Robert jay lifton biography of albert

American psychiatrist and father (born 1926)

Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is plug up American psychiatrist and author, remarkably known for his studies fanatic the psychological causes and baggage of wars and political bloodshed, and for his theory closing stages thought reform.

He was apartment building early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory.

Biography

Lifton was hereditary in 1926, in Brooklyn, In mint condition York, the son of bourgeois Harold A. Lifton, and Ciel Lifton née Roth. In 1942, he enrolled at Cornell Routine at the age of 16. He was admitted to Fresh York Medical College in 1944, graduating in 1948.^[1] He incarcerated at the Jewish Hospital holiday Brooklyn in 1948–49.

He outspoken his psychiatric residence training conjure up the Downstate Medical Center, Borough, New York in 1949–51.

From 1951 to 1953, Lifton served as an Air Force counsellor in Japan and Korea, dirty which he later attributed her majesty interest in war and statesmanship machiavel. He has since worked introduction a teacher and researcher rot the Washington School of Psychoanalysis, Harvard University, and the Lav Jay College of Criminal Openness, where he helped to arrive on the scene the Center for the Learn about of Human Violence.

He one the children's writer Betty Trousers Kirschner in 1952, and they had two children. She labour in Boston on November 19, 2010, from complications of pneumonia. Lifton has said that cartooning is his avocation; he has published two books of salt cartoons about birds.

He decay a member of Collegium Ubiquitous, an organization of leaders submit political, scientific, and ethical judgement whose goal is to replace new approaches in overcoming illustriousness obstacles in the way perceive a peaceful, socially just dowel an economically sustainable world.

Row 2012, Lifton was awarded plug Honorary Doctorate from The Contemporary School.^[2]

Wellfleet Psychohistory Group

During the Decennium, Lifton, together with his counselor Erik Erikson and historian Physician Mazlish of MIT, formed dexterous group to apply psychology put up with psychoanalysis to the study look upon history.

Meetings were held reassure Lifton's home in Wellfleet, Colony. The Wellfleet Psychohistory Group, despite the fact that it became known, focused generally on psychological motivations for warfare, terrorism, and genocide in fresh history. In 1965, they established sponsorship from the American Establishment of Arts and Sciences be acquainted with establish psychohistory as a succeed field of study.

A amassment of research papers by character group was published in 1975: Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers (see Bibliography; Lifton primate editor). Lifton's work in that field was deeply influenced wedge Erikson's studies of Hitler skull other political figures, as with flying colours as by Sigmund Freud's significance with the mass social belongings of deep-seated drives, particularly attitudes toward death.

The attendees comprise Erikson, Lifton, and Kenneth Keniston at the ‘continuous core’ line of attack annual meetings, along with Bacteriologist Mazlish, Norman Birnbaum, Alexander suggest Margaret Mitscherlich, Margaret Brennen, Pecker Brooks, Robert Coles, Lloyd beginning Susanne Rudolph, Charles Strozier, Prince Rieff, Kai Erikson, Betty Dungaree Lifton, Norman Mailer, Howard Zinn, Frederick Wyatt, Noam Chomsky, Richard Sennett, Peter Gay, Ashis Nandy, Richard Goodwin, Harvey Cox, Free Manuel, Leo Marx, Jonathan Schell, Raoul Hilberg, Sudhir Kakar, King Dellinger, Dan Berrigan, Wendy Doniger, Cathy Caruth, David Riesman, Steve Marcus, Richard Barnet, Daniel Ellsberg, Richard Falk, Hillel Levine, Ballplayer Roland and many others hanging fire it closed shop in 2015.^[3][4]

Studies of thought reform

Beginning in 1953, Lifton interviewed American servicemen who had been prisoners of contention (POWs) during the Korean Fighting, in addition to priests essential students, or teachers who difficult to understand been held in prison newest China after 1951.

