Gustave-Nicolas Fischer, psychologist: “Forgiveness is the only remedy I have found for trauma”

A therapist friend, met in Montreal, recently told him: "You do like salmon, you like to swim against the current!"

The health psychologist Gustave-Nicolas Fischer claims it: “To be interested in forgiveness in 2023 is to go against the tide of the current atmosphere, where we no longer know what forgiveness means.

When you have been betrayed, offended, devastated, how do you perform this “senseless” act?

From murderous attacks to devastating incest, from family breakdown to romantic betrayal, can we heal by continuing to hate the one who has hurt us?

Professor Gustave-Nicolas Fischer, who taught at the universities of Lausanne, Strasbourg and Lorraine, and in Montreal for twenty years, has helped many victims recover from the trauma.

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"It's an inner strength in each of us that allows us to heal from hatred, he says, and that offers a radically new perspective: forgiving allows us to return to ourselves and to life."

A unique analysis.

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Forgiveness, a force that liberates

“Today, we judge, we accuse, we condemn, but we no longer forgive.

The offense has become unforgettable in a society of clash marked by violence and conflict.

Not only does forgiveness no longer have a place, but I observe a sort of inversion of values: “unforgiveness” is valued as a force that would help us overcome hardships.

It is indicative of our individual and collective inability to overcome our impulses.

For many, forgiving is a gadget to stay zen, or even a sign of hypocrisy, of compromise.

We anchor forgiveness in the spiritual or the religious, and our representation is off the mark!

Because it has nothing to do with reconciliation or repentance.

He is not'

It's not about patching up a relationship or compromising to fix things.

Forgiveness is a psychic force that allows the injured person to get back on the road.

A senseless, extraordinary act of freeing oneself from one's own hatred.

Wounded life turns in circles

““I hate her”, “I want her to death”… In the testimonies that I have collected from victims of violence or heartbreaking breakups, many refer to the person who hurt them as a “monster”, a “bastard”.

"Forgive ?

Don't you think about it!” a woman who had been sexually abused for years told me.

I wanted to explore this link between hate and the impossibility of forgiving.

A psychic wound is an extreme experience: everything has been destroyed, shaken to the very depths of oneself.

For many victims, the harm is irreparable, and forgiveness is unthinkable.

This evil that they keep track of contains resentment, resentment, hatred, psychological locks that prevent them from freeing themselves and rebuilding themselves.

Not forgiving feeds a feeling of revenge that gnaws at the victims and invades their inner world.

By freezing them on their past wound, the traumatic memory drools, the evil extends its hold on the present.

To start forgiving, you have to start to stop hating the one who hurt you.

Otherwise, we go around in circles with our misfortune.

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Forgiveness is the ability to shed the burden of hatred to recreate another life

Gustave-Nicolas Fischer, psychologist

You won't get my hate

"The words of Antoine Leiris who had just learned of the death of his wife, during the attack at the Bataclan on November 13, 2015 - "You stole the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you 'will not have my hate' – echo this process that I observed in therapy: to come out of hate is to stop the spiral of death in oneself.

Resistance fighter Lucie Aubrac said that forgiveness is the way to “unlearn hate”.

Forgiveness is not self-evident, it cannot be demanded.

It is an inner gestation, a personal and trying journey that takes time, sometimes a lifetime.

One of my patients, a victim of incest, took a long time to be able to reconnect with her abusive father.

This is an inner fight whose challenge is not to

accept the harm that has been done, but his bruised life.

Forgiveness is the ability to shed the burden of hatred to recreate another life, free from the harm that has been done to us.

A person who has a confidence, even tenuous, to be able to get out of it, who still hopes, is in a state to forgive.

justice and appeasement

“During the criminal trial, which is a very strong moment, many victims expect from the culprit a word of repentance which does not always come.

The impossibility of forgiving stems from the fact that the aggressor never asked them for forgiveness.

This vision encloses forgiveness in a kind of transaction, “I forgive you, if you ask my forgiveness”, whereas these are two distinct paths on the psychic level.

The aim of justice is not that of forgiveness, its function is to repair the wrongs and condemn the guilty.

It can sometimes bring a form of psychic restoration, as seen in the film

, by Jeanne Herry, focused on restorative justice: a discussion group brings together victims and perpetrators of criminal acts, all volunteers.

This connection makes it possible to move towards appeasement.

Justice can repair, it does not heal.

Forgiveness in four steps

“Forgiveness is learned.

For thirty years there has existed in the United States a psychology of forgiveness, a therapeutic process still ignored in France.

Group and individual sessions are conducted with patients suffering from mental disorders following attacks, violence, painful breakups.

The idea is to move them from a hostile relationship towards their attacker to a human relationship.

This learning goes through four major stages, developed by the American professor Robert Enright, which combines cognitive, affective and behavioral factors.

The injured person first returns to the offense suffered by confronting his suffering and his anger.

Second step, she assesses her willingness to forgive, and can understand that what she did before does not

didn't work.

Then, she puts her aggressor back in her story by no longer confining her only to her destructive acts.

The final step is that of emotional forgiveness: we cannot erase the evil, but we can courageously commit to accepting our suffering and rediscovering the feeling of living.

The therapeutic effects of forgiveness are widely documented by North American studies: depression, anxiety disorders, anger decrease and are accompanied by better self-esteem and greater confidence.

Forgiveness is a force that heals: this treasure buried in us, we must seek it.

My observation may be provocative, but it is the only psychological remedy that I have found for the trauma!

I come across people who are dead inside every day.

Forgiveness, he

sends the message that life is here.

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Forgive.

Healing the Wounds of Life,

by Gustave-Nicolas Fischer, Ed.

Odile Jacob, 240 pages, €22.90.