Anger and Forgiveness

Home > Other > Anger and Forgiveness > Page 20
Anger and Forgiveness Page 20

by Martha C. Nussbaum


  really useful would be to express the concern frankly and try to work

  with the parent to figure out a respectful relationship with the right sort

  of space. But the asymmetry inherent in the history makes this very hard.

  It is extremely difficult for children to see the world from the point of

  view of parents, as whole and fallible people, rather than thinking of

  them as magical and huge.

  Where do anger and forgiveness fit in? Both are expressed, all the

  time— and sometimes the anger is well- grounded. Still, it is likely to be

  inflated, as I’ve said, by status- anxiety, and the forgiveness of the parent, correspondingly, is likely to be infected by gloating at control and new

  superiority. And even were this not the case, following the lead of anger

  and its promise of self- respect is usually counterproductive.

  In The Dance of Anger, psychologist Harriet Lerner describes an adult daughter in Kansas whose frequent migraine headaches and constant

  anger revolve almost entirely around her mother— even though the

  mother, living in California, visits only once a year. The mother is always

  present, but things get much worse when she actually turns up:

  During her therapy sessions, she would describe the horrors

  of the particular visit to which she was being subjected. With

  108

  Anger and Forgiveness

  despair and anger in her voice, she would recite her mother’s

  crime sheet, which was endless. In vivid detail, she would docu-

  ment her mother’s unrelenting negativism and intrusiveness.

  During one visit, for example, Maggie reported the following

  events: Maggie and Bob had redecorated their living room;

  mother hadn’t noticed. Bob had just learned of his forthcom-

  ing promotion; mother didn’t comment. Maggie and Bob effort-

  fully prepared fancy dinners; mother complained that the food

  was too rich. To top it all off, mother lectured Maggie about her

  messy kitchen and criticized her management of money. And

  when Maggie announced that she was three months pregnant,

  mother replied, “How will you deal with a child when you can

  hardly make time to clean your house?”24

  (This really could be Doris Roberts, but then it would be funny. …) Of

  course things go from bad to worse when the baby is born, in predictable

  ways. Maggie wants Lerner to say her anger is justified, and to sympa-

  thize with her; and of course her anger is at least what we have called

  well- grounded. Its “payback” wish seems mild— only that the mother

  will go away. But what lies within that wish may be less mild. Moreover,

  the pain of separation for the mother is all too evident.

  Lerner’s point is that asking who’s to blame and for what, keeping

  a crime list, is rarely a useful thing to do. Even trying to figure out how

  far the anger is well- grounded is likely to be counterproductive. Indeed,

  in this case it positively obstructs useful change. What Maggie had

  never done was to speak calmly about her goals and to let her mother

  know the limits she believes compatible with her independence. That

  would take work, and it would be risky, because things would then

  have to change. Cycling round and round in the predictable “dance” is

  a lot easier, because it means not having to address fundamental issues.

  So anger becomes a deflection from the constructive job of working

  out a reciprocal adult relationship. It is not just non- Transitional, it is

  anti- Transitional.

  Finally, as tensions around how to deal with the baby become

  fraught, with Lerner’s encouragement Maggie finally breaks the predict-

  able pattern. “Maggie’s heart was beating so fast, it occurred to her that

  she might faint. She realized in a split second that it would be easier to

  fight than to do what she needed to do.”25 What she needs to do is not to

  talk angrily about independence and maturity but to be mature. And so, for the first time, she speaks to her mother calmly and firmly. Her mother

  stands amazed. “Maggie felt as if she had stabbed her mother with a

  knife.”26 At first her mother goes right back to the old pattern of intru-

  sive criticism, but Maggie stands firm, while again and again her mother

  Intimate Relationships

  109

  tries “to draw Maggie back into fighting in order to reinstate their earlier, predictable relationship.” When her mother slams the door, “Maggie had

  the terrifying fantasy that her mother was going to kill herself and that

  she would never see her again. Suddenly, Maggie noticed that her own

  knees were shaking and she felt dizzy… . Maggie was beginning to leave

  home.”27 And her mother too, terrified of being abandoned, is just barely

  beginning to comprehend that there can be closeness without blame and

  counter- blame.

  Lerner makes two excellent points in this fascinating chapter. First,

  she shows that anger is often a way of not solving the real problem, of

  cycling it round and round. (And of course, the forgiveness that would

  follow one of these routine fights would be just another part of the ritual.

  We see this clearly when it’s an abusive spouse, just not when it’s us.) It’s like a game with repeat play, and in this case each repetition makes things

  worse for both. Like all rituals, this one is rooted in the past. Especially

  in the child- parent relationship, playing out the anger ritual locks both

  parties into a posture of no- change, and positively deflects them from

  examining what they need to do and what would really solve the prob-

  lem. Indeed it compounds the problem, by focusing attention on what is

  bad in the other, rather than on what might be good.28

  Second, Lerner emphasizes that anger is easy and reasoning about

  the future is hard, because repeating a problem is easier than solving it.

