If anyone deserves to be a pessimist, Robert Jay Lifton would seem ideally equipped. After all, this psychiatrist-scholar, now in his middle 80s, has spent much of his career studying groups of people connected with some of the greatest evils of the 20th century.
These four groups are 1) people subjected to “thought reform” forced on them by Chinese communists in mid-century; 2) victims of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945; 3) anti-war American veterans of the Vietnam War; and 4) doctors who cooperated with the Nazi regime.
In his recently published memoir “Witness to an Extreme Century,” Lifton details his experiences talking with these people who figured in horrific events. From each of these research studies he drew conclusions of great value to everybody concerned about human well-being.
After they came to power in 1949, the Chinese communists forced millions of people to obliterate their own way of thinking in favor of a new ideology. This form of what the new rulers considered correct thought was accomplished by subjecting most people to rigid training and, in some instances, torture.
Lifton labels this treatment of the human mind “totalism.” He considers such an all-or-nothing outlook on reality to be a menace, allowing its practitioners absolute control over others.
In later interviews, talking with survivors of Hiroshima, Lifton discovered what a single bomb could do. He spoke with a history professor who had climbed a hill overlooking the city only to look down and find that the city itself had disappeared. From this experience Lifton formed the mantra “one plane, one bomb, one city,” a slogan still alive in his memory.
A third study concerned Americans who had served in the Vietnam War, only to turn against it. His conversations with them became for Lifton a lessen in war-making. He discovered that, for many soldiers subjected to combat, it is impossible to avoid what he now calls “atrocity-producing situations.”
That description certainly applied to My Lai, where, in 1968, American soldiers massacred defenseless women and children along with unarmed old men. Conversation with one veteran, who refused to shoot but could do nothing to stop his comrades, served as a haunting example of the horrors produced by war.
Finally, and in some ways the most dramatic of the interviews came with Nazi doctors for whom the death camps served as a laboratory for unspeakable experiments. They represented the biggest challenge for Lifton, in part because he is Jewish himself, sharing an identity and a heritage with these men’s victims.
He was also horrified to discover that, among the many Nazi doctors he interviewed, not one expressed regret about what he had done.
They were ordinary people, Lifton came to see, who could be socialized to evil—a hands-on evil that ultimately worked its terror.
Despite the scholarly effort it took to conduct these thousands of interviews and to preserve them, Lifton has never felt satisfied with scholarship alone. Instead he has carried over what he learned into activism on behalf of positive social change.
He loves the United States and credits our country for having given him a privileged life. At the same time he sees that America has sometimes been a dangerous force in the world.
He also finds, in each one of the four studies, relevant lessons for the United States today. It disturbs him that so many right-wing groups in this country advance totalitarian ideologies. As to nuclear weapons, President Obama has promised their elimination, but realization of that goal remains far off. The United States wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced atrocities, and are ultimately self-defeating for the United States. And some American physicians have involved themselves in supporting torture, while some relevant professional associations have not opposed it.
When people today ask Robert Jay Lifton what he thinks of humankind, they may expect to hear “not much.” However, that is not his answer.
Instead, he remains a man of hope. He believes in the power of the human mind to accomplish great things on behalf of us all. That does not means he feels optimistic about the future. But he does believe we can learn from the errors of the past and embark on a better future.
My enthusiasm for this man and his memoir confirm my long-standing admiration for him. Some fifteen years ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a discussion with him before an older audience. On that occasion I was impressed with the wisdom and the insight he showed in discussing the subject of aging and related topics.
When the time came for him to entertain questions form the audience, he handled each with serious thought and with respect for each person who spoke up.
Over the years, the writings and actions of this man have proven how fortunate we are to have him as a member of our local and national community.