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Rating: 
Summary: Responding to a critic
Review: "What we do in the realm of forgiveness says a great deal about both how we mourn our losses and how well we have separated psychologically from our parents, two fundamental issues in emotional health and development." Dr. Karen's long introduction is unusually astute: "There are many reasons why forgiveness may be difficult, impossible, or wrong." Addressing both the wronged and weary and the ashamed and hiding, he has written a psychologically sophisticated exploration of the complex dynamics of (the usual suspects of) authentic relationship and forgiveness -- not at all as "misty," sentimental or politically correct moral virtue -- that deserves your unsentimental attention.
Rating: 
Summary: Correting some flagrant misunderstandings by reviewers
Review: Although I rarely write reviews of books, I was compelled to do so here upon reading the review by the reader Out west. His or her claim is that Mr. Karen is mistaken in conflating mental health problems with moral immaturity. Wrong! Mr. Karen never makes the claim that those suffering mental anguish are morally *immature.* On the contrary, he claims that people can become *stronger* in their practice of the virtues, particularly forgiveness, for their own good and the good of those around them. This is an ages-old idea, going back at least to Aristotle. Neither Aristotle nor Mr. Karen are passing judgement on anyone, only claiming that all of us should be challenged to grow morally. With regard to the reader's claim that Mr. Karen has broken the rules of psychotherapy by introducing forgiveness into the inner sanctum of the profession, I have this to say: So what? Who cares? He broke the rules??!!?? Heavens, what might happen next? Penicillin was discovered by breaking the rules; the Wright brothers discovered flight by breaking the rules; Michael Jordan broke every rule of conventional basketball to give us a better way. Rule-breaking is no sin, especially for such a pragmatic science as psychotherapy when good results are obtained. Mr. Karen gets good results. Don't condemn that.
Rating: 
Summary: Forgiveness Brings Peace
Review: I didn't expect to carry old wounds and hurts from childhood into adulthood. Foolish on my part, but I hoped experience would bring peace and perhaps some understanding. Reading THE FORGIVING SELF helped me realize I not only carry the pain, but it influences the way I feel about myself today. What Robert Karen has achieved in his book is so important. In beautifully written prose, funny, charming and insightful, he helps us understand how to LET GO! To send the pain and hurt away for good. Or at least to come to terms with it. To accept that we had and have every right to be angry and hurt. But not to let it go on spoiling our life in the present. Karen helps us understand that to forgive those who have hurt us, to forgive ourselves for the pain we've caused others, and to accept our humanity, warts and all, is the road to true freedom of the heart and mind. PEACE, it's wonderful! GO FOR IT!
Rating:
Summary: Correting some flagrant misunderstandings by reviewers
Review: I found this book perceptive and personally helpful. Robert Karen is careful, at the beginning of the book, to make clear his intentions. He is not using forgiveness as a blanket application nor is he discussing the forgiveness of great atrocities (the Holocaust, 9/11, etc.) or the forgiveness of such terrible violations as sexual, physical and verbal abuse. He is exploring, rather, forgiveness as a step towards wholeness: the recognition that people can be both lovable and infuriating, that we ourselves can be flawed and yet worthwhile. Karen is encouraging the reader to move beyond "good guy--bad guy" tags, to accept that people--our parents, ourselves--can be imperfect without being the enemy. This acceptance and recognition, Karen makes clear, is a process. He is not advocating forgiveness as something easy or instantaneous or even, sometimes, appropriate. Forgiving, from Karen's point of view, is a dialog, whether it is a dialog with another person or with our past. The hallmark of this kind of forgiveness is honesty--to honestly admit, "This is how I feel, this is what I'm doing, this is what I experience." Karen is not interested in "fixing" problems: "Okay, I won't do, feel, experience that anymore." He is interested in illustrating the achievement of being able to say, "Okay, I feel this envy or this malice. I don't like it. That's also part of me. I'm a whole person." Wholeness is the object of Karen's book: how to achieve personal wholeness through recognizing the potential wholeness in other people: "I can still love someone even though they are flawed." In this, Karen accesses a deep truth, call it religious or ethical or whatever (and why should religion and ethics be removed from mental health?): to try to act towards others how we would like them to act towards us. Karen uses a number of movies, books and current events as examples. Although some of these are applicable, and they are all very interesting, these object lessons are less credible and less applicable than his therapy work and personal experiences.