  It is very challenging, when two people are close, to renegotiate a rela-

  tionship that will include both genuine separateness and real love and

  intimacy. Change is scary, whereas going through the familiar routine,

  even if painful, is less scary.

  Let us now return to our questions about respect and self- respect.

  I think here the question about respect is the clearer of the two: we are

  not inclined to say that Maggie’s new calm manner toward her mother is

  condescending or disrespectful. Indeed it seems that it is only now, after

  forgoing anger, that Maggie finally sees her mother as a whole and sepa-

  rate person, and can treat her with respect as such. Does Maggie fail to

  respect herself, when she puts aside her anger at her mother’s encroach-

  ments? Actually, as Lerner argues, she is now stronger and more self-

  respecting. She has given up the crutch of the anger game, and she is able

  to stand up for herself in a productive way, forging true reciprocity for

  the future.

  As for empathy and playfulness: both were utterly lacking in the

  “dance of anger.” With the calm renegotiation comes the beginning of

  real thought in Maggie about the mother’s point of view, her ongoing

  need for closeness. The two are still too tentative to tease one another

  or be playful, but we can observe that the rigidity of the former rela-

&nbs
p; tionship, while humorous from the outside, made humor on the inside

  110

  Anger and Forgiveness

  utterly impossible. (The role of repetition and rigidity in humor is

  notorious.) After the renegotiation, things are more relaxed, and humor

  might possibly begin to emerge.

  As the two start talking about limits, independence, and a new

  future, what place is there for forgiveness? Clearly there is no place for

  forgiveness of the classic transactional sort. Indeed, to the extent that

  apologies and demands for forgiveness— or even spontaneous offers

  of forgiveness— become prominent, we would be right to feel that

  the old “dance” was continuing. Maybe Maggie will need something

  in the neighborhood of forgiveness to wean herself from her angry

  feelings— but maybe not. Maybe thinking about her wrongs, and how

  to forgive her mother for those wrongs, would be a way of not mov-

  ing on with the constructive job. Anger will be dissipated far more

  effectively by a new mode of interaction than by meditative exercises

  about forgoing anger.

  We have been talking about an ongoing relationship, and about

  trivial wrongs— albeit wrongs that cause real suffering. What about the

  truly terrible things some parents do to their children? Things such as

  abandonment, neglect, and abuse?29 Often, in such cases, the parent is no

  longer around in the child’s life, and the child is held captive by feelings

  of resentment. In such situations, a type of internal forgiveness, mean-

  ing a liberation of the self from angry and punitive wishes, can be very

  important, and I shall discuss this sort of forgiveness further in section

  VIII. Even in such cases, however— especially when the parents are not

  monsters but deeply flawed and yet basically loving people— a kind of

  generous letting- go is often more promising than delving into anger and

  pursuing forgiveness.

  A case in point is a best- selling memoir that is touted as a “memoir

  of forgiveness”— but it really is no such thing.30 Liz Murray was the

  child of two drug- addicted hippie parents. The parents were in a sense

  extremely loving, but as their use of both cocaine and heroin increased,

  they could not be effective parents. Her mother sold Liz’s winter coat, her

  birthday money, even a Thanksgiving turkey a local church had given

  them. The two girls were often hungry, and because they were unwashed

  and lice- ridden, they were bullied at school and stopped going. Along

  the way, her mother contracted AIDS, and Liz and her sister spent much

  of their time nursing her— until she died, and the father, failing to pay

  rent, moved to a homeless shelter. Liz lived on the streets.

  The memoir is primarily about Liz’s decision to take her life into her

  own hands, educate herself, and go back to school. It culminates in her

  winning a New York Times Scholarship to attend Harvard, where she

  began her studies in 2000. Because her father also had AIDS, she took

  Intimate Relationships

  111

  time off to care for him (an episode not discussed in the memoir, which

  ends with the scholarship). She graduated in 2009, and is currently a

  motivational speaker.

  How do anger and forgiveness figure in this terrible story? Liz

  shows us clearly that her parents really loved her. She does not appear

  to harbor a grudge or to have a difficult struggle with angry feelings—

  toward them. She does report a lot of anger toward people who deni-

  grate her attempts to educate herself. One obtuse welfare caseworker,

  for example, taunts her when she talks about her Harvard interview,

  not believing her. Liz gets really mad. “Blood rushed to my cheeks,

  and I stormed out” (309). And her anger is very well- grounded. The

  welfare system behaves pretty badly through most of the memoir. Still,

  Liz does not waste any time on connecting with her anger or under-

  standing it or even dealing with it. She just goes on with her life, in

  the spirit of the Transition: “That’s okay, I thought, pushing open the

  double doors and exiting that miserable office. That’s okay, because

  despite my caseworker’s disbelief, I did have an interview with a

  Harvard alumnus that afternoon. In fact, my schedule that day was

  packed” (309).

