Mechanisms of Healing

I am proposing nine ways in which apologies heal. Several healing mechanisms often overlap, and applying them in various combinations may be required for a successful apology. The offending party, in effect, must understand and respond to the essential needs of the offended.

1. The Restoration of Respect or Dignity: Many offenses lead to or at their core are humiliations which leave the offended party feeling degraded, diminished, hurt, and angry, emotions accompanied by poor judgment and residual grudges. Thucydides, a fifth century B.C historian, who in his history The Peloponnesian War cites loss of honor (humiliation or loss of dignity) as one of three causes of war. A central task of the apology is to restore the dignity of the offended party.

2. The Restoration of Power: Loss of power, often associated with loss of dignity, commonly results whenever there is a power differential between the offender (the more powerful) and the offended (the less powerful). Examples are offenses committed by large bureaucracies such as corporations, hospitals, and governments against smaller groups and individuals. Democracies and democratic practices, hopefully, protect the rights of individuals and groups, even though it may take decades for the apology to be forthcoming.

3. Validation that the Offense Occurred: A person, group or nation who is offended needs recognition and validation for their suffering and the injustice that caused it. We see this in the distress of Jews and Armenians towards those who deny mass murder was committed against them, and in African Americans who want their suffering from slavery and related events such as lynching and the Tuskegee experiment, validated. On an individual level, the humiliated party wants the offender, as part of the apology, “to know and to acknowledge what he did to me and how much I have suffered.”

4. Designation of Fault: The victims may have lingering doubts as to whether they were responsible. Women who were raped, men who were sexually abused as boys by priests, Jews who were accused of not resisting the Nazis, patients who were victims of medical mistakes, all need verbal affirmation that they were not at fault. President Clinton, in his apology to the victims of the Tuskegee experiment, wisely declared, “It was not your fault.”

5. Affirmation of Shared Values: The apology must validate the values of the friendship, the marriage, the community, or the nation. The apology affirms the wrong of an extramarital affair, a public statement that slanders a minority group, violation of a person’s legal rights, the practice of slavery, and the bombing of a peaceful nation,. Without these shared values, implicitly understood or explicitly stated, there can be no effective apology.

6. Suffering of the Offender: Evidence that the offender suffers in offering the apology is often a healing force. Such an emotional expression provides the offended party with a sense of evening the score, “They should suffer like I have suffered.” It also may indicate courage in offering up the apology.

7. A Promise for the Future: The apology must commit emotional and physical safety to the offended party and assurance the offense will not recur. Repetition of the offense voids the value of the apology as well as undermining subsequent apologies.

8. Material Reparation: When the offense is material damage without a diminution of self esteem, material reparation alone may be a satisfactory healing force. When material offenses are coupled with human suffering, the healing force of material reparation will be limited. Other reparation will be symbolic such as monuments, museums, holidays, and corrected and updated historical records including textbooks.

9. The Offender takes Risks by Apologizing: The offender risks social censure, loss of the relationship, and costly reparation, yet taking such risks communicates caring, sincerity, and courage.

Synthesizing the Mechanisms of Healing

The interactions between the parties to the apology produce the raw material out of which the mechanisms of healing are synthesized. These interactions can be understood as two sets of phenomena, each, in various combinations, contributes to one or more of the nine healing functions.

One set is the three part structure of the apology: first, acknowledging the offense, second, expressing remorse, and third, making reparation. The structural part of the apology that most commonly fails is acknowledging the offense. The offending party may undermine the apology with a vague or incomplete statement of acknowledgment, use of the passive voice (“mistakes were made”), use of “if” or “but” to undermine responsibility, an apology to the wrong party, an apology for the wrong offense, or minimizing the offense.

The second set, subtle and subjective, not clearly as structural as the first, but no less important, relies on judgment and interpersonal skills. First, determining who should offer the apology and who should receive the apology: This is important when the apology is offered by a group or nation to another group or nation. Second, Determining the timing of an apology: It usually makes sense to apologize as soon as the offense is discovered. Many apologies, however, are offered in a serial manner over time as the offended party digests and integrates the meaning of the offense. There are many instances of profoundly successful apologies, by individuals and nations, that are delayed by months, years, or decades. Third, Engaging the Offended Party in a Therapeutic Dialogue: A dialogue optimally affords an adequate opportunity for the offended party to ventilate feelings, to ask important questions about all aspects of the offense, to see that the offended party understands his/her suffering, to feel cared for, and to experience the empathy of the offender. This dialogue is the medium by which many of the healing mechanisms are effected.

Aaron Lazare, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Chancellor and Dean Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is the author of "On Apology," Oxford University Press, 2004.