HOW to APOLOGISE
& WHEN to FORGIVE
by
Kalu Singh
[1997]
PREFACE [2007]
Ten years ago I wrote a Discussion Draft which I called “An Apology for Apology”. My hope was to set up an interdisciplinary discussion group to look at the concept of contrition as a necessary condition for effective apology, forgiveness and reconciliation. I sent the draft to philosophers, theologians, psychoanalysts, translators - in the UK and abroad - Members of the House of Commons, Members of the House of Lords, Baronnesses, the Foreign Secretary, a members of the South African Truth & Reconciliation Committee and teachers. Most wrote back and some I met. All were encouraging and though the group did not form, the discussions opened up new projects for me,
In the following years new discussions would prompt me to append a few words. This Autumn, after a spirited discussion with a good friend, I have once again been thinking about ‘forgiveness’ : and I have added another appendix.
This last section concludes with my assertion that one’s theory of forgiveness is the most powerful thing one possesses. By 21, or perhaps even by 11, a person knows that sometimes other people will do bad things to one, both accidentally and maliciously. How one adjusts to this hurt and to the hurter will be informed by the theory of forgiveness one has arrived at. A person’s theory may be vague, poorly constructed, illogical, barely conscious, but that is what he/she uses to challenge and negotiate with or endure humiliation by the hurter once or ten times a day. No one has no theory.
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SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION
"We are all murderers and prostitutes!"
A great line to read when you're seventeen: in Laing's The Politics of Experience.
It's still a great line.
A few cornices away, we all make mistakes, do nasty things, even illegal and immoral things - sometimes. We all say "Sorry" sometimes. So we know that sometimes we feel better having said it or heard it. And we all know that sometimes, even after hearing it or saying it, we feel worse than ever. But whoever is saying the word or hearing the word, it's one of the simplest words in the language. It's not as hard as that mythical conversation between Borges and Burgess in Buenos Aires - in Anglo-Saxon - is it?
I am interested in the experience, and theory, of contrition and apology. It is a difficult subject to discuss, because I know that most people will say:
"Huh! Everyone knows about apology - how to offer it and how to receive it."
They will say this so wearily that I am to understand that they know it so well that whatever I'm about to say, or write, will be received by them as an affront to their intelligence & sensitivity. And yet, one doesn't have to turn one's antennae very far to hear the distressing cacophony of lamentation at apologies failed or withheld - most commonly at the domestic level but rising through all levels to international politics and religion.
Here is an easier question. We all know various people who impress us with their cooking or speaking or dancing or writing or driving or macramé. We could name them, tell their shoe size. So can you three people, know personally to you, who impress you with the gravitas of their moral understanding AND the luminosity of their contrition AND the good-grace of their apology AND the steadfastness of their resolution to behave differently? Or name one!
It's not a task at all to recount a million failed gestures. Think of three hurts and failed apologies in a row and you feel depressed for hours, even misanthropic.
What I will do here is as follows:-
Section 2: THE MODEL. I will present a model of apology.
Section 3: RESEARCH REALMS. I will outline different realms of knowledge & experience relevant to apology. I will state briefly:-
i) The specific realm
ii) A research proposal
Section 4: CONCLUSION
SECTION 2: THE MODEL
Consider Efi & Mal, two
ordinary adults, ordinarily healthy in body and mind: not depressed or
paranoid.
Let us say that there is a situation and Mal does
Action-X.
PRECONDITION 1: THE ACTION & THE HURT HAPPEN
There are three possibilities:-
a) Mal intends to hurt Efi,
and;
Mal
intends to do X, knowing this will surely hurt Efi.
Mal
does X, The result is:
a1) Efi feels hurt;
or
a2) Efi doesn't feel
hurt.
b) Mal unconsciously intends to hurt Efi, despite all public statements and gestures to the
contrary, and;
Mal
intends to do X, despite knowing this might hurt Efi.
Mal
does X. The result is:-
b1) Efi feels hurt;
or
b2) Efi doesn't feel
hurt.
c) Mal
doesn't intend to hurt Efi, and;
Mal intends
to do X, not knowing this might hurt Efi.
Mal
does X. The result is:-
c1) Efi feels hurt;
or
c2) Efi doesn't
feel hurt.
d) Mal
doesn't intend to hurt Efi; and
Mal
doesn't intend to do X, knowing this will surely hurt Efi.
X happens and Mal is involved in X
happening. (This is a plausible passive
form of the description `Mal does X').
The result is:-
d1) Efi feels hurt;
or
d2) Efi doesn't feel
hurt.
Scenario A describes a completely clear and successful
attack.
Scenario D describes an accident. B & C are grey scenes.
One possible result in each scenario is that Efi feels hurt.
Or, more formally:
Mal doing X is sufficient, though not necessary, for Efi to feel hurt.
MORAL LAW 1 (Do we or
ought we to live by this precept?)
When one person in a dyad feels hurt by the other
person's action, it is the latter's moral duty to heal the hurt and repair the
tear in the dyad.
PRECONDITION 2: THE HURT DECLARED
The hurt must be declared. This is best done by the hurt person, here Efi, declaring that she is hurt, and hurt by the other
person, here Mal.
viz Efi stating to
Mal. "I feel hurt by your doing
X".
a) She says it in words,
and not some `equivalent' non-verbal communication eg.
sulking, snapping, breaking things, attacking others.
b) She says it to Mal, and not to her
parents, children, friends, colleagues, or hairdresser.
c) Saying it to Mal's
face is the ideal: all other means of
relaying these SEVEN words - phone, letter, e-mail, flag or plane-smoke - are
weaker.
PRECONDITION 3: THE DECLARATION RECEIVED
On hearing Efi's statement
"I feel hurt by your doing X" said to him, Mal realises two things:-
a) He can't pretend he hasn't heard and so
received the declaration.
b) He also understands the inference that Efi thinks and feels that this action and hurt have created
an emotional and intellectual breach - chink to chasm - between them. This inference is valid because that is the
way moral concepts work.
c) He can't ignore the declaration and
inference. He must respond: even an
attempt to ignore it by not responding is an intentional response.
If Mal receives the communication by
any other means than Efi saying it to him, and
especially if there is only her `odd' behaviour or only sudden reports from
other people, then he might feel he is entitled to proceed believing nothing
has been communicated to him; and no further response is required from
him. This is the logical hard line; and
perhaps life would be a little less fraught if one was entitled to ignore all
ambiguous actions and third-party reports.
But human relations are based more on the spirit than the letter of the
social and moral rules. So perhaps Mal
ought to be alert to non-verbal clues from Efi and to
verbal clues from others with whom Efi engages.
PRECONDITION 4: THE REPARATIVE IMPULSE OBSERVED
Mal has received the declaration, noted the inference of
the breach and accepted that he must respond.
He now must ask himself, his heart and being, two questions: and answer
them as honestly as possible. It is
almost as if by answering honestly he might observe his true self.
a) Do I desire to repair this
breach/chink/chasm?
b) Do I desire to do so because I want to
re-establish the genuine, open-ended relationship between Efi
and I, spoiled by my doing action X? Or
do I simply want to protect a functional, albeit mutually useful, relationship
that we have?
If Mal's honest answer to a)
is "No, I don't desire to repair the breach", this may or may not be
a surprise to him. What it signals
clearly to him is that there are three further inferences:-
a1) He is no longer as concerned about Efi's feelings as he once was.
a2) He desires their relationship to become
less intimate or friendly.
a3) He may or may not wish to express more
anger or hatred by doing more actions like X.
Once these three inferences arrive then Mal has the
final decision:-
a4) Do I have the desire, and also the
necessary uncowardliness, even courage, to
communicate this preference to Efi; so that we both can
renegotiate how we engage in the future - with some cordiality, with only
minimal civility or complete silence?
If Mal's honest answer to a)
is "Yes, I do desire to repair the breach?" he may become aware of an
attendant impulse to do this promptly. His
task is to find the response to the hurt Efi which
will best expedite his wish to be reconciled with her. The question is `What would be the necessary
and sufficient conditions for this reconciliation?'.
I propose below a model that consists of four necessary
stages which become jointly sufficient as a response for the hurter, Mal.
STAGE 1:
UNDERSTANDING (& EXPLANATION)
Mal must communicate to Efi
that he understands two fundamental facts:-
(i) That she feels hurt and hurt precisely by his
action X. The simplest and undoubtedly
the best way would be for him to say to her: "I see and understand THAT
you are hurt by my doing X".
(ii) That he understands her reasons and
explanations for how and why his action X hurt her;
and crucially it is (almost) irrelevant that he, or others, would not feel hurt
by an action like action X. Again, the
simplest and best way would be for him to say to her; "I understand HOW
and WHY you feel hurt by my doing X".
These two utterances would be, let us say, sufficient
to allow Mal to proceed to the next stage.
But usually two further elements are present.
a) Mal's desire
to explain to Efi how action X and his connection to
it came about. This explanation will have one dominant tone of three possible:-
a1) Simple description. "I did X for reason R1: that's
all!"
a2) Justification. "I did X for reason R2: and
was fully right to!"
a3) Excuse. "I did X for reason R3: and was partly
right to!"
b) Efi's desire
for Mal to explain why he did X. From Efi's perspective the situation in THE FIRST PRECONDITION
above is crucial. She wants the
following questions answered:-
b1) Did
Mal intend - consciously or unconsciously - to hurt her?
b2) Did
Mal intend to do X?
b3) Did
Mal intend to do X precisely to hurt her?
The quality or reparative action that Efi will require from Mal will depend on:-
a) The quality of intention he owns up to.
b) The tone of explanation.
She understands two possible limits to the
success of her maintaining a requirement that Mal attempts to repair the
breach.
a) SCENARIO D: The `accidental' involvement of Mal in action
X
Logically, if Mal states he had no
intention to hurt Efi nor to
do X, and others validate this, then Mal has no case to answer. But social and moral rules imply that merely
being without intention is not sufficient to release one from the obligation to
attempt to heal the hurt and repair the breach.
One was in the story, so one must follow the story through.
b) SCENARIO
A: Mal's clear
and successful attack upon her
She feels, rightly, that there would
be something psychologically implausible, and so unbelievable, about Mal
attacking her one minute and attempting reconciliation a moment later.
There must be what Nixon called `a decent
interval', some time for Mal to reappraise the sequence - intention,
action and the result of Efi hurt.
Perhaps the intensity of Efi's
hurt, and his distress at seeing and feel her hurt, will persuade him that:-
a) He didn't really want to hurt her THAT
badly.
b) He was unfair - by their community
standard - of hurting her that much or even at all.
These possibilities overlap with SCENARIOS B & C,
where the possibility of partly intended and partly
unintended actions are present.
The establishment and acceptance by Mal and Efi of this ambivalence about intention is the necessary
task of the stage of understanding and explanation.
