Shani Robins, Ph.D. (IL/ USA)
Biography:
Born 1966
Professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California.
Assistant Professor and Instructor. Currently at: Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.
Clinical Psychologist, providing Clinical Supervision for pre- and post-doctoral candidates.
Developed the Wisdom Therapy of which humility and forgiveness are central components.
Institute for Wisdom Therapy, President (www.wisdomtherapy.com)
Organizational Consulting: Workplace applications of Emotional Intelligence & Wisdom.
Intervention outcome evaluations in the community and organizational settings.
Workshop: Wisdom Therapy, Anger & Forgiveness
Wisdom Therapy is an integration and application of western psychological science with Eastern traditions and concepts such as Mindfulness Meditation, humility training, and compassion. Wisdom Therapy is an effective intervention for reducing anger. Such increases in humility and subsequent decreases in anger will be discussed in length as they relate to forgiveness.
Humility is hypothesized to have at least 2 components: (1) The extent to which one recognizes that his perception of events is subjective (others perceive it differently) and tentative (will change over time), and (2) an appreciation, respect, and awe of the grand scale of events of the universe. Both tend to shake up the grandiosity that seems to accompany much of anger and which is antithetical to forgiveness.
Both Anger and forgiveness are often, and rather explicitly, related to the extent to which one maintains a rather arrogant assumption that they are “right” and another “is wrong” -- “My perception and judgment is the right one and you did something wrong.” Even when forgiveness takes place, that assumption still seems to be often maintained but is followed by the additional thought, “…but I’ll forgive you anyway.” The humility training component of Wisdom Therapy aims to explicitly shake up such certainty of right and wrong and facilitate an appreciation that one’s judgments and interpretations are highly subjective and tentative. Importantly, it is not meant to eliminate a sense of right and wrong but rather one's absolute certainty of that sense. The use of visual illusions has been found to be an effective new tool for achieving that and will be demonstrated in this presentation. A decrease in certainty has been established as an important component of wisdom (e.g., Baltes, 1993) and in the present research program, has empirically been demonstrated to lead to significant reductions in anger and self-centeredness, and consequently to greater forgiveness.
Outcome data will be reviewed from several Wisdom Therapy studies and the implications of that data will be discussed in terms of forgiveness in everyday, clinical, and political contexts.