Quotes by Robert Jay Lifton - Page 1

Yes, I've been very preoccupied with the survivor all through my work.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Survivor
Preoccupied
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I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
War
Veteran
Vietnam
Turned
Veterans
Vietnam Veterans
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I'm a Brooklyn boy. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised there, and spent most of my childhood there.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
New York
Born
Boys
Brooklyn
Childhood
Raised
Boy
Spent
York
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I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Book
Feelings
Mark
Mind
Absolutely
Young Person
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And I was troubled by the heavy-handed prose of so much psychoanalytic writing, which seemed drowned in its own concepts.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Heavy
Prose
Writing
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Every adult in the world has some sense that he or she might be obliterated at any time by these weapons that we have created.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Time
Adults
Weapons
World
Adult
He Or She
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Sometimes its said that psychiatrists are doctors who are frightened by the sight of blood. I might have fallen into that category.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Blood
Doctors
Sight
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Sometimes it's said that psychiatrists are doctors who are frightened by the sight of blood. I might have fallen into that category.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Blood
Doctors
Frightened
Sight
Category
Psychiatrists
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I struggled with each of these studies and I was uncertain about what they meant, and often confused, and then I tried to put together what I was seeing.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Confused
Uncertain
Meant
Struggled
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I did the first study because I had been exposed to something that I took to be important and interesting - this thought reform process - in the military.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Exposed
Important
Interesting
Military
Study
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It was because of my deep concerns about nuclear weapons that I went to Hiroshima. And then I was astounded in Hiroshima to find that nobody had really studied it.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Astounded
Hiroshima
Nuclear
Nuclear Weapons
Weapons
Studied
Concerns
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I never quite envisioned myself a proper doctor under that white coat, but I was interested in the idea of healing and in the psychological dimension rather early on.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Doctors
Healing
Ideas
Psychological
Doctor
Coat
Dimension
Envisioned
Proper
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When I was still in my psychiatric residency training in New York City, I was subjected to the doctor draft of that time, during the early fifties, at the time of the Korean War.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
New York
War
Doctors
New York City
Psychiatric
Residency
Training
Doctor
Draft
Early
Fifties
Subjected
York
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As a kid I was fascinated with sports, and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports, like books about Baseball Joe, as one baseball hero was called.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Sports
Baseball
Book
Fascinated
Hero
Anything Else
Joe
More Than Anything
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It may sound terrible, but I often say that the military saved me from a conventional life in the United States and I've never really thanked them for it, because I haven't exactly been pro-military in my work.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Conventional
Military
Saved
Sound
United States
Life Work Me
Life Work May
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Again, I was influenced by my father, who was very much an atheist and took pride in combating the traditional or orthodox forms of Judaism, which his parents and which my mother's parents were very steeped in.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Atheist
Father
Judaism
Mother
Orthodox
Pride
Traditional
Forms
Influenced
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That is, we are bombarded by all kinds of images and influences and we have to fend some of them off if we're to take in any of them, or to carry through just our ordinary day's work, or really deepen whatever we have to do or say.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Bombarded
Ordinary
Carry
Deepen
Images
Influences
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But when I went to Hiroshima and began to study or just listen to people's descriptions of their work, it was quite clear they were talking about death all the time, about people dying all around them, about their own fear of death.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Clear
Dying
Hiroshima
People
Study
Talking
Began
Descriptions
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And I thought about the psychic numbing involved in strategic projections of using hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons of any kind. And I also thought about ways in which all of us undergo what could be called the numbing of everyday life.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Bombs
Everyday
Everyday Life
Hydrogen
Hydrogen Bomb
Involved
Nuclear
Nuclear Weapons
Psychics
Strategic
Weapons
Psychic
Undergo
Using
Ways
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The one-sided exploitation of existential guilt is thought reform's trump card, and perhaps its most important source of emotional influence over its participants. Revolving around it are issues most decisive to thought reform's outcome.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Emotional
