ABSTRACT
Introduction I have met many people who, despite the painful wounds they have had inflicted on them by the experience of betrayal within their intimate relationships, vehemently eschew suggestions that they would benefit from therapeutic help. Their strident opinions on counselling and other treatments find resonance with the views of Allan Bloom, the philosopher, classicist and academic, who stated: ‘There are great industries of psychotherapy that address our difficulties in “relationships” – that pallid, pseudoscientific word, the very timidity of which makes substantial attachments impossible. One has to have a tin ear to describe one’s great love as a relationship.’ One can have a degree of sympathy for this opinion that the tired word ‘relationship’ fails to capture the deep sense of belonging that individuals experience from an intense intimate rapport with another person. It is understandable also that such a man as he, chronically disenchanted with his contemporary society and firmly of the belief that commercial goals had become more highly valued than love, should look sceptically on the struggles of psychotherapists to help clients ‘fix’ their relationships. Yet it may well be the Herculean effort that many couples put into the ‘fixing’ of their damaged lives together that confounds such a view and places their love above displays of meretricious emotionality. Some of the content of this chapter extends material introduced in Chapter 3 and is supportive of therapeutic endeavour in respect of remorse and forgiveness.
