Few books have had such a strong impact on me as did Elie Wiesel’s novel “Night.” First published in 1958, this slim volume was as dark as its title, reflecting the near despair of a Holocaust survivor. As a young boy, Wiesel had seen his parents and sister die in Buchenwald, one of millions lost to Nazi beastliness.
This personal account of horror, degradation, and loss of faith in goodness personalized for me one of the major horrific events of the twentieth century. At the time I wondered how anyone who had undergone such an experience could ever recover any positive attitudes about human beings and believe in our capacity for doing good.
Recently, I wondered the same thing about Robert Jay Lifton, not himself a survivor, but a psychiatrist and scholar who has made a distinguished career studying human beings connected with the Holocaust, the Hiroshima atomic bombing, and other terrible twentieth century happenings.
His research has made this Brooklyn native famous in the field of psychohistory. For a long time he was based at Yale University, but now has become a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School.
In the course of a public conversation with Dr. Lifton, two weeks ago at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, I asked him about his experience. Would having talked to such people as Nazi doctors, Hiroshima survivors, and American victims of brainwashing in the Korean War have left him unscathed? Could he have salvaged any hope from his interviews with people connected to such terror?
Of those interviewed, he says: “I’ve always focused on survivors’ capacity for resilience.” And he himself has taken from those contacts surprisingly positive results. “I categorize myself as neither an optimist nor a pessimist” he adds, “but somebody who continues to work and behave and live with hope.”
In reflecting on the history of the twentieth century with all of its terror, this scholar sees the human psyche as having been changed by this history. At the same time, certain abiding human values continue, no matter what.
“There is always a kind of interaction between enduring psychological characteristics,” he believes, “and changeable shifts that have to do with the forces of history and collective influences.” Among the continuing traits of human beings, he cites our need to nurture and be nurtured, for sexual expression, self-esteem, and the capacity to get along with other people.
Dr. Lifton sees the present historical moment as a time when we have lost clear cut guidelines and certainty about values. Thus it has become unclear how we should act at certain ages, and what to do in the face of knowing we will die. “We are struggling with dislocation,” he says, “and we’re also struggling with the mass media and the information revolution.”
This has made for a new situation that affects our psyches, creating the many-sided self. However, we also labor under the “more dreadful and threatening knowledge that we are capable of exterminating ourselves as a species with our own technology,” Dr. Lifton warns.
Reflecting on World War II, this scholar sees that titanic conflict still touching us now, especially those of us who came of age then. He calls the terrible Nazi genocide worked against Jews and others, along with the atom bombing of Japan, “the two pivotal events of the twentieth century.” Those events continue to reverberate in him as reminders of our capacity for self-destruction. He also thinks they have a relevance to the current state of our country.
In his research on Nazi doctors, Dr. Lifton found them using what he calls “distancing,” the ability to inflict extreme violence on other people without feeling very much themselves. This phenomenon amounts to a serious problem in our time, making it necessary for us “to make more clear to scientists, military people, doctors and others what their responsibilities are and how what they do affects other people.”
This scholar applies to elders what he has learned about survivors. Those of us in our 60s, 70s and beyond are survivors in two ways. We have lost many people known to us and we have also lost certain elements of our world as it used to be. Survivors either shutdown or open out. This opening out means the capacity to take in loss and to move ahead. But to do that you must first allow yourself to feel the pain of the loss.
In answer to a question, Lifton finds it strange the way the events he has studied have all taken on a new and immediate relevance. So much of his work has dealt with apocalyptic violence, a subject that terrorism has raised anew. And he worries about our nation: “we have taken on something of an apocalyptic vision ourselves.
Asked how older people can share wisdom gained from long experience, Dr. Lipton answers forthrightly: “I think we should assert ourselves.” He believes electoral politics insufficient and urges elders to get involved in non-official organizations. “One has the right to articulate what we have learned.”
Richard Griffin