Lifton's Journey

While there was so much to take away from Lifton as a writer, witness and a human being, I found myself rereading sections while performing the tasks of comprehending his life and analyzing the mechanics of his work. More and more I began to appreciate how seamless his memoir complemented not only the kind of person he has, but how his life's journey had been taken.

Sometimes when I read a particularly gifted writer, I begin to look for common constructions, stylistic tricks and other cues that help me to understand how the work sustains various emotions or is effective in maintaining interest. As I read Lifton, I began to notice the sparsity of physical detail in people, places and objects, but noticed I didn't seem to need them very much as a reader. This became more-and-more interesting to me as we traveled the world to meet some of the most influential people in the 20th century and also to spend time in some of the most iconic physical spaces as well.

It began to dawn on me that Lifton's journeys, his life, was more about the progression and evolution of the mind. The mind of victims, aggressors, thinkers and radicals were the landscape that Lifton trades in with this memoir. The physicality of Munich, for instance, is described in passing. The atmosphere of Munich and the psychic effects of the history of National Socialism are described in great detail. How the city affected him and his family (particularly BJ) was fascinating. That Lifton would move almost completely internally during this memoir is amazing and completely appropriate (in retrospect, of course.)

For Lifton, life is a journey of the mind and I find that this is an inspirational way to begin a semester of takling a similar journey.

Lifton: The Importance of Books

During my reading of Witness to an Extreme Century, I noticed several occasions where Lifton speaks directly about the impact that his research will have. These moments stood out to me because--like many other readers, I'm sure--it amazed me to see that he could continue his work in the face of such death and destruction, encountering the evils of the world on a near daily basis. But I saw that through all of his difficulties, whether emotional or research-related, he knew that writing his book would make everything worth it in the end. In writing his books, Lifton gives himself the final say on the matter. He can look back over his interviews and shape the words into substantial commentary that has the power to incite change, action, and awareness.

For example, Lifton speaks of his mixed emotions during his meetings with the Nazi doctors. On the one hand, he knows that he must be civil and work together with them to accomplish the interviews, yet on the other hand, he is angered and horrified by the stories that they tell. It is such a strange situation, and just thinking about it is staggering. He even explains how he felt compromised because he acted so politely to their Nazi host during a social gathering. But again, he uses his book as a means of gaining some control and power over the situation. He states: "Again I told myself that my planned book--having the ultimate say--justified our behavior, but that did not prevent me from feeling unclean in connection with this 'socializing'" (277). In this way, Lifton shows that even though he was in an uneasy situation and had to act in a manner that did not align with his conscience, he knew that this was the only way to gain the information that would allow him his final say in the end.

On another level, writing his novels becomes a way for Lifton to exorcise his personal demons. One example deals with his research. In preparation to write his book, Lifton places the interview files on the desk in his study. This causes his previously welcoming writing space to turn into a part of his home that he does not even want to enter. He explains, "Only by writing that book could I get them out of my study" (332). Here, Lifton's research has invaded his personal life on a tangible level, and he combats this development by writing his book.

As a final note, I think of the advice he received from Mary Wright: 

I know how intensely committed you are to your political protest against the Vietnam War and against nuclear weapons . . . But I want to point out to you very strongly that if you had done nothing but protest, you could not have written Death in Life. And writing that book and others like it has much more importance for the world, and much more influence in the directions you desire, than does any political action you may take. (162)

Lifton takes this advice to heart, and, in retrospect, we realize just how prophetic this advice really was.

On Lifton

Robert Jay Lifton's memoir, Witness to an Extreme Century, is impressive. The expanse of time covered, his contributions to the field of psychology, his compassion, his deep introspection, and the extreme twentieth-century events he chose to study. (Namely, Chinese thought reform, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, antiwar Vietnam veterans, and Nazi doctors.) Because of the breadth of this memoir, it's hard for me to focus on one specific aspect, so I'm going to just dive in to this blog post and see what comes of it.

In both the Harvard Bookstore video and the book, Lifton talks about his interview method and the necessity of "translating words into visual images" (32). What complicated this conversion process further was that these words were about "unfamiliar experiences" to Lifton. He recalls the process in the specific example of the history professor in Hiroshima who described the haunting disappearance of the city: "Hiroshima just didn't exist." Through personal reflection, Lifton admits, "I was struggling to witness his witness" (111). However, this one man's interview and perceptions of Hiroshima's nothingness would come to influence Lifton's antinuclear sentiments as well as the idea of a "nuclear end" versus a "nuclear war," which I found interesting in its differentiation--the former highlighting the power of technology and nuclear weapons as means of absolute destruction without the promise of renewal. And arose from this: "One plane, one bomb, one city!" When put so simply, I find myself considering the devastation and apparent disappearance of Hiroshima at the time of the bombing--recreating my own images from both Lifton's words and those he's shared of his interviewees.

