This is a collection of essays, most of them quite good, on the subject of forgiveness. The editors and authors note that forgiveness is quite popular as a subject for therapy, but most of them take a somewhat skeptical view, not dismissing the idea of forgiveness, but questioning whether it should be automatic.

One of my personal favorites is Jerome Neu's “To Understand All is to Forgive All – Or is It?” I have long considered that to be one of the stupidest of clichés. Neu points out that it is a mistranslated and out of context quote from Mme. De Staël. He argues that often when we understand someone's motives, they sometimes turn out to be base, and that we don't blame people whom we consider to be mentally ill, precisely because we don't understand their motives.

A point of departure for many is forgiveness-guru Robert D. Enright's definition of forgiveness “as a "willingness to abandon one's right to resentment, negative judgement and indifferent behavior toward one who unjustly hurt us, while fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity, and even love towards him or her.'” If that is the definition of forgiveness, I am going to be a lot less willing to forgive. Sometimes the only way to avoid a repetition of the offense is to avoid the offender. Sharon Lamb, in her introduction, states that the advocates of unilateral forgiveness, “try to make it clear that forgiveness is not 'condoning' or 'excusing' or 'forgetting' or 'denying'” the behavior, but “in actual practice, forgiveness expressed often fails to communicate to an offender this essential promise.” It is exactly for this reason that in her essay “Women, Abuse, and Forgiveness: a Special Case” that she does not advocate automatic forgiveness in cases of abuse. Janice Haaken, in her essay “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Psychoanalytic and Cultural Perspectives on Forgiveness,” adds: “The suspicion is that the valorizing of forgiveness is a seductive ideological cover for baser motives. As oppressed groups gain the strength to speak up and claim new rights, include the right to disengage from abusive relationships, the powerful rediscover the salutary virtue of forgiveness.”

One problem that becomes clear through the essays is that maintaining the distinction between forgiveness and pardon often requires a third party (e.g., the legal system) who metes out justice to the offender even though he/she is forgiven. It is therefore the case that often smaller wrongs, which seem more forgivable, cannot be forgiven, especially not as Enright defines the word, simply because avoiding the unrepentant offender may be the only way to protect oneself, even if one does not remain hostile . Janice Haaken argues: “For therapists who believe in a 'just world' – that emotional suffering is generally brought on by factors under control of the individual – the therapeutic process may focus too narrowly (and oppressively) on the need for a modification in the patient's attitudes.”

Many people believe, for religious reasons, that all offenses must be forgiven, the notion of repentance somehow having gotten lost, and they may not get much out of this book, but those who ponder this issue will find a lot to think about. ( )