Association of Jungian Analysts
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Cutting Edges: Analytical Psychology
A Series of Talks Initiated by Dr. Gottfried M. Heuer
Tuesday 31 January 2012
8.30 p.m
The Colour of Rainbows:
On Forgiveness and Post-postmodernity
Birgit Heuer
This paper explores forgiveness from multiple perspectives, socio-political, clinical and through empirical research. In addition, I shall also consider forgiveness from a spiritual point of view, rather than a religious or moral one. This approach is inspired by post-postmodernity and from it emerges the paper’s central idea: A reading of forgiveness as something that is closely linked to ordinary daily experience and much more prevalent than widely assumed, rather than an act of supreme religious or moral effort. Thus forgiveness is present whenever the talion law is suspended and a different way is found. A post-postmodern context is needed here, for this conceptually enables what I call ‘deep positivity’, a benign epistemology that is neither naïve or nor regressive. To bring out a further facet of my theme, it is then set in a clinical context where forgiveness is seen as an imaginal creative act that unfolds over time. The paper ends with addressing restorative justice, a contemporary instance of the notion of forgiveness that bridges the personal and the political.
Brief Biography: Birgit Heuer is a Jungian Analyst of the BAP. Having previously trained in body-oriented psychotherapy, she has been in private practice for the past thirty years. She has served on the BAP training committee and worked as clinical supervisor at Kingston University. She has lectured and published on the body and analysis as well as on clinical paradigm and is currently writing a doctoral thesis on sanatology.
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