This also has me thinking about reversing the conversion process--to recall images in order to produce words, particularly when it comes to describing historical evils (like all four in this book) and how most words can probably feel inadequate to describe such extreme events and their emotional or psychological effects. Somebody mentioned in another blog post about whether or not we can truly understand an event of which we were not a direct witness. Even in these incredibly in-depth and personal interviews, there is the problem of that conversion process for both parties. Lifton's need to create images of the interviewee's words and the interviewee's need to produce words suitable enough to convey their experiences. And even then, is it enough? I think Lifton's efforts to get as close to the experience as possible demonstrate his responsibility as both a psychologist and a writer. He is a witness to their witness, and sometimes a witness on his own account in his dedication to travel and immersing himself in the locations of his studies. I think this sense of responsibility is strong throughout Lifton's memoir. He writes, "I've often been told that I had shown great 'courage' in carrying out such disturbing studies as the effects of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and the behavior of Nazi doctors in the Holocaust...I could stay and work in Hiroshima because I sensed that the study was right for me, for who I was; that I had arrived at an appropriate intersection of my evolving work with an important world event" (101).

Nuclearism: The Threat of Destruction to Keep the Peace

One of the concepts Lipton explores is nuclearism, the idea that the threat of nuclear annihilation helps to keep peace in the world.  Lipton even goes as far to say that some people or groups of people have come to revere nuclear weapons as god-like entities due to their "world-destroying power."  He sees this type of hero worship as a cause of "a vast societal numbing" and as a barrier to nuclear disarmament.

I found this very interesting and disturbing.  Although it seems absurd that possession of nuclear weapons by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union kept the Cold War from escalating to full out war, there does seem to be a ring of truth to the idea.  History and Lipton's careful analysis in his memoir demonstrate that leadership on both sides came to revere and fear nuclear weapons to such a degree that each superpower began to see that the only way to keep world balance and therefore world peace was to arm itself with an abundance of nuclear weaponry.  In other words, the only way to ensure that its Cold War rival didn't attempt to extend its sphere of influence via nuclear attack  was for each superpower to arm itself with nuclear weapons and make that armament known.  Only the threat of mutually assured annihilation could keep world order.

Like Lipton, I find this type of foreign policy both bizarre and sad.  It's bizarre that the ability to destroy the world and humankind has kept the peace in the past and is still viewed by some as the only way to protect world order.  I also find it sad there is so much mistrust in the world that, to some, diplomacy alone will never be enough.  The fact that many of the scientists who created the first atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer, became the most outspoken opponents of bombing warfare made our continued reliance on bombs even more unsettling.  How could we continue down that path when the creators, the people who understood this type of weaponry better than the majority of people on the planet, thought it was a disastrous idea?

I think the answer to this question lies in both our fear and mistrust of other nation states and to the "vast societal numbing" Lipton mentions in his book.  Since other people and other nations can't be trusted to disarm themselves, we, as Americans, must combat our numbing and debilitating fear that our way of life and culture might be forever destroyed by arming ourselves with nuclear weaponry.  According to Lipton, nuclearism is society's mistaken way of protecting its culture and assuring the continuation of the human race as a whole.

Attempting to Know the Nuclear Unknown

One thing that struck me from the text, or what I was most drawn to, was Lifton’s interaction with the survivors of Hiroshima. I’ve always been interested in nuclear weapons, whether their use in World War II, the arms race during the Cold War, or, in terms of my fiction, the development and testing of hydrogen bombs in the Pacific. In my research and reading of other texts outside of Witness to an Extreme Century, I’ve found that the focus is often on, as Lifton explores, the technological aspects of the weapons or the military and sociopolitical implications that their use and existence has caused. So little do we hear about the hibakusha, a term I was glad to see Lifton use when referring to the survivors. “The explosion-affected people” are so often glossed over when discussing the bombing of Hiroshima and to read about Lifton’s experiences dealing with survivors sixteen years after Fat Man was dropped on the city and his personal evolution in dealing with them was fascinating. It makes me want to read Death in Life and see how it contrasts to other works.