STAGE 2:
CONTRITION
This is the most subtle and most difficult stage. How does one become aware of the experience
in oneself and how does one recognise it in others? The ideal scenario is as follows:-
a) Mal has passed through Stage 1 above.
b) He sees Efi,
in front of him, separate from him, hurt - shocked, shaken, weeping.....
c) He experiences, senses the distress -
her distress - in the room, in the air, strangely seeming to pass from her body
into his, connecting the two of them.
d) He reminds himself that he is the
cause.
e) He regrets that he is the cause.
f) Her hurt passing into him reaches a critical
level - mass or resonance - and suddenly he feels so unsettled, disturbed,
guilty and ashamed that he feels strangely broken; as if his sense of his own
integrity - that manageable mixture of his own goodness and badness - has
fractured, revealing an impulse of badness, and a capacity to harm others, that
is unmanageable.
g) This draining of the rampant Ego, and
its replacement by an imploded, ashamed and frightened Self, leaves Mal visibly
shaken. His sense of shame at hurting Efi is further complicated by his fear that his action
might result in losing or being abandoned by her. He feels separated from her, lost in his
misery.
h) This is the crucial experiential
break. In mirroring the first breach
between Mal and Efi, created by Mal's
action X, it is the final and perfect proof for Efi
that Mal understands and regrets the hurt she felt at that first breach.
i) She sees Mal, in front of her,
separate from her, hurt - shocked, shaken, perhaps even weeping.
j) She experiences, senses the distress -
his distress - in the room, in the air, strangely seeming to pass from his body
into hers, connecting the two of them:
and somehow displacing her sense of her own distress.
k) She feels pity and compassion for
Mal. She feels she would like to help
him put himself back together again - for his and for her sake, for their
relationship.
The obvious question is `How can one tell that the
experiences delineated above, whether in oneself or in
others, are genuine?" Couldn't a
person pretend to be distressed at having caused another person hurt and
distress? Well of course - one can act
any emotion. But then only a regular -
or pathological liar - would try to. The
more common experience in ordinary life is that the hurt person, Efi, becomes aware that the only response Mal can manage
after admitting "Yes I intended to hurt you by doing X", is a kind of
emotional paralysis. She infers from
this that it is probably pointless to say "Well, how do
you feel about your causing my hurt?" She senses, whereas he knows, that when he
looks inside his heart and mind for an answer they are empty: he can't think or
feel anything. Tragically, the situation
gets worse: for into this vacuum come anxiety and terror. Mal feels that Efi
might attack him. The worst-case
scenario is that Mal deals with this fear by a preemptive
strike on Efi, more savage than action X. So once Efi senses Mal's moral vacuum she decides the sensible thing would be
to withdraw, to abandon the appeal for apology.
I would like to suggest that this experience of
contrition, felt and observed, is the epicentre of the act of apology. Even people who don't know the word
`contrition' proceed through the efforts of reconciliation waiting for this
unnameable experience to come into the room.
Whatever insufficiency they feel in someone's apology, it has its roots
in the insufficiency of this experience.
It is of psychological and cultural interest that this word -
delineating a very precise experience - is no longer familiar nor much used.
STAGE 3:
THE APOLOGY
This seems to be the easiest stage. All that is required is the utterance of two
words: "I apologise" or the
more common but vaguer trio: "I'm
sorry".
The proper tone - of voice and gesture - with which they
are uttered comes from the preceding experience of contrition. It is allowable but not necessary to say
"I'm contrite": for the
contrition is show in three other ways:-
a) The preceding experience of contrition.
b) The tone with which one states "I
apologise".
c) The tone with which one states and
discharges Stage 4: the Resolution.
STAGE 4:
RESOLUTION (AND PURGATION)
No mature, adult-minded, even sane person wants to
experience again and again - daily, weekly, monthly - unhealthy situations and
their attendant emotions. So the final
stage in the effort to establish reconciliation is to initiate the process
which will prevent repetition. This
consists of:-
a) The statement of the resolution to
refrain from doing action X. viz
Mal says:
"I
will not do X again".
Perhaps it is a point for negotiation between Mal and Efi whether the simple declaration will do or whether more
moral force and commitment are required, in the form of a promise: "I promise I will not do X again".
b) The acting out of the resolution over a
period of time T: which is long enough to persuade Efi and also Mal that a repetition of X is acceptably
improbable.
c) The resolution is strengthened by
purgation: (explained below).
The resolution is necessary and sufficient to
avoid the mess which doing X created - Efi hurt, Mal
distressed, and the efforts of reconciliation.
Of course simply not-doing X may not be the best way to address the
complex situation which led to the doing of X:
but at least it won't reproduce the situation doing X produced.
c) PURGATION
This is a means of strengthening the plain resolution to
not-do X: the act of omission. Another action, Y, is done: the act of commission. Mal states more to himself, than to Efi:-
"I will
do action Y for time T, as a means of attending, for a while, to the meaning of
this recent experience of intending to hurt Efi by
doing action X: and the subsequent
necessary effort of reconciliation.
Perhaps the meaning and understanding born of
this action and time will enable me to purge myself, completely or at least
partly, of the impulse which led to the intention to hurt Efi".
The nature of
action Y - whether it is offered by Mal or imposed by Efi
or others: and whether it is conceived as retributive punishment or rehabilitation
- is another complex topic. At the level
of the
structure of
the model and its functional dynamics, Mal's desire
to do action Y for time T obviates any necessity to impose the requirement he
do action Z as a guarantee that he won't do action X again.
Ideally Mal
comes to see that the opportunity to do action Y for time T is a grace and
haven. He will do it daily or weekly and
each time with good grace and a cheerful heart.
Though it is intrinsically
connected to the appeal
for and receipt of forgiveness, it is in significant ways independent of those
elements. As a virtue, it is its own
reward!
POSTCONDITION 1: THE APPEAL RECEIVED
To recap, Mal intended to hurt Efi
by doing X, and Efi was hurt. Then he attempted to be reconciled with Efi by proceeding through the four stages, making the
statements and doing the actions with honesty and good-grace. This effort constitutes the appeal for
forgiveness. It is allowable but not
necessary for him to say "Please forgive me". He can do no more than this. From this moment the baton of moral
obligation passes to Efi.
POSTCONDITION 2a: FORGIVENESS GIVEN
Efi is now
morally obliged to forgive Mal. This
consists of three parts:-
a) Efi accepts
the contrition, apology and resolution, by saying: "I accept your
apology".
b) Efi offers
forgiveness, by saying: "I forgive you".
c) Efi
articulates the inference, by saying:
"Now, let us close the door on that episode, and go forward
together".
POSTCONDITION 2B: FORGIVENESS WITHHELD
Here again the crucial element is Time. There is undeniably a rhythm to the human
heart. From the moment X was done, Efi has had to attend to and process certain experiences.
a) The initial shock of action X.
b) The pain attendant on the realisation that
Mal wanted to hurt her. This pain
broadens into a mixture of sadness and anger.
c) The complex emotional and intellectual
task of attending to Mal's effort at
reconciliation. His passage, through the
four stages, has to be appraised by Efi for clarity
and genuineness.
d) She has also to attend to how his
efforts are attenuating her sense of pain - hurt,
sadness and anger.
Ideally there is synchronicity: as Mal proceeds through
the four stages she feels her pain diminishing.
So that by the time he is effectively saying, "Please forgive
me", she can answer, "I forgive you".
But most commonly there will be a time-lag,
producing one of two types of withholding:-
i) If Mal completes his four stages -
however honestly and genuinely - before Efi has processed
her emotions of hurt, anger and sadness, then she will know and feel that
though she recognises intellectually that Mal's
efforts are complete and that he can do no more, she still has an unmanageable
residue of hurt, anger and sadness which inhibits her from genuinely accepting
his apology and offering genuine forgiveness.
She might say:-
a) "I accept your apology, but I
can't forgive you YET".
b) "Please give me a little more
time".
ii) If Mal is too slow in his progress
through the stages, Efi might feel sceptical of the
genuineness of his statements and actions.
So by the time he completes, she will have acquired an additional volume
of anger (and sadness) at his seeming obtuseness: which has left her feeling
even worse. And she will say then:-
a) "I don't accept your apology and I
won't forgive you".
b) "You've hurt me more: so try again, and harder this time!"
THE IDEAL SEQUENCE
(KEY: T = THOUGHT F = FEELING S =
STATEMENT A = ACTION : TWO AGENTS Mal & Efi
|
PRECONDITION 1 |
Mal |
T&F |
I intend to hurt Efi
and |
|
The Action and |
|
T |
I intend to do X, to hurt Efi. |
|
The Hurt Happen |
Mal |
A |
He does X. |
|
|
Efi |
T&F |
I feel hurt by Mal doing X. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
PRECONDITION 2 |
Efi |
S |
I feel hurt by your doing X. |
|
The Hurt Declared |
Efi |
A |
She looks shocked & is weeping |
|
|
Efi |
T&F |
I feel hurt Mal wanted to hurt me: |
|
|
|
|
So I feel there is now a breach
between us. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
PRECONDITION 3 |
Mal |
A |
I see Efi
is hurt by my doing X. |
|
The Declaration |
|
T&F |
There is now a breach between us. |
|
Received |
|
T |
What do I want to do? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
PRECONDITION 4 |
Mal |
T |
Perhaps I was unfair |
|
The Reparative |
|
T |
Perhaps I didn't want to hurt her so
bad. |
|
Impulse Observed |
|
T |
Do I desire to heal her hurt and |
|
|
|
T |
repair the breach? |
|
|
|
T |
Yes!
But what do I do? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
APOLOGY 1 |
Mal |
S |
I see and understand that you are
hurt by my doing X. |
|
Understanding & |
Efi |
T&F |
At least he understands that much. |
|
Explanation |
Efi |
S |
But why did you do X to me? |
|
|
Mal |
S |
I did X for Reason-R (& was partly
right to do so.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
APOLOGY 2 |
Mal |
A |
I see Efi
(was) is shocked & weeping. (He looks upset) |
|
Contrition |
|
T |
I did that. How could I be so bad? |
|
|
|
T |
I can't believe I'm such a brute. |
|
|
|
F |
I feel awful. |
|
|
Efi |
T&F |
He seems to understand how hurt I
am. |
|
|
|
T |
He looks quite shocked. |
|
|
|
T |
I believe he does understand. |
|
|
|
F |
I can feel he is shocked. |
|
|
|
F |
I can feel he is upset. |
|
|
|
F |
Oh this feels too much to me. |
|
|
|
T&F |
I feel I must help him |
|
|
|
|
|
|
APOLOGY 3 |
Mal |
S |
I apologise. |
|
Apology |
|
T |
I can't do any more. |
|
|
|
T |
I hope she will forgive me. |
|
|
|
T |
I hope both of us will feel better
then. |
|
|
Efi |
T |
He's apologised. |
|
|
|
T&F |
It feels like a genuine apology |
|
|
|
T |
I can't expect him to say/do more. |
|
|
|
T |
So, it’s up to me now. |
|
|
|
S |
I forgive you. |
|
|
Mal |
S |
Thankyou. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
APOLOGY 4 |
Mal |
T |
That's a relief. What a time! |
|
Resolution and |
|
T
|
Will it happen again'. |
|
Purgation |
|
T |
Will Efi
believe me next time. |
|
|
|
T |
I need time to think. |
|
|
Mal |
S |
I (promise) I won't do X again |
|
|
|
S |
I will do Y for time T and think
about this episode |
|
|
Efi |
T |
He sounds genuine. |
|
|
|
S |
Thankyou |
|
|
|
|
|
|
POSTCONDITION 1 |
Efi |
S |
Thankyou |
|
|
|
|
Let’s close that episode now, and lets go forward. |
|
|
Mal |
S |
Thankyou |
COMMENTS ON THE MODEL
1 I anticipate that most people's initial
reaction to the model will be:-
"What a
ponderous and ugly structure, and how irrelevant and untrue to ordinary life! I know - and my friends and relatives know -
how to apologise. I don't think that
way: life is not read off a moral wallchart. And if it doesn't make sense to ordinary
people, then it's unnecessarily `clever'!.
Unsurprisingly, that viewpoint strikes me as jejeune
and belied by common experience – everybody’s.
