ABSTRACT
It has long been clear that the analysis of trauma and severe relational failure of psychoanalytic patients has developmental as well as cognitive and affective components. Forgiveness is a willingness to reinvest in the failed relationship and to risk once more using it for psychological growth. The author has described forgiveness in psychoanalysis as a psychological work in continuation of the work of mourning with the power to safeguard the gains of a successful mourning process. This chapter focuses on two cases which demonstrate the psyche's propensity toward forgiveness, that is, the need to retrieve a significant relational bond—even though, as in the first case, it initially entails a massive denial of its impossibility. In the second case, it involves the spontaneous unfolding of forgiveness in the transference, based on a significantly positive reassessment of the emotional loading of the heretofore despised relationship.
