Robert Jay LiftonRezensionen

$6.50. famous psychiatrist, writes about vietnam, 60's.

This huge study, taken on by Lifton, must have been very painful in its execution. If you hated Nazis and Aryans before you read this, you will become enraged at their presumptuous impression that THEIR race was the only one that should survive in this world. Ugh. Anyone could be a target for murder: elderly, people with mental illness, homosexuals, Romanians, ...and Jews.

However, when you see Animals as sentient beings, instead of flesh on a plate, you are not as shocked by cruelty to humans as flesh-eaters are.

9/7/22

This book could have been very interesting given the subject matter, but it lacked any sort of narrative whatsoever, which made it an exhausting and confusing read.

"I medici nazisti erano delle belve quando fecero ciò che fecero? O erano degli esseri umani?": è questa la domanda a cui si propone di rispondere questo libro, un'inchiesta sconvolgente che ha aperto una prospettiva inedita sul Terzo Reich e le sue perverse atrocità. (fonte: Google Books)

This book is essential in any quest to understand how someone could murder and torture during the day only to return home to their nice families at night.

This book is an acquired taste.

Also, I'm saddened that it's painted with such broad strokes that paragraphs like the following can turn up in it:

One other important factor in the Chinese heritage also played a part in the evolution of reform techniques: human-centered psychological skills. No other civilization has paid so much attention to the conduct of human relationships. The Chinese family, with its characteristically complicated inner maneuvering, has been an excellent psychological training ground: in order to be “proper,” Chinese children have had to learn to be aware of the emotional currents in their milieu. And this personal emphasis has extended from the family into the rest of Chinese life: whether performing official duties or seeking personal objectives, the Chinese people have always put great stress on exerting influence upon the people involved—and there is only a fine line between influence and manipulation. These human-centered skills have been carefully nurtured over centuries, and emphasized at the expense of technical achievements. In this sense, thought reform is the modern totalitarian expression of a national genius.

There are far too few references and sources provided to give way to these kinds of statements; I mean "the Chinese people"...

That kind of writing, along with the author's preference to create terms that should be avoided a lot of the time, is drab and turned me right off this book, which is a shame as its subjects—e.g. Donald Trump (and the alt-right that follows him), Aum Shinrikyō, and "the Chinese".

In recent work I have referred to “malignant normality,” by which I mean the imposition of a norm of destructive or violent behavior, so that such behavior is expected or required of people. I came to this idea through my study of Nazi doctors. The physicians arriving at Auschwitz were expected to carry out selections of Jews for the gas chambers. That was their job. Whatever conflicts they experienced, the great majority adapted to that malignant normality.

This could have been a triumphant book, but instead, it fell into a heap of piffles, for me.

I'm glad I read it; it was quick, he introduces new words and phrases that could be very relevant in climate communications and work, and of course Robert Jay Lifton is a person with enormous credibility and weight whose efforts towards climate change can only help. But it wasn't as amazing as I'd hoped. There wasn't a lot to take away and use in my daily work, which was disappointing.

I did appreciate his optimistic take that the world is finally coming around to action on this issue. I think--and hope--he's right, and I hope that momentum can survive the concurrent rise of populist governments.

This might be the scariest book I have ever read. It was written in 1999... before the Twin Towers attack. Lifton warns us that Aum Shinrikyo would likely be the start... well, a further step in a pattern that would probably just keep expanding. And so it has. Right now, whew, to look at Kim and Trump rattling their nuclear swords. What a world.

Lifton goes through quite carefully the various dimensions of the Aum Shinrikyo phenomenon. I should say, I practice Vajrayana Buddhism, which seems to be the main foundation of Aum Shinrikyo. There is a classical perversion of Vajrayana, where emptiness and compassion, the absolute cornerstones of Buddhism, are forgotten, and the visionary outrageousness of Vajrayana is acted out literally. Aum Shinrikyo was a textbook example, with the further extensions into modern weapons of mass destruction, science fiction imagery, etc. But still, to see how the tools of Vajrayana Buddhism can be so misused... actually, there are plenty of warnings in Vajrayana about the potential for misuse, but it is easy not to take those too seriously.... kind of like reading the pages of possible side effects when you pick up some pills from the pharmacy. Whew, that horrible stuff really can happen!

