Forgiveness and Spirituality in Psychotherapy: A Relational Approach

329 Pages·2015·2.005 MB·English

by  E. L. Worthington Jr., S. J. Sandage

FORGIVENESS
and
SPIRITUALITY in
PSYCHOTHERAPY
SpiritualityTitlePP.indd 1 6/11/15 9:34 AM
FORGIVENESS
and
SPIRITUALITY
in
PSYCHOTHERAPY
A Relational Approach
EVERETT L. WORTHINGTON, JR.,
and STEVEN J. SANDAGE
American Psychological Association • Washington, DC
SpiritualityTitlePP.indd 2 6/11/15 9:34 AM
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Worthington, Everett L., 1946-
Forgiveness and spirituality in psychotherapy : a relational approach / Everett L.
Worthington, Jr., and Steven J. Sandage. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4338-2031-1 — ISBN 1-4338-2031-5 1. Psychotherapy—Religious aspects.
2. Forgiveness. 3. Spirituality—Psychology. I. Sandage, Steven J. II. Title.
RC489.S676W67 2016
616.89'14—dc23
2015009341
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record is available from the British Library.
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
DOI:10.1037/14712-000
CONTENTS
Preface ........................................................................................................ vii
Acknowledgments ...................................................................................... ix
Introduction ................................................................................................. 3
I. Theory and Evidence .......................................................................... 19
Chapter 1. How Forgiveness Helps People Cope
With Transgressions ....................................................... 21
Chapter 2. How Spiritual Transformation Occurs ........................... 37
Chapter 3. H ow Attachment Affects Spirituality
and Why Spiritual Transformation
May Be Needed to Forgive ............................................. 61
Chapter 4. Evidence Supporting the Models ................................... 79
v
II. Promoting Forgiveness .................................................................... 113
Chapter 5. Helping People Forgive ................................................ 115
Chapter 6. Forgiveness in Brief Psychotherapy .............................. 139
Chapter 7. Case Study of Forgiveness
in Brief Psychotherapy ................................................. 155
Chapter 8. Forgiveness in Long-Term Psychotherapy ................... 185
Chapter 9. Case Study of Forgiveness
in Long-Term Psychotherapy ....................................... 203
Chapter 10. Forgiveness in Couples and Family Therapy ................ 223
Chapter 11. Forgiveness in Group Interventions ............................. 247
Afterword ................................................................................................. 267
Appendix: Measures to Assess Aspects of the Victim–Sacred
and (Victim’s Perception of) the Offender–Sacred Relationship ........... 275
References ................................................................................................ 279
Index ........................................................................................................ 307
About the Authors................................................................................... 319
vi contents
PREFACE
This is a book based on research but aimed at mental health practitio-
ners. If you want to know more about how people deal with transgressions,
especially when religion and spirituality get mixed up in them, then this book
is for you. If you do research on forgiveness or spirituality or are an under-
graduate seeking an application-focused, research-informed understanding of
forgiveness and spirituality, or if you are a curious and thoughtful reader with
expertise in another area, we hope you will be enriched by this book, too. We
have tried to stay close to the research while writing this book directly for
those who struggle to help clients through their difficulties.
Most writing for clinicians and researchers about the topic of forgive-
ness has been done since 1998. Research on how forgiveness and spirituality
relate to each other has developed more recently (for a meta-analytic review,
see D. E. Davis, Worthington, Hook, & Hill, 2013). Little new theory has
guided that study, especially in interventions (for a meta-analysis, see Wade,
Hoyt, Kidwell, & Worthington, 2014). In the past few years, we believe, that
has changed. We aim at theory- and research-informed clinical applications.
Much of our theorizing grew from a research grant awarded by the
Fetzer Institute to Dr. Worthington, with Dr. Sandage and with Dr. Michael
McCullough of Miami University as coinvestigators. The three of us met
vii
in 2005 in the midwinter Miami steam heat, and we cooked up this theory