It is a sad fact that most people apologise very inadequately. This is not a matter of brainpower, but
heart-power, of intelligent sensitivity - what Bettelheim
called `the informed heart'.
2 The model is based largely on Dante
and, more privately, on experiences within my family. Though it might seem heretical, I feel one
can separate Dante's genius for psychological understanding from his
theological imperatives. `Purgatory'
might be seen as a blessed prison or a final moral-school: the `Inferno' is a
more familiar prison. One of the finest
accounts in our time of an experience which fits the above model - and after so
many, many years - is found in Eric Lomax `The
Railway Man' - the book and the tv
documentary.
3 The model is the product of experience
and is of course to be tested by experience - to see how it facilitates the
good society, however that is conceived.
There may be better models and explanations.
4 Though I do not include it in the
model, I accept that there is another post-condition which is relevant - restitution
or recompense and for how much time this effort must endure. Having exchanged apology and forgiveness, how
much money or goods and, even more importantly, how much difficulty or pain for
the hurter will be enough both for the hurt person's and for the hurter's
recovery of a sense of well-being? I
will say more about this another time.
5 More also needs to be said about time
- the rhythm of the various stages. What
has been surprising in recent years is the way men and
women of the war generation have wanted to look at thoughts and feelings locked
away for almost fifty years. For those
who were not there, this impulse can only command fear and respect for the
density of human misery.
6 I hold as an axiom that the most
important thoughts and feelings that a human being wants or needs to
communicate to another can be communicated in under
five minutes and in the simplest language.
It is only to explain the lack of sensitivity or emotional intelligence
that produces failures of communication - billions by the hour - that theory
and time are required.
7 That said,
I'm aware that concepts like `intention', `action', `accident', `knowledge',
etc have precise philosophical meanings and usages. So the above account is, let us say, fairly
broad. It would be useful to give an
account of a person's understanding of the crucial distinction between a `slip'
and a `systematic error' and the associated concept of `practice'.
SECTION 3:
THE REALMS
1) LINGUISTICS
1A THE
REALM
The word `sorry' has to do an
enormous number of things. Its use, or
perhaps its overuse, by English speakers has become a light joke for speakers
of a different first-language; and of course by first-English speakers themselves
in light self-deprecation. There was a tv advert which had this word and
only this word said twenty times. I
don't know how this word relates, or used to relate, to `sorrow' or
`apology'. The latter seems clear enough
and yet a century ago tended to mean `defence'.
(Thus my original title).
1B RESEARCH
PROPOSAL
i) How have the words used to initiate,
exemplify - or simply describe - these experiences been brought into being and
developed?
<< sorry,
contrition, guilt, apology, sorrow, penitence, repentance, regret,
remorse>>
ii) How do other languages divide and
describe these experiences in words? It
is the realm of socio-linguistics to determine how different cultures and societies
- and thus their languages - hold and express the different nuances of these
experiences. Is it an index of
civilization that these words develop more and more subtle nuances? The corollary being that the loss of nuance
or words becomes an index of brutalisation.
I doubt it is controversial to state that there cannot be a society
without some sort of range of word/concepts for these experiences.
2) PHILOSOPHY
2A THE
REALM
Wittgenstein's concepts of `family
resemblance' and `form of life' seem apposite here. As does the concept of `illocutionary
act' which Austin introduced to give an account of what was happening
when men and women promised, ordered, threatened etc.
2B RESEARCH
PROPOSAL
What kind of acts - emotional and
intellectual - are involved in acts of, experiences of, moral understanding,
contrition, apology, resolution, forgiveness, and reconciliation. What are the necessary and sufficient
conditions for each of these acts and what are the consequences.
3) THEOLOGY
3A THE REALM
`Contrition' is a lahdedah word. I
guess most people don't use it and many might not even have a clear idea of
what it once meant and might still mean.
In the past it was theology which defined it. To use the word nowadays is to impute an almost
literary (non-real) resonance to someone's experience or expression. It is related to but different from guilt,
penitence, repentance, remorse, mortification, denial, self-chastisement,
laceration etc, etc.
3B RESEARCH PROPOSAL
What is that difference between
these concepts? How useful was it? How do other religions delineate these
experiences? Some religions propose a counsel of perfection to forgive
unconditionally. Is such a speech act/emotion psychologically or even logically
possible? If not, what consequences does such impossible moral overreaching
have for genuine
contrition and reconciliation.
4) PSYCHOTHERAPY
4A THE
REALM
On the spiritual path, the third stage,
`Enlightenment', is followed by the fourth, `The Dark Night of the Soul'. Historically, the hope of the Enlightenment,
that Humankind was perfectible, wasfollowed
by the gloomy doom-laden axioms of Nietzsche
and Freud - thus Laing's quote. So it felt strange to read Klein, Winnicott - and before them Suttie. The very possibility of the `depressive
position' and
the ‘stage
of concern' seem to bring hope again.
Suttie was almost Dantean
in his account of love-perverted. (In
the spiritual path, the fifth and final stage, which is
attained after enduring the dark night
of the soul, is
I hope it is
not precious to introduce the analogy of the spiritual path into a realm Freud
fought so hard to keep scientific. I
remember being astonished by Malan's use of the word
`miracle' when he spoke
of the `miracle
of the depressive position'. One
of the most common experiences for a therapist is witnessing the absolute
brokenness and despair of a client who has just recounted an experience
of parental
abuse that the parent, even years later, refuses to acknowledge or understand
or show contrition for and apologise for.
(I remember being impressed by a book on sexual abuse in which the
authors state clearly
that it is vain and ineffective to try to use religion (of cradle or
newly-found) to `forgive', in absentia, the unconcerned abuser as a way of
containing one's own confusion). This is
Bion’s realm of almost chemical equations of
projections and introjections, alpha and beta elements and the psychic
pocket.
It is also the
realm of heart-breaking irony:
"My father" said Spock's son "remained his
mother's son: as I remain my father's son": hinting at his own failure to use TWO
generations of misery
to protect his
child from himself.
4B) RESEARCH PROPOSAL
How is it to be defined
experientially by the client and the therapist?
Can one state it as a condition of initial maturation or finally
attained mental health. Do the experiences of transference and
counter-transference contain some sort of rehearsal of apology?
5) ART: LITERATURE, FILM ETC
5A THE
REALM
In these narratives - whether a poem
or a novel or a stage-drama or a film - any subject may be presented. We bring to the experience our understanding
that we are absolved of any responsibility for the fictional characters: but we
can enjoy watching them. We know the saying "Comedies end in marriage,
tragedies end in death", and we can decide before buying a book or a
ticket whether we want the frisson of courtship or of treachery and death.
5B RESEARCH
PROPOSAL
Is an expression of contrition or
apology ever a focal point in a narrative in a book, play or film? Do people want them or remember such scenes
as `pleasing'? How would a director or
voice specialist, like Rodenburg, teach an actor how
to present false contrition? I remember
being astonished by the rather cursory contrition and apology of Proteus in The
Two Gentlemen of Verona: and further
astonished that it finally released something in my heart after four years and effected the beginning of a reconciliation with my best
friend. Presentations of false
contrition and apology don't come any better than in Richard III or Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist.
A different theme is broached by the
strange essay at the heart of Kundera's The
Unbearable Lightness of Being: where
the principal character, himself morally dubious, reflects on the difference
between Oedipus who though guiltless of intentional moral fault blinds
himself: and the Czech rulers who though
persistently guilty of chosen moral fault just carry on unperturbed.
6) SOCIOLOGY/POLITICS
6A THE
REALM
Aggregations of individuals -
groups, communities, societies - fail their individual members by alienation or
anomie: and discipline them by law, fine and imprisonment. Religious groups discipline their individuals
by shaming, shunning and excommunication.
From the group's point of view it is a simple functional problem - can
the individual threatening the group be made to fit in? As long as the individual's external
behaviour changes, and the threat to the group passes,
the group is not concerned with what happens inside the individual or even if
the statements or motives were false.
The appearance of contrition is a tactical move on a par with wearing a
suit/dress rather than ripped shorts or fishnet stockings to one's trial. But speak the word only! I suppose this process of the gradual
irrelevance of contrition parallels the separation of Church from State.
It is a grim fact that for the past
fifty years, most political initiatives for addressing the problem of young
offenders have been consistently useless at the practical level and barren at
the theoretical level. Genuinely radical
efforts, employing psychotherapeutic knowledge, which began to show some
humanitarian success, typically lost funding.
When I was doing my PGCE in 1983 the
big new thing was the value of developing in pupils the skills of oracy as well as literacy and numeracy. I think this was mostly to do with social
confidence in describing one's experiences and in making one's point in a
discussion. I don't think it achieved
the subtle skill of knowing and feeling the value of the manners and good-grace
possible in being involved in a group pursuit of truth, as was produced by Lipmann's philosophy programme for six-year olds.
It is yet another quantum leap of
the heart & mind to understand & feel how one might offer or receive
understanding, contrition and apology without the sense of humiliation and/or self-annihilation
that produces the stonewalling that is so pervasive in youngsters of 12 or
50! To teach this to 12 year-olds or
middle-aged obdurates would take considerable
skill. Without it even the new Labour
government's attempts to get some sort of life-enhancing moral fission by
merely bringing together offender and their victim is likely to lapse into
opportune behaviourism or farce.
Here one must acknowledge the
courageous hope and sheer grandeur of gesture in setting up something called of
The Truth & Reconciliation Committee in South Africa. I don't know its principles and practices -
whether there is a required ritual or ceremony of contrition and apology that
precedes the ceremony of forgiveness and reconciliation. I am trying to arrange a meeting with a
doctoral student who has been out there looking at the Group's work.
When the groups involved are
different nation states and we are in the realm of real-politick, then
contrition becomes even more like fanciful posturing. Reparation is spoken of and is exacted. But this is not preceded by any requirement
of contrition or any test of its authenticity.
Nor - more perilously - is it considered whether an incontrite reparation will produce a desire - and
quite plausibly - for terrifying revenge:
even to finding the same train at
6B RESEARCH
PROPOSAL
The philosophical as well as
political question is `Can groups, governments or nations, offer or demand
apology? What instances of success and
failure are found in history? What
contributed to the success or failure?
What is the British government doing asking the Japanese government for
a `proper' apology and `more' reparation for the Second World War? Is Blair's apology to the Irish an example or
a bargaining trick to help the case against the Japanese? The Pope's apology to womankind recently
meant what? Who can judge him or it and
how - given his doctrinal infallibility?
What would a procedure or ritual of contrition and apology between
governments and nations look like? How
to draft it, implement it, test it?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
SECTION 4:
CONCLUSION [1997]
I do believe these are very interesting areas of
research. What a team of researchers
might produce are:-
a) An account of how apology fails at
present.
b) A series of tentative descriptions and
definitions of apology - for different contexts - individuals, couples, groups,
families or communities or nations - that might facilitate clearer acts or
rituals of apology or at least a dialogue about how these might be
approached. In the alchemy of the heart
it is apology that turns base emotions into the golden chain of reconciliation.
I would
love to be part of something like:-
i) A Contrition Project or
ii) A
Committee of Enquiry into Apology. (in the
spirit of the philosopher Bernard Williams’s Government Enquiry into ‘Obscenity’)
=======================================================================
APPENDIX 1
[This originally appeared as the first page
of the essay.
It invited the Rader to do a personal Apology
Audit. ]
SORRY TALES
1) Describe an apology you made, which was
well-made by you, and
well-received by the person you hurt.