Guilt
Issues
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David Frankfurter's valuable, well-written study takes us to the far reaches of demonology. In documenting the harm done by labeling others evil, he poses a challenge to those of us who believe, however regretfully, in the necessity of the concept.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Believe
Challenges
Evil
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One reason that I embarked on a study of Nazi doctors was that in this personal journey, I had the feeling increasingly that I did want to do a Holocaust study and that increasingly I wanted it to be of perpetrators, which I thought was more needed.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Journey
Doctors
Holocaust
Study
Embarked
Increasingly
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But I spent just two calendar years at Cornell University, though it was covering more than three years of work, and then went to medical school and did become interested in psychiatry, and even helped form a kind of psychiatry club in medical school.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Covering
Medical School
Psychiatry
School
Two
University
Years
Calendar
Helped
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The American president has particular power. This makes Trump the most dangerous man in the world. He's equally dangerous because of his finger on the nuclear trigger and because of his mind ensconced in solipsistic reality. The two are a dreadful combination.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Men
Mind
Reality
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And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
China
Hong Kong
People
Real
Research
Study
Years
Arrange
Interviewing
So-Called
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What I found was when I started my first study, and then in subsequent studies, is here you have people under some kind of duress, or I chose to study them because they represented some kind of historical event, as it impacted on them or as they helped to create it.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Duress
Historical
Chose
Event
Helped
Impacted
Studies
Subsequent
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The other thing that happened was my last military assignment - this was in the air force; I had enlisted in order to avoid being drafted as a private, and of course I only practiced medicine or psychiatry in the air force so I was never in any kind of violent combat.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Air
Air Force
Combat
Enlisted
Medicine
Military
Order
Psychiatry
Assignment
Avoid
Drafted
Practiced
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With the nuclear threat we know that if sufficient weapons are used, human civilization - all of humankind - could be extinguished literally by "nuclear winter." So we have to see ourselves as part of the ultimate human group, just as we have to do with global warming.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Global Warming
Threat
Winter
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In sum, doubling is the psychological means by which one invokes the evil potential of the self. That evil is neither inherent in the self nor foreign to it. To live out the doubling and call forth the evil is a moral choice for which one is responsible, whatever the level of consciousness involved.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Evil
Mean
Self
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The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Analysis
Language
Phrases
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There is a movement of more people recognizing global warming as a danger, recognizing the human contribution to global warming, recognizing the necessity for doing something about it. So there's a trend in that direction, and that trend is consistent with what a climate swerve - which is, as we're both saying, a mindset.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Global Warming
Mindset
People
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Trump has a mind that in many ways is always under duress, because he's always seeking to be accepted, loved. He sees himself as constantly victimized by others and by the society, from which he sees himself as fighting back. So there's always an intensity to his destructive behavior that could contribute to his false beliefs.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Belief
Fighting
Mind
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People with what we call mental illness can indeed serve well, and people who have no discernible mental illness - and that may be true of Trump - may not be able to serve, may be quite unfit. So it isn't always the question of a psychiatric diagnosis. It's really a question of what psychological and other traits render one unfit or dangerous.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Mental Illness
People
Psychological
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There's more and more recognition that a carbon economy is dangerous to us economically. And there is increasing recognition that renewable fuels have economic value as well as obvious value for our health and our well-being and our survival. In fact, as you know, the economic revolution in renewable fuels has been impressive. It really had not been anticipated.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Recognition
Revolution
Survival
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We have a duty to warn on an individual basis if we are treating someone who may be dangerous to herself or to others - a duty to warn people who are in danger from that person. We feel it's our duty to warn the country about the danger of this president. If we think we have learned something about Donald Trump and his psychology that is dangerous to the country, yes, we have an obligation to say so.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Country
