C O V OBERT AY IFTON E R J L R PORTRAIT OF A PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL F E A T U R E E O S O H

H O K I E

Y B

O T O H P BY CHRISTOPHER BUSA

134 PROVINCETOWN ARTS 2007 WELLFLEET MEETINGS

THE HOUSE OF ROBERT JAY LIFTON and his wife, B.J., perches atop a massive sand dune overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, with acres of beach grass and impenetrable nettles overrunning a for- mer path, which is now infested with deer ticks. There are other paths to the freedom of the beach, and the reporters, historians, psychologists, novelists, and political activists who attend the Liftons’ annual meetings in Wellfleet are not deprived of the beauty before them, despite some disease-causing obstacles. The architecture of the house reflects the influence of the Tyears the Liftons lived in Japan. Glass walls front the ocean view, and, outside, decking is stepped on several levels, allowing for casual seating and inviting informal conversation or solitary reflection. Their home is situated in landscape of scrub pine, struggling to survive in the sparse nutrients of the sand dunes, where their roots are set. The scent is strangely strong for such E O stunted trees, but perhaps it is caused by the caustic infusion of S O H

ocean brine into pinesap. The house is surrounded by privacy, H O K I

and even when it is full of guests, chance seating invites further E

Y B exchanges between small groups of people. O T O

For forty years, the Liftons have hosted a gathering in the H P summer or fall of an evolving group of about thirty people to ABOVE: LIFTON, NEW YORK CITY, 1990 discuss as objectively as possible the irrational experiences of liv- FACING PAGE: ROBERT JAY LIFTON IN THE STUDY OF HIS CENTRAL PARK WEST APARTMENT, 1990 ing in our present time. Interested members of the community are welcome to attend the Saturday salon-like evenings, when the living room is filled with folding chairs so that this eager audience can Lifton’s first book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study hear fresh reports from Teheran or Norway. Many panelists come from of “” in China, was published in 1961. Back in the 1970s, when afar, and stay at a motel or with friends in the area. Their hosts’ absorption I was a graduate student in English, I began reading Lifton’s work. of Asian culture, with its social courtesy, blends perhaps with the pleasure Already, he was something of a public intellectual, transcending his field Lifton took, when he was in medical school, during weekend outings in to achieve a wide readership, particularly after his book Death in Life: Sur- New York with his father’s best friend, the writer and lyricist Yip Harburg, vivors of received a National Book Award in 1969. His next book, whose progressive political views are heartfelt in his famous Depression Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” This tradition continues with extended his study of “thought reform” in China. At the time, I was new artists and new political views—and, yes, sometimes, even new songs— deeply curious about how his peer-tested ideas had leaped from the sleepy at the Liftons’ meetings. Procrustean bed of Freudian formulations, which had shaped him in his The weather is usually good on the Friday through Sunday events— psychiatric training, and what caused him to suddenly appear on the balmy in the afternoon, with a bracing chill outside in the evening, offset by forefront of articulate debate on the political issues of our time. Lifton’s the smell and warmth of wood burning in the fireplace. The more formal heady immersion in onrushing historical facts, and his mental efforts to presentations are held in a separate building, adjacent to the house, and set make conceptual sense of them, may not be dissimilar to the actions of below the terrain of the main house. The Liftons bought this little one- the narrator of Moby-Dick: Ishmael is thrust overboard when the whale story house, knowing it would be where Robert would do his life’s work. sinks the ship, but he clings to an empty coffin that becomes the life raft Then they built the main house, where, during four-month seasonal stays, that saves the only person who can tell the story. he and B.J. would raise their children: Ken, an executive consultant for The formative years of the Wellfleet meetings were documented in a Accenture, a large corporation, and Natasha, who has just qualified as a collection of the early proceedings published in 1974, Explorations in Psy- psychoanalyst. Each in turn has two children, so that four grandchildren chohistory: The Wellfleet Papers, edited by Lifton with Eric Olson, and with now animate the house when they visit. essays by , Kenneth Keniston, Philip Rieff, and others. Psy- Lifton’s office is a large rectangular room, with one wall faced with a chiatrists use the term “presenting problem” to describe the issue that large brick fireplace, and other walls lined with bookcases or works of art. brings a person to seek help. The presenting problem for the Wellfleet On a shelf is a figurine of , which Lifton uses to remind meetings, originally, was to define the meaning of their evolving disci- himself to be bold. Two enormous oak tables, which Lifton had built in pline—“psychohistory”—which sought to incorporate new understand- anticipation of their use as his personal workspace, fill the center of the ings in psychology into the writing of history and biography. room, and can be abutted in a T-shaped structure or aligned as one long I see Lifton’s effort as an action to renew life by affirming our respect conference table capable of seating about twenty-five people. for the actuality of death. Such “respect” must be demonstrated—in the

