Robert Jay Lifton est un psychiatre et auteur américain, renommé pour ses études sur les causes et les conséquences psychologiques de la guerre et de la violence politique, ainsi que pour sa théorie de la réforme de la pensée. Il fut l'un des premiers défenseurs des techniques psychohistoriques, explorant les aspects les plus sombres de la psyché humaine à travers ses écrits influents.
The memoir offers an introspective look at Robert Jay Lifton's life as an influential intellectual and political activist. It reflects on his journey through the tragedies of the twentieth century, emphasizing his role in founding psychohistory. Lifton shares his experiences as a hopeful witness, exploring the depths of human suffering while seeking to understand and transcend it.
This is not only one of the most important works on medical ethics yet written. It also breaks through the frontiers of historiography to provide a convincing psychological interpretation of the Third Reich and the crimes of National Socialism.-New York Review of Books
Examines the psychological problems arising from dependence on nuclear weapons
De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World
Includes essays and excerpts from the works of prominent modern thinkers such as Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, and Isaiah Berlin among others.
Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Focusing on the psychological aftermath of catastrophe, this work by Robert Jay Lifton explores how individuals and communities can cope with the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing parallels with historical survivors of Hiroshima and Nazi death camps, Lifton emphasizes the concept of "survivor power" and advocates for a deep reckoning with the pandemic's effects. He presents a hopeful vision for renewal, suggesting that meaningful lives can emerge from tragedy and that confronting our collective experiences is essential for moving forward.
On a fateful day in the spring of 1954 Robert Jay Lifton, a young American psychiatrist just discharged from service in the Korean War, decided to stay in Hong Kong rather than return home—changing his life plans entirely—so that he could continue work that had enthralled him, interviewing people subjected to Chinese thought reform. He had plunged into uncharted territory in probing the far reaches of the human psyche, as he would repeatedly in the years ahead, and his Hong Kong research provided the first understanding of the insidious process that came to be known as brainwashing.From that day in Hong Kong forward, Lifton has probed into some of the darkest episodes of human history, bearing his unique form of psychological witness to the sources and consequences of collective violence and trauma, as well as to our astonishing capacity for resilience.In this long-awaited memoir, Lifton charts the adventurous and constantly surprising course of his fascinating life journey, a journey that took him from what a friend of his called a “Jewish Huck Finn childhood” in Brooklyn to friendships with many of the most influential intellectuals, writers, and artists of our time—from Erik Erikson, David Riesman, and Margaret Mead, to Howard Zinn and Kurt Vonnegut, Stanley Kunitz, Kenzaburo Oe, and Norman Mailer.In his remarkable study of Hiroshima survivors, he explored the human consequences of nuclear weapons, and then went on to uncover dangerous forms of attraction to their power in the spiritual disease he calls nuclearism. During riveting face-to-face interviews with Nazi doctors, he illuminated the reversal of healing and killing in ordinary physicians who had been socialized to Nazi evil. With Vietnam veterans he helped create unprecedented “rap groups” in which much was revealed about what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, helping veterans draw upon their experience for valuable, even prophetic, insights about atrocity and war. As a pioneer in psychohistory, Lifton’s encounters with the consequences of cruelty and destructiveness led him to become a passionate social activist, lending a powerful voice of conscience to the suppressed truths of the Vietnam War and the dangers of nuclear weapons.Written with the warmth of spirit—along with the humor and sense of absurdity—that have made Lifton a beloved friend and teacher to so many, Witness to an Extreme Century is a moving and deeply thought-provoking story of one man’s extraordinary commitment to looking into the abyss of evil in order to help us move beyond it.
