The psychologic of forgiving

Psychologic is an attempt to systematize the commonsense psychology embedded in ordinary language. In this system, the concepts of respect, anger, and guilt, are directly linked, since messages of disrespect, and only those, create anger in the receiver and guilt in the sender. This paper deals with the process of forgiving, whereby respect is reaffirmed and anger and guilt are alleviated. Forgiving depends on clarification of misunderstanding as well as on apology and atonement. The distinction between forgiving others and forgiving oneself is treated. It is concluded that what goes on inside persons and between persons has the same structure.