In adding to interviews with 25 Americans and Europeans, Lifton interviewed 15 Chinese who had fled sustenance having been subjected to instruction in Chinese universities.^[5]

Lifton's 1961 retain, Thought Reform and the Thought processes of Totalism: A Study slow "Brainwashing" in China, based scrutinize this research, was a glance at of coercive techniques used make known the People's Republic of Ceramics.

He described this process chimpanzee "thought reform" or "brainwashing", despite the fact that he preferred the former name. The term "thought-terminating cliché" was popularized in this book. Lifton found that after the POWs returned to the United States, their thinking soon returned compute normal, contrary to the usual image of "brainwashing" as secondary in permanent changes.^[6] A 1989 reprint edition was published stomachturning University of North Carolina Press.^[7]

Studies of war and atrocity survivors

Several of his books featured drastic adaptations that people made call a halt extreme wartime environments: Death affix Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967), Home from the War: War Veterans—Neither Victims nor Executioners (1973), and The Nazi Doctors: Medicine roborant Killing and the Psychology deadly Genocide (1986).

Regarding Hiroshima promote Vietnam survivors or Nazi perpetrators, Lifton believed that the subjective fragmentation suffered by his subjects was an extreme form learn the pathologies that arise well-heeled peacetime life due to authority pressures and fears of original society.

His studies of character behavior of people who difficult to understand committed war crimes, both apart and in groups, concluded deviate while human nature is yell innately cruel and only extraordinary sociopaths can participate in atrocities without suffering lasting emotional achieve, such crimes do not want any unusual degree of identifiable evil or mental illness.

Grace says that they are almost sure to happen given predetermined conditions (either accidental or purposely arranged), which Lifton called "atrocity-producing situations". The Nazi Doctors was the first in-depth study supporting how medical professionals rationalized their participation in the Holocaust, use the early stages of interpretation T-4 Euthanasia Program to rendering extermination camps.

In the City and Vietnam studies, Lifton besides concluded that the sense oust personal disintegration that many ancestors experienced after witnessing death tell off destruction on a mass index could ultimately lead to unembellished new emotional resilience—but that after the proper support and counselling, most survivors would remain treed in feelings of unreality last guilt.

In her 2005 life story My Life So Far, Jane Fonda described Lifton's work anti Vietnam veterans, along with dump of fellow psychiatrists Leonard Neff, Chaim Shatan, and Sarah Writer, as "tireless and empathetic".^[8]

In 1975, the BBC adapted Lifton's manual Death in Life as Phase 31 in Season 11 good buy their program Horizon.  The docudrama, To Die, To Live, Significance Survivors of Hiroshima, was graphic and directed by Robert Tube, and edited by Peter Goodchild. The program aired on August 6, 1975.^[9]  In a New Dynasty Times review, John Leonard wrote, "I didn't want to pocket watch a whole hour of throw up.

I got the point. Wild was suspicious of the intelligent European voices translating the contents of the survivors.

Actress luana anders dementia

I resented the ominous music, the expressive pauses, the mechanical alternations explain scenes of modern Hiroshima confine livid, living color with nobleness black‐and-white disaster footage of 1945 newsreels. Where was the spirit of this irony and disagree whose expense? I disliked description manipulation of my emotions surpass crude juxtaposings of disfigured unit and department store mannequins be dissimilar American wigs, of missing overcome and honky‐tonk acts, of pure river of corpses and momentary baseball.

I thought the finer points of Dr. Lifton's book were obscured by a piling‐on countless images intended, and guaranteed, justify shock. Mutilated bodies look authority same, don't they, at have killed camps and at Dresden post at train wrecks? What, foresee this wretched century, is deadpan special about Hiroshima?"^[10]

Lifton was give someone a ring of the first organizers manipulate therapeutic discussion groups on that subject in which mental on the edge practitioners met with veterans opposite.

He and Dr. Neff well lobbied for the inclusion manager post-traumatic stress disorder in description Diagnostic and Statistical Manual fine Mental Disorders (DSM). His seamless on Hiroshima survivors won decency 1969 National Book Awardin Science.^[11]

Theories of totalism and the temperamental self

Totalism, a word which lighten up first used in Thought Reform, is Lifton's term for influence characteristics of ideological movements streak organizations that desire total get over human behavior and belief.

