comes gratitude for what one has received.

The forgiving attitude, then, is the product of the resurfacing of this

early identification with the benign aspects of the parents’ superego,

facilitated by the transferential aspects of the work with the analyst.

Obviously, the reassessment of the overall balance of the relationship

as good enough will determine the resurfacing of the repressed benign

qualities of the parents and, subsequently, the wish for forgiveness.

If the most primary exploits of psychoanalysis are the softening of

the archaic punishing superego and helping it mature, then at some

point in analysis one would expect an increased sense of loving orienta-

tion to the world and a sense of well-being associated with the surfac-

ing of the benign aspects of the superego that emanates from positive

identifications with the parents. This benign superego is not just kinder

and more loving; it also carries a newfound capacity to embrace real-

ity and the capacity for more nuanced and less distorted interaction

with the world, since the moral commandments emanating from the

superego are defensive and inhibit full expression of emotional needs

for the sake of security (Holmes, 2011). With increased expansion

of the ego as the prime agent of rationality, and with the diminution

of the superego demand for narcissistic gratifications from the ego

ideal, the internal world becomes less threatening as the external world

becomes less disappointing. The heretofore primitive defences that

had led to the mindset of splitting mostly manifest in “innocent me/

guilty others” abates and there is a diminished need for non-negotiable

moral superiority. Instead, the patient can tolerate and take responsibil-

ity for his aggression and no longer be plagued by the victimisation

and brutalisation that is the legacy of a superego that is composed of

the worst parental identifications mixed with the child’s own aggres-

sive, hostile projections onto them. Gradually, as one’s own fantastic

elaboration of events is understood and the subsequent rigid defences


are recognized as products of one’s own mind, there is an increased

self-understanding that facilitates personal responsibility. As the cycle

of anger, guilt, and punishment diminishes, the increased responsibility

for one’s own investment in hatred, disappointment, and hostility shifts

focus from the wrongdoer of the past to oneself, from victimhood to

agency. The grudge diminishes through this empowerment and so does

the tension with the significant offenders generally, the parents. Shafer

(1999) emphasises that as the reality testing improves, the potential for

making allowances for imperfection develops, making room for more

differentiation and object relational stability. He considers making

allowance for imperfection in pleasure an important constituent of tol-

erating ambivalence, a hallmark of entry into the depressive position.

As the positive parental imagos become more accessible, and the need

to hang on to disappointment as a defence against hopeful expectation

diminishes, a gradual shift of affect toward the parents follows.

When there is a capacity to see the offender both as good and bad the

outcome of a tremendous amount of psychoanalytic work of revisiting

the trauma, its aftermath, and an evolving newfound capacity for self-

reflection the more mature superego, no longer in the grip of the Talion

principle, becomes more congruent with ego’s self-reflective functions.

The conscious guilt associated with one’s own hatred now has a pur-

pose for constructive activities within the relationship. It is no longer a

meaningless guilt (Bion, 1962) in search of self-punishment. The super-

ego is now mature enough to become more flexible, resilient, differenti-

ated, and adaptive to the environment and more forgiving, because it is

capable of gradation and the subtle criteria necessary for judging what

is permissible for oneself and the world and what is not (Holmes, 2011).

Therefore, the surfacing in analysis of a forgiving attitude, as opposed to

the past, punishing attitude, is inextricably linked with the emergence

of the benign superego. This concept was only minimally explored in

psychoanalysis by Freud and others, although Freud did not ignore its

healthy presence (Shafer, 1960).

Holmes (2011) offers a new attachment perspective on superego, not

only as heir to the Oedipal conflict but also as heir to the attachment rela-

tionships. He sheds light on the role of the benign superego, its neglected

role in psychoanalysis, and cogently illustrates how these two perspec-

tives—namely, the problematic Oedipal constellation and the conflictual

attachment needs—interact throughout the analysis. He demonstrates

that the dyadic interaction between the internal parent and the child


is not only about the internal parent in charge of regulating the child’s

sexual and aggressive drives, but, from an attachment perspective, the

dyad also represents the internalisation of the care-seeker/care-giver

couple. Holmes conceptualises these functions of care-providing as the

maternal counterpart of the paternal Oedipal heir. The role of mental-

isation that is, the increased ability to understand the inner forces that

guide the behaviour of oneself and others becomes crucial in the self-

reflective, self-observing capacity of the superego, while providing

regulatory function for the psyche. Holmes justly points out that this

function of the superego has been eclipsed by the second facet of the

superego that represents moral values and conscience, with its guilt

evocations when policing transgressions. Through his case material,

Holmes illustrates how, in the structure of the superego, the vicissitudes

of the patient’s need for security is always intertwined with the facet

of the superego in charge of parental prohibitions and how the uncon-

scious conflict between the two facets can be debilitating to the patient.

