The Real Roots of Vengeance and Forgiveness

Yesterday, somebody pointed me to this article, which I wrote a few years ago for a magazine called Spirituality and Health. I had not realized until yesterday that the magazine had made the article available on the web. Even though it's several years old, I still like the way it reads. In fact, it's as decent a précis of my book Beyond Revenge as you're going to find anywhere.

I'm not exactly a regular reader of this particular magazine, but their editorial staff have taken an interest in some of my research and writing over the years, including some of our (by which I mean, my and my collaborators') work on forgiveness and gratitude, for which I have always been appreciative. The founder of the magazine, whom I was fortunate enough to know, was T. George Harris--one of the most colorful figures in the history of 20th-century magazine publishing. Some readers of this blog might know of George's work in helping to turn Psychology Today into the behemoth it eventually became, but there is much more to George's personal and professional life that's worth knowing about.

George died last year at the age of 89. I found two really nice chronicles of his life--this one from the local San Diego paper (George was a La Jolla resident), and this one written by Stephen Kiesling, who not only is the editor-in-chief at Spirituality and Health, but also was one of George's closest friends and fondest admirers.