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.
Lifton was born in 1926, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of businessman Harold A. Lifton, and Ciel Lifton née Roth. In 1942, he enrolled at Cornell University at the age of 16. He was admitted to New York Medical College in 1944, graduating in 1948.[1] He interned at the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn in 1948–49. He did his psychiatric residence training at the Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York in 1949–51.
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 Betty Jean Kirschner in 1952, and they had two children. She died in Boston on November 19, 2010, from complications of pneumonia. Lifton has said that cartooning is his avocation; he has published two books of humorous cartoons about birds.
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]
During the 1960s, Lifton, together with his mentor Erik Erikson and historian Bruce Mazlish of MIT, formed a group to apply psychology and psychoanalysis to the study of history. Meetings were held at Lifton's home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The Wellfleet Psychohistory Group, as it became known, focused mainly on psychological motivations for war, terrorism, and genocide in recent history. In 1965, they received sponsorship from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to establish psychohistory as a separate field of study. A collection of research papers by the group was published in 1975: Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers (see Bibliography; Lifton as editor). Lifton's work in this field was deeply influenced by Erikson's studies of Hitler and other political figures, as well as by Sigmund Freud's concern with the mass social effects of deep-seated drives, particularly attitudes toward death. The attendees include Erikson, Lifton, and Kenneth Keniston at the ‘continuous core’ of annual meetings, along with Bruce Mazlish, Norman Birnbaum, Alexander and Margaret Mitscherlich, Margaret Brennen, Peter Brooks, Robert Coles, Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, Charles Strozier, Philip Rieff, Kai Erikson, Betty Jean Lifton, Norman Mailer, Howard Zinn, Frederick Wyatt, Noam Chomsky, Richard Sennett, Peter Gay, Ashis Nandy, Richard Goodwin, Harvey Cox, Frank Manuel, Leo Marx, Jonathan Schell, Raoul Hilberg, Sudhir Kakar, David Dellinger, Dan Berrigan, Wendy Doniger, Cathy Caruth, David Riesman, Steve Marcus, Richard Barnet, Daniel Ellsberg, Richard Falk, Hillel Levine, Aaron Roland and many others until it closed shop in 2015.[3][4]
Studies of thought reform
Beginning in 1953, Lifton interviewed American servicemen who had been prisoners of war (POWs) during the Korean War, in addition to priests and students, or teachers who had been held in prison in China after 1951. In addition to interviews with 25 Americans and Europeans, Lifton interviewed 15 Chinese who had fled after having been subjected to indoctrination in Chinese universities.[5]
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 The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986). Regarding Hiroshima and Vietnam survivors or Nazi perpetrators, Lifton believed that the psychic fragmentation suffered by his subjects was an extreme form of the pathologies that arise in peacetime life due to the pressures and fears of modern society.
His studies of the behavior of people who had committed war crimes, both individually and in groups, concluded that while human nature is not innately cruel and only rare sociopaths can participate in atrocities without suffering lasting emotional harm, such crimes do not require any unusual degree of personal evil or mental illness. He says that they are nearly sure to happen given certain conditions (either accidental or deliberately arranged), which Lifton called "atrocity-producing situations". The Nazi Doctors was the first in-depth study of how medical professionals rationalized their participation in the Holocaust, from the early stages of the T-4 Euthanasia Program to the extermination camps.
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]
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.
Following his work with Hiroshima survivors, Lifton became a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons, arguing that nuclear strategy and warfighting doctrine made even mass genocide banal and conceivable. While not a strict pacifist, he has spoken against U.S. military actions in his lifetime, particularly the Vietnam War and Iraq War, believing that they arose from irrational and aggressive aspects of American politics motivated by fear.
In 1993, he said:
What's happening there [in Bosnia] merits the use of the word genocide. There is an effort to systematically destroy an entire group. It's even been conceptualized by Serbian nationalists as so-called "ethnic cleansing." That term signifies mass killing, mass relocation, and that does constitute genocide.[12]
Lifton regards terrorism as an increasingly serious threat due to the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and totalist ideologies. He has, however, criticized the Bush administration'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 Shinrikyo as a forerunner of "the new global terrorism".
Appearances
Lifton is featured in the 2003 documentary Flight From Death, a film that investigates the relationship of human violence to fear of death, as related to subconscious influences. In 2006, Lifton appeared in a documentary on cults on the 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.
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 (epubed.). New York, London: New Press. ISBN9781620975121.
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]
Brainwashing is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds, as well as to change their attitudes, values, and beliefs.
Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its proponents claim to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. It works to combine the insights of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, with the research methodology of the social sciences and humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present. Work in the field has been done in the areas of childhood, creativity, dreams, family dynamics, overcoming adversity, personality, political and presidential psychobiography. There are major psychohistorical studies of anthropology, art, ethnology, history, politics and political science, and much else.
Margaret Thaler Singer was an American clinical psychologist and researcher with her colleague Lyman Wynne on family communication. She was a prominent figure in the study of undue influence in social and religious contexts, and a proponent of the brainwashing theory of new religious movements.
