Robert Jay Lifton
Robert Jay Lifton | |
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mind control, thought reform | |
Institutions | Washington School of Psychiatry Harvard University John Jay College of Criminal Justice Yale University |
Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence, and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory.
Biography
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Lifton was born in 1926, in
From 1951 to 1953, Lifton served as an Air Force psychiatrist in Japan and Korea, to which he later attributed his interest in war and politics. He has since worked as a teacher and researcher at the Washington School of Psychiatry, Harvard University, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he helped to found the Center for the Study of Human Violence.
He married the children's writer
.He is a member of Collegium International, an organization of leaders with political, scientific, and ethical expertise whose goal is to provide new approaches in overcoming the obstacles in the way of a peaceful, socially just and an economically sustainable world. In 2012, Lifton was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School.[2]
Wellfleet Psychohistory Group
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During the 1960s, Lifton, together with his mentor
Studies of thought reform
Beginning in 1953, Lifton interviewed American servicemen who had been
Lifton's 1961 book,
Studies of war and atrocity survivors
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Several of his books featured mental adaptations that people made in extreme wartime environments: Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967), Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans—Neither Victims nor Executioners (1973), and
His studies of the behavior of people who had committed
In the Hiroshima and Vietnam studies, Lifton also concluded that the sense of personal disintegration that many people experienced after witnessing death and destruction on a mass scale could ultimately lead to a new emotional resilience—but that without the proper support and counseling, most survivors would remain trapped in feelings of unreality and guilt. In her 2005 autobiography My Life So Far, Jane Fonda described Lifton's work with Vietnam veterans, along with that of fellow psychiatrists Leonard Neff, Chaim Shatan, and Sarah Haley, as "tireless and empathetic".[8]
In 1975, the BBC adapted Lifton's book Death in Life as Episode 31 in Season 11 of their program Horizon. The documentary, To Die, To Live, The Survivors of Hiroshima, was written and directed by Robert Vas, and edited by Peter Goodchild. The program aired on August 6, 1975.[9] In a New York Times review, John Leonard wrote, "I didn't want to watch a whole hour of it. I got the point. I was suspicious of the cultivated European voices translating the words of the survivors. I resented the ominous music, the pregnant pauses, the mechanical alternations of scenes of modern Hiroshima in livid, living color with the black‐and-white disaster footage of 1945 newsreels. Where was the center of this irony and at whose expense? I disliked the manipulation of my emotions by crude juxtaposings of disfigured women and department store mannequins with American wigs, of missing ears and honky‐tonk acts, of a river of corpses and night baseball. I thought the subtleties of Dr. Lifton's book were obscured by a piling‐on of images intended, and guaranteed, to shock. Mutilated bodies look the same, don't they, at death camps and at Dresden and at train wrecks? What, in this wretched century, is so special about Hiroshima?"[10]
Lifton was one of the first organizers of therapeutic discussion groups on this subject in which mental health practitioners met with veterans face-to-face. He and Dr. Neff successfully lobbied for the inclusion of post-traumatic stress disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). His book on Hiroshima survivors won the 1969 National Book Award in Science.[11]
Theories of totalism and the protean self
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Totalism, a word which he first used in Thought Reform, is Lifton's term for the characteristics of ideological movements and organizations that desire total control over human behavior and thought. Lifton's usage differs from theories of totalitarianism, as it can be applied to the ideology of groups that do not wield governmental power.
In Lifton's opinion, though such attempts always fail, they follow a common pattern and cause predictable types of psychological damage in individuals and societies. He finds two common motives in totalistic movements: the fear and denial of death, channeled into violence against scapegoat groups that set up to represent a metaphorical threat to survival, and a reactionary fear of social change.
In his later work, Lifton has focused on defining the type of change to which totalism is opposed, for which he coined the term the protean self. In the book of the same title, he states that the development of a "fluid and many-sided personality" is a positive trend in modern societies. He said that mental health now requires "continuous exploration and personal experiment", which requires the growth of a purely relativist society that is willing to discard and diminish previously established cultures and traditions.
Critiques of modern war and terrorism
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Following his work with Hiroshima survivors, Lifton became a vocal opponent of
In 1993, he said:
What's
War on Terrorism" as a misguided and dangerous attempt to "destroy all vulnerability".[13] His 1999 book, Destroying the World to Save It, described the apocalyptic terrorist sect Aum Shinrikyoas a forerunner of "the new global terrorism".Appearances
Lifton is featured in the 2003 documentary
History Channel, Decoding the Past, along with fellow psychiatrist Peter A. Olsson.[14] On May 18, 2008, Lifton delivered the commencement address at Stonehill College and discussed the apparent "Superpower Syndrome" experienced by the United States in the modern era.[15]In 2018 he also appears in the documentary Metamorphosis, about climate change and positive changes towards a more sustainable future.Bibliography
ISBN 0-8078-4253-2.; Reprinted, with a new preface: University of North Carolina Press, 1989 (Online at Internet Archive).- Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, Random House (New York City), 1968.
- Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Random House, 1968.
- Birds, Words, and Birds (cartoons), Random House, 1969.