PROVINCETOWN ARTS 2007 135 extremely narrow, people may experience pro- found perceptual distortions, including insensi- tivity to pain, depersonalization, derealization, time slowing, and amnesia. This is the state we call dissociation. Similar states can be induced voluntarily through hypnotic induction tech- niques, or pharmacologically.” In therapy, so much depends upon the dynamic relationship of patient and doctor, a process that itself produces a story, perhaps a meta-story, extracted from one human’s trauma that finds release in the effort of another to understand and care. Ideally, one sits in a chair in a relaxed position, and engages in a meaningful conversation. Although the doctor is trying to help, the patient may be suspicious, or possess a secret that he or she does not wish to disclose. Trust eventually allows talk. Herman adds, “Sim- MEETING IN WELLFLEET, LEFT TO RIGHT: R. J. LIFTON, NORMAN MAILER, CHARLES STROZIER, 2004 ple retrieval of memory was not sufficient in itself for successful treatment. The purpose of therapy was not simply catharsis, but rather inte- raising of a child, in the care for a dying parent, in not accessible via ordinary modes of memory, due gration of memory.” the making of memorials. It comes forth in the to the fact that the death memory was imprinted Lifton’s formative experience was the research daily prayer over a lifetime that one will live forev- during a time when the mind of the victim was he did while accompanied by his wife, B.J.—a er in heaven. It finds strength in the belief that a traumatized. Let us say he or she was not thinking writer, an adoption therapist, and a leading life of saintly purpose will canonize one, and that clearly when all attention on a knife at the neck spokesperson for adoption reform—whom he had doing good works and marching on a pilgrimage eliminated awareness of the context of the situa- married en route to his assignment in Japan, after melts in the doing the very anxiety of the mission. tion. Tunnel vision is a narrow vision, narrow as being caught up in the doctor draft. Soon after And it is encompassed in the felt knowledge that the artery on one’s neck, and trauma victims need arriving in Tokyo, Lifton was dispatched to Korea one will be survived by mountains and rivers and to remember many more details before they can for six months, leaving B.J. to fend for herself in a that grass will continue to grow. It is revealed in make sense of how they faced death, yet now culture where everything was the opposite of what an experience of ecstasy, communing, however remain alive. Remaining alive, yet burrowing into she had known in Ohio and New York. In her briefly, with an oceanic glimpse. Another way to a death memory for sustenance of continuing book Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter, pursue symbolic immortality is to turn your ideas vitality, is the mission of the survivor. she describes how she moved in with a Japanese and beliefs into books, and that is the way Lifton In the midnineties, two colleagues of Lifton’s, family, and found a job as a journalist working for has chosen. His form of advocacy is not so much Charles B. Strozier and Michael Flynn, edited a the Japan Times, and then the Tokyo Evening News. to march in strikes with shouts and protest two-volume collection of essays discussing the She started the East-West Discussion group to posters raised high (although he went to prison impact of Lifton’s career on the thinking of a new give Japanese and Americans a chance to commu- on two occasions for civil disobedience in oppos- generation of social scientists, Trauma and Self nicate with each other, and this group still exists ing the ), but to write thoughtful and Genocide, War, and Human Survival. Strozier today. She also began writing children’s books, books for a general readership that help us make referred to the books as a kind of unfestschrift, which were illustrated by Japanese artists. Later, fundamental ethical decisions. He inspires us to meaning that they were less eulogistic panegyrics she would collaborate with the renowned Japanese be receptive to what we can learn from the suffer- than an homage that extended Lifton’s concepts: photographer Eikoh Hosoe on the book A Place ing of others. In this spirit the Liftons participate “Our contributors honored Lifton’s work by Called Hiroshima. in a yearly ritual dedicated to Hiroshima, a small moving off from it in their own creative ways.” As the only air force psychiatrist in Korea, silent vigil held in front of the Wellfleet Town They pondered the questions Lifton raised about Lifton consulted with soldiers who had experi- Hall on the morning of August 6. violence and human survival, and that may be, as enced combat reactions or what would later be If we have not personally experienced death in Strozier said, “a truer form of honor accorded a termed “post-traumatic stress.” At first, he said, he a way that has altered us, then, even though we major thinker by his colleagues.” felt “wet behind the ears.” He was stationed well know abstractly that we will die, we do not know One of the points that Judith Lewis Herman behind the lines in Taegu, and the pilots suffering what death means until our own last encounter. etches as especially important in Lifton’s work is from combat stress were not initially referred to Close brushes with death, even minor ones, give his recognition of the emotional experience of him. He was eventually assigned to treat returning us foreknowledge of our own death, and this terror. In her essay “Crime and Memory” she prisoners of war, repatriated from North Korea, somewhat abstract information is emotionally writes: “People in a state of terror are not in a nor- where they had been in Chinese Communist reinforced by a major near-death experience. mal state of consciousness. They experience hands. While interviewing these soldiers, Lifton Despite the huge numbers of concentration extreme alterations in arousal, attention, and realized they had been exposed to a process con- camp victims, many other victims of rape, assault, perception. All these alterations potentially affect fusing to them and to Americans in general. torture, or other forms of life-threatening or ego- the storage and retrieval of memory.” Like brand- Lifton tried to solve the mystery during the annihilating attacks have suffered personal hor- ing the hide of a cow, the burn of the event leaves year and a half he and B.J. lived in Hong Kong, ror. One’s own demise becomes real in our imagi- an indelible mark. Herman makes us appreciate while he interviewed Europeans and Chinese com- nation when one remembers an event as part of Lifton’s insight into the trauma of terror: hyper- ing out of thought reform programs in China. the larger life history. arousal bundles intense attention with intense That work, described in his first book, was fol- Lifton’s books concentrate on the “psychology emotion. Narrowing of attention during a trau- lowed by his interviews with survivors of the atom- of the survivor”—this person or that people who matic experience can induce a type of hypnotic ic bomb in Hiroshima, where he and B.J. lived with have come into direct contact with death, either trance, and Herman notes, “Peripheral detail, their infant son for six months. physically or psychically, and yet continue to live. context, and time sense fall away, while attention Lifton never learned to speak Chinese, but One encounters one’s own extinction, and the is strongly focused on central detail in the imme- he had studied Japanese—never quite learning actual experience leaves a lasting imprint that is diate present. When the focus of attention is the written language, but gaining an under-

136 PROVINCETOWN ARTS 2007 standing of some crucial spoken Japanese. In with his students, clearing tracks of vegetation to returning Vietnam veterans, today’s mutant his extensive interviews, he always worked with contain the spread of fire. , and the complicated conditions of concen- an interpreter. From the beginning, he tape- At his Wellfleet home, with the distant white tration camp inmates. His books develop what recorded his encounters. He cultivated a habit noise of ocean waves breaking on the beach, he calls “shared themes” of people who have suf- of not only recording his conversations with the Lifton remembered the professor’s horrific expe- fered extreme trauma, which allow him to have subjects of his inquiry, but also taking notes on rience: “He was not injured. Soon after the bomb- similar inquiries answered independently by his own post-interview reflections. This ing, he climbed a hill on his way back to the city— more than one witness, broadening and refract- archive—much of it kept at the New York Public the city is surrounded by hills. He looked down ing the perspective through authoritative testi- Library—is now Lifton’s resource for the mem- and saw that the city had disappeared. Then he mony that diverges in ways that open up new oir he is currently writing. This project repre- walked through where the city had been, looking considerations. The “survivor,” Lifton has deter- sents the first time (except perhaps when he was for his family. I quote what he said in the mem- mined, possesses five common characteristics: undergoing psychoanalysis as part of his train- oir I am writing. He said, ‘Of all the extreme and 1. Death has marked them, and the psycho- ing) that Lifton himself now becomes the object horrible things I saw that day, what stays in my logical imprint is as much a part of their being as of inquiry, rather than the feelings and experi- mind is that picture of Hiroshima having disap- the blue numerals tattooed on the foreheads ences of others. peared. Hiroshima no longer existed.’ This was the and wrists of inmates in Auschwitz. Survivors of the atomic destruction in beginning of my idea about the ‘imagery of 2. Guilt can shroud the survivor in the carbon Hiroshima are called hibakusha. Even when they extinction’ and its relation to nuclear weapons.” of an invisible quilt, because guilt is the cloud of seemed to have recovered, life-threatening radia- Lifton’s other books on this subject are The Bro- unknowing that connects via the touch of mist tion effects could manifest themselves at any ken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life; and separates via the blindness of fog. The sur- time over the course of their lives. And emotion- Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological vivor exists in this moist cloud, which is survival al responses were beginning to reverberate world- Case Against Nuclearism; and The Genocidal Mentali- itself. Fellow human beings have died by your wide. As he now recalls this period, a few figures ty: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat. side, and you, the survivor, remember how much stand out in his recollection. A history professor In his interviews and explorations, Lifton you cared for your own survival, perhaps more at Hiroshima University had been outside the links Chinese thought control, the experiences of than that of the other people. city when the bomb fell. He had been working the hibakusha, the post-combat trauma of 3. Lifton’s concept of psychic numbing has a

ANTIWAR FUND-RAISER ON THE WELLFLEET DUNES, 1971. ROBIN ROBERTS IS SINGING.

