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Introduction :
Relating to others whether strangers, friends, or family-inevitebly exposes people to the risk of being offended or harmed by them. Throughout history and across cultures, people have developed many strategies for responding to such transgessions. Two classic responses are avoidance and revenge-seeking distance from the transgressor or opportunities to harm the transgressor in kind. These responses are common but can have harmful and negative consequences for individuals, relatives and perhaps society as a whole. Psychologists have been investigating interpersonal transgressions and their aftermath for years. However, many of the world's religions have advocated the concept of forgiveness as a productive response to such transgressions, (McCullough & Worhtington, 1999)
Forgiveness is a healing journey for both the body and the soul. The first definition for "forgive" in Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary(1983) is to give up resentment against or the desire to punish; to stop being angry with; to pardon”. Studzinski (1986) defines forgiveness as a willful process in which the forgiver chooses not to retaliate but rather respond to the offender in a loving way. Forgiveness is further described in the psychological literature as a powerful therapeutic intervention and as an intellectual exercise in which the patient makes a decision to forgive (Fitzgibbons, 1986). In defining forgiveness, the psychological literature tends to focus on the benefits of forgiveness for the forgiver and the role of forgiveness in the therapeutic and healing process, Rowe(1989) emphasizes that the experience of forgiveness is spiritual or transpersonal as well as interpersonal. Canale (1990) views forgiveness as a therapeutic agent in psychotherapy and considers the cognitive dimension of forgiveness. Subkoviak (1992) defines forgiveness from a psycholgical perspective that forgiveness involves the affective, cognitive and behavioural system, that is, how a person forgiving another feels, thinks and behaves towards him or her. The psychological response that is forgiveness includes the absence of negative affect, judgment, and behaviour toward the perpetrator and the presence of postive effect, judgment and behaviour. Forgiveness is a suite of prosocial motivatonal changes that occurs after a person has incurred a transgression. People who are inclined to forgive their transgressors tend to be more agreeable, more emotionally stable, and more spirtitully or religiously inclined. When people forgive, the probability of restoring benevolent and harmonious interpersonal relations with their transgressors is increased.
for-give= 'give-for' = to give undeserved gifts. It is about 'giving for someone when they are powerless to give by themselves-transforming the condition and stituation of people and organisations who have lost power or been denied it. It means forgiveness is creative and pro-active. Forgiveness can 68
Arhat Vacana, 24 (1), 2012