It's a bit like George W. Bush's call for a war against evil... something like that. Lifton I think makes the crucial point, though he doesn't elaborate it. The real value of a book like this is that it can alert us to what is possible. Lifton does a good job of showing how this kind of thing could happen anywhere, it's not just some strange Japanese one-off. The real way to fight evil is to start with the awareness that the potential for evil exists in all of us. Real evil starts with the assumption that I myself am inherently not evil. That opens the door to every evil.

It is so utterly sad to reflect on how the horrible predictions suggested by this book have been fulfilled. These are not any sort of unique special events, but just instances of a general pattern. Whew, what a dark place we have gotten to! Yeah, okay, to see that darkness is itself a glimmer of light. I sure wouldn't mind a bit more than a glimmer!

In a Dark Time will shock, warn, and ultimately inspire those many people who share the perception that humankind now stands on the brink of self-annihilation but who believe, with Theodore Roethke, that "in a dark time, the eye begins to see.....

The first part of the book is based on interviews with lower echelon Aum members. If you haven't read much about people who join destructive sub-groups, you're likely to find this part of interest.

I, however, was more interested in Lifton's analysis of the group, especially vis-a-vis his work with the Nazis. I didn't find this part particularly well written. The arguments were more off-hand remarks rather than clear points. Maybe he feels he's made them so many times before he doesn't need to get into the details. However, when he starts analyzing millennial groups in general, he just gets too loosey-goosey for me, and I stopped reading.

The footnotes are less than comprehensive and there is no bibliography.

This is a new take on the Holocaust. The thesis is that the policy of the "final solution" was evolutionary, growing out of prior programs, such as euthanasia. A haunting phrase is used to describe Jews (and other subhumans): "Life Unworthy of Life." Lifton's point is that from the very beginning--forced sterilizations--physicians were the point people for every subsequent escalation of death, culminating in Auschwitz. The author provides context and research gathered from multiple sources, including interviews with survivors and SS doctors. The role of Jewish and Polish doctors is examined as well. Nazi doctors believed that the Fuhrer oath supplanted the Hippocratic oath; their patient was deemed to be the German volk, rather than individuals. Given that mindset, it made selections at the death campus (conducted almost exclusively by physcians) an acceptable activity. Lifton notes the reversal of reality: from healing people to killing them. His perceptive psychological profiles of people like Mengele are alone worth the price of admission. The medical dimension of the Holocaust seems to be central to the entire Nazi effort to exterminate the Jews. Doctors were the ones, for example, who supervised the delivery of Zyklon B pellets into the showers. Lifton has done history a major service by plumbing this heretofore under-appreciated aspect of Holocaust studies. The last section is devoted to a rather difficult examination of links between psychology and genocide. I couldn't get through that, and it seemed too specialized for someone more interested in history.½

This book is about the events in China in 1966 and '67. It was published in 1968 so the author did not have the benefit of knowing about the death of Lin Piao and the long term effects of the Cultural Revolution. The author's basic premise is that Mao was reacting to his mortality and his fear that his revolution would die with him.
Lifton is a psychiatrist and he uses a psychohistorical approach to analyze the events of the Cultural Revolution. I think he could have come up with a clearer explanation of events with a more conventional approach. He makes great use of the term psychism to try to explain Mao's mind over matter approach which denigrated the need for technical experts. Once I began substituting ideology for the term psychism I was able to get a better understanding of what the author was saying.
The author does provide some useful information about Mao's leadership of the Chinese people. His analysis of some of Mao's poems is very insightful. I do feel that he ignores some of the historical realities of political revolutions.
The back yard steel smelters in the Great Leap Forward were an early example of Mao's use of psychism. He preached the idea that the will of the people could replace the technical expertise of engineers and increase steel production without the necessity of large factories. People all over China took their metal utensils and tried to make them into steel in back yard kilns. The end result was that they destroyed all of their metal utensils and didn't make any steel.
In the Cultural Revolution he mobilized the youth as the Red Guards and went on a crusade to destroy the four olds. Ten years later there were millions of Chinese who had missed high school and technological development was retarded because all of the engineers had been sent to work in the fields.
In the end Mao's revolution was no different than the majority of political revolutions. After a period of intense political mobilization the populace tires. Making a living becomes more important than revolutionary ideology. After Mao died Deng Xioaping took power with the idea that what ever works is good. It does not matter if it is a white cat or a black cat as long as it catches mice. China today is socialist in name only. Mao is no longer the great hero that he was. In the end I found this book disappointing. The author creates an historical ideology that ignores the facts. I cannot recommend this book.

Wonderfully written and well informing.

