Robert Lifton

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Robert Jay Lifton (2000)

Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926 in Brooklyn , New York , NY ) is an American psychiatrist and author, best known for his psychological studies on the causes and consequences of war and political violence. He was one of the earliest advocates of the methods of psychohistory .

Life

Lifton was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of businessman Harold A. and Ciel (Roth) Lifton. He studied medicine at New York Medical College . From 1951 to 1953 he 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 establish the Center for the Study of Human Violence .

In 1952 he married the author Betty Jean Kirschner. The two have three children.

Influences

During the 1960s, Lifton and his mentors Erik Erikson and Bruce Mazlish formed the Wellfleet Group , a project sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to define "psychohistory" as a field of research. In 1970 Lifton was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Lifton's work in this area was heavily influenced by Erikson's studies of Hitler and other political figures, as well as by Sigmund Freud's concern about the social effects of instinctual attitudes ( cf.e.g. contemporary on war and death (1915) and mass psychology and ego analysis ( 1921)).

Theory of correcting thoughts

Lifton's 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China was a study of compulsive techniques that others had termed " brainwashing " or " mind control ". Lifton describes in detail eight methods that he says are used to change the minds of people without their consent:

  • Environment control (controlled relationships with the outside world)
  • mystical manipulation (the group has higher goals than the rest of the world)
  • Confession of current or past violations of group-defined rules to the supervisor or the group
  • Self-sanctification through purity (pushing the individual to strive for unattainable perfection)
  • Aura of sacred science (the beliefs of the group are sacrosanct and perfect)
  • cluttered language (new meanings for words to encourage black and white thinking)
  • Doctrine about the person (the group is more important than the individual)
  • Existence spared (insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed to destruction)

His name was associated with these terms in the popular media when he testified as a defense witness in the trial of Patty Hearst in 1976 that the Symbionese Liberation Army had used similar techniques to induce a temporary behavior change in Patty Hearst.

Contrary to popular ideas about 'brainwashing', Lifton was always of the opinion that such coercion could only bring about short-term changes in behavior or general neuroses , but not permanent changes in beliefs or personality changes. Psychologists like Margaret Singer and Steven Hassan later loosely tied into his theories and transferred terms like “totalism” and “ thought reform ” to the practices of certain religious groups; the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association have stated that they do not find such an analysis scientifically valid, but they did not reject Lifton's original work.

Studies of survivors of wars and atrocities

Lifton's most influential books, Death in Life: Survivors of Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1968) and Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans. Neither Victims nor Executioners (1973), and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986) focused on the mental adaptations that occur in cruelty survivors as well as perpetrators. In any event, Lifton believed that psychological fragmentation in these subjects is an extreme form of pathology that occurs in modern societies even in peacetime due to the pressures and fears.

His studies of people who, individually or in groups, had committed war crimes concluded that although human nature is not inherently cruel, and only rare sociopaths can partake in such cruelty without suffering permanent emotional damage , such crimes do not require an unusual degree of personal malice or mental illness. Under certain conditions, whether they came about due to various circumstances or were brought about according to plan, which Lifton called “atrocity-producing situations”, they are almost safely committed. The Nazi Doctors was the first in-depth study of how medical professionals streamlined their participation in the Holocaust , from the early stages of Action T4 to the extermination camps .

In his Hiroshima and Vietnam studies, Lifton concluded that the feeling of personal disintegration experienced by many who have witnessed death and destruction on a very large scale can ultimately lead to a new emotional stability, but that most survivors become stuck in feelings of unreality and guilt without proper psychological support. In his work with Vietnam veterans, Lifton was one of the first to organize therapeutic discussion groups. He campaigned for the recognition of the post-traumatic stress disorder (German: Posttraumatic stress disorder ) in the psychiatric manual Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders .

Theories of 'totalism' and the protean self

Totalism , a word first used in Thought Reform , is Lifton's name for the characteristics of ideological movements and organizations that seek total control over human thought and behavior. Lifton's use differs from totalitarian theories in that it can be applied to the ideology of groups that have no government power.

According to Lifton, such attempts always fail in the end. They follow a common pattern and cause predictable psychological harm in individuals and societies. He finds two common motives in 'totalist' movements: fear and the denial of death , channeled into violence against scapegoats , who are made into metaphorical representatives of the danger of death, and a reactionary fear of change .

In his later work, Lifton focused on defining the type of change against which totalism is directed. To this end, he introduced the concept of the ' protean self '. In the book The Protean Self (1993) he argues that the development of a 'fluid and versatile' personality is a positive trend in modern societies. Mental health today requires 'continuous exploration and personal experimentation' which reactionary and fundamentalist movements oppose.

Criticism of Modern War and Terrorism

After working with Hiroshima survivors, Lifton became a committed opponent of nuclear weapons . He argued that nuclear strategy and warfare strategy trivialized mass genocide on a large scale and made it imaginable. While not a strict pacifist , he has spoken out against various US military actions, particularly the Vietnam War and the war against Iraq. He believes they resulted from the irrational and aggressive aspects of American fearful foreign policy.

Lifton has also criticized the current “ US war on terrorism ” as a misguided and dangerous attempt to “rule out all vulnerability”. He sees terrorism as an increasingly serious threat due to the spread of nuclear and chemical weapons and 'totalist' ideologies. In his 1999 book Destroying the World to Save It , he describes apocalyptic groups such as the Japanese sect Ōmu Shinrikyō (known as Aum) as the forerunners of the 'new global terrorism': “Therefore, Aum should not be used as an end point, but as a threatening beginning and expression of a new dimension of global threat can be recognized. "

bibliography

German

  • The immortality of the revolutionary: Mao Tse-tung ud chines. Cultural Revolution , Munich: List, 1970
  • The loss of death: about d. Mortality d. People and persistence d. Lebens , Munich; Vienna: Hanser, 1986
  • Doctors in the Third Reich , Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988
  • The Psychology of Genocide: Nuclear War and Holocaust , Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1992
  • Bearing witness , Hamburg: Hamburger Ed., 1995
  • Terror for immortality: sects of redemption rehearse the end of the world , Munich; Vienna: Hanser, 2000, ISBN 3-446-19879-2

English, as an author

  • Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China, Norton (New York City), 1961.
  • 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, 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.
  • (Co-author) 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.

English, as editor

  • The Woman in America , Houghton (Boston), 1965.
  • America and the Asian Revolutions , Trans-Action Books, 1970, second edition, 1973.
  • (With 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 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 , WH Freeman, 1982.
  • (With Nicholas Humphrey) In a Dark Time: Images for Survival , Harvard University Press, 1984.

Filmography

In 2009 the film "When Doctors Kill" was released. Robert Lifton examines how German doctors participated in forced sterilization , euthanasia , selection and human experiments during the Nazi regime and how they integrated into German society after the end of the war.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robert Jay Lifton: Terror for Immortality: Redemption sects rehearse the end of the world. Hanser, Munich, Vienna 2000, p. 290 f.
personal data
SURNAME Lifton, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lifton, Robert Jay (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychiatrist and author
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York , NY