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Robert Jay Lifton

Born May 16, 1926 (1926-05-16) (age 82)
Brooklyn, New York
Residence United States
Nationality American
Fields psychiatry, mind control, thought reform
Institutions Washington School of Psychiatry
Harvard University
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Yale University
Alma mater Cornell University
New York Medical College
Known for Author, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
Notable awards Leo J. Ryan Award, 1987 Honorary Doctorate - Stonehill College (2008)

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 war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform. Events 1204 - Baldwin IX Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire. Year 1926 ( MCMXXVI) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Brooklyn (named after the Dutch town Breukelen) is one of the five boroughs of New York City. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Psychiatry is a medical specialty which exists to study, prevent, and treat Mental disorders in Humans Psychiatric Mind control is a broad range of psychological tactics able to subvert an individual's control of his own thinking, behavior emotions or decisions The John Jay College of Criminal Justice is a senior college of the City University of New York in midtown Manhattan New York City and is the only liberal arts college Alma mater is Latin for "nourishing mother" It was used in Ancient Rome as a title for the mother Goddess, and in Medieval New York Medical College is a graduate health sciences university based in Westchester County, New York. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism A Study of "Brainwashing" in China is a Psychology Non-fiction book on Brainwashing The Leo J Ryan Award was established by the Leo J Ryan Education Foundation in honor of Congressman Leo J Year 1987 ( MCMLXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link displays 1987 Gregorian calendar) Events 1204 - Baldwin IX Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire. Year 1926 ( MCMXXVI) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the A psychiatrist (also archaically called an alienist) is a Physician who specializes in Psychiatry and is certified in treating Mental disorders War is an international relations Dispute, characterized by organized Violence between National Military units He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory. Psychohistory is the study of the psychological motivations of historical events

In 2006, Lifton appeared in a documentary on cults on the History Channel: "Decoding the Past", along with fellow psychiatrist Peter A. Olsson[1]. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Documentary film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt in one fashion or another to " Document " reality This article does not discuss "cult" in the original sense of "veneration" or "religious practice" for that usage see Cult (religious practice History, formerly known as The History Channel, is a Satellite and Cable TV channel, with shows on historical events and persons&mdashoften Peter A Olsson is an American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst and author

Contents

Education

Biography

Lifton was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Harold A. New York Medical College is a graduate health sciences university based in Westchester County, New York. Year 1948 ( MCMXLVIII) was a Leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the 1948 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Psychiatry is a medical specialty which exists to study, prevent, and treat Mental disorders in Humans Psychiatric Year 1956 ( MCMLVI) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Year 1961 ( MCMLXI) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Brooklyn (named after the Dutch town Breukelen) is one of the five boroughs of New York City. (a businessman) and Ciel (Roth) Lifton. He studied medicine at New York Medical College. New York Medical College is a graduate health sciences university based in Westchester County, New York. 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. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. Korea is a geographic area composed of two sovereign countries a civilization and a former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia. 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. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice is a senior college of the City University of New York in midtown Manhattan New York City and is the only liberal arts college

He married the writer Betty Jean Kirschner in 1952 and has two children. Year 1952 ( MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Lifton calls cartooning his avocation; he has published two books of humorous cartoons about birds. A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing Cartoons Traditionally much of this work was and still is humorous and is intended primarily for entertainment purposes An avocation is an activity that a person does as a Hobby outside their principal occupation Birds ( class Aves) are bipedal endothermic ( Warm-blooded) Vertebrate animals that lay eggs.

The Wellfleet Psychohistory Group

During the 1960s, Robert Jay Lifton, together with his mentor Erik Erikson and MIT historian Bruce Mazlish, formed a group to apply psychology and psychoanalysis to the study of history. Erik Homburger Erikson ( June 15, 1902 – May 12, 1994) was born in Frankfurt to Danish parents but later obtained Meetings were held at Lifton's home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Wellfleet is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. 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. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS is an organization dedicated to scholarship and the advancement of learning 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 heavily influenced by Erikson's studies of Hitler and other political figures, as well as Sigmund Freud's concern with the mass social effects of deep-seated drives, particularly attitudes toward death. Hi and welcome to Wikipedia! Please understand that this article is frequently vandalized and vandalism is reverted immediately Sigmund Freud (ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt born Sigismund Shlomo Freud (May 6 1856 &ndash September 23 1939 was an Austrian Psychiatrist who founded

Theory of thought reform

For more details on this topic, see Thought Reform (book). Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism A Study of "Brainwashing" in China is a Psychology Non-fiction book on Brainwashing

Lifton's 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China was a study of coercive techniques that he labelled thought reform or "brainwashing", though he preferred the former term. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism A Study of "Brainwashing" in China is a Psychology Non-fiction book on Brainwashing Brainwashing (also known as Thought reform or as Re-education) consists of any effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and Beliefs Othes have labelled it also as "mind control". Mind control is a broad range of psychological tactics able to subvert an individual's control of his own thinking, behavior emotions or decisions Lifton describes in detail eight methods which he says are used to change people's minds without their agreement:

His name became further popularly associated with those terms when he testified as a defense witness in the 1976 trial of Patty Hearst, stating that the Symbionese Liberation Army had used similar techniques to produce a behavioral change in Hearst. Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) now known as Patricia Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper Heiress, The Symbionese Liberation Army ( SLA) was an American self-styled urban Guerrilla warfare group active between 1973 and 1975 that considered itself a

Contrary to popular notions of "brainwashing", Lifton always maintained that such coercion could only influence short-term behavior or produce general neuroses, not permanently change beliefs or personality. This article describes the term in psychology For the experimental metal band see Neurosis (band. Psychologists like Margaret Singer and Steven Hassan (author of the book Combatting Cult Mind Control), later loosely adapted his theories and applied his terms "totalism" and "thought reform" to the practices of certain religious and other types of groups. Margaret Thaler Singer (1921 - 2003 was a clinical psychologist and adjunct professor emeritus of Psychology at the University of California Berkeley, Steven Alan Hassan (born 1954 is a licensed Mental health counselor and an exit counselor. Combatting Cult Mind Control The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults is a non-fiction work by Steven Hassan.