- History and Human Survival: Essays on the Young and the Old, Survivors and the Dead, Peace and War, and on Contemporary Psychohistory, Random House, 1970.
- Boundaries, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Toronto), 1969, published as Boundaries: Psychological Man in Revolution, Random House, 1970.
- Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans—Neither Victims nor Executioners, Simon & Schuster (New York City), 1973.
- (With Eric Olson) Living and Dying, Praeger, 1974.
- The Life of the Self: Toward a New Psychology, Simon & Schuster, 1976.
- Psychobirds, Countryman Press, 1978.
- (With Shuichi Kato and Michael Reich) Six Lives/Six Deaths: Portraits from Modern Japan (originally published in Japanese as Nihonjin no shiseikan, 1977), Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1979.
- The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life, Simon & Schuster, 1979.
- (With Richard A. Falk) Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case against Nuclearism, Basic Books (New York City), 1982.
- The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Basic Books, August 2000 (first edition 1986).
- The Future of Immortality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age, Basic Books, 1987.
- (With Eric Markusen) The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat, Basic Books, 1990.
- The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation, Basic Books, 1993.
- (With Greg Mitchell) Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, Putnam's (New York City), 1995.
- Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, Owl Books, 2000.
- (With Greg Mitchell) Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions, Morrow, 2000.
- Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation With the World, Nation Books, 2003.
- Lifton, Robert Jay (15 October 2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry (epub ed.). New York, London: New Press.
ISBN 9781620975121.- Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic, The New Press, 2023.
Lifton as editor
- (With Jacob D. Lindy) Beyond Invisible Walls: The Psychological Legacy of Soviet Trauma, East European Therapists and Their Patients, Edwards Brothers (Lillington, NC), 2001.
- The Woman in America, Houghton (Boston), 1965.
- America and the Asian Revolutions, Trans-Action Books, 1970, second edition, 1973.
- (With Richard A. Falk and Gabriel Kolko) Crimes of War: A Legal, Political-Documentary, and Psychological Inquiry into the Responsibilities of Leaders, Citizens, and Soldiers for Criminal Acts of War, Random House, 1971.
- (With Eric Olson) Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers, Simon & Schuster, 1975.
- (With Eric Chivian, Susanna Chivian, and John E. Mack) Last Aid: The Medical Dimensions of Nuclear War, W. H. Freeman, 1982.
- (With Nicholas Humphrey) In a Dark Time: Images for Survival, Harvard University Press, 1984.
Awards
- 1987:
National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category for The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide[16]See also
Destructive cult List of cult researchersReferences
- ^ "Lifton, Robert Jay 1926". Encyclopedia.com.
- ^ "The Right Mixture for a New School Commencement". 2012-05-01. Archived from the original on 2018-07-06. Retrieved 2018-07-05.
S2CID 236901441. S2CID 225526152. ISBN 978-0-86377-439-3 PMID 13138750. Retrieved 2008-03-30.- ^ Lifton, Robert Jay. "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism". UNC Press. Archived from the original on 2013-10-02. Retrieved 2013-09-29.
ISBN 978-1-58836-478-4. Retrieved 9 September 2013.- ^ To Die, to Live: The Survivors of Hiroshima, Horizon, 1975-08-06, retrieved 2021-12-23
ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-12-23.- ^ "National Book Awards – 1969". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-05.
- ^ Toledo Blade, "Slavic Horror Termed Genocide" 28 February 1993.
ISBN 9781458785701. History Channel, "Decoding the Past".
"Cults: Dangerous Devotion": Scholars and survivors discuss the mystery of cults. (120 min). History. (PG/TV-PG)- ^ "News". www.stonehill.edu. Archived from the original on May 28, 2008.
- ^ "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Robert Jay Lifton.
- Articles
- Evil, the Self, and Survival Archived 2018-05-30 at the Wayback Machine: interview by Harry Kreisler, 1999
- Doctors and Torture: Lifton discusses "atrocity-producing situations" in the case of the
Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, 2004- Superpower Syndrome articles. Robert Jay Lifton on superpower syndrome, TomDispatch, 2006.
- The End of Life: Exploring Death in America "Doctors and Death" Transcript, All Things Considered, Jan. 4
- Hiroshima and the World: The Wisdom of Survivors Archived 2021-02-25 at the Wayback Machine article in the Chugoku Shimbun.
- Media
- Talk on Apocalyptic Violence Archived 2021-12-09 at the Wayback Machine
- Flight From Death. Robert Jay Lifton is interviewed in this documentary film.
- Bill Moyers Interviews Robert Jay Lifton: about the aftermath of
September 11 terrorist attacks, 2002- Religious and Ethnic Conflict Abroad Talk of the Nation, September 15, 1999
- Doomsday Cults/Apocalyptic Groups Morning Edition, April 7, 2000
- Robert Jay Lifton at
IMDb- Interview with Steven Hassan
Freedom of Mind, July 13, 2011- Interview with Steven Hassan
Freedom of Mind, August, 2012- Interview with Robert Jay Lifton by Stephen McKiernan, Binghamton University Libraries Center for the Study of the 1960s, August 10, 2010
- To Die, To Live, The Survivors of Hiroshima (1975), hosted on the Internet Archive