ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the fundamental steps envisioned towards forgiveness after trauma as the letting go of the negative relation with an inside persecutor in the treatment of traumatised patients, if forgiveness is to become possible at all. If connectedness is vital to survival, mourning and grieving are necessary parts of the working through after trauma, fundamental moments for the resurrection of the victim and the recuperation of agency and subjectivity. In the renewed space of the beyond of trauma, forgiveness resides as a pure gift to the bestowed but mostly to the bestower. The desire for reconciliation to repair social damage, for individual forgiveness and a desire to keep the relationship have been observed among non-human primates. Individual forgiveness happens in interpersonal context, both intrapsychically and in reality, that is, in the relationship with the therapist. Creativity stems from a reparative impulse and reorganizes historical reality intergenerationally, finding a force of expression for what has gone unsaid for decades.