The issue of nuclear bombing presents a greater significance in light of Obama's disdain for America. In 2012, he did not make any public statement on the anniversary of D-Day. The country has shifted into agnosticism on the proper role of American power in the world. Additionally, in light of the Islamic world's rush to nuclear development (as is North Korea) he has done little to oppose Iranian efforts, along with Pakistan to proliferate non-America power.

Until Obama's disloyalty to American ideals but reflecting an elitist disdain about using atomic diplomacy, Eisenhower questioned the decision to detonate the atomic bomb (pp. 212-13). In his 1948 memoir, Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower expressed his misgivings. Fifteen years later, in Mandate for Change, Eisenhower was even more blunt and determined to object to the Bomb. The authors, despite the strong evidence that Eisenhower objected, merely state that Eisenhower's opinion was ignored. And why not? Eisenhower, despite his bearing as a military, yet morally informed individual, expressed himself in military terms and questioned the value of the Bomb, but the American public of the day was no doubt rabidly anti-Japanese and their down to earth sentiment advocated deployment. Few ordinary people of the time would have seriously questioned the wisdom of ending the war under regrettable, but necessary conditions. Instead of taking solace in the American qualms about unleashing such a weapon, the authors are adamant about taking Americans to task for the decision. General Omar Bradley concurred with Eisenhower's idealism as did several other high ranking military officials. The officials should be evidence enough that a sound and careful reflection on American values occurred that nonetheless resulted in the decision to deploy the Bomb.

In their discussion of Nixon (pp. 218-20, 332, 333) the authors do not even reference Nixon's Quaker upbringing as having a role in his thinking about the Bomb. It is enough to raise the bloody flag of Watergate, as irrelevant as it is, to besmirch his nuclear diplomacy.

They do reference media works which make an interesting sidelight into American views about Hiroshima. Also, they do point self-admitted limitations in McCullough's Truman. What would have been more helpful, since they largely dismiss Truman, was to delve into Truman's qualifications as a former artillery officer in World War I.

The authors report on an incident, reported in more detail in a documentary (pp. 233-234).

The 2007 documentary by Steven Okazaki "White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki":

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0911010/

Some Hiroshima survivors were flown to the US in 1955 to get plastic surgery for wounds they received when the atomic bomb was dropped. Among them was Shigeko Sasamori, who was interviewed for the film.

At the time, the leader of the mission, Kiyoshi Tanimoto, was featured on the TV show "This Is Your Life" where he met Captain Robert A. Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that bombed him.

Clip from "This is Your Life:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_58byuLBu0

In the clip, which the authors describe an inebriated co-pilot, the flyer does not impaired at all.

In contrast, most veterans seem to be clear in their several propositions which disagree with author's conclusions (pp. 238-239.

There is a list of popular dramatic and written works which address the topic.

This book makes very sad reading

The author is a gifted and relentless academic who has studied suicide notes and treatment case histories, atom bomb victims, suicide survivors, and the literature of death. He seeks to replace the therapeutic sex-dream model of Freud, with an anthropological model of a connection between life/death, now viewed as "broken", derivative of Ruth Benedict's theories of culture. The chapter on Osiris' body broken -- most of us first found this image in Milton's Paradise Lost -- is worth the price of extinction.

A story of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the profound psychological and cultural impact that decision has had on America and Americans since that time. The heart of the issue is that there was no reason to drop the bomb to get Japan to end the war - the country had already extended feelers exploring possible terms of surrender. Rather, the bomb was dropped to signal the strength of the US to the Soviet Union. A fascinating read, albeit a bit cynical.½

This is a very frightening book about how ordinary people end up doing horrific things. If you think you could never be involved in an atrocity, I recommend reading this book and finding out just how hard it is to avoid given certain coercive circumstances.

An examination of the Japanese extremist cult.

A wonderful book on a difficult topic. Only one country has dropped an atom bomb - a technological achievement and a moral dilemna. This book details how America, rightly and wrongly, justifies the moral act.

This book examines the threat that nuclear weapons pose to the human future, the cast of mind that created and maintains that threat, and about an alternative hopeful direction. It is a continuation of Robert Jay Lifton's book, "The Nazi Doctors".

It is not commonly appreciated that doctors were instrumental in the Shoah; the Nazis were terrorists who perverted the medical professional as they did every apparatus of a modern industrial state. The psychological phenomenon of "splitting" played a key role in the psychology of genocide; it enabled people to commit the horrors they did as a part of their job.

I gather this is vilently revisionist, but I have yet to read it.