By other works I mean specifically Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which, as the title implies, details the construction of the weapon, but I’m more interested in comparing it to George Weller’s book First into Nagasaki. That text, which compiles Weller’s previously censored writing (it was written in 1945 but not released until 2006) on the subject of slipping away from his military supervisors to visit the titular city before it was able to be “sanitized” for reporters is a fascinating read into an American in Japan directly after the end of the war, as opposed to Lifton’s experience over a decade later, when the world was changed but people still felt that resentment.

The distrust that he explores in the text of the survivors for Americans wasn’t something I had considered but made so much sense that I couldn’t believe it hadn’t struck me before. Of course the US would want to be examining the hibakusha, because if we could understand what happened to them because of our choice to drop the bomb, we could better understand what would happen if more were to drop in the Cold War.

I find myself agreeing with how Lifton characterizes the bomb in the beginning of chapter eight, when he describes it not only destroying cities and bodies but having “an all-enveloping impact on the mind” and that “anyone could be entrapped by it,” especially “people who sought to engage it with their imaginations.” It’s something we can’t fundamentally understand, despite how we try. There can be interviews or documentation and endless exploration, but we, nearly seventy years later, cannot fully understand what it was like, nor should we. And perhaps that is why I am drawn to it (I always have been, and remember having fears of nuclear annihilation as a child growing up at the end of the Cold War thanks to various films my father let me watch with him), because it’s something that is both known and documented but ultimately and always unknowable.

Lifton's Little Legacy of Freudianism Regarding Dreams and Sex

In the reading we watched Lifton give at the Harvard Bookstore last week, he described his book as a "memoir of his professional life." To this end, I appreciated the work Lifton did to position himself in the times and traditions and prevailing ideas of whatever environment he found himself working in. He talked about being trained by mostly Freudian psychoanalysts but disagreeing with their dogma. He talked about maintaining respect for Freud and that it made sense that Freud's work was so interested in sex because the early twentieth century was a time of such sexual reinvention in Europe.

Throughout the memoir, I found that Lifton repeatedly conveyed his feelings about his research via dream interpretations--which is a practice that I assume he would've experienced in relation to the psychoanalytical shades of his training. This thread of dream interpretations amused me as a reader and I respected Lifton's ability to act on feelings he was able to extract from his dreams--it seemed like didn't think reading dreams literally was what dreams were for, but he was able to recognize what emotions were weighing on him importantly enough to manifest in dreams and he was able to work on those. His attention to dreams put me at attention for other ways that the environment (either of psychoanalysis or any other) would act on him, and specifically it put me on the lookout for the role of sex in dealing with atrocities or the study of atrocities.

This might have been a fruitless thing to look for because it was a "memoir of his professional life" and because Lifton seemed to have such a great, respectful relationship with his recently deceased wife BJ that he wouldn't be inclined to share the impact his professional life may have had on their romantic lives. I imagine I would have to read Lifton's original works to see if he ever asked about the role of sex after atrocities in his interviews. Lifton's work, similar to Freud's, coincided with a period of sexual awareness, so it was interesting to see how rarely sex appeared in this book--though, of course, this was also a period of "totalism" and extreme destruction, and if that's what his work was focused on, then maybe there wasn't room for an account of other factors.

When talking about his dreams during his Nazi doctor research, Lifton brings up sex explicitly:

I had a series of erotic dreams involving beautiful young women, though noting later that "the scene remains controlled," suggesting restraint even in the dream. Then and later, when relaxing with friends or even giving a public talk, I would sometimes bemoan the grim subjects of my research and would say such things as "My next study will be about love, sexual pleasure, and human goodness," or about "the varieties of human orgasm." Underneath that little "joke" about changing my subject to something more pleasant was a hunger for erotic, life-affirming images to counterbalance my immersion in cruelty, dying, and killing (p 268).

This passage served to interest me further in whether the survivors/victims/perpetrators he interviewed felt the same need to balance out their extreme images of cruelty, dying, and killing.

Recurring Words and Themes

While reading "Witness To An Extreme Century" I started to pick up on two phrases that kept showing up again and again.  One of them was "indelible".  Though he uses it (only) three times throughout the novel, it is a word that sticks when you've read it more than once.  Furthermore, I think the "(of ink or a pen) making marks that cannot be removed" is an excessively apt way to describe Lifton's experiences and encounters.  He uses the phrase "gallows humor" on nine occasions throughout the book.  This too feels excessively apt. 