It is within this more inclusive and broader conceptualisation of the

superego that the topic of forgiveness as a potential capacity embedded

in the “loving and beloved” superego, and the unfolding of it at certain

points in analysis, becomes an exclusively analytic pursuit. Shafer sums

it up with these words: “The feeling of sustained contact, the sexual

pleasure to be derived from morality, the relief from the inevitable sense

of guilt, and the substitution of activity for passivity, all contribute to and

derive from the experience of loving and being loved by the superego”

(Shafer, 1960, p. 182). The emergence of a more benign superego is about

abating hatred and hateful orientation, the enemy of self-observation

and self-reflective function observed in the state of unforgiveness.

Regarding the analyst’s benign presence, vis-à-vis a patient’s angry

attacks, Strachey’s (1934) elaborate discussion of mutative interpretation

is significantly relevant to the topic of forgiveness in psychoanalysis. The

analyst’s commitment to understanding and to grounding the patient in

reality, is the very essence of her ability to give meaning to the patient’s

angry transferential provocations and attacks, in the spirit of tout com-prendre, c’est tout pardoner (to understand all is to forgive all). In other

words, through a fundamental tenet of psychoanalysis—neutrality

in the service of curiosity—the analyst’s creation of an unbiased

exploratory atmosphere, enriched by the tool of interpretation, gives

the patient a new opportunity to reflect on his anger and, through

his identification with the reflective function of the analyst, move


toward self-understanding and mentalisation. In addition, through

identification with the benign, non-retaliatory presence of the analyst,

he enters into a forgiveness-of-self mode. Strachey demonstrates how

under such circumstances the expectation of retaliation is met instead

with mutative interpretations:

I shall take as an instance the interpretation of a hostile impulse. By

virtue of his power … as auxiliary superego, the analyst gives per-

mission for a certain small quantity of the patient’s id-energy … to

become conscious. Since the analyst is also, from the nature of things,

the object of the patient’s id-impulses, the quantity of these impulses

which is now released into consciousness will become consciously

directed toward the analyst. This is the critical point. If all goes well,

the patient’s ego will become aware of the contrast between the

aggressive character of his feelings and the real nature of the ana-

lyst, who does not behave like the patient’s “good” or “bad” archaic

objects. The patient … will become aware of a distinction between

his archaic phantasy object and the real external object. The inter-

pretation has now become a mutative one, since it has produced a

breach in the neurotic vicious circle. (Strachey, 1934, pp. 142–143)

Following his hostile attacks on the analyst, as the patient’s persecutory

expectation is met with meaningful exploration of the motives and con-

text behind the hostility, he experiences a halt in the movement toward

retaliation, a halt produced by the analyst’s suspension of judgment

which allows the patient to begin anew, to be less vengeful and more

forgiving. An unintended consequence of the analyst’s containing and

interpretive function is that the patient has in the transference a benign

model of a forgiving parent heretofore absent from his mental land-

scape. This is a second chance to furnish the psyche with a loving, for-

giving introject that was amiss throughout its development.

Arendt echoes this analytic situation with its therapeutic action in

her (1958) description of forgiveness as “the only reaction which does

not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by

the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences

both the one who forgives and one who is forgiven” (p. 241)—as in the

therapeutic action of psychoanalysis whereby the suspension of judg-

ment allows for the possibility of rebirth and starting anew. Kristeva

(1997) expands Arendt’s perspective on the suspension of judgment in

psychoanalysis as she revisits it and points out that interpretation in


psychoanalysis not only helps healing but effectively creates a situation

that facilitates forgiveness. Following the diminution of hatred and the

accompanying guilt, improved mentalisation facilitates forgiveness.

Powerful feelings of hatred in the aftermath of trauma compromise this

crucial developmental milestone. In this regard, Fonagy aptly remarks:

“Forgiveness and the growth of love go hand in hand in a mutually

facilitative, benign cycle … guilt becomes more bearable through the

growth of love and the capacity to repair” (Fonagy, 2009, p. 442).