People
Thinking
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The scientists who made the atomic bomb are, in my sense, people with a tragic destiny. You know, there was the US race with Nazi Germany and good evidence that the Germans were more advanced in nuclear physics, and we had to get the bomb first. But then there was the use of that dreadful weapon, or instrument of genocide, and many of the more sensitive scientists turned quickly into anti - nuclear people - and very effective ones.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Destiny
People
Physics
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There are people who believe that there should be a standard psychiatric examination for every presidential candidate and for every president. But these are difficult issues because they can't ever be entirely psychiatric. They're inevitably political as well. I personally believe that ultimately ridding the country of a dangerous president or one who's unfit is ultimately a political matter, but that psychological professionals can contribute in valuable ways to that decision.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Believe
Country
People
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Donald Trump doesn't have clear contact with reality, though I'm not sure it qualifies as a bona fide delusion. He needs things to be a certain way even though they aren't, and that's one reason he lies. There can also be a conscious manipulative element to it. When he put forward, and politically thrived on, the falsehood of President Obama's birth in Kenya, outside the United States, he was manipulating that lie as well as undoubtedly believing it in part, at least in a segment of his personality.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Believe
Lying
Reality
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While Donald Trump doesn't have any systematic ideology, he does have a narrative, and in that narrative, America was once a great country, it's been weakened by poor leadership, and only he can make it great again by taking over. And that's an image of himself as a strongman, a dictator. It isn't the clear ideology of being a fascist or some other clear-cut ideological figure. Rather, it's a narrative of himself as being unique and all-powerful. He believes it, though I'm sure he's got doubts about it.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Believe
Country
Unique
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Donald Trump both disbelieves and believes in falsehoods, so that when he did thrive on his longstanding - the claim that Obama was not born in the United States - he's crazy like a fox in manipulating it because it gave him his political entrée onto the national stage. In order to make your falsehoods powerful, you have to believe in them in some extent. And that's why we simplify things if we say that Trump either believes nothing in his falsehoods and is just manipulating us like a fox or he completely believes them.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Believe
Crazy
Powerful
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Donald Trump gives the impression that he would like to govern by decree. He has that impulse in him and he wants to be a savior, so he says, in his famous phrase, "Only I can fix it!" That's a strange and weird statement for anybody to make, but it's central to Trump's sense of self and self-presentation. And I think that has a lot to do with his identification with dictators. No matter how many they kill and no matter what else they do, they have this capacity to rule by decree without any interference by legislators or courts.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Giving
Strange
Thinking
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In early psychoanalytic thought, narcissism was - and still, of course, is - self-love. The early psychoanalysts used to talk of libido directed at the self. That now feels a little quaint, that kind of language. But it does include the most fierce and self-displaying form of one's individual self. And in this way, it can be dangerous. When you look at Donald Trump, you can really see someone who's destructive to any form of life enhancement in virtually every area. And if that's what Fromm means by malignant narcissism, then it definitely applies.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Language
Mean
Narcissism
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For anyone with the traits - of feeling himself victimized, of seeking to be the strongman who resolves everything, yet sees truth only through his own self and negates all other truth outside of it - is bound to become more malignant when he has power. Power then breeds an intensification of all this because the power can never be absolute power - to some extent it's stymied - but the isolation while in power becomes even more dangerous. Think of it as a vicious circle. The power intensifies these tendencies and the tendencies become more dangerous because of the power.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Feelings
Isolation
Thinking
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There's an all-enveloping destructiveness in Donald Trump's character and in his psychological tendencies. But I've focused on what professionally I call solipsistic reality. Solipsistic reality means that the only reality he's capable of embracing has to do with his own self and the perception by and protection of his own self. And for a president to be so bound in this isolated solipsistic reality could not be more dangerous for the country and for the world. He's not psychotic, but I think ultimately this solipsistic reality will be the source of his removal from the presidency.
Robert Jay Lifton / Psychiatrist
Character
Country
Mean
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Robert Jay Lifton Quotes - Page 1

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