What I found particularly interesting Lifton's "Witness to an Extreme Century" was the evolution of the book, his research, and also his self.  He was living in two worlds.  The notions of the evolving self, identity, influence, perspective and a shared experience are what seemed like the largest factors to grapple with and come to terms with.  Lifton was documenting not only the evolution of a person (himself, through various lenses), but also of a people.   Lifton has made his mark in exposing and preserving the truths.  That need and job is something that he must come to terms with; "Witness to an Extreme Century" I think is the process of accepting and exploring this. 

Also, I found the process of and translations as a whole to be a really interesting thread throughout this memoir.  In every sense of the word there was a constant translating.  Be it in literal language (to English) or the act of translating one persons's experience into Lifton's words...or other witnesses (those reading about/viewing various retellings of history).  The fact that everything must filter through a layer of translation further adds to the creation of a "witness" and again, the various layers of that term. 

Fun fact: Lifton lived in Woodbridge, CT for a while.  That's where my high school is--it's the town next to my hometown.  Despite unnecessarily long Googling I couldn't find where in Woodbridge he lived, though I have a good idea based on his descriptions.  It's a really small town. 

On defining scholarship and the anxieties between action/inaction

Sorry for being late on this. I somehow lost all my technical capabilities over the weekend (which is funny considering...)

In consideration of time, I guess the “too long, didn’t read” summary: I’m interested in how scholarship and activism work hand in hand and how Lifton, who’s writing this memoir not as a direct action activist, but as a scholar who advocates for activism and does so through writing, manages that anxious feeling that things are moving on without him or feeling that he is missing his chance to really help when its needed most.

I think the most interesting aspect of Lifton’s memoir is his attempt at defining scholarship and how it relates to activism. Lately, the idea of what criticism is and how it manifests within social justice, particularly within the field of game criticism, is a subject that many within the game industry have been dealing with. As a new field that encourages diverse voices, especially those who tends to be on the younger spectrum, I’ve noticed that these writers and activists typically spotlight injustice by resorting to public shaming and online harassment—the same tactic that’s traditionally used by those who begin the harassment.

 I guess I mention this because I wrote a slightly long blog post/mini-essay on how Lifton’s relation between scholarship and activism is something I’ve been thinking about when it comes to the value of good criticism versus these online bouts between critics themselves. (linked here)

In that post I point to a very specific passage that was illuminating:

Goodman was rejecting, or failing to appreciate, the larger principle of the importance of taking a scholarly approach to highly destructive events. I share his sense of horror and rage in connection with the atomic bombings, but I had set myself the task of exploring systematically the psychological consequences of the weapon. My work on destructive historical events was based on a specific conviction: we had to go beyond mere outrage and disgust to seek a fuller grasp of what led to an atrocity, what it did to fellow human beings, and what significance it had for the world that remained.

I highly value Lifton’s approach and I feel he presents a super articulate defense for scholarship that resonates with how I want to approach scholarship within game studies. Yet I tend to feel incredibly anxious that I am missing my opportunity to speak if I am not fast enough, if this methodical approach then becomes a hindrance to participating in the warp-speed discourse that moves at a pace I myself can hardly keep up with.

 Though I of course am not suggesting we talk about game studies and the field itself, I think the 21st century is forcing us to think about how we view scholarship, seeing as how access and thoughts don’t need to be peer reviewed or picked up for publishing in order for them to be read critiqued and integrated into the discourse. On the one hand this “lifting of the gates” excites me, but like I said above, creates both an anxious feeling of exclusion as well as a possible lack of deeply critical reflection which is counter intuitive to a productive healthy conversation.

 Maybe not in the same ways, but I’m finding that Lifton felt this anxiety between action and inaction and that’s why he continually brings up the defense for scholarship when reflecting on his hesitance for direct action (or at least in his idea direct action, though to us he was plenty involved). So maybe even though Lifton and I work on a completely different speed of “acting” we both feel this sense of inadequacy, whether or not it is legitimate.

The Limits of the Un-present Witness

While reading Lifton's work, I came back to a thought I've had in several other film and history classes: what are the limitations of bearing witness to an event you were not present for? In other words, how complete of an understanding can you ever have of an atrocity/situation that you were not there to witness yourself?

