psychotherapy

The Forgiveness Field: Martin Buber, William Blake, and David Bohm, by Rod Tweedy

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Quantum Therapy: How Forgiveness restores the relational field

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“Forgiveness is the great yes” – Martin Buber

 

“Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously and not minimising it; drawing out the sting of the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence.” – Bishop Desmond Tutu

 

“The Spirit of Jesus is continual forgiveness” – William Blake

 

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much” – Oscar Wilde

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Radical Forgiveness

3031353198_b5013103fe_oThe concept of forgiveness is often understood as operating within traditional ethical and philosophical contexts and frameworks involving issues of moral agency, moral standards, and moral virtue. But there’s another tradition of thinking which sees forgiveness as in a sense a transcendence of, or even a radical challenge to, normal or normative ‘moral’ thinking, with its emphasis (as Martha Nussbaum suggests) on the more ‘transactional’ or ‘performative’ aspects of ethical behaviour and decision-making – for example, calculating the pros and cons of forgiving someone, or weighing up the possible health benefits of forgiveness, which seem to imply and draw on a sort of moral ‘logic’ or ethical equation. 

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The Political Self: Understanding the Social Context for Mental Illness

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Integrating the Inner and the Outer: How Society Shapes Who We Are

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In my 2017 book, The Political Self: Understanding the Social Context for Mental Illness (Routledge), I explore how our social and economic contexts profoundly affect our mental health and well-being, and how modern neuroscientific and psychodynamic research has significantly developed our understanding of these wider discussions. The book therefore looks both inside and outside—indeed one of the main themes of the volume is that the conceptually discrete categories of “inner” and “outer” in reality constantly interact, shape, and inform each other. Severing these two worlds, it suggests, has led both to a devitalised and dissociated form of politics, and to a disengaged and disempowering form of therapy and analysis.

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“Rather than separating our understanding of economic and social practices from our understanding of affective development and human development, we need to bring them together, to align them: we need to realise that politics, the external world, is not a world without an ‘inner’.”

Drawing on a number of leading figures in these fields, including Iain McGilchrist, Sue Gerhardt, David Smail, Nick Totton, Joel Bakan, Nick Duffell, Dave Grossman, Joel Kovel, Jonathan Rowson, and James Hillman, the book argues that we need to understand people and their psychological distress in an essentially social and environmental context. Rather than separating our understanding of economic and social practices from our understanding of affective development and human development, we need to bring them together, to align them: we need to realise that politics, the external world, is not a world without an “inner”. And for this to happen, we need a new integrated model for mental health, and a new politics: we need a new dialogue between the political and personal worlds, and a recognition of how psychotherapeutic practice and the psyche both shape and are powerfully shaped by existing structures and interests.

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