The relinquishing of grudge plays an important role in expanding

the ego access to heretofore forbidden memories of potential goodness

of the offending party. It facilitates the two-phase process of forgiveness

consisting of the process of repair by the individual’s relinquishment of

the damaging forces of his own hatred, set on destruction of the object,

and the gradual fading of the grudge, along with the newfound ability

to make contact with hidden wishes heretofore masked by primitive

defences associated with hatred and vengeful preoccupations. It is this

honest connection with one’s true self, no longer cut off by hatred, that

leads to the surfacing of a shift of affect toward the perpetrator, setting

off an unconscious wish to settle for the good-enoughness (Winnicott,

1951) of the relationship in order to enrich the psyche with a sense of

rootedness in a heavily loaded relationship—a significant step in the

progression to forgiveness of the traumatising parents. With a new

outlook on the self and on one’s adverse circumstances, significant

relationships with wrongdoers are reassessed, and the fate of those rela-

tionships is reconsidered with less hostility and hatred.

The manifestation of forgiveness in intimate relationships through

the emergence of a shift in affect is a testament to the power of the lov-

ing and beloved superego in search of goodness, even in a previously

unlikely place. This is the true dynamic of forgiveness, that differen-

tiates and distinguishes it from forgiveness in other settings. Genu-

ine forgiveness only occurs in psychoanalysis because it provides the

optimum arena for faithfully re-examining and representing the past,

despite its reconstruction. It is the fruit of long and hard self-introspec-

tion, working through the rage and disappointment of failed expecta-

tions, and mourning the losses. If at some point through the change of

affect toward the perpetrator one experiences a wish to forgive, this wish

is mobilised by the healthy narcissistic need of the individual to resume

a significant relationship that is most meaningful to the psyche. Unlike

other situations, self interest, and not altruistic concerns, is the primary


motive in the dynamic conceptualisation of forgiveness. This dynamic

brings forgiveness one step closer for potential consideration as a

psychoanalytic concept, a construct with meanings diametrically

opposed to its formulation in religious or socio-political fields, or in

fact, in any field outside psychoanalysis.

Those concerned about transplanting a religious concept into psycho-

analysis are apprehensive of its misuse and its idealisation as a desirable

outcome which may interfere with the neutrality and non-agenda frame

of psychoanalysis. Rather than being a dangerous intrusion in the non-

judgmental arena of psychoanalysis, forgiveness as it occurs in psy-

choanalysis could be conceived as the continuous manifestation of the

dominance of the benign and mature superego. In fact, the more acces-

sible benign superego, minimally tainted by aggression, optimises an

unbiased ability for self-observation and, as such, enhances the person’s

ability to be grounded in reality. Simultaneously, its ego ideal functions

are more in line with promoting, rather than condemning, aspirations.

The appearance of a forgiving attitude toward oneself and others is a

consequence of alterations in the superego which in its more primitive

mode as the seat of aggression, was engulfed by its conscience function

of policing; this provided the semblance of control through terrorising

the ego, pigeonholing, and prohibiting access to kinder identifications.

Letting go of the grudge—M against herself and T against the

world−and giving up on the fantasy of revenge as the panacea for

alleviating the pain of being wronged, opens the work of mourning,

an intra-psychic process of accepting the reality of loss and coming to

terms with it. More importantly, as Kernberg (2010) has remarked, grief

can usher powerful reparative impulses with the internalised object,

and these reparative processes can expand into spiritual orientation.