The American Sociological Association has stated that it does not consider such an analysis scientifically valid, but have not disavowed Lifton's original work. The American Sociological Association (ASA founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society (ASS is a Non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and The American Psychological Association has taken the position that no definite conclusion has yet been reached. The American Psychological Association (APA is a professional organization representing psychologists in the U (See DIMPAC. )

The term thought-terminating cliché was popularized by Robert Lifton in this book. A thought-terminating Cliché is a commonly used phrase sometimes passing as folk wisdom used to quell Cognitive dissonance. Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is an American Psychiatrist and author chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes

Studies of war and atrocity survivors

His most influential books, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1968), 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 made by humans in extreme wartime environments—whether as survivors of atrocities or, in the latter case, perpetrators. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at Vietnam Era veteran is a phrase used to describe someone who served in the armed forces of participating countries during the Vietnam War. Nazism, which was a short name for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus refers primarily to the Ideology and practices of the National Socialist German Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction in whole or in part of an ethnic racial religious or national group In each case Lifton believed that the psychic fragmentation experienced 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, and are nearly sure to happen given certain conditions (either accidental or deliberately arranged) which Lifton called "atrocity-producing situations". War crimes are "violations of the laws or customs of war" including but not limited to "murder the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied Sociopathy is a loosely-defined term that may be used to refer to Psychopathy Antisocial personality disorder Dissocial 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. The Holocaust (from the Greek el ''ὁλόκαυστον'' (el-Latn holókauston holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt" also known as Action T4 (Aktion T4 was a program in Nazi Germany spanning October 1939 until August 1941 during which physicians killed 70273 peoplespecified in Hitler's Extermination camps were two types of facilities that Nazi Germany built during World War II for the systematic killing of millions of people in what has become

In the Hiroshima and Vietnam studies, Lifton also concluded that the sense of personal disintegration 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 his work with Vietnam veterans, Lifton was one of the first organizers of therapeutic discussion groups in which mental health practitioners met with veterans, and he lobbied for the inclusion of post-traumatic stress disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Post traumatic stress disorder It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' ( DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association

Theories of totalism and the protean self

Totalism, a word 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 in that it can be applied to the ideology of groups that do not wield governmental power. Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe Political systems where a State regulates nearly every aspect of public and private ) 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 are made to represent a metaphorical threat to survival, and a reactionary fear of social change. Death is the termination of the biological functions that define living Organisms It refers both to a specific Reactionary (also reactionist) is a derogatory term usually used by the Left wing in regards to movements which oppose radical change in society and seeks a return

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 Greek mythology, Proteus (Πρωτεύς is an early sea-god one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea" whose name suggests the 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, and that mental health now requires "continuous exploration and personal experiment", which reactionary and fundamentalist movements oppose. Fundamentalism refers to a "deep and totalistic commitment" to a belief in and strict adherence to a set of basic principles (often Religious in nature a reaction

Critiques of modern war and terrorism

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. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of Nuclear weapons As a sub-branch of Military 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. The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, or the Vietnam Conflict, occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia The Iraq War, also known as the Second Gulf War, the Occupation of Iraq, or the War in Iraq, is an ongoing Military campaign

Lifton has also criticized the current "War on Terrorism" as a misguided and dangerous attempt to "destroy all vulnerability". The War on Terrorism (also known as the War on Terror) is the common term for the military political and legal, and ideological conflict and specifically for U However, he regards terrorism itself as an increasingly serious threat due to the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and totalist ideologies. Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion His 1999 book Destroying the World to Save It described the apocalyptic terrorist sect Aum Shinrikyo as a forerunner of "the new global terrorism". Aum Shinrikyo, now known as Aleph, is a Japanese new religious movement organization

Notable Appearances

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. UNHGradjpg|thumb|right| George H W Bush and Bill Clinton speaking at the University of New Hampshire commencement Stonehill College is a private Roman Catholic College located in North Easton, Massachusetts, United States founded in 1948 [2]

Bibliography

Lifton as editor

See also


External links

Articles
Media

NPR Fresh Air interviews:

References

  1. ^ 2006, History Channel, "Decoding the Past". Talk of the Nation is a Talk radio program based in the United States, produced by National Public Radio, and is broadcast nationally from 2 Morning Edition is an American Radio news program produced and distributed by National Public Radio (NPR Fresh Air is a Radio talk show hosted by Terry Gross, broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. History, formerly known as The History Channel, is a Satellite and Cable TV channel, with shows on historical events and persons&mdashoften
    Cults: Dangerous Devotion: Scholars and survivors discuss the mystery of cults. (120 min). History. (PG/TV-PG)
  2. ^ http://www.stonehill.edu/media_relations/articles/051808_themes_of_commencement.htm


Persondata
NAME Lifton, Robert Jay
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION American psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn, New York
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Events 1204 - Baldwin IX Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire. Year 1926 ( MCMXXVI) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Brooklyn (named after the Dutch town Breukelen) is one of the five boroughs of New York City.
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