  So far as her father is concerned, she does report one brief episode

  of forgiveness, but it is significant for what it omits. On Liz’s eighteenth

  birthday, her father tells her that he has AIDS:

  When the cake arrived, glowing with eighteen candles, they

  both sang me happy birthday and Daddy gently squeezed my

  hand below the tabletop— one awkward touch with his own

  shaky hand… . In his gesture, I could feel him reaching out to

  me across our distance, assuring me silently, “I know, Lizzy, and

  I’m with you.” I couldn’t take my eyes off him, I was captured

  by this image: my father clapping his hands before the smoke

  of my extinguished birthday candles, so vulnerable and still

  full of life right in front of me, for now. I wanted to grab on

  to him, to protect him from AIDS. I wanted to make this stop

  happening to our family, to keep him safe and to make him

  healthy again.

  I did not make a wish over my candles. Instead, I chose to

  forgive my father, and made a quiet promise to work on heal-

  ing our relationship. I wouldn’t make the same mistake that I’d

  made with Ma, I would be there for him through this. We would

  be in each other’s lives again. No, he hadn’t been the best father,

  but he was my father, and we loved each other. We needed each

  other. Though he’d disappointed me countless times through

  112

  Anger and Forgiveness

  the years, life had already proven too short for me to hold on to

  that. So I let go of my hurt. I let go years of frustration between

  us. Most of all, I let go of any desire to change my father and

  I accepted him for who he was. I took all of my anguish and

  released it like a fistful of helium balloons to the sky, and I chose

  to forgive him. (294– 95)

  Liz forgives her father, she says. But what she lets go of, as she tells the

  story, is disappointment, “hurt,” and “anguish.” It is not anger. Indeed

  we can see from the opening description that she loves him intensely,

  and he her. They have been estranged, because she could not endure the

  repeated disappointments: but her position (like that of Swede Levov)

  was that of grief and helplessness, together with a wish to control his

  choices that she increasingly realizes to be doomed. There’s no bitterness,

  no resentment, no wish for payback— before or after. So what forgiveness

  means to her is letting go of grief at his failure to be someone different,

  and taking on the far more difficult task of supporting and caring for him

  as the person he is (rather as Swede Levov takes on the job of visiting

  Merry and trying to care for her until she dies).31 If she wants to call this forgiveness, fine, but it is very different from forgiveness in the classic

  transactional mode (there’s no apology, indeed she renounces con
cern

  with whether he regrets his prior actions), and different, as well, from

  the sort of unconditional forgiveness (if one wants to call it that) that one might have if one is very angry, and lets anger go. There’s no Transition,

  because there is no anger and no payback fantasy. She is as focused on

  the future as she can sensibly be, given that her father does not have long

  to live.

  It is not surprising that as a motivational speaker Liz Murray’s

  message is about taking control of your own life and building your

  own future, not trying to make excuses by blaming others, and not

  expecting to be able to control others. Her memoir goes in the opposite

  direction from those therapies that urge people to delve into their inner

  anger— even if that is supposed to be a prelude to healing. When the

  time seems to have come for anger, she just doesn’t give anger the time

  of day.

  There are problems in Liz Murray’s approach to life (insofar as she

  gives advice to others): It is all about the individual will, and it neglects politics. Some people really can will and discipline themselves into success, but these people are the lucky exceptions. Others may really need

  therapeutic assistance in order to avoid or exorcise anger. More impor-

  tant still, if the problems Liz encounters are really to be solved, society

  itself has to change. The inhumanity and inefficiency of the social welfare

  system should be addressed not by Stoic detachment, but by political

  Intimate Relationships

  113

  change. That issue awaits us in chapters 6 and 7. For now, I focus on

  her relationship with her father as a personal relationship, bracketing the

  impact of institutions.

  VI. Gratitude and Reciprocity

  At this point it is time to revisit our discussion of anger’s good- pay-

  back cousin. As I said in chapter 2, gratitude is typically regarded as a

  first cousin of anger: given a high evaluation of some things or persons

  beyond our control, we will naturally feel anger if someone wrongfully

  damages those things, but gratitude if there is intentional benefit. Both,

  say the Stoics, betray an unwise dependency on the goods of fortune, and

  in chapter 5 I will basically agree with this critique in the Middle Realm,

 

‹ Prev