Bøger af Robert Jay Lifton

From the National Book Award winner, a powerful and timely rumination that "cuts through the existential fog to reveal something like hope" (The Washington Post) In this moving and ultimately hopeful meditation on the psychological aftermath of catastrophe, award-winning psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton "writes with the authority of experience" (Kirkus Reviews) to show us how to cope with the lasting effects and legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is a "thought-provoking . . . [and] absorbing sociological study focused on survivors--the keys to social renewal after disasters strike" (Foreword Reviews). When the people of Hiroshima experienced the unspeakable horror of the atomic bombing, they responded by creating an activist "city of peace." Survivors of the Nazi death camps took the lead in combating mass killing of any kind and converted their experience into art and literature that demonstrated the resilience of the human spirit. Drawing on the remarkably life-affirming responses of survivors of such atrocities, Lifton, "one of the world's foremost thinkers on why we humans do such awful things to each other" (Bill Moyers), shows readers how we can carry on and live meaningful lives even in the face of the tragic and the absurd. Surviving Our Catastrophes offers compelling examples of "survivor power" and makes clear that we will not move forward by forcing the pandemic into the rearview mirror. Instead, we must truly reckon with COVID-19's effects on ourselves and society--and find individual and collective forms of renewal.

"A powerful rumination on how we can draw on historical examples of "survivor power" to understand the upheaval and death caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and collectively heal"--

Longlisted for the PEN America/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing "Well worth the read. . . . [A] prescient handoff to the next generation of scholars." -The Washington PostFrom "one of the world's foremost thinkers" (Bill Moyers), a profound, hopeful, and timely call for an emerging new collective consciousness to combat climate changeOver his long career as witness to an extreme twentieth century, National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual Robert Jay Lifton has grappled with the profound effects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. Now he shifts to climate change, which, Lifton writes, "presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind," what he describes as the task of mobilizing our imaginative resources toward climate sanity.Thanks to the power of corporate-funded climate denialists and the fact that "with its slower, incremental sequence, [climate change] lends itself less to the apocalyptic drama," a large swathe of humanity has numbed themselves to the reality of climate change. Yet Lifton draws a message of hope from the Paris climate meeting of 2015 where representatives of virtually all nations joined in the recognition that we are a single species in deep trouble.Here, Lifton suggests in this lucid and moving book that recalls Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell, was evidence of how we might call upon the human mind-"our greatest evolutionary asset"-to translate a growing species awareness-or "climate swerve"-into action to sustain our habitat and civilization.

A definitive account from a leading expert on the nature of cults and those who are susceptible.

Informed by Erik Erikson's concept of the formation of ego identity, this book, which first appreared in 1961, is an analysis of the experiences of fifteen Chinese citizens and twenty-five Westerners who underwent "brainwashing" by the Communist Chinese government. Robert Lifton constructs these case histories through personal interviews.

Revising the psychology of the self, this text draws a line between multiplicity and fragmentation. The message is that it is better to be fluid, resilient and on the move than to be firm, fixed, self-assured and settled.

In The Broken Connection, Robert Jay Lifton, one of America's foremost thinkers and preeminent psychiatrists, explores the connections between death and life, the psychiatric disorders that arise from these connections, and the advent of the nuclear age which has jeopardized any attempts to ensure the perpetuation of the self beyond death.

"Proteanism"--or the protean self--describes a psychological phenomenon integral to our times. We live in a world marked by breathtaking historical change and instantaneous global communication. Our liv

This new edition of Revolutionary Immortality coincides with two interesting rediscoveries in American intellectual life-that of China and that of death. The book happens to be about both.