I'm thinking of this because I think Lifton does, in many ways, get us as close to a full understanding as can be had, but I think his limits as a witness (he was not at Hiroshima during the bombing, nor was he in Auschwitz or any other concentration camp) along with our limitations as an audience (unless I'm seriously misreading ages, none of us were alive when any of these main four events came to pass, and thus we can only look through someone else's lens) make for an interesting study in how we interpret and understand the past. Is this the best way we can understand and interpret the past, or are there ways to overcome these limitations to gain a greater understanding of the past?

In thinking about this problem, I've been coming back to Alain Resnais' film Hiroshima, Mon Amour. In the film, a French actress making a movie in Hiroshima has an affair with a architect native to the city. When she continually states she understands what the city has gone through and how destructive the bomb was, he only replies that she "has not seen Hiroshima" and "has not been to Hiroshima." The point being that talking and reading and studying can only take us so far. I guess what I'm wondering is if Lifton is taking the idea of bearing witness as far as it can go, or is there a way to take this even further to make us understand even more? How would that work? And do we think that the limitations of bearing witness as they currently stand contribute to the fact that many of these topics (genocide, American involvement in questionable wars) continue to happen over and over again?

Lifton

As those who already posted have said, so much important territory is covered in this memoir and in the lifetime of work Robert Jay Lifton completed. As I think about the memoir in its entirety, I find myself thinking about our class discussion about the definitions of the words "witness" and "extreme."

I found Lifton's response as a witness to the 20th century more than impressive; the work he completed as a psychiatrist, scholar, and individual who understands the importance of discussing and responding to events, was imperative. Imperative to understanding what humankind did over the course of this century--what human beings are capable of (both good and "evil")--and what must be done in attempt to stop such history from repeating.

While reading the book I also found myself thinking of my own projects, and of how Lifton's research might inform my writing. The length at which he discussed his research on subjects of the mind such as "psychic numbing" and "de-realization" helped me begin thinking about the reasons my mother's Jewish family ignored their religion in different ways. In fact, I'm hoping to read more of Lifton's work on Nazi doctors and on this human need to "forget" the past--forget parts of who we once were--in order to move forward.

I'm also hoping that when we read Primo Levi I'll be able to start working on a research project the combines these aspects of Lifton's work, Levi's writing, and my own research on my Jewish ancestry.

Oh--almost forgot! In response to Kayleigh's thought that Lifton often seemed like "an explorer being dropped into a deep well": Yes, I agree, and would take the thought a step further and say that he presents himself as an explorer throughout his entire life. And, in this book specifically, he is an explorer in the sense that he is revisiting all of his work and reassessing all he's experienced, learned, and uncovered, and, often times, seeing parts of his life, work, and the 20th century in ways he hadn't before.

Continuations of Totalism

Perhaps because I only just finished Robert Lifton’s memoir, I am now thinking mostly about the final chapter, “Full Circle,” especially with the sections in which he connects his studies and the events from the 20^th Century to the more recent and ongoing events of the 21^st. I’m interested in his following America’s war-making projects from World War II to Vietnam to Iraq/Afghanistan, and it had me wondering how extreme the early 21^st Century and later the century as a whole may seem compared to the historical events we will be studying.

I like how Lifton emphasizes the totalistic, absolutist ideology that allows for the terrible work of thought reformers, Nazi doctors, the cults like Aum Shinrikyo, and other, and that that same absolutist mindset helps spur the extremist beliefs of religious fundamentalists (both Christian and Muslim) today. I also saw in Lifton’s brief description of fundamentalism on page 388, a mixing in Fundamentalist thought of totalist and reactionary impulses—the desire to bring to the world an impossible purity and that desire blooming in adherents from their rejection of “protean experimentation,” of compromise and an understanding of complexity that challenges such simplistic ideas of purity. Lifton also mentions fundamentalism in the 20^th Century occurring as a sort of reaction “to religious liberalism” (388), which recalled the moments of “political backlash against radical movements” that Lifton alludes to in the “decades following the sixties” (214). It speaks to a cycle of Rebellion, Change, and Reactionary Backlash, which even seems to occur in a miniaturized scale during these past few Obama years--the movement from “Hope” and “Change” to the rise of the Tea Party and what Liften calls the “new waves of right-wing American totalism” (406).

I’m interested in the intersection of totalism and reactionary backlash, as it occurs in the past and present. It’s amazing how much Lifton’s life, his studies, and this memoir cover, and I feel like I’ll be dwelling on this book for quite a while.