Recommendation: Buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Confuses neurosis and real damage, among other things
Review: I've just finished reading this terrific book, and I'm ready to give it to my sister, my parents, a long list of friends and even (maybe) my ex-husband. Robert Karen is a wonderful writer. This book is like having a conversation with your most intelligent and intuitive friend, the one who tells it to you straight and also makes you laugh through your tears. Karen takes us to the deepest reaches and farthest frontiers of intimate relationships. Using novels and movies -- from Chaplin to Aldomovar, Shakespeare to Dostoevsky -- Karen holds up a mirror and exhibits us our universal struggles, as parents and children, siblings, friends, lovers and partners. Robert Karen is a great storyteller. This is most evident in the way he brings his own therapeutic practice to life. Moment-by-moment, he shows us his patients as they transform their disappointment, shame and rage to understanding, compassion, and love. I can't recommend this book enough. It's a gift!
Rating:
Summary: Responding to a critic
Review: Though the rules of Amazon.com's review boards explicitly state that reviews are not supposed to be interchanges between reviewers, someone chose to ignore that rule and "correct" my "flagrant misunderstandings" of this book. I'm reasonably sure I did not misunderstand this book; I am a reasonably well respected scholar on the history and ethics of mental health care, a very experienced psychotherapist, and an expert in health care policy who consults with and writes for some major players in health care reform. Why does it matter that Dr. Karen has brought moral issues into the therapy room? The issue is really quite obvious and fairly simple: Historically mental health professionals have insisted that moral improvement is beside the point of mental health--that disease, not lack of moral strength or the practice of any virtue, is the cause of the problems they address. Removing the stigma of mental illness has always been understood to depend on denying any connection between illness and virtue. If it is true, as Karen insists, that sometimes health requires that we acquire a specific virtue, several things follow. First, if Karen is right, much of the ideology of the mental health professions must simply be false. It cannot be the case that mental problems do not reflect moral deficiencies, if it is the case that at least sometimes they reflect failures of attaining appropriate virtue--in this case, the ablity to forgive. That is a tautology, hence cannot possibly be false. Second, mental health professionals practice on licenses that depend on the idea that they have mastered a specific science. Neither their training nor any licensure exams require that they have training in helping their patients toward moral improvement. Thus, when mental health professionals urge their patients to cultivate and practice a certain virtue--in this case, forgiveness--they are using their professional licenses to urge on patients beliefs that their training and licensure do not warrant, in the most literal sense of "warrant." Third, if at least some mental problems reflect deficiencies of character, i.e., the inability to forgive when it is needful to do so, then there is indeed good reason for attaching stigma to mental health patients. Since at least some patients' problems reflect their moral failings, and since (for reasons of patient confidentiality) we cannot know which patients those are, we are justified in wondering of any patient whether his are the sorts of problems caused by failing to attain some virtue. Finally, if one admits moral counsel into mental health care, one puts the entire edifice into question. From the first licensing laws to recent gaurantees of parity with physical illness, mental health care has trested its case for legal protections on the model of illness, not moral immaturity. Does anyone really believe that such protections, essential to the functioning of the mental health system,would continue if lawmakers saw therapists setting themselves up as moralists? Why does it matter if a mental helth professional breaks the rules? The entire point of licensing mental health workers is to insure that they practice within the bounds of "the rules."
While patients rarely sue over the issue--since, after all, they don't even known when it's happening--professionals can be (and often are) censured by professional examination boards for such things. Fortunately, the sort of loosy-goosy reasoning contained in this book, along with tolerance of psychiatrists sitting around making up stuff without scientific basis or public accountability, is coming to an end. One upshot of mental health parity is that insurers are beginning to offer well-validated treatments and to exclude others. Insurerers do not care to pay for flaky, speculative moral counsel, and--note this carefully--the laws that created the professions do not require them to. The legal rights of mental health professionals rest entirely on their claim to science, not morals. People who don't like science, or who don't want their care based on the anti-moralistic traditions that created the mental health disciplines, may of course continue to pay out of pocket for whatever snake oil they enjoy. Practitioners purveying notions inconsistent with the legal protections and responsibilities of the professions will depend on such people for their survival--because the professions are rapidly extruding them.
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