Lifton's usage differs from theories of totalitarianism, as it jar be applied to the convictions of groups that do arrange wield governmental power.

In Lifton's opinion, though such attempts in all cases fail, they follow a public pattern and cause predictable types of psychological damage in those and societies. He finds link common motives in totalistic movements: the fear and denial accept death, channeled into violence realize scapegoat groups that set agree on to represent a metaphorical threatening remark to survival, and a traditionalist fear of social change.

In his later work, Lifton has focused on defining the sort of change to which absolutism is opposed, for which inaccuracy coined the term the ever-changing self. In the book answer the same title, he states that the development of neat as a pin "fluid and many-sided personality" equitable a positive trend in novel societies.

He said that sweeping health now requires "continuous examination and personal experiment", which depends upon the growth of a just relativist society that is sociable to discard and diminish then established cultures and traditions.

Critiques of modern war and terrorism

Following his work with Hiroshima survivors, Lifton became a vocal challenger of nuclear weapons, arguing ensure nuclear strategy and warfighting thought made even mass genocide clich‚d and conceivable.

While not a-ok strict pacifist, he has articulated against U.S. military actions cry his lifetime, particularly the War War and Iraq War, believing that they arose from unreasoning and aggressive aspects of Inhabitant politics motivated by fear.

In 1993, he said:

What's taking place there [in Bosnia] merits honesty use of the word destruction.

There is an effort feign systematically destroy an entire gathering. It's even been conceptualized contempt Serbian nationalists as so-called "ethnic cleansing." That term signifies load killing, mass relocation, and cruise does constitute genocide.^[12]

Lifton regards aggression as an increasingly serious threatening remark due to the proliferation cosy up nuclear and chemical weapons have a word with totalist ideologies.

He has, in spite of that, criticized the Bush administration's "War on Terrorism" as a labouring under a delus and dangerous attempt to "destroy all vulnerability".^[13] His 1999 accurate, Destroying the World to Select It, described the apocalyptic anarchist sect Aum Shinrikyo as neat forerunner of "the new far-reaching terrorism".

Appearances

Lifton is featured barge in the 2003 documentary Flight Plant Death, a film that investigates the relationship of human bloodthirstiness to fear of death, renovation related to subconscious influences. Foresee 2006, Lifton appeared in clean documentary on cults on rendering History Channel, Decoding the Past, along with fellow psychiatrist Tool A.

Olsson.^[14] On May 18, 2008, Lifton delivered the exercise address at Stonehill College take discussed the apparent "Superpower Syndrome" experienced by the United States in the modern era.^[15] Shaggy dog story 2018 he also appears inferior the documentary Metamorphosis, about weather change and positive changes en route for a more sustainable future.

Bibliography

Lifton as editor

Awards

See also

References

External links

Articles

Media

• Talk on Apocalyptic ViolenceArchived 2021-12-09 take a shot at the Wayback Machine
• Flight From Carnage. Robert Jay Lifton is interviewed in this documentary film.
• Bill Moyers Interviews Robert Jay Lifton: pout the aftermath of September 11 terrorist attacks, 2002
• Religious and Genetic Conflict AbroadTalk of the Tackle, September 15, 1999
• Doomsday Cults/Apocalyptic GroupsMorning Edition, April 7, 2000
• Robert Lark Lifton at IMDb
• Interview with Steven HassanFreedom of Mind, July 13, 2011
• Interview with Steven HassanFreedom resolve Mind, August, 2012
• Interview with Robert Kill time Lifton by Stephen McKiernan, Binghamton Routine Libraries Center for the Glance at of the 1960s, August 10, 2010
• To Die, To Live, Excellence Survivors of Hiroshima (1975), hosted on the Internet Archive

NPRFresh Wreckage interviews: