Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND CORE CONCEPTS
- PART II THE ROOTS OF HELPING OTHER PEOPLE IN NEED IN CONTRAST TO PASSIVITY
- PART III HOW CHILDREN BECOME CARING AND HELPFUL RATHER THAN HOSTILE AND AGGRESSIVE
- PART IV THE ORIGINS OF GENOCIDE, MASS KILLING, AND OTHER COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE
- PART V THE AFTERMATH OF MASS VIOLENCE: TRAUMA, HEALING, PREVENTION, AND RECONCILIATION
- 33 Preventing Group Violence
- 34 Kosovo: The Need for Flexible Bystander Response
- 35 The Effects of Violence on Groups and Their Members
- 36 Healing, Reconciliation, and Forgiving after Genocide and Other Collective Violence
- 37 Healing, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Project Summary and Outcome, with Addendum on Other Projects
- 38 Further Avenues to Prevention
- 39 Commentary: Human Destructiveness and the Refugee Experience
- 40 A Vision of Holocaust Education in Holocaust Centers and Schools
- 41 Out of Hiding
- 42 Review of Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich
- 43 What Can We Learn from This Tragedy? A Reaction Days after September 11, 2001
- PART VI CREATING CARING, MORALLY INCLUSIVE, PEACEFUL SOCIETIES
- Appendix: What Are Your Values and Goals?
- Index
36 - Healing, Reconciliation, and Forgiving after Genocide and Other Collective Violence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND CORE CONCEPTS
- PART II THE ROOTS OF HELPING OTHER PEOPLE IN NEED IN CONTRAST TO PASSIVITY
- PART III HOW CHILDREN BECOME CARING AND HELPFUL RATHER THAN HOSTILE AND AGGRESSIVE
- PART IV THE ORIGINS OF GENOCIDE, MASS KILLING, AND OTHER COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE
- PART V THE AFTERMATH OF MASS VIOLENCE: TRAUMA, HEALING, PREVENTION, AND RECONCILIATION
- 33 Preventing Group Violence
- 34 Kosovo: The Need for Flexible Bystander Response
- 35 The Effects of Violence on Groups and Their Members
- 36 Healing, Reconciliation, and Forgiving after Genocide and Other Collective Violence
- 37 Healing, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Project Summary and Outcome, with Addendum on Other Projects
- 38 Further Avenues to Prevention
- 39 Commentary: Human Destructiveness and the Refugee Experience
- 40 A Vision of Holocaust Education in Holocaust Centers and Schools
- 41 Out of Hiding
- 42 Review of Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich
- 43 What Can We Learn from This Tragedy? A Reaction Days after September 11, 2001
- PART VI CREATING CARING, MORALLY INCLUSIVE, PEACEFUL SOCIETIES
- Appendix: What Are Your Values and Goals?
- Index
Summary
This chapter will explore the impact of collective violence on victims and, to some degree, on perpetrators as well. It will consider the role of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation in building a better future in societies in which such violence had taken place. As a primary example, the chapter will focus on Rwanda, where the authors have been conducting a project on healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness are deeply interrelated. Healing and reconciliation help break cycles of violence and enhance the capacity of traumatized people for psychological well-being. Forgiving is essential for reconciliation to take place and both arise from and contribute to healing.
overview: the need to heal, forgive, and reconcile
Victimization of one group by another that leads to great suffering by a group has intense and long-lasting impact. Members of the victim group feel diminished, vulnerable. They see the world as a dangerous place. They tend to see other people, especially outside groups and their members, as hostile. Their capacity to live life well, to be happy, is diminished. When the group is in conflict with another group, when it is threatened, its members are less able to see the other's point of view, to consider the other's needs. The group is more likely to strike out, in the belief that it is defending itself. However, it may actually become a perpetrator of violence against others.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Psychology of Good and EvilWhy Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others, pp. 432 - 450Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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