On Revenge, Pardon, and Forgiveness.

Political violence has long been a focus of psychoanalytic writing. Jessica Benjamin's concepts of the complementarity, or twoness, and that of thirdness can serve as a point of departure allowing us to challenge the dichotomy between positions of revenge and forgiveness (on the victim's part) and positions of evil and remorse (on the perpetrator's), and to suggest a spectrum of encounters between victims and perpetrators that includes four types of interaction: (1) between the on the perpetrator's part, and the on the victim's; (2) between the perpetrator's , and the victim's (3) between the perpetrator's , and the victim's (4) between the on the perpetrator's part, and the on the victim's. A thorough analysis of various testimonies illustrates how these four positions manifest, with varying degrees of dominance, in every encounter (whether concrete or imagined) between victim and perpetrator.