2) Describe an apology you made, which was
well-made by you, but
badly-received by the person you hurt.
3) Describe
an apology you made, which was
badly-made by you, and
badly-received by the person you hurt, but
you still don't care.
4) Describe
an apology you made, which was
badly-made by you, and
badly-received by the person you hurt, and
which makes you still feel you want to make a well-made
apology.
5) Describe an apology made to you,
by a person who hurt you, which was
well-made by her, and
well-received by you.
6) Describe an apology made to you,
by a person who hurt you, which was
well-made by her, but
badly-received by you.
7) Describe an
apology made to you,
by a person who hurt you, which was
badly-made by them, and
badly-received by you, but
you still don't care.
8) Describe an apology made to you,
by the person who hurt you, which was
badly-made by her, and
badly-received by you, and
you still feel outraged and want from her a well-made
apology.
9) Describe some apologies -
well-made or badly made - from other people's lives, which have interested
you or even taught you something.
10) Describe some apologies -
well-made or badly-made - from TV, films or books, which have
interested you or even taught you something.
NOTE: A person who says she can't answer these
questions is posing or lying!
============================================================================
APPENDIX 2 (1998)
A) THE PLACE OF
INDIFFERENCE TO FAILED CONTRITION/APOLOGY
Let us consider `emotional hurt'
using the metaphor of a physical wound.
Action-X is a stabbing viz Mal stabs Efi with his dirty-knife.
Again let us assume neither Efi
or Mal are psychotics: this episode is promoted by (extra)-ordinary
high-emotion.
After the initial shock, Efi's own psychic-first-aid system - her own conscious and
unconscious will-to-health - will be activated.
This necessarily reflex level of response is not contingent upon what
Mal does next.
1) Efi will attend to the wound: she might cover it with her hand, press on a
pressure-point, clean it of the dirt, bandage it, take herself to Casualty to
get it checked and stitched.
2) Efi will wonder about the meaning of Mal's
attack.
CONTRITION,
in Mal, again is produced by an element in the spectacle of the bleeding Efi suddenly making him aware that he has forced his dirt
into Efi: that he had such an intention, that he did
such an action, that she is poisoned by his dirt. He feels as if by this act he has just
doubled the dirt in himself: and is more infected now than before. His strongest impulse is not to clean himself
but to clean her wound of his dirt.
APOLOGY would
be Mal offering first-aid: to clean the wound etc: perhaps offering to take her
to Casualty.
FORGIVENESS,
from Efi, would be her seeing that Mal is broken by
his awareness of the wound/infection he has caused her: seeing that he is
slipping into a dangerous self-infection which can perhaps only be halted by
his being allowed to clean her wound: and so she should let him help; clean the
wound, dress it, take her to Casualty.
REPARATION
would be Mal offering to buy her dinner, a holiday, paint her house, write her
a song......
Of course at the level of physiology
the body itself will attend to the wound.
We have supposed Efi to be ordinarily healthy
in body and mind: so the body's and the mind's
resources will act to the heal the physical wound. Perhaps this physical process is catalysed,
if not actually facilitated, by Mal's contrition and
apology (and reparation).
But what if after the stabbing Mal
doesn't acknowledge he has caused the wound?
Efi will of course attend to the wound as
in (1) and (2) above. But in the absence
of contrition and apology she can hardly forgive Mal.
Efi might
decide to wait a while - days, weeks, months - before representing to Mal the
wound/hurt he has caused her viz showing him the
sling, stitches, scar etc. But if he
persists in not acknowledging his part in the wounding, and consequently not
offering contrition and apology, let alone reparation, what does this do to the
wound and to Efi?
The wound won't knit properly, the
stitches won't quite hold, there will always be a slightly painful sense of
tugging, a corner of the wound will ooze pus (perhaps a slither of Mal's dirt/poison is still there). Rather than tight and healed stitches leaving
a strong scar, there will be, perhaps at best, a variously fragile scab.
I'm conscious of the metaphor mixing
inelegantly, even breaking down, but is indifference
to the person who failed, yesterday or months ago, to be contrite and
apologise, like such a scab? A necessary defence, even sort of effective, but having an
obtrusive visibility and ugliness very different from new scar-skin which soon
becomes anonymous. One forgets
because one has truly forgiven the person who truly apologised.
And like a scab, it can present a
temptation to her (or others) to pick at it - to remind herself
of the wound and Mal's awfulness. Or it might even get knocked off by a similar
attack by someone else.
Perhaps as the years go by the scab
becomes smaller and smaller, but never quite becoming new enduring skin. Efi can feel it's
there: and sometimes this will make her sad or even angry.
B) INTERCESSIONARY
FORGIVENESS
1) The defining exemplar of intercessionary forgiveness is Christ's own utterance "Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do". Here I would like to look at what sort of experience
this is: and how it relates to the schema above.
It is said, with magnificent
conciseness by Huxley, that there are four types of experience/procedure
designated by the one word `prayer': petition, intercession, adoration
and contemplation. I would guess that most theists, of whatever
religion, couldn't even name, let alone distinguish, between these four very
different experiences.
To posit intercessionary
forgiveness is to extrapolate from the similarity of the presence of a
triad. In petitionary
prayer there is, let us say, (One-)Self, (an-)Other
and the Deity: and just so in the drama of intercessionary
forgiveness. In the other forms of
prayer - petition, adoration and contemplation there are only dyads - Self
& Deity. Though perhaps to be
spiritually accurate, in contemplation - which aims at union - there is in fact
a monad.
The direction of prayer is (availing
myself of the received metaphor/idiom) upwards and
outwards - from mortal to deity. What is
crucial is the purity of the mortal's impulse to pray: the wish to request a
dyadic and dialogic relationship with God.
When Mal says, from a pure heart, "I pray to God" the channel
between himself and God is opened. It is
a pure channel: and it can take not only himself but also any other Self he is
concerned for.
The question is whether, by analogy,
there can be intercessionary forgiveness: and what is
implied when the attempt is made. Above
we looked at what are the preconditions for the hurt person Efi
saying to the hurter Mal, "I forgive you". I proposed the criterion of Mal's contrition as the touchstone for genuine
reconciliation between him and Efi. In this model situation the two persons Mal
and Efi are sufficient for the reconciliation: anyone
else, eg Otto, would be superfluous and called at
best an observer, at worst a violator.
Let us imagine a situation where, as
above, Mal has hurt Efi: and he is clearly not
contrite. Otto observes this and says to
Efi: "Forgive Mal, he doesn't realise what he's
done!"
What does Otto's utterance/gesture
achieve or imply?
a) Otto
forgives Mal: and recommends Efi does so as well.
b) Otto
doesn't forgive Mal: but he recommends Efi does.
c) Otto
feels his forgiveness is irrelevant: but he recommends Efi
does.
In a) and b) there is a presumption,
on Otto's part, that his forgiveness is relevant to the moral problem of Mal's attack on Efi.
The simplest cause of such a belief
is that Otto interprets Mal's attack on Efi as implicitly, though not really explicitly, carrying
an attack on him also. And so he, like Efi, feels hurt by Mal.
And just as Efi might interpret Mal's refusal, which she disallows to be only intellectual
inability, to be contrite and apologise, as being yet another attack on her: so
Otto will take this refusal as a personal attack on him also.
The requirement that Otto forgives
Mal is only valid if Otto feels, personally, hurt by Mal's
original action-X, and also the later refusal to be contrite. If so, then the model above applies. And though "Do as I do!", as in (a) above, is the best example of Good
Authority, Otto's forgiveness is logically separate from Efi's
forgiveness. Being the direct recipient
of Mal's attack, her hurt is different from
Otto's. It might take longer for her to
forgive genuinely. "Do as I say,
not as I do!" viz (b) above, is, as Pitt-Aiken
& Ellis say the perfect expression of Bad Authority.
If Otto doesn't feel personally hurt
by Mal's action-X and/or absence of contrition and forgiveness,
then the experience and the concept of forgiveness don't apply to him
personally. This is scenario (c). It is a variant of Bad Authority.
2)
Let us consider a different scenario, like Christ's.
Once again, there is a
triad: Mal, Efi and Otto. Mal has hurt Efi,and he is not contrite. Let us
assume that Otto does not feel personally hurt by Mal's
attack on Efi. What would be meant by Efi saying to Otto: "Otto, forgive Mal! : he doesn't realise what he's done"?
Unless this
utterance is preceded by Efi saying to Mal,"I forgive you", Efi's
appeal to Otto will seem to him extraordinary, even slightly mad. But note, and
this is crucial, even her
"I forgive you" in this
situation, of the absence of contrition and apology, is
logically bizarre.
An apology
is an illocutionary act within a dyad and not a monad. To take an analogy, a
promise is likewise an illocutionary act within a dyad. There is of course a
common construction, a verbal
formulae, we all have used sometime: "I promised myself a cake (or car),if I
managed XYZ..."
This is comprehensible. But it is only a promise by
metaphor, or hyperbole. It is allowable and functional at the level of
individual psychology. Perhaps, using Freudian terms, the Superego promises the
Ego. Though at the strict level of the logical status of moral utterances in
the social realm, "I promise myself" is empty.
Similarly if the preconditions of apology are not
fulfilled then the illocutionary act saying "I forgive you" is an
empty utterance. Again it might have individual functional that is
psychological value. It is a way for Efi to manage
her dismay and/or rage that Mal has not shown contrition. This management is of
course crucial to Efi's well-being: that she doesn't
become obsessed and bitter about Mal's refusal.
3) Two other
things of a psychological nature may be implied by her utterance to Otto: "Otto, forgive Mal!:
he doesn't realise what he's done".
a)
An implicit rather than explicit
declaration that in reality she can't (and won't) forgive Otto
: “I can't and won't forgive Mal. You forgive him!"
This is often said by people who don't know the above
model: and somehow feel guilty about feeling unforgiving even to an incontrite hurter.
In Christian societies, this is the legacy of the
counsel of perfection to forgive "seven times seventy
!": but, sadly, a counsel that doesn't explain the
situational intricacies and psychological, as well as logical, limits of these
scenarios. The most tragic example of how much a hurt person can be further
hurt by a misunderstanding of these limits was in the terrible Ealing Vicarage
attack. Ruth Saward, speaking a year later, said how
dismayed and distressed she was by her father, the Vicar, ‘forgiving' her
rapists within days!.
Interestingly Dante speaks of the limiting case where "pity
or piety must die". Though this is said in the next life, he intends
it to be understood in this.
b) It might be a way for Efi
to signal submission to her incontrite attacker Mal. By
signalling she won't counter-attack, as she is in some sense justified in
doing, she hopes Mal
won't attack her again.
Perhaps that is what is really meant by her utterance.
As we have seen the positive response of forgiveness isn't relevant here. What
is being forestalled within Efi is the negative
response of counter-attack, with the possible consequence of raising the level
of confrontation. Perhaps this is by default the limit of Efi's
goodwill under duress. (And also Otto's, as Efi's friend). She reasons:
i ) I am hurt by Mal's
action X.
ii ) I am hurt by his being incontrite.
iii) I
understand that for some reason -whatever that is - he is incontrite:
and obtuse in not trying to understand how and why I feel hurt.
iv ) I know that the
community would say that in this circumstance I have the right to
counter-attack Mal: even enlisting another person's help, Otto.
v ) I am scared to
raise the level of confrontation by counter-attacking: I am afraid he will attack
me harder.
vi ) My difference from Mal is partly in the certainty that
I really don't wish to be like him in attacking.
