Page 149 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5

A Portrait of a Christian Psychologist: Paul C. Vitz

Wolfram Soldan (Germany)
Question to Paul Vitz

“Self-forgiveness

in Psychology and

Psychotherapy: a Critique”

Dear Paul,
first of all, you spoke to me, with your article,
straight from the heart. Until now, I have been
arguing, mainly theologically rather than psy- Wolfram Soldan
chologically, that I myself do not have the au- (Germany) is a Physician, psy-
thority to forgive myself. For this reason, the chotherapist and one of the main
compilation of psychological arguments was lecturers for clinical psychology at
very valuable. Two questions occupy me: the IGNIS-Institute. He worked
two years in the DE‘IGNIS Hos-
The problem of subjectivity, which you raised, pital, about five years as head of
also arises (perhaps less markedly) in interper- the former IGNISTherapy-Cen-
sonal forgiving, as the experienced severeness ter. His main topics include for-
of guilt (one’s own and others’), compared with giveness processes, dealing with
the reasonably objectifiable sequence of events, the Bible in counselling and se-
is dependent on the felt responsibility/freedom xuality.
and the subjective constellation of relationships Articles by Wolfram Soldan you
(in some things it can be easier to forgive a can see here:
rather unknown than more closely associated Journal 2 on page 76
persons!). In my model, I emphasise that objec- Journal 4 on page 7
tive assessment of guilt is reserved for God, so
that I on the one hand always have to work with
subjective material, but, with a genuine process
of forgiveness (especially under the leading of fake forgiveness. The one who forgives is, accor-
the Holy Spirit), move at least in the direction of ding to this model, never the good person, since
an objective (= divine) point of view. The pro- he himself is always dependent on forgiveness.
blem of the (inevitable) subjectivity can, in my With “self-forgiveness”, there would thus not be
opinion, not really be solved in terms of secular any good self who forgives a bad self, but both
psychology. Would you see that differently? selves would need forgiveness. Understood this
way, self-forgiveness would be a virtual, sub-
I represent, as a practitioner, the approach that jective (anthropologically unreal) psycholo-
self-forgiveness is objectively not possible and gical process which can be useful for some as
therefore is also not productive, and that helpful an intermediate step. In the end, however, the
“self-forgiveness” is really nothing other than clear conclusion would be that “I have (in an
profoundly accepting, understanding or seizing “as-if” act) been able to ‘forgive’ myself” becau-
the forgiveness extended to us by our human se I profoundly accept that that I have received
(and in the end godly) vis-á-vis. As, in my mo- forgiveness. If, as described, the main dangers
del, I can only finally forgive another profound- of the concept of self-forgiveness are counterac-
ly if, and to the extent that, I myself genuinely ted, would there then only remain a delineated
and profoundly experience forgiveness (from indication for this “as-if” self-forgiveness, for
others, ultimately from God), a narcissistic, self- persons who feel this to be a bridge? How do
glorifying forgiveness will always be exposed as you see this?

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