Tom Cruise was on the Today Show with Matt Lauer doing a public confession for seeming arrogant during his last publicly-recorded interview on the show several years ago. He likely hopes to change his image
Tom Cruise, Hollywoood actor in the United States, was on the
Today Show with Matt Lauer doing a public confession for seeming arrogant during his last publicly-recorded interview on the show several years ago. He likely hopes to change his image of being being prideful and know-it-all, while he promotes his new movie “Valkyrie.” But does public confession work?
During that earlier performance with Lauer, Cruise challenged his host over psychiatry and stated that Scientology gave him the foundation for right answers on the subject and that Lauer was just glib. During his appearance on Monday with Lauer, Cruise was all over himself with apologies for having come across as someone that he says he really isn’t. In fact, he underlined that he had changed tactics and wouldn’t be combining talk about Scientology and his movies anymore and that there is a time and place for everything, a concept that he was going to adhere to now and in the future.
Contrary to Cruise, George Bush, right from beginning, declared he never made a mistake. He said that regarding the number of executions in the State of Texas, where he was resistant to clemency for prisoners sentenced to death and with regard to the need for the Iraq War as well. His popularity these days is well below 30%, but would public confessions have helped and what are the benefits of confessions?
On an individual level, experts maintain that confession can really help the person. Now both movie stars and Presidents have a level of stress, with the latter, one would think, having a greater level than those who entertain. The role of confession,
authorities in religion and psychology maintain, is to provide a form of relief for the individual, something that can help alleviate stress. Perhaps Bush would have found relief from stress had he confessed his mistakes. But if relief is the principal reason for individual confession, what about public ones? So the emphasis on confession is that relief. That’s for personal confession, but what about public confessions.
Dr. Mowrer, research professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, states that,”Honesty, openness, restitution and willingness to help others” are keystones to helping oneself and the community around that individual. The Professor maintains that letting “significant others” know who we really are can do a great deal in resolving major problems. The restitution approach to confession and the admission of guilt is the hallmark of Dr. Mowrer’s approach. Has it been used effectively before and with what results?
South Africa, before Nelson Mandela, was a nation under the aegis of apartheid. Both whites and blacks had killed one another over the years in great numbers. Public confessions were used to resolve hatreds and helped to bring resolution to great hatreds, although some of them remain sufficiently to make South Africa to continue to be a very violent country. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was the initial attempt at using public confessions and truth to broker peace and build a sense of unity and nationhood. One scholar,
Deborah Posel, observes that, “Writing the truths of past suffering is seen as a way to produce a historical subject who is both ethically and psychologically redeemed.” But does it really work.?
Posel claims it has been a mixed bag due to the differences in expectations of the respective parties in the conflict. Some people believed that public confessions would end all hatreds, but they didn’t. Although there has been some semblance of public order with regard to the community and a sense of nationhood, there is also a simmering animosity that takes place among the factions, based upon past history.
Photo by kballard Cruise, shown here at Yahoo event, used pubic confession to regain stature. He also is shorter than the average American and European man. He is 5'7" tall.
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What about Rwanda, the most recent example of public confessions and the truth commission approach that had been used in South Africa? What has been this African experience, and where is it in the process? So far it has been too early to say, but there are those who believe that it will be healing for the country of Rwanda to repair itself from the image it developed during the mass executions and genocide that took place among the warring tribes, the Hutus and the Tutsis, eleven years ago.
Ms. Fatuma Ndanginiza, Sececutive Secretary National Unity and Reconciliation Commission,who is responsible for helping to shore up the wounds left by the tribal wars, declares, "When you are treating a wound, you do not treat it by concealing it and pretending that it is going to get healed by itself. You have to open it, put the medicine, which may sometimes bring excruciating pain. Sometimes you have to swallow unpleasant medicine. This is the best way otherwise if you handle it with kid gloves, you may never get rid of it. “ She goes on to say, "Reconciliation is a process- a painful process.” Ndanginiza believes that it is essential, however, that reconciliation take place at every level of the culture in order for it to be effective.
So for Cruise, confession might bring relief and public acceptance of his personal growth towards behaving appropriately when questioned about controversial subjects. On a community level, experts relate, it will take more time for healing to occur.