It may be simple fear and/or a gesture of superogatory human goodwill that prompts Efi not to counter-attack. What it categorically is not, is forgiveness.
To return to Christ's remark,"Father
forgive them: for they know not what they
do!" The absence of contrition and
apology in His persecutors makes any gesture of forgiveness an empty utterance. But as the
Redeemer of the Christian revelation He, and He
alone, can make this apparent gesture of intercessionary
forgiveness carry meaning & power. In the non-human logic of the Trinity he
can establish a dyad: he is the persecutor, the victim and the third.
In other religions this problem does not find this
solution. But for ALL mere mortals, it is logically impossible to imitate
Christ in this. Human intercessionary forgiveness
is comprehensible: but impossible, except as psychological consolation, to
achieve.
(NOTE :This Appendix arises
from a conversation with the English
translator of Dante, Dr Barbara
Reynolds).
==================================================================
APPENDIX 3 :
APOLOGOPHOBIA! : NEVER HAVING TO HEAR "SORRY" [June
: 1999]
A) LEVEL ONE
Consider the following
exchange:
(1)
: MAL : Look, I
wanted to say. Well, I feel I was quite rubbish last week.
(2)
: EFI : Oh, it's
alright. I've got faults. I've been as bad as you.
(3)
: MAL : Well, I
wanted to say.
(4)
: EFI : No, it's
alright.
(5)
: MAL : Err.
(6)
: EFI : Did you
see that film last night?
(7)
: MAL : Err, yes.
It was great.
(8) : EFI : Mmm,
so I've heard. I'm going tonight.
What is going on? There is some tension. Mal is trying
to do something. Efi is trying to do something else.
What is the difficulty? Would stage directions help? They are preceded by SD.
(1) : MAL : (SD:
He is trying to take control of himself and the situation. He feels hesitant, anxious
but very respectful towards Efi)
Look
I wanted to say. Well, I feel I was quite rubbish last week.
(2) : EFI : (SD:
She suddenly feels unbearably anxious. She interrupts,
gabbles but then fades into silence.)
Oh!
It’s alright. I’ve got faults. I’ve been as bad as you.
(3) : MAL : (SD:
He feels very puzzled. He is anxious to try again.)
Well,
I wanted to say.
(4) : EFI : (SD:
She still feels anxious - both more and less than a moment ago.
No!
It’s alright.
(5) : MAL : (SD:
He feels checkmated. He wonders what to do.)
Err....
(6) : EFI : (SD:
She feels she's just about won. But she feels only brittle bright.)
Did
you see that film last night?
(7) : MAL : (SD:
He feels puzzled still: but now also
both relieved & annoyed)
Err,
yes. It was great..
(8) : EFI : (SD:
She feels relieved, almost in control: but still brittle bright.)
Mmm so I’ve heard. I’m going tonight..
This clarifies how much anxiety there is in this brief
exchange. Efi and Mal's
anxieties have different sources, but both are intense. Let's explicate
further.
C) LEVEL THREE
(1) : MAL : All the preconditions from above are
met. From Mal's point of view , he understands that he hurt Efi. He feels contrite. He wishes to apologise. He is
anxious about how his contrition and apology will be received by Efi. He enters a quiet room, where Efi
is resting. He tries to begin his apology.
Look,
I wanted to say. Well I feel I was quite rubbish last week.
(2) : EFI : All the preconditions from above are
met. From Efi's point of view, she felt hurt by Mal.
She was upset. She remains upset. Mal enters a room where she is resting. He
seems anxious. He begins to speak. Suddenly she feels very anxious. She feels what Mal is doing is unbearable to
her: and she wants to stop him speaking, to end it immediately. She interrupts
him. She makes a statement -
supposedly stating her belief that she is as bad as Mal. A part
of her feels this is untrue the moment she has said it.
Oh
it’s alright. I’ve got my faults. I’ve been as bad as you..
(3) : MAL : Mal is puzzled. He thought and felt
he was doing the right thing. He becomes aware that he is still feeling the
pain of contrition and also the anxiety which he hoped be alleviated by a
successful communication of contrition and apology. He decides to try again.
Well I wanted to say..
(4) : EFI : Efi understands
that she has failed to quash Mal's impulse to show of
contrition and apology. She is aware that she is still anxious about this impulse. She tries to make the impulse irrelevant to
her, by telling him it is not necessary.
No! It’s alright..
(5) : MAL : Mal is utterly baffled. A part of him
is still anxious to discharge the impulse to show contrition and apology: and
so attain some relief. A part of him is in fact relieved by Efi's
communication, however clumsy, that neither contrition nor apology
are necessary. A part of him is frightened by the force of her saying
"No". The tension between these three parts gets expressed as a
noise/gesture.
Err..
(6) : EFI : Efi is
initially puzzled by the noise/gesture. It seems she has finally quashed his
impulse. She decides to pause, to check. Nothing happens. So she takes control,
by changing the subject: to one she knows Mal, and in fact she herself, will be
comfortable with.
Did
you see that film last night?
(7) : MAL : Mal
is still baffled. He understands that Efi has quashed
his impulse. He is not sure whether this is a true release from his obligation
to show contrition and apology: or just a respite. He wonders whether he should
have another go. At the surface, he is aware of the requirement to answer the
question asked. He makes the noise/gesture of bafflement: and then proceeds to
answer the social question.
Err, yes. It was great.
(8) : EFI : Efi is
relieved to be in control, but still high from the brittle bright emotion.
Mmm.
So I’ve heard. I’m going tonight..
LATER - DAYS OR WEEKS OR MONTHS LATER
MAL : He still feels not-quite unburdened of his pain
of contrition and wish to apologise and to be clearly reconciled. He still
feels not-quite forgiven by Efi.
EFI : She still feels not-quite unburdened of her resentment at Mal for his original
hurt. She still wants him to apologise.:but she is not sure how
or why.
COMMENTS
In this scenario it is not the hurter/offender,Mal, whose actions are
puzzling, but Efi's, What is going on inside her? It
is clear that she is very anxious. She can't endure Mal's
impulse for more than eleven words, ten seconds. It's that bad. But what?
There are many utterances which produce a
feeling-response far faster than a reacting-thought. The loveliest description
of this is in the example above, Ulysses: Leopold is being gallant to a
Maternity Sister and Nun: "Light swift her eyes kindled: bloom of
blushes his word winning".
Consider the following utterances:
Can I have a date?
May I kiss you?
Will you marry me?
I'm pregnant.
I'm having an affair.
I'm leaving you.
I'm bankrupt.
I've got cancer.
Well, four to eight words: sayable
in under five seconds.. The first four statements
might produce intense joy. But even they, as well as the others, might produce
misery & terror. But why should the attempt to say "I'm sorry"
cause terror.
a) Perhaps Efi
has a general anxiety about being in the presence of someone else's deep
emotions.
b) Perhaps she feels a deep anxiety about
the stability and direction of Mal's emotions: that Mal's apology might suddenly turn into an attack or just
something she doesn't want. She might
even say to herself, `this is irrational': but still submit to the force of the
inhibition against accepting the apology.
(One possible cause of Efi's sensitivity here
might be a double-binding, or simply moody, parent).
c) Perhaps she feels an intuitive
disbelief in Mal's contrition. She feels that if she
now accepts his seemingly insufficient apology, she will have lost something
forever: her pain will remain insufficiently recognised.
d) Perhaps she realises, somewhere deep
within, that she doesn't really like Mal. A part of her doesn't want
reconciliation. A part of her wants the petty malice of making him suffer
still. She doesn't want the trouble of making explicit the implied end of their
relationship. As with many things in life, cowardice is in the equation. Usually such a failed apology marks the
beginning of the end of the relationship.
The actual end may be only days or it may be years ahead. But every encounter in
between will have a false taste.
=========================================================
APPENDIX 4 : UNTWINNED
TALES [September
1999]
i
) A father attends the trial of the young-man who killed
his young-son through driving when drunk. The young-man is irritated & wearied
by the legal procedures: and when the Court concludes with a suspended
sentence, he throws at him a look of triumphant scorn. Outraged and almost
out-of-his mind, the father decides to stalk the young-man. He sees no change
in his behaviour, and in fact even more reckless driving. One day, at his
limit, he shoots and wounds the young man. The action is in public, in
daylight, with witnesses: and he gives himself up to the police immediately.
They charge him, with breach of the peace, intention to harm etc….
The jury at his trial acquit him.
ii) Another father,
attends the trial of the man who killed his son through driving when drunk. The
man attends to the legal procedures like one undergoing surgery without
anaesthesia. He seems so utterly broken with grief and remorse he can barely
raise his head to meet the father’s glances. Even the custodial sentence seems
incommensurate to him. At the end, he is so obviously at the limits of his wretchedness, the father spontaneously goes over to console
him.
(These two cases happened in England
in the 1990s)
B) TWO LEVIS
i
) I believe
in reason and in discussion as supreme instruments of progress ,and therefore I
repress hatred even within myself: I prefer justice…. All the same I would not
want my abstaining from explicit judgement to be confused with an
indiscriminate pardon. No, I have not forgiven any of the culprits, nor am I
willing to forgive a single one of them, unless he has shown (with deeds, not
words and not too long afterward) that he has become conscious of the crimes
and errors of Italian and foreign Fascism and is determined to condemn them ,uproot them from his conscience and from that of
others. Only in this case am I, a non-Christian, prepared to follow the Jewish
and Christian precept of forgiving my enemy, because an enemy who sees the
error of his ways ceases to be an enemy. (Primo Levi)
ii) The morning after we arrived in the camp,
there was an order for 50 persons to go to a neighbouring town for work. I had
decided that we had to go but, since Mother refused to move, I quite brutally
forced her to come with me. Something possessed me to behave this way. When we arrived at
the place of departure there were already 49 people in the group. I pushed an
elderly woman aside to enable my mother and me to make up the numbers.
Throughout the war this was the one deed of which I was greatly ashamed and
which I regretted. But at the time I just had to get into that group. From the camp we were taken by train some 12.5
miles to another disused factory. All warehouses or workshops were separated by
wire fences. We were taken into one - and there was my father. It was wonderful
and yet quite traumatic to feel his presence. The man who had always been so
incredibly self-assured kept on pleading for forgiveness as he held my hand. As
I recall we were a couple of days in this camp and were then herded into
railway cattle-trucks where we spent the next five days until we arrived at
Auschwitz. Meanwhile, my mother became increasingly senile, and finally
went completely out of her mind. My father kept holding my hand, begging me to forgive him…..
On our arrival at Auschwitz, my parents and I were separated from each
other. My mother was immediately taken to the gas-chamber: I could never find
out what had happened to my father. (Trude Levi: no
immediate relation to Primo Levi)
COMMENTS
Theoretical Ethics examines what is
knowable. Practical Ethics is concerned with what is teachable: it is implied that
what is knowable is teachable: or more strictly, only what is teachable to many
is knowable to one: otherwise, we are in
the realm of mysticism.
“I have experienced states… in which
I completely dwelt in every idea, but also filled every idea, and in which I
not only felt myself at my boundary, but at the boundary of the human in
general.” (Kafka)
Ai)
Isn’t one’s first response to cheer, as the
second-jury did - albeit only in the acting out of the impulse of ‘natural’
law?
Aii) Here the
emotion is not of surface revenge but of deeper and somewhat puzzling awe.
“Yes, I too might console the killer, if his tears looked like that” one hears
oneself saying: and allowing oneself the moral glow of refusing revenge, even
in one’s heart. But how does one
learn to see and feel and judge that someone else’s tears express sufficient
contrition?
