How I became involved in forgiveness studies

WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.300 --> 00:00:01.980
I'm Robert Enright.

2
00:00:02.046 --> 00:00:05.129
I'm a professor in the
Department of Educational

3
00:00:05.196 --> 00:00:08.609
Psychology at the University
of Wisconsin Madison,

4
00:00:09.029 --> 00:00:12.240
a licensed psychologist and a
founding board member

5
00:00:12.660 --> 00:00:15.719
of the International
Forgiveness Institute.

6
00:00:15.786 --> 00:00:19.019
My studies are on the
psychology of forgiveness

7
00:00:19.500 --> 00:00:22.019
and we have research projects
going in

8
00:00:22.086 --> 00:00:24.179
many venues across the world.

9
00:00:24.246 --> 00:00:29.609
In 1978 the University of
Wisconsin hired me to study

10
00:00:29.676 --> 00:00:33.019
moral development because I'm
in the human development area,

11
00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:37.769
but almost all of the scholars
were centered on the question

12
00:00:37.836 --> 00:00:40.739
"How do children and
adolescents become fair

13
00:00:41.009 --> 00:00:43.230
or just in society?"

14
00:00:43.979 --> 00:00:47.939
And I like an obedient academic
followed along

15
00:00:48.006 --> 00:00:49.240
with everybody else.

16
00:00:49.306 --> 00:00:53.909
After I got ten years of doing
that, I became very bored and

17
00:00:53.976 --> 00:00:56.189
discouraged with this topic.

18
00:00:56.256 --> 00:00:58.979
It was not making a difference
in anybody's life

19
00:00:59.046 --> 00:01:00.060
other than my own.

20
00:01:00.799 --> 00:01:04.469
And so I threw all of that
research over a cliff

21
00:01:04.969 --> 00:01:08.879
and I didn't have a new topic
and so I asked myself the question:

22
00:01:09.329 --> 00:01:11.640
"What might make a difference
in the world

23
00:01:11.706 --> 00:01:13.109
in people's lives?"

24
00:01:13.176 --> 00:01:18.019
And I realized not justice
but injustice is a theme

25
00:01:18.150 --> 00:01:20.260
we all suffer with.

26
00:01:20.340 --> 00:01:24.359
We all have to confront
in a way to heal from

27
00:01:24.426 --> 00:01:27.420
injustices against us,
probably is

28
00:01:27.486 --> 00:01:29.560
the virtue of forgiveness.

29
00:01:29.626 --> 00:01:32.969
So I was staying in the realm
of moral development

30
00:01:33.269 --> 00:01:35.640
where I was hired to begin with.

31
00:01:35.706 --> 00:01:38.230
And that happened in
1985.

32
00:01:38.296 --> 00:01:42.659
So when I looked around in the
social sciences at the topic of

33
00:01:43.049 --> 00:01:47.190
forgiving there literally was
nothing out there.

34
00:01:47.256 --> 00:01:51.629
I actually went to the library
and had a computer search done

35
00:01:51.696 --> 00:01:56.640
by the librarian, she looked for
any social scientific study

36
00:01:56.706 --> 00:02:00.300
that existed on person to
person forgiving and after an

37
00:02:00.366 --> 00:02:05.400
hour she came back defeated
with a blank sheet of paper and

38
00:02:05.466 --> 00:02:07.679
said: "There is nothing !"

39
00:02:07.746 --> 00:02:10.170
And that shocked
me because something as

40
00:02:10.236 --> 00:02:12.450
important to forgiveness,
you think people would have

41
00:02:12.516 --> 00:02:15.689
been studying this in the
helping professions

42
00:02:15.756 --> 00:02:19.439
in the social sciences
and yet they did not.

43
00:02:19.506 --> 00:02:21.659
So I started a seminar,
we call it

44
00:02:21.726 --> 00:02:25.020
the "Friday forgiveness"
seminar in 1985.

45
00:02:25.449 --> 00:02:28.409
And we had people from all over
the world joining this

46
00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:32.789
and we all started to sit around
once a week on Fridays

47
00:02:33.360 --> 00:02:36.390
to start asking questions
such as these:

48
00:02:36.456 --> 00:02:39.330
"What do we mean when we
say to forgive?",

49
00:02:39.960 --> 00:02:41.130
"How did people do it?".

50
00:02:41.879 --> 00:02:46.979
"How can we research this to
see the extent of improvement

51
00:02:47.069 --> 00:02:49.680
of emotional well-being when
people forgive?"

52
00:02:50.449 --> 00:02:54.000
and "how can we then bring this to
others and forgiveness therapy

53
00:02:54.066 --> 00:02:55.979
and forgiveness education ?"

54
00:02:56.046 --> 00:03:00.930
It started in 1985, the seminar
has been running for 30 years

55
00:03:01.340 --> 00:03:05.909
and we've basically had the
honor of building a field of

56
00:03:05.976 --> 00:03:09.269
forgiveness studies within
the social sciences.

57
00:03:09.336 --> 00:03:12.960
I think in looking back on it
now the reason why there were

58
00:03:13.026 --> 00:03:16.740
no studies at all in the social
sciences on the topic of

59
00:03:16.806 --> 00:03:19.710
forgiveness that's not just
psychology, that would

60
00:03:19.776 --> 00:03:22.380
include
psychiatry, social work,

61
00:03:22.446 --> 00:03:25.550
counselling any of
the social sciences.

62
00:03:25.650 --> 00:03:27.539
I think there are a
couple of reasons.

63
00:03:27.606 --> 00:03:32.579
One is that almost everyone
with whom I spoke early on

64
00:03:33.060 --> 00:03:37.620
thought that forgiveness was
linked to religion or faith

65
00:03:38.129 --> 00:03:40.349
and the thought was: "Well how
could something that is

66
00:03:40.416 --> 00:03:44.849
religious be brought into
something as exalted and

67
00:03:44.916 --> 00:03:49.530
as important as the social sciences?
"We can't have that ! "

68
00:03:49.596 --> 00:03:52.289
Others thought of forgiveness
as a sign of weakness

69
00:03:52.710 --> 00:03:58.250
that as you forgive you give in
to the other's unfairness.

70
00:03:58.409 --> 00:04:01.799
You just simply cave in
to the nonsense.

71
00:04:01.866 --> 00:04:03.859
And that's not
what forgiveness is.

72
00:04:03.926 --> 00:04:07.080
Forgiveness is giving
goodness to those

73
00:04:07.146 --> 00:04:08.939
who have not been
good to you.

74
00:04:09.006 --> 00:04:12.780
It's truly from a position of
strength and struggle

75
00:04:13.050 --> 00:04:16.129
to achieve a virtue that's very
difficult to achieve.