Psychology of Forgiveness

I don’t want to reduce forgiveness to mere psychology, but to explain what it really is in psychological terms. I did come up with this on my own, and I do apologize if someone else has thought of it before me, so simple and obvious it seems to me that I just had to note this observation.

Forgiveness is really the process of self-conditioning, using the conscious willful brain to master the subconscious or “flesh nature,” to bend the flesh to the will of God – or for secular people, some abstract peaceful state of mind where they do not allow the feelings and its own reactive feelings to continue being associated with the original wrongdoing.

Because the brain’s natural inclination in effect causes us to hate someone as a means of secondary or learned response to the stimulus of that person, and by extension people like that person one has “learned” to hate.  
Though forgiveness is much more than mere reverse conditioning, it contains as a part of it the willful disassociation of the “learned” or secondary response to that person who did the wrong (the wrong itself being the primary stimulus provoking the anger or hatred or frustration).

I wonder if this is basic, already-tread territory for you all or if this is something you folks have already reverse-engineered.  I have never had it explained to me like this, as of yet.

Hate the Sin, Not the Sinner

In other words, what you have as an example is Tom whacks you on the foot.  The pain of the foot is the primary stimulus but you hate Tom because he’s the secondary stimulus, and so you see Tom and you brace to be whacked on the foot.  In forgiving Tom, even though Tom still whacks people on the foot, we use the power of will to associate feelings of Tomwith kindness and peace.

Again, to be clear I am not reducing forgiveness to mere conditioning.  However I do believe conditioning is a part of the process, designed by God in His infinite love for us.