B) The Holocaust defines one boundary of human
possibility. Trying to understand the Holocaust takes, or ought to take, one to
one’s internal boundary. There was one boundary for those who suffered there.
There is another for those for whom it is their Century’s history. I read some
books years ago. This summer, [1999] I took myself, alone, to Auschwitz. I came
back and read a little more. I have felt
at the limits of my understanding all these weeks. Something faints when I try.
i) Who would argue
with Primo Levi? He is asserting with bitterness, and
with all his restraint the hard line of sufficient contrition: that even he
knows is a Counsel of Perfection: and so will rather than must fail to persuade
any but the already fainting.
ii) I hear Trude
Levi speak in Cambridge last year [1998]. The most distressing aspect of her
talk was her almost reflex recourse to litote. This
nearly eighty-year-old woman was telling a large group at a University seminar
about her incarceration. It was a tale she had told no doubt a thousand times,
many of them in public like this. And on this Spring
evening, I was hearing it. After she had used the device, “And I can tell
you that was not very nice…”,
to describe some horror, a few times in the first twenty minutes, I felt
unbearably sad for her. Then I suddenly felt that I had attained, in the most
blinding clarity, an understanding of Hamlet’s heartbreaking realisation that
sometimes an acted misery communicates more distress than real testimony. Her use of litote
seemed more shocking than the event: it made me feel sadder than if she had
given a straight, uninflected account: or even one with hyperbolic
embellishment: and if
In the quotation above from her
auto-biography, there is her regret over the old woman, that she will not let
slip from her narrative nor memory. This she understands. But what is odd is
that she doesn’t know what to do with the fact of her father’s contrition. She
mentions it twice: but is unable to say any more. So one wonders how much of
its meaning she understood in the Camp : and how much,
if anything, has clarified in the subsequent decades as she herself attained
parenthood. What should the reader understand of this parental plea in the
midst of the Holocaust?
During my visit to Auschwitz I saw
several school parties of teenagers being shown round. I doubt they had been prepared for
this in any unique way: by drama or counselling or fasting and meditation….
This was shocking to me: in a way more shocking than the pathetic reflex
recourse to their expensive cameras of the old men and women - clicking almost
before looking. I instinctively felt it was a useless and really quite bad,
almost cruel, thing to do to such young people. I began to feel a rage at the
educationists who would implement such naiive realism
in the teaching of history: you’ve seen the barbed wire & the ovens, so now
you know! But what?! How would Primo
Levi have tested their knowledge and understanding at the level of daily life.
But what did I
know? What had I seen? And from what I had read, what skill at appraising
contrition had I learned. I came back and read ‘Reading the Holocaust’
by Inga Clendinnen.(1999).
It is a wonderful book exemplifying intellectual and moral integrity. And yet I
could still feel myself disagreeing, quite strongly, with her lavish praise of Gitta Sereny. For two paragraphs into The Guardian’s
extract from Sereny’s book on Speer, I thought “My God! Speer is not contrite: nothing such! Why can’t she see this? All those hours she
was with him, talking to him, looking at him, why couldn’t she see it?”
But what could I see, who had never met
him? Who taught me this way of looking?
Couldn’t I be wrong. And who else would judge? How
many schools of looking and how many votes would decide it? But let there be
some teaching…..
=================================================================
APPENDIX 5
: CONTEMPORARY COMMENTATORS [2003]
A) KIERKEGAARD
& REMORSE :
Alice Theilgaard
Kierkegaard is very complex and his
fascinating taxonomies bring both illumination and puzzlement. Prior to this, I
had read only some extracts in my teens. Though I agree that his
differentiation of remorse is a genuine conceptual advance, I feel that hanging
over the schema is the cold shadow of Original Sin: which I find troubling
intellectually & personally. I found myself wondering whether Klein had
drawn an analogy between the Paranoid-Schizoid position & the Post-Lapsarian distress: and between the benign gestures of the
Last Supper and the Depressive Position. Could mere mortals be allowed a felix culpa ever again?
(Note : Prof Theilgaard is a
retired Prof of Psychiatry in Denmark and a Fellow of the Shakespeare
Institute. Myself and Ivan Ward of the
B) THE TORTURER’S HORSE : Beatrice
Clarke
Beatrice
Clarke’s papers and letters prompted me to read a book that had been lingering
on the edge of intention for months, Derrida’s essay ‘On Forgiveness’.
I’m not fluent in French abstruse theory, which is the main reason I hesitated.
On a first reading, there seems something annoyingly adolescent about his
principal point, the paradox that only the unforgivable is fit to be forgiven.
But I will read it again – for there does seem to be a subtler strand in his
argument.
My own essay began with a
preoccupation with a concept that is presupposed in any discussion of
forgiveness – ‘contrition’. As I say, I
believe that there is something profoundly symptomatic about the fact that the
word/idea of ‘contrition’ has dropped out of ordinary discourse. How often does
one see or hear of the word in the papers or on tv – even its synonym ‘remorse’ is used sparingly.
If I think
about my own engagement with this matrix, at its heart is my experience of
reading Dante’s Purgatory in my twenties. I am not a Christian by
upbringing or witness, but I still believe this book is the single greatest
attempt, in any language/culture to think about the experience and meaning of
contrition. One can abstract out the Christian dogma and still marvel at the
great psychological acuity. For me the debate begins with him. One must get to
Dante first, then see how big and clever one’s talk
is. The first genuine advance since The Divine Comedy, a mere seven
hundred years later, is from psychoanalysis - Freud, Klein and Bion.
It is a monumental
dereliction of those who preach and witness to the Christian revelation, that
they have been unable to use Dante: to ground the debate using this epic. There
are either psychopaths spouting hellfire or morally hesitant simpering vicars.
At the far end of hypocrisy are of course the corrupt priests abusing little
boys or Magdalen nuns showing no mercy to young
girls. The current (secular) strategy of a ‘no-blame’ approach to fault and
hurt eg bullying in schools seems another piece of
spinelessness and not-thinking.
There is
great compassion in Adam Phillips’ hesitation about showing Bulger’s
killers their own murderous reflection. The difficulty is of course that
something else gets frozen: a kind of not-knowing enough about ones past, the
burden of a vague ineluctable affect.
This is precisely my point. That neither the Judaeo-Christian paradigm –
as presented in the weekly pulpit, Radio 4 or the tv Godslot – can offer a
persuasive explanation that would dissolve that wilful not-knowing, and also
offer a container that would contain healing and hope. Why should this be? The
church, in London or Rome, refuses to disestablish because of its vanity of
relevance and its hunger for power. But against this test case of the agony of
these young murderers it is useless. Secular journalists, with no greater
grasps of the matrix, show their ancient upbringing by resorting to phrases
like ‘evil children’.
I believe
the secular paradigm of psychoanalysis has much to contribute to a better
understanding of the making and healing of child murderers. The lost fact that struck me as pointing to a
foreclosed destiny was that the mother of one of the murderers was brought up
in a house of such casual brutality that she was incontinent at puberty. She
was referred to endless consultants for physical treatment– none of whom would
see the daily torture in her family home.
As I say my
intuition was that Longford was seduced by Hindley.
Compare that with Chris Morris’s parody of the media seduction by her or Brady’s
judgement of her – (enclosed).
Isn’t Brady some kind of mad Miltonian creature?
I look
forward to your thoughts about Lomax. I was, and am,
equally interested in the Japanese translator’s contrition as in Lomax’s forgiveness. I wonder how much truth that I have perceived
and imagined and hoped for will survive your account. I have other tales of the wonder of
sufficient contrition. I wonder whether one’s understanding of this realm is to
be grounded in many tales of contrition and forgiveness rather than conceptual
analysis – thus Dante, again!!!!
NOTE : Beatrice Clarke is a teacher, in
====================================================================
APPENDIX 6 : THEO-LIT-CRIT : On Manzoni [2005]
PREAMBLE : Wanting a Shot at
Redemption
A great artist re-ploughs
the furrow trying for a better line. Even a very minor critic, myself, attempts to get his argument tighter and righter. I
am intrigued by the way human groups deal with fault and reconciliation (and
the broader matrix in which these concepts are situated). In 2005 I read Manzoni’s opus The Bethrothed in deference to a
friend, and decided to send him some comments. This prompted me to get a book I
chanced upon in a remainder shop, Bishop Holloway’s book On Forgiveness : which
the cover announced takes off from Derrida’s book of the same title, and the
latter’s aphorism “There is only forgiveness, if there is any, where
there is the unforgiveable” . I think
this is a kind of sophistical device that Derrida flogs
to tedium. It is trite philosophically (another type of the fallacy of false
imprecision) , and utterly useless
psychologically. [2007 Note: I still
haven’t been able to bring myself to read Holloway’s book for this reason]
MANZONI’S (LITERARY) CONCEPTION OF FORGIVENESS
Manzoni’s epic has four main episodes about forgiveness.
a) Cristoforo – This is perfect :
philosophically, psychologically and narrationally.
“ [He was the] happiest man…who was now beginning a
life of expiation and service, which might not be able to undo the effects of
his crime, but could at least make reparation for it, and blunt the intolerable
sting of remorse.” (p.86) This foregrounds the necessary abiding contrition and the
necessary will to repair. Given his social rank and the extraordinary abstract
gesture of taking holy orders, he could have avoided the mess of seeing those
he had hurt. But he seeks them out, requesting an audience with the family of
the bereaved. Manzoni says that they “had
expected to savour the dismal pleasure of satisfied pride, instead of which
they found themselves full of the serene happiness that comes from forgiveness
and goodwill.” (p.89) The crucial point is that Cristoforo’s contrition and daring and humility baffle and
then move the bereaved to a genuine feeling, rather than a mere aristocratic
ritual, of forgiveness, which releases both sides from the trauma of the crime
and hurt.
The
religious ‘deal’ is plausible but unnecessary as a form of reparation: we do
well to remember that here was a society that would not look kindly on secular
gestures of reparation or civic virtue :see para 7B above.
b) Sister Gertrude’s pre-novitiate trial. This is so obviously imperfect
and a shame to all in the charade. “Now that the first step was taken [her
letter of contrition] she found she could bear false witness against herself
more boldly” (p.201: my emphasis). I have emphasised this
because ever since school religious education classes, I have been struck by
the false-witness commandment: knowing that most people lie more about
themselves than they do about others. So
those old Judaic patriarchs should have included a specific commandment against
hypocrisy & Gertrude’s kind of mortifying abuse of Self,
as well as one against calumnies against others.
c)
The
Unnamed – this is a tiresome
picaresque reversal – almost the kid-stuff of inaccessible castles, dungeons,
ogres, virgins, even the silly name: (I don’t know if this is a nod to
Odysseus’s name trick on the Cyclop) . He becomes a
trophy (metaphorical severed Gorgon’s head) to the
Good Cardinal to awe the multitude with.
d) Don Roderigo – this is magical thinking & inhumane ethical
totalitarianism. I hold – against all theologies - that offering forgiveness without the
at-fault-person’s prior contrition, apology and plea for forgiveness is mere
magical thinking and social ritual. Even worse is when theological ministers
coerce others into such magical forgiveness. Alas, the hero of contrition, Cristoforo, forces Renzo with
this terrifying remark. “Perhaps this man’s salvation, and your own,
depend on you at this moment, on an impulse of forgiveness and pity from you,
and yes, an impulse of love. (p.603)
How could the wise man of
example (a) become the Jesuitical sophist here! Note the psychological
implausibility of the sequence of emotions – forgiveness, pity and love. Too
many concepts are muddled and elided to produce a convenient outcome. There is
no sense that Don Roderigo is contrite or wants the
forgiveness from Renzo and Lucia or Cristoforo: not even in the melodramatic fashion of the
Unnamed. So, by ordinary psychology and philosophy, Renzo
and Lucia’s forgiveness isn’t required or would be offered only magically
ritualistically and then only to the wind.