of how people with interpersonal problems, which often include grudges
and vengeful motivations, could forgive. And because most people in the
United States consider themselves spiritual, religious, or both, we included
religion and spirituality in our thinking about how forgiveness and spiritual-
ity might change with time. We planned three longitudinal studies—one
for each of us—and a host of smaller studies to test our theorizing. Some of
this Fetzer-funded research piggybacked on existing grants (Lilly Founda-
tion, to Sandage; National Institute for Mental Health, to McCullough), and
other research has piggybacked onto it (John Templeton Foundation grant
to Worthington and later to Dr. Don Davis at Georgia State University).
The three of us formulated the basic theory of forgiveness and relational
spirituality together—the pyramid that you will see in Chapter 4. However,
McCullough was completing a large National Institutes of Health grant and
could not participate as a coauthor in this book. So we cite his work, but we
(Worthington and Sandage) tell the story of the research, place it in the
broad context of their theorizing and other research, and most important,
make it clinically and personally relevant.
We do not emphasize a particular religious or spiritual tradition. We high-
light the importance of clinical sensitivity to various traditions. We recognize
that forgiveness is sacred to some people but is not religious or spiritual for
others. In 1997, the three of us published To Forgive Is Human: How to Put
Your Past in the Past (McCullough, Sandage, & Worthington, 1997), a trade
book whose thesis was captured by the title. Forgiveness does not belong to any
religion. It is a human enterprise. We affirm that position in this current book.
We do not consider spirituality as an aspect of religion. Spirituality can
be religious or nonreligious. Although some people might associate the topic
of forgiveness with certain religious traditions, we find a diversity of expres-
sions of forgiveness in various traditions. Some individuals have experienced
negative or abusive experiences with spiritual and religious communities,
and their forgiveness struggles can be complicated by traumatic associations
with the sacred.
We want to make this book usable. We have included many cases,
adapted with masking or by synthesizing a composite client, and we have
conformed to ethical guidelines in disguising at least five identifying char-
acteristics of individuals. We believe you will enjoy this read regardless of
whether you share our theoretical perspectives. We hope you find this book
stimulating.
viii preface
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We wholeheartedly thank the Fetzer Institute, which initiated this proj-
ect. Program Officer Wayne Ramsey was our contact with the Institute from
the beginning. He challenged us to find a project and kept after us to bring
it to fruition. Through Grant 2266, the Institute not only funded personnel
time to collect data, analyze it, and write but also provided the lens that kept
our separate projects converging on a single image. Dr. Worthington received
another grant from the John Templeton Foundation (Grant 14979) to com-
plete his data collection and to consider new variables (namely, humility).
Dr. Sandage’s research was also supported by Lilly Endowment, Inc., Grant
2078 and the John Templeton Foundation Grants 10987 and 29630 on rela-
tional spirituality and humility that informed this book.
From a personal standpoint, we want to acknowledge the many wonder-
ful collaborators in this research. Listing all the names of participants since
the project began in 2006 would be tedious, but we are not any less grateful.
The acknowledgments of those collaborators are authorship on the many
publications that came from these three projects (you can peruse the refer-
ences and see their names). Also, numerous workers within each lab were
crucial to the success of the research, even though their contributions might
ix
not have risen to the level of publication credit. Thank you to all. A special
thanks go to Sarah Hassen for graphic design and to Sajel Patel and David
Paine for their research support.
Writing this book has consumed three weeks of each of three summers for
me (Ev), and I am so grateful that my wife, Kirby, has been so generous in allow-
ing me to retreat to Florida for writing and to Wayne Canipe for providing the
condo. I (Steve) want to thank my wife, Danielle, and daughters, Kate and
Camille, for sharing the journey of learning about relationships, forgive-
ness, and spirituality. I am also grateful to my primary clinical mentors, Jim
Maddock and Noel Larson, for showing me the possibilities for integrating
attachment and differentiation.
x acknowledgments