The term large-group awareness training (LGAT) refers to activities - usually offered by groups with links to the human potential movement - which claim to increase self-awareness and to bring about desirable transformations in individuals' personal lives. LGATs are unconventional; they often take place over several days, and may compromise participants' mental wellbeing.
A cliché is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning, referring to an expression imposed by conventionalized linguistic usage.
A thought-terminating cliché is a form of loaded language, often passing as folk wisdom, intended to end an argument and quell cognitive dissonance. Its function is to stop an argument from proceeding further, ending the debate with a cliché rather than a point. Some such clichés are not inherently terminating; they only become so when used to intentionally dismiss dissent or justify fallacious logic.
Thought reform can refer to:
Erik Homburger Erikson was a German-American psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity crisis.
Steven Alan Hassan is an American author and mental health counselor who specializes in the area of "cults" or "New Religious Movements". He is sometimes described in the media as an expert on mind control and cults, but some sociologists are critical of what they regard as the "cult-busting" approach of Hassan and others, arguing that it promotes hysteria and intolerance.
Cult is a term, in most contexts pejorative, for a relatively small group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader, who excessively controls its members, requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant. This term is also used for a new religious movement or other social group which is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined – having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia – and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.
The anti-cult movement consists of various governmental and non-governmental organizations and individuals that seek to raise awareness of cults, uncover coercive practices used to attract and retain members, and help those who have become involved with harmful cult practices.
Milieu control is a term popularized by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton to describe tactics that control environment and human communication through the use of social pressure and group language; such tactics may include dogma, protocols, innuendo, slang, and pronunciation, which enables group members to identify other members, or to promote cognitive changes in individuals. Lifton originally used "milieu control" to describe brainwashing and mind control, but the term has since been applied to other contexts.
Warning from Space is a Japanese tokusatsu science fiction film directed by Koji Shima. Produced and distributed by Daiei Film, it was the first Japanese science fiction film to be produced in color. In the film's plot, starfish-like aliens disguised as humans travel to Earth to warn of the imminent collision of a rogue planet and Earth. As the planet rapidly accelerates toward Earth, a nuclear device is created at the last minute and destroys the approaching world.
Greg Mitchell is an American author and journalist. He has written twelve non-fiction books on United States politics and history of the 20th and 21st centuries. He has also written and directed three film documentaries.
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China is a non-fiction book by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton on the psychology of mind control.
Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control is a 2004 popular science book explaining mind control, which is also known as brainwashing, thought reform and coercive persuasion, by neuroscientist and physiologist Kathleen Taylor. It explains the neurological basis for reasoning and cognition in the brain, and proposes that the self is changeable, and describes the physiology of neurological pathways. It reviews case studies including Patty Hearst, the Manson Family, and the mass murder/suicide of members of Peoples Temple at Jonestown, and compares the techniques of influence used by cults to those of totalitarian and communist societies. It lays out a model FACET – Freedom, Agency, Complexity, Ends-not-means, and Thinking – which she believes can be used to negate the influence of brainwashing techniques.
Thought reform in China, also known as ideological remolding or ideological reform, was a campaign of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to reform the thinking of Chinese citizens into accepting Marxism–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought (Maoism) from 1951 to 1952. Techniques employed included indoctrination, "struggle sessions", propaganda, criticism and self-criticism, and a variety of other techniques.
Psychic numbing is a tendency for individuals or societies to withdraw attention from past experiences that were traumatic, or from future threats that are perceived to have massive consequences but low probability. Psychic numbing can be a response to threats as diverse as financial and economic collapse, the risk of nuclear weapon detonations, pandemics, and global warming. It is also important to consider the neuroscience behind the phenomenon, which gives validation to the observable human behavior. The term has evolved to include both societies as well as individuals, so psychic numbing can be viewed from either a collectivist or an individualist standpoint. Individualist psychic numbing is found in rape survivors and people who have post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide was written by Robert Jay Lifton and published in 1986, analyzing the role of German doctors in carrying out a genocide. In the work Lifton details the medical procedures occurring before and during the Holocaust and explores the paradoxical theme of healing killing in which one race was healed by eliminating another; a concept that many used to morally justify their actions. Throughout the book, Lifton provides quotes from interviews he conducted with SS doctors and with victims.
Clio’s Psyche: Understanding the “Why” of Culture, Current Events, History, and Society: is an academic journal established in 1994 by the Psychohistory Forum (1982–) to further interdisciplinary knowledge of society and history utilizing the tools of applied psychoanalysis, political psychology, psychobiography, psychohistory, and related disciplines. It is part of the innovative field of psychohistory and it was created by the members of the Forum to both keep a record of the scholarship the psychohistory forum was nurturing. Initially, it started as a newsletter and before long became a full length, double-blind refereed journal, one of several in the field. Its website is at cliospsyche.org. and issues a year or more old may be found there along with a listing of all interviews, issues, and memorials.
↑ 2006, History Channel, "Decoding the Past". "Cults: Dangerous Devotion": Scholars and survivors discuss the mystery of cults. (120 min). History. (PG/TV-PG)
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