This isn’t interpersonal affection between adults: as Cristoforo had exchanged with conscious thinking adults
after his own crime. It is a striving for a supra-human connectivity for which
the crucial human isn’t even required. At this level, Cristoforo
could pray for Mussolini & Hitler & Stalin & Pol
Pot!
There’s the difference:
for some people believe such a wind carries the Holy Ghost, in this Way, and
all gestures of forgiveness go to and through God. I found it an utterly
depressing scene: even more so for the realisation that for Manzoni
and for many Christians this is a more climactic scene than the long delayed
marriage a few pages later. Of course it is in the Church’s interest to
maintain such magical thinking, and mad or at least opportunist unChrist-like deal-making. And once the Church has defined
sexuality as the most elusive and sinful force, then it is not long before
people like St Paul or Lucia are offering their sexuality to God as part of a
deal. Surely a good and true Christian would just pray to God for strength and
hope – Our peace in His will - rather than try to make deals with
Him. It takes a typical piece of rubbish sophistry by Cristoforo
to get her out of her promise to God. “I can free you
from any obligation” (p.681).
====================================================================
APPENDIX 7 : AGAINST SOPHISTRY :
AUTO-CONCEPTUAL ASPHYXIATION : I DID IT
MY WAY
PREAMBLE
A few weeks ago, a good friend, and a
far cleverer man, a Kings man, steeped in psychoanalysis and anthropology &
linguistics, accused me – in the street – of sophistry. Yes – in the
street! I was disputing the intellectual
and moral viability, though not the emotional force, of the gestures of
forgiving the incontrite or forgiving oneself. We had
first met because of my original 1997 draft on Apology. So our new
animated exchange was proof of how emotionally live this theme is. I returned
to Cambridge and decided to write to Dr Plant, a theology don. In preparation
to meet him I decided to rewrite my argument on this point and send it to my
old philosophy tutor, Mr Peetz.
This piece, yet another appendix to the
97 essay, will look further at how private and social gestures maybe described.
INTRODUCTION
All human meanings have the
fundamental, primary reference point of a social action. “Socialisation goes all the way
down”, as Rorty
puts it. Private meanings take their comprehensibility from the social version
of the action being done privately. The above axioms of course merely rephrase
less elegantly Marx’s mighty thesis (On Feuerbach,
VIII):
All mysteries
…find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of
this practice.
But quoter beware:
it is easer to note the practice - “We
do it like this.” - than to
comprehend it, describe if it makes sense, and explain why an irrational,
inefficient, or pain-causing practice is imposed or clung to fiercely.
The comprehension of a social practice
is the meaning given to it by that social unit (six persons or 100 or
1million). It is a negotiated and shared understanding located among/between
the individuals forming the social unit: and not a private inflection of that
meaning located inside the head of just one of them. A public action, a
practice, arising out of that understanding can be called a proper move. Other actions, arising out
of an attenuated or contrary or private understanding of the social meaning, I
will call as-if moves.
I will begin by examining some of these
as-if actions in their common and perfectly comprehensible descriptions.
1:
SELF-TALK “I was talking to myself.”
One can
talk to oneself – it is doable. One may
talk to oneself -
it is not illegal, immoral, or sinful. Then again, most societies use as an
index of breakdown & madness a certain frequency & intensity of talking
to oneself. For though it is talking, it is not conversation
(as we know & do). It is an
as-if action. When I
talk to myself, I split my sense of self into two temporary part-selves, as if
there were now two persons (of equal authority) in the room, of whom one talks
and the other listens.
1b : A COMMON VARIANT : “I gave myself a
(good) talking to”
In the first scenario ‘talk’ is the
verb. Here it is a noun – the meaning of the sentence being: “I chided myself”. Again this is
comprehensible, and doable, we’ve all done it. But it is still an as-if exchange. The subtle difference
is here there is a hierarchy of moral and emotional authority: a mature
rational
part-self is talking to
a less mature, less reasonable part-self. One might say my Ego splits into a
Superego giving my Id a bollocking.
This ordinary scenario must be
distinguished from the rarer and more distressing experience of hearing an
inescapable mocking & punishing voice
in one’s head:
this is the ‘real’ Superego, an internalised memory trace of the voice of a
real authority figure (mum or dad or the priest). That such a voice always
feels more forceful, authoritative, menacing than the voice of one’s acting,
as-if, superego-self is proof that the reference point of such acts of chiding,
bollocking is a dyad not a monad, a pair of human beings, not a solo, vaunting
self.
People do say things like “I am my harshest critic. I don’t need you
or anyone to tell me that what I do is only ever almost-brilliant, and
mostly not good enough and sometimes even wicked. I don’t need a
discussion.”
I know what such declarations mean, how
they fit into all sorts of relationships, professional and personal. I’d still want to assert that part of being properly human is to be in a continuous
moral discussion with others and so when such remarks are spoken often, and
certainly when frequently used a shield, they are an index of moral, and
emotional, breakdown: no matter how much power and riches and fame the speaker
has achieved.
1c : THE SELF-THREAT
It follows that self-praise is a thin
gruel. The limiting case of self-chiding is
self-threatening. Here one
should admit that though the as-if action of
self-chiding can have a
lot of emotional force, attempting to self-threat is as doomed a project as
lifting oneself by one’s bootstraps. The straps will fray and break long before
one has enough energy to move.
On a lighter note, ain’t
it just like His Bobness to produce a charming
variation on this theme, in a love-song:
“You’re gonna make me give myself a good talking to”. [Dylan
1975]
2 : SELF-PROMISE
: “I
promised myself (this pleasure)”
2a: THE PROPER PROMISE
We learn how the act of promising works
from situations like these:
(i)
Arthur : If you are
ever in trouble, call me and I promise I will help.
Dexter : Thank you.
(Time passes)
Dexter : Arthur I’m in
trouble.
Arthur : I’m on my
way.
Dexter : Thank you. You
made good your promise.
(ii)
Ruth : We don’t
marry out. But I promise you - if you become a doctor, you will have my
blessing to marry who you want.
Shula: Thanks mum.
(Time passes)
Shula
:
I’ve met someone in my cardiology team, Mfwane, an Ibo
lesbian. We’re in love and, once we’re civil partners, we’re going to adopt a
Hutu orphan.
Ruth : Over my dead
body, you will.
Shula
:
But you promised! I’ll never believe a word you say ever again.
What is a promise? Let us try a
metaphor. In this reference-point example, there is no guile, guessing, or
pretending: the participants mean what they say. The Promiser,
intending to offer a promise, spins out of her heart-strings an emotional
rope-bridge. ( cf Gerard
Manley Hopkins). She anchors one end in
her heart. When she says to the Promisee “I promise you X”
, she is throwing this rope-bridge from
her heart to the Promisee’s heart. She is offering
also the implied invitation “Shall we
advance one increment of human connectivity, ordinary (non-sexual) intimacy.
Shall we be closer? I’d like to be with
you.” As the philosopher Austin
clarified, the Promiser’s action of uttering
(writing) the linguistic phrase/formula “I
promise you” is the (illocutionary) action of promising: it is not a mere
preparatory description.
Now here’s the bleeding obvious point!
The promise exists between these two
people if and only if the Promisee accepts the promise, by saying “Thank you” or just nodding. This is the
Promisee’s (illocutionary) act of accepting the promise. Both speaking
& nodding mean: “I am touched by your
offer, I have taken the emotional rope bridge you have thrown me, and anchored
it in my heart too. I am happy to be a bit closer to you.”
If the Promiser
and the Promisee speak with goodwill, then the
promise exists. Neither can say at a later stage “There was no promise”. The common phrase ‘the promise was broken”
assumes there was a prior connection between two persons that could be broken. In another scenario, the Promisee
can say to the Promiser , “I don’t want your
promise” or “I don’t care” or even “Go to
hell you two-faced git!” : any of which will
abort the promise instantly from existing between the two of them.
Here is an asymmetry: all promises are
contracts but not all contracts are promises. Both promises and contracts are
arrangements of obligation between two people: but the former carries the
greater emotional interpersonal force. One could deal with a broken contract
without emotion, taking legal recourse and being satisfied with the result. But
one would rightly be suspicious of someone who said they didn’t care about a
broken promise.
I am mindful that this is account is
giving promises an almost mystical aura. Another song-line arrives: “And all your secrets are your own” [LEE 1967]. This is given as a final criterion of isolation and
loneliness. It is relevant to this discussion of as-if experiences, because a
secret is by definition shared! To offer to another person a secret, as
distinguishable from gossip and slander, is another increment of emotional
intimacy.
I believe it is not controversial to
use as a diagnostic marker of a person’s sociality, her emotional embeddedness among other human beings, kin and friends, her
humanity even, the volume and type of promise-relationships she has with other
people: and if she holds any shared secrets.
2B : FAILED PROMISES
(i)
THE FALSE PROMISE (of the DARK HEART)
We have seen that promises, like
secrets and unlike contracts, are deeply emotional human gestures. They are in
fact among the highest and best things, ‘gifts’ is the better word, one human being can give another. Given human anxiety and
greed there are many ordinary strategies of pretense
in order to get what one wants or to avoid pain. People sometimes pretend
interest, concern, love, and domestic or professional skill etc. So it is not
surprising they pretend to promise. In such situations there is still the
minimum requirement of two persons make the basic and necessary illocutionary
gestures. The only flaw is the unseeable, dark heart
of the Promiser who says “I Promise you X” when she
knows she doesn’t mean it.
In a 1975 paper called Threats
and Promises, the philosopher Vera Peetz drew
attention to the oddness of saying:
“ If
you do X, I will hurt you. And that’s not a threat – it’s a promise!”
We understand the words and the
intensity of emotion captured by this not-rare phrasing. We also know it is a
mark of ordinary sanity to refuse this promise: and to recognise that it is not
really a promise at all but a threat, which gets an intensification of
emotionality from the pocket of affect & emotion that attaches to the word
and gesture of promising.
Nor can one really threaten or even
frighten another person to offer a free promise. So it is that the bitter old
King Hamlet frightens his hysterical son into binding & swearing, nearer to
a contract rather than promising: which is also why the Prince thinks of the
metaphor of writing. As we know, Shakespeare’s theology (of purgatory &
revenge) is a mess in this perfectly dramatic play.
(ii) THE AS-IF PROMISE (of the
LIGHT BUT CONFUSED HEART )
Good ordinary people, with light &
clear hearts – and I am not at all implying trainee saints of any faith - want
to do good things as much as possible, or at least more often than not. Because a promise is a good thing, promising
will enter their repertoire of good acts.
This might lead them into the trap of fudging the conditions of
promising given above: especially the very first condition: that there are two
sane, non-devious humans. So it is that these people who are neither mad nor
criminal say “I promise” to:
a) babies
& very young kids
b) their pets
c) their
cuddly toys
d) their
machines
e) dead
relatives
f) themselves
It is a philosophical and theological
point (for all belief systems) to judge the true or false promising-status of
saying “I promise” to :
a) God (Abrahamic)
b) Jesus
c) Ganesh
d) Athene
e) L. Ron Hubbard
Some people might say - It is harder
than a standard promise to make a promise to one’s baby, horse, dead kinsmen. They will report they felt better afterwards;
that they went on to do more good actions for others. Clearly deep emotions are
quickly engaged.