Certainly there is significant overlap between the process of mourn-

ing and the gradual move toward forgiveness. The crucial factor in the

emergence of the wish to forgive is attachment, or libidinal cathexis, of

the relationship, which Fonagy (2009) considers the seed of forgiveness

as well as its primary product. Forgiveness of intimate others following

the recovery from the trauma is rooted in this attachment, significant not

only in terms of kinship but also in its powerful emotional loading of

prolonged shared experiences with good and bad content. If the overall

balance tilts toward good-enoughness then it is not in ego/self-interest

to give up and abandon the salvaging of the relationship by remaining

either indifferent/accepting or unforgiving. With the discovery of an

overall good-enough balance, a gradual change of affect followed by a


wish to forgive will protect the relational investment. For these reasons,

genuine forgiveness, emanating from superego alteration and extended

to significant others, belongs only to psychoanalysis. Nowhere else can

such a deep transformation, rooted in the most profound interaction

with an attuned and understanding other—the analyst—provide the

possibility of such humanised treatment of oneself and the other; this

stems from a newfound ability to realistically and comprehensively

understand and judge the total context of actions. Enhanced ability to

find meaningful one’s own inner psychic experience permits empathy

with, and processing of, the other’s motives, beliefs, and intentions and

plays an important role in downgrading the hurt caused by the offend-

ing party—just as the empathy and understanding of the analyst con-

tains and diminishes the patient’s aggression and hostility. Therefore,

the progression from self-forgiveness to the wish to forgive the intimate

other is further facilitated by the patient’s new-found capacity to con-

sider the extenuating circumstances and reassess malice and intentions.

He is now capable of considering the whole context of offence and of

taking into account the offender’s limitations and compromising cir-

cumstances. All these new developments speak volumes to the patient’s

increased reality testing and capacity to mentalise. Fonagy (2009) high-

lights defects in the capacity for internal forgiveness as a feature of the

same psychopathology that has concerned attachment theory and for

which the indicators of overcoming childhood adversity have been

identified. He remarks that the incessant hatred and vengefulness with

which some patients start their analytic work can, with appropriate

technique, grow into reparative consideration, with the net effect of

helping them overcome internal fragmentation caused by hatred.

Forgiveness as an attribute of the benign superego, the heir to the

attachment relationship (Holmes, 2011), is a useful dynamic concept

whose manifestation in psychoanalysis is of great importance. Fur-

thermore, Holmes remarks that the positive effect of psychoanalysis, of

allowing the individual to enter into a depressive position, promotes the

propensity toward forgiveness not only in terms of achieving a more tol-

erant superego through mutative, transference interpretations (Strachey,

1934) but also through the dissolution of the superego, ego expansion,

and a realistic assessment of the world, as opposed to a childish phantas-

magoria conducted by the fear mongering function of a brutal superego.

In his discussion of Lear’s model of therapeutic change, Holmes (2011)

remarks that this benign superego is not just about the unfolding of a

good parental introject, it entails the individual’s new respect for truth,


including the truth of one’s own hatred and destructiveness, by taking

responsibility for it and no longer blaming the parental imperfections.

This new ability to self-reflect occurs under secure conditions, and the

resulting maturity is no longer just about replacing hatred with love but

also “mastering the anxiety that inhibits exploration, including explora-

tory self-understanding” (Holmes, 2011, p. 1233). The implication of

this new way of conceptualising the emergence of the benign superego

in the course of analysis, and the unfolding of the wish to extend the

gains of self forgiveness to others, is significant. The safety and security

of the analytic setting, by furthering one’s ability to let go of primitive

defences, allow a more nuanced judgment of the circumstances. Con-

texts matter, subtlety and ambiguity prohibit immediate judgment; the

capacity to understand the other with empathy precludes immediate

verdicts and encourages curiosity and exploration.

The positive regulatory function of the superego potentially trans-

lates into forgiveness. As an analysis advances, the possibility of healing

is enhanced through bonding with the very same significant wrongdoer

of the past whose negative presence had compromised the sense of self.

Since the gains of analysis allow the psyche to make a more realistic

assessment of the overall relationship and as the benign and loving

qualities of the same significant past offender becomes more accessible,

the patient is offered a chance to embrace the worth-whileness of the

relationship through the emergence of his wish to forgive. By adding

an attachment perspective to the superego we see how the very first

primitive attempt at forgiveness dates back to, and coincides with, the

emergence of primitive unconscious guilt, taking place in the crucible

of parent-child relationship and testifying to the significance of attach-

ment needs of the child. After all, it was the indispensableness of the

relationship, with its highly charged significance, that gave rise to an

initial unconscious fantasy of control in the sequestering sequence of

guilt/self-punishment/forgiveness, compromising the reality-testing of

the child and alienating the child from a genuine relationship with the

parent. Later, with massive psychoanalytic work, it is the embracing of

the very same parental relationship that transforms the child and the

relationship through harvesting a long buried sequence of love/hope/

forgiveness. The recapturing of the goodness of the relationship, through

the change of affect and forgiveness, also brings the patient back to the

reality of the actual relationship, as the patient can see and tolerate the

good and the bad of the parental figure without defensive distortion.

true forgiveness belongs to...

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