ABSTRACT
This chapter examines forgiveness, traditionally relegated to the domain of the religious and spiritual, as a relational issue and as an aspect of therapeutic process. It outlines possible long-term consequences of the reality of early separation and loss of physical contact between infant and mother, of the threat of death or disability, of a prolonged state of crisis, all of which may result in the rupture of attachment and trust and in the use of dissociation and splitting by both parents and developing child in order to survive the overwhelming affects created by trauma. Cornell's paper on 'The intricate intimacies of psychotherapy and the question of self-disclosure' begins with a poignant clinical moment in which the traditional patient/therapist roles seem to be reversed. Perhaps the splits between various schools of psychoanalysis on the one hand, and the affiliation of the relational perspective with humanistic tradition on the other, are more pronounced in the UK than in other parts of Europe.