But I still want to assert that these
are imperfect, as-if gestures, and truly non-promises:
even if we don’t use the insult ‘false promise’.
There is some dignity in reporting :
“I went to the
mortuary and I said over the body of my estranged mother, dead from shame - I
promise mum, I’ll kick heroin, finish my apprenticeship, restore our family
fortunes and make you proud of me.” I do not doubt
that such a ‘performance’ may soothe one’s grief and give one strength to
attempt the promised actions. Nor would I be so crass as to say to someone who
reported such an experience: “Actually,
you didn’t quite achieve the making of a promise.”
The most nonsensical, though still
semantically comprehensible, performance is the all too common self-promise. “I
promised myself if I grouted the bathroom at Christmas I’d go to the Maldives
at Easter. I did, finishing on New Years Eve. I booked the flight on-line the
very next day: a bargain ” It is of a frivolous
moral order, a deeply narcissistic individualism encouraged by US self-help
manuals.
3 : SELF-SEX : “I had
sex with myself.”
I have argued that the statement/gesture “I promised myself” is
an instance of Self-aggrandizement, one
might say Self-abuse. Only a couple of generations back dictionaries described masturbation as both self-abuse
and self-denial.
At the very least, sex is stimulation of the genitals for the
purposes of relief of tension, and for the attainment of great physical
pleasure. At its highest it is a way of being and knowing oneself & another
human being, and expressing concern & love, through shared physical
stimulation: in some cultures this is described as a form of meditation. Greer
reminded us of the subtlety of sex when she said: “There is more to sex than
masturbation in the vagina” .
But like cards, one can play alone AND one can play with other people. There is
no reference point sex. There are only different ways to have sexual experiences.
Woody Allen quipped: “Don’t knock
masturbation: it’s sex with someone I love”. The
splitting of the Ego here is done as a joke: there is no earnest attempt to
imitate a reference point action, as-if sex.
With regard to ordinary linguistic
usage, though people do say “I had a talk
with myself” and also “I promised
myself”, they never say “I had sex
with myself”. It seems a ridiculous
move to foreground the self. They will say ‘I wanked’ or ‘I had
a wank’.
4: SELF-FORGIVING “I forgave
myself”
To put it starkly - forgiving
should not be reduced to wanking. This Is not to slight wanking!
Forgiveness is not like sex. It has no
morally allowable solitary form: or
to put it another way, solitary forgiving is unlike solitary sex, it is totally devoid of meaning and worth.
Before proceeding, I will reiterate the
basic distinction between a proper move and an as-if move by looking at imitation objects & imitation games.
‘PROPER’
OBJECT : Gold : Diamond : Freshly Ground Coffee :
Cocaine : Studio DVD
IMITATION
OBJECT : Pyrites :
Glass : Bulk Instant Coffee :
BabyTalc : Pirate DVD
Most people would prefer, enjoy &
treasure the ‘proper’ object both individually and in a shared experience. In
difficult circumstances, poverty and wartime, they might adjust to and endure
the lesser satisfactions of the imitation object. It is easy to imagine some
people using the imitation object with the same satisfaction, individual and
shared, as others use the proper object. One could not argue with a person who
said he loved take-away Chicken Tikka and Nescafe and
found cordon-bleu-class or home-made Indian curry too subtle. This of course
does not prove forgiveness is a dish that may be murdered a la carte blanche in
the suburbs!
To take another example there is an
ideal/proper way to play (non-solitary) games and there are attenuated versions
of this. I am mindful of Wittgenstein’s remarks on the family resemblances between games and the perils of pedantic
definition. As Ron Manager so beautifully put it football is not only what is
done by prancing millionaires at Wembley and the San Siro
but also by “small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts”. Two boys or girls could play one-a-side
football in the street using a tennis-ball or even rolled up sock. But a solitary person with a football,
in the park or his back yard, or even Wembley, is not-quite playing football.
He is certainly playing-with-a
football, and certainly practising
football. But even if he carries two different team-jerseys and changes them
after each kick, he is not-quite playing football.
Finally, imagine a solitary person
trying to run a four-by-four relay with a baton. This is a perfect image of a
nonsense-move. One could say that proper forgiveness, in its non-secular
modality, is like the four-by-four relay and requires four ‘persons’: the
hurt-person, the hurter, the interceder (the mortal
priest and/or the immortal Christ) and the Divine Being. Such an assertion
would imply that any move without all participants was incomplete and that a
solitary move by the hurt-person was a nonsense.
FORGIVING & PROMISING
I observed above that people, of all
cultures, who are neither mad nor criminal, say
“I promise” to:
a) babies
& very young kids
b) their pets
c) their
cuddly toys
d) their
machines
e) dead
relatives
f) themselves.
They also say “I forgive you” to this
same cohort. Once again I assert that such moves though comprehensible, and
carrying great private meaning and emotional force, are a public nonsense.
BINDING THE
PSYCHICALLY SHREDDED
To be violently sexually abused as a child
is surely the worst experience a person can have. Sexual abuse, even without
violence, in childhood, is a close-enough second-worst horror, because it can
also shred one’s psyche more completely and probably permanently than any other
form of attack – physical or emotional. Such a child may gather defences and
make it to adult and all kinds of worldly success, but they remain terrifyingly
broken at their core. Sometimes even adult success is not enough to prevent a
despairing slide into self-degradation and perhaps compensatory violence on
children. Alas Chris Langham! On Newsnight,
July 2007, Woman X, who was brutally
abused in childhood, and then humiliated in adulthood by the appearance of those earlier images on
the Web, said categorically that one’s own endurance of abuse is never an
excuse for inflicting similar misery on other children.
As such confessions of early horrors
became more frequent in the 1980s, I would sometimes
hear or read of religious & secular advisors & therapists recommending
to the broken person:
“Try to
forgive the abuser. It will help you move on. Forgive them for yourself”.
This was a panacea for all scenarios,
including when the proven abuser was:
a) offering
conditional contrition – “If I hurt you…”
b) utterly incontrite
c) threatening
more abuse,
d) miles and
even continents away
e) in a coma
f) dead
g) more than
one or all of the above.
I knew from philosophy that this was a
conceptual muddle. I also knew from my own life experiences that such
self-enclosed strategies either provided merely brief relief or they were no
relief at all: and in fact they added to one’s rage at the hurter, a
disappointment and sometimes rage at the shallow adviser. My intuition was that
even those who reported perfect relief probably still carried a volume of
negative energy that was only imperfectly managed and would transmute into to
other negative emotions and physical sicknesses.
My counselling tutor, a philosophical
psychotherapist, stated early on in my training that one should not give this
kind of counsel/direction as it was ineffective. It was also unfair
: demanding of the damaged person an effort beyond their psychic means:
and adding the burden of guilt at failing to execute the counsellor’s counsel.
This was a great relief to me. So I never have. When my patients have reported
attempting such strategies, I have sometimes, but not always, challenged them.
It is a matter of timing.
So what could I, did I, offer the
hurt-person?
a) A conceptual clarity of the
philosophical, psychoanalytical (and theological) concepts and actions involved
in hurt and reconciliation.
b) An affirmation, implicit in the
explanation above, of the emotional daring involved in genuine contrition and
genuine forgiveness: they are not merely shallow ritualised utterances and
embraces.
c) An affirmation of their right to
(brief) rage and (brief & ordinary) fantasies of revenge.
d) A releasing of them from any sense
of responsibility for the contrition of the hurter
e) A releasing of them from the burden
of waiting for the hurter’s contrition.
f) A releasing of them from the burden
of any attempt at the as-if forgiveness moves above.
f) An invitation to join the community
of people who believe (a) – (f) with its sufficiently better behaviours and
shared actions, that will - however slowly -displace
the relentless temptation to revisit one’s hurt and rage.
As I argue in my main draft, it is my
axiom that the hurter’s expression of genuine
contrition, plea for forgiveness and offer of reparation and the creation by this sequence of a genuine desire in the hurt person to
forgive and be reconciled, is the intellectual, moral and psychological
reference point of individual, paired and social health.
But the sequence (a) – (f) is the best
second-best.
All other moves are weaker. The as-if moves are shite.
INSTRUCTION
It is possible to be taught this or to
work it out by puberty: and then by emotional vigilance to live it, for the
benefit of one’s psyche and to resist being a forked-tongued double-dealer with
others.
DANGER & CONTROL
The Reader may think this is a lot of
vexation over two common remarks: “I
promised myself” and “I forgave (my incontrite hurter) for myself”.
How much damage can such remarks, such
moves, do? My belief is that they can do a lot of damage. At the very least
they preserve sloppy thinking, which is no help to anyone. More insidiously, by
suggesting that such self-enclosed remarks have a moral valency
& social validity equal to the proper behaviour, they encourage a
narcissism that will tend towards the authoritarian within the social unit,
family, congregation, society.
Another puzzle remains. Why would a
social unit, family, community, nation, preserve such essentially useless
behaviours?
For all human beings life is a never
ending struggle against anxiety, greed and guilt. The best defence against
anxiety, and the best facilitator of satisfying greed, is power. Controlling
the means of production is the best way to hold economic power. Controlling the
group’s explanation of the cause of pain, and adjudicating allowable relief
& pleasures is the best way to hold emotional power. When the explanation
includes Gods and the afterlife, then there is no hiding place. But guilt remains, both for the powerful and
the powerless - the
Freudian unconscious or the theological soul – the jagged pebble in the golden
slipper.
When contradictions are asserted with
power, secular or divine, then there is total power and total terror. The
Christian Creed in its most common exegesis, from the pulpits, government
lobbies, newspaper columns and telly, asserts both:
a)
God will only forgive the contrite
sinner and
b)
Mortal sinners must forgive the incontrite.
Ideology
is usually scorned as half-truths, paradoxes & utter lies used to
legitimise morally illegitimate power.
No group, religious or secular, cedes power – political, economic or
emotional - unless
forced. Dogma will be soiled by paradox and lies and the suffering of the congregation
to hold onto power. Thomas More against Tyndale! And
every religion’s shameful record on child abuse by its ministers.
Freud
asserted that maturation is the lifelong adjustment to successive attacks on
one’s narcissism and sense of omnipotence. Perhaps that’s too lahdedah a way of putting it. In plain speak, The Four Bastards
of the Daily Apocalypse, people who piss one off the most from moment to
moment are:
a)
The
Inattentive : who don’t really listen or
remember what you say.
b)
The
Ingrates : who don’t thank you or remember your
kindnesses.
c) The Unpraising:
who don’t say Well Done.
d) The Incontrite : who are
still not sorry for hurting you.
Each
of these gestures by a person – kinfolk, friend, colleague, acquaintance, authority – can make you feel like shit, and sometimes ready
to explode with rage. But, I want to argue that the fourth wound is the deepest
and the hardest to forget, wish away or heal. That is why people cling to
illogical, contradictory and ineffective rubbishy auto-strategies. “I forgive X
for myself”. The only seeming alternative is being broken by one’s rage and
despair. But what if that rage became thinking, became a new theory, became a
new domestic action challenging the authority in the hearth, became a new political action that challenged
the authorities in the Council House, the Senate, the Synod… a latter day
Prometheus unbound!
As
Dr Plant remarks - such unbound emotion can present the authorities with great
difficulties.
A
person’s theory of forgiveness is probably the most powerful thing they
possess. How they are, how they dare to
be, with other human beings is built on this theory. That is why it is so
important
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