IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT

A few nights ago, I watched “Good Will Hunting” again. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a tough kid from South Boston (Will Hunting, played by Matt Damon) who also happens to be a math genius. Will splits his nights between drunken brawling and working as a janitor at MIT – where he amuses himself solving complex math equations on the blackboards … anonymously. As it happens, Will is busted for both of his hobbies simultaneously. As a result, he's faced with a choice of doing six months in jail or seeing a therapist under the supervision of a math professor who’s dazzled by his potential.

The therapist (Sean McGuire, played by Robin Williams) is something of a misfit himself. After a rocky start, he slowly succeeds in establishing rapport. Finally, a turning point is reached in which the therapist discloses that he, like Will, has been a victim of childhood abuse. The scene goes this way:

          SEAN
I don't know a lot, Will. But let me
tell you one thing. All this history,
this shit...
     (indicates file)
Look here, son.

Will, who had been looking away, looks at Sean.

          SEAN
This is not your fault.


          WILL
     (nonchalant)
Oh, I know.


          SEAN
It's not your fault.

          WILL
     (smiles)
I know.


          SEAN
It's not your fault.


          WILL
I know.

          SEAN
It's not your fault.


          WILL
     (dead serious)
I know.

          SEAN
It's not your fault.


          WILL
Don't fuck with me.


          SEAN
     (comes around desk, sits in front of
     Will)
It's not your fault.


          WILL
     (tears start)
I know.



          SEAN
It's not...



          WILL
     (crying hard)
I know, I know...

Sean takes Will in his arms and holds him like a child. Will sobs like a baby. After a moment, he wraps his arms around Sean and holds him, even tighter. We pull back from this image. Two lonely souls being father and son together.


From “Good Will Hunting” © 1997. Matt Damon & Ben Affleck.

On the one hand, this scene is something of a cliché. Breakthroughs in therapy are rarely so dramatic. Therapists like to retain objectivity and tend not to take patients in their arms. On the other hand, for those who have experienced childhood abuse, the scene has tremendous power, because it captures a fundamental psychological truth: self-blame is a well-neigh universal concomitant of childhood abuse.

The connection between childhood abuse and self-blame may be well known, but it is not by any means well understood. Nor, in my opinion, is the reason why overcoming self-blame is such an essential part of the healing process.

WHY DO VICTIMS BLAME THEMSELVES?

Considered within the Judeo-Christian moral construct, the self-blame victims impose on themselves defies logic. We may not like watching a lion kill a lamb, but we don't blame the lion for it.  Why?  Because blame requires a moral choice.  If there is no ability to choose, blame is inappropriate.  According to Judeo-Christian belief, the child is a moral tabula rasa.   Why would victims raised within this system blame themselves for having been abused?  The victims didn't choose their parents or teachers or priests.  Why would they be responsible for abuse suffered at their hands?


The common response of modern psychology is to assume the child engages in self-blame because the abusive adult suggests to the child that he or she is at fault – as a way of justifying abusive adult behavior. In the case of child sexual abuse, psychologists also postulate self-blame is based on confusion arising from the fact that, while the experience was unwanted, it may also have been, in some measure, pleasurable. Based on this analysis, psychologists (and screenwriters) tend to think that once victims of abuse fully understand and thereby dissolve the self-blame, they are able to begin the healing process.


While it is true that confronting self-blame can be cathartic, it is also true that such catharsis is not a lasting state. Even if self-blame is consciously relinquished, if that blame is redirected to the abusive adult, to the Church, or to society as a whole, depression and anger tend to remain. The victim often clings stubbornly to feelings of worthlessness and guilt, regardless of the apparent illogic.

Why is this?

VICTIMS AND THE LAW OF KARMA

Once one accepts that the law of cause and effect operates in the psychological realm, just as it operates in the physical, the principles of psychological healing become more comprehensible. If we accept that everything happens as a result of our own past actions, we must admit that if we have suffered abuse in this life, it is because we have been guilty of abuse in some other. To be sure, most of us are not – mercifully – aware of our past life errors. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t responsible for them, or that we don’t carry with us the feelings, traits and tendencies they have engendered. These are, sorry to say, very much with us, taking the form of moods and reactions that are so much a part of us that we take them for granted, even if we don’t understand them.

Since we’re ignorant of our past life errors, we’re also ignorant of our need for forgiveness. What’s more, we’re ignorant of our past life situation – of the reasons we made the mistakes we made. So, even if we suspect that we may deserve the things that have come to us, we may not suspect that we are deserving of understanding and forgiveness.

This is why so many victims of childhood abuse are stuck in a stubborn sense of guilt and worthlessness. Merely being told that we were children and, therefore, not responsible, doesn’t necessarily help us. And displacing blame to the adult, or to the church, or to society, doesn’t help us, either. Why?


Because it does not awaken within us the understanding that the abuser is, himself, a victim. It does not help us to realize that the abuser is, himself, worthy of forgiveness. On the other hand, if we are able to forgive our present life abusers, then we are able to believe that we, ourselves, are worthy of forgiveness.


From a spiritual perspective, we are all victims of abuse. If we are victims, we are also abusers. And if we are abusers, we are all in need of healing and forgiveness. There is, in this sense, no distinction between normal and abnormal psychology.


We are all God’s children. We are taught God doesn’t judge us. We are taught He loves us unconditionally. But in all honesty, how many of us can say we really believe it?


Perhaps if we invest a little less time in judging and condemning and a little more time in understanding and forgiving, we will draw the grace of the One who created this colossal motion picture show to begin with.


“Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.”


Matt Damon and Ben Affleck didn’t say that but, who knows, maybe they’ll do a sequel.