Robert Jay Lifton

Examines the psychological problems arising from dependence on nuclear weapons

"We are becoming fluid and many-sided. Without quite realizing it, we have been evolving a sense of self appropriate to the restlessness and flux of our time. This mode of being differs radically from that of the past, and enables us to engage in continuous exploration and personal experiment. I have named it the 'protean self,' after Proteus, the Greek sea god of many forms."—from The Protean Sel

No one is better equipped than psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton-a leading scholar of thought control and mass violence- to make sense of the extreme moment. From Hiroshima survivors to Nazi doctors, from Vietnam veterans to the cult that sarin-gassed the Tokyo subways, he has explained to us global apocalyptic urges, the ravages of psychic numbness, and the psychology of the survivor. Now, as al- Qa

Biographical sketches show how six writers and public figures prepared for their deaths

In The Broken Connection , Robert Jay Lifton, one of America's foremost thinkers and preeminent psychiatrists, explores the connections between death and life, the psychiatric disorders that arise from these connections, and the advent of the nuclear age which has jeopardized any attempts to ensure the perpetuation of the self beyond death.

Essays on History and Human Survival from the viewpoint of a Psychohistorian

Essays discuss the psychological aspects of Hiroshima, Vietnam, the Jewish Holocaust, and the threat of nuclear war

A study of the events surrounding the Hiroshima bombing focuses on its affects in America, considering the cover-up efforts by the government and linking the bombing to current insensitivities toward violence.

Informed by Erik Erikson's concept of the formation of ego identity, this book, which first appreared in 1961, is an analysis of the experiences of fifteen Chinese citizens and twenty-five Westerners who underwent "brainwashing" by the Communist Chinese government. Robert Lifton constructs these case histories through personal interviews and outlines a thematic pattern of death and rebirth, accomp

Articulates concepts and principles developed by Lifton through various studies and writings, integrating Freudian and post-Freudian assumptions into a view of life's continuity and the self's powers of assimilation and renewal

National Book Award winner and renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton reveals a world at risk from millennial cults intent on ending it all.Since the earliest moments of recorded history, prophets and gurus have foretold the world's end, but only in the nuclear age has it been possible for a megalomaniac guru with a world-ending vision to bring his prophecy to pass. Now Robert Jay Lif

Capital punishment has existed in our country for centuries, but Americans have always felt conflicted about it. Now, as the number of executions rises, opposition to the death penalty is building. To explain this society-wide struggle to come to grips with executions, a pair of award-winning authors—a distinguished psychiatrist and acclaimed journalist—talked to Americans deeply involved in the d

In Home from the War, the award-winning author and noted psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton offers a powerful critique of American militarism during the Vietnam War. Recognized as the ultimate text for those working with Vietnam veterans, the book's insights have had enormous influence among psychologists and psychiatrists all over the world.Lifton's new preface connects the experie

“Robert Jay Lifton offers a new conceptual framework for our understanding not only of Chinese convulsion, its causes, its surprising potency and its consequences, but of evolution in general and the strange urgency, which can become paramount, of revolution never to proclaim itself successful, never to say its job is done and its goals attained. . . . [Dr. Lifton] has made a signal contribution t

In Japan, "hibakusha" means "the people affected by the explosion--specifically, the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in 1945. In this classic study, winner of the 1969 National Book Award in Science, Lifton studies the psychological effects of the bomb on 90,000 survivors. He sees this analysis as providing a last chance to understand--and be motivated to avoid--nuclear war. This compass

Examining the premises of the arguments in favor of maintaining nuclear weapons capability, the authors argue that recovery after nuclear warfare is unlikely

Psychological Man in Revolution by Robert Jay Lifton

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 reache

Longlisted for the PEN America/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing"Well worth the read. . . . [A] prescient handoff to the next generation of scholars."― The Washington PostFrom "one of the world’s foremost thinkers" (Bill Moyers), a profound, hopeful, and timely call for an emerging new collective consciousness to combat climate changeOver his long c

A definitive account of the psychology of zealotry, from a National Book Award winner and a leading authority on the nature of cults, political absolutism, and mind control In this unique and timely volume Robert Jay Lifton, the National Book Award–winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual proposes a radical that the psychological relationship between extremist political movements a

Lifton, Robert Jay, Birds

From the National Book Award winner, a powerful and timely rumination on how we can draw on historical examples of “survivor power” to understand the upheaval and death caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—and collectively heal"Lifton shows us why we must confront reality in order to save democracy." —Peter Balakian, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ozone JournalIn this moving