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).