PROVINCETOWN ARTS 2007 137 learn what he has to tell us about medical- ized killing and corrupted medical science. For the fact that Mengele seemed to thrive in Auschwitz says much not only about the man, but even more about the psychology of the institution.

Lifton details Mengele’s early right-wing nationalism and its connection with his univer- sity studies in anthropology and genetics; he notes that Mengele’s dissertation, “Genealogical Studies in the Cases of Cleft Lip-Jaw-Palate,” foreshadowed his concentration camp “research” in genetic deformities and twins. Lifton’s detail shows the originality of his research. He does not make up what he reports, analyzes, and draws conclusions from. When a new train arrived at the camp, the passengers faced the grueling, humiliating, effacing process of being examined in a slow single line before a “selection” committee, and then Mengele appeared on a ramp during this selection process, somehow seeming above the actual pro- ceedings. One survivor described Mengele as “a nice-looking man with a cane in his hand who LIFTON IN UNIFORM WITH B.J., 1952 looked at the bodies and the faces for a couple of seconds and said Links [left] . . . Rechts [right].” Others noted the “cheerful” and “cultivated” vast number of synonyms, each of which has to Before he began work on The Nazi Doctors: Medical expression on Mengele’s face and his “graceful do with a distancing of the experiencer from the Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, a friend, who and quick movement” on the platform, “almost experience. Prisoners about to be tortured usual- was a rabbi, approached him and said, “Hiroshi- like he had fun.” Survivors saw he was playing a ly have instructions from other prisoners about ma is your path, as a Jew, to .” In “role.” He looked “like a Hollywood actor.” ways to endure torture. Symptoms of this his foreword, Lifton admits that the pronounce- Many saw “intensity” about Mengele in his numbing are amputation of feeling, anger, apa- ment made him ill at ease; certainly the project is wanting “to contrast his own elegance with the thy, depression, dissociation, self-depreciation, queasy to contemplate. prisoner’s barely human state.” withdrawal, and taking on the phantom appear- Lifton proceeded by doing a study not of con- For me, the darkest moment in this dark book ance of a “living corpse.” centration camp victims, but of the doctors who came late in this chapter when Lifton details an 4. Nurturance and contagion refers to the insid- supervised their extermination. Some have criti- incident concerning two Gypsy twins who were ious suspicion toward others when one has been cized Lifton for adopting a detached tone when not yet ten, whom one of the inmate doctors exposed to what Lifton calls a “counterfeit uni- discussing matters with the doctors in Germany described as “splendid.” The boys were “favorites” verse,” where the roles of helper and harmer have whom he interviewed for his book, but the book of everyone, not just Mengele. However, they had been reversed. reads with a chilling dedication toward compre- certain bone deformities that could be linked to 5. Reformulation is the ongoing goal. The form hending just what steps a decent mind must take tuberculosis. Here, Mengele had a dispute with is the shape of one’s action and purpose. Every before committing indecent acts. Lifton’s cate- his fellow doctors. Mengele believed that the boys survivor is obliged to become an artist, learning gories become like tongs that are employed to give were tubercular. The others saw no trace of TB. that first the person makes the form, and then one’s hands the protection of a mediating instru- Mengele left the consultation and disappeared. the form becomes the person. The struggle is to ment in order to firmly grasp volatile material. He returned an hour later. “You are right,” he said. find meaning in the death encounter so that one Deep in his book, Lifton devotes a long chap- “There was nothing.” Mengele had shot the boys can find meaning in the rest of one’s life. Here is ter to the Auschwitz activities of Dr. Josef Men- in the neck, and then dissected them, his hands where symbolization becomes a technique for gele, opening his harrowing portrait with this probing their warm organs. making sense of life, despite enormous evidence orientation: I asked Lifton, “In writing this book, did you to the contrary. have bad dreams?” These five concepts are tools for making com- My work on the Nazi doctors began and “Oh, yes. I think one has the most profound parisons between Hiroshima and the Holocaust. ended with . It was initiated by impact from events like this as one enters them, In Hiroshima, the city was reduced to dust. There legal documents on him and was completed as one leaves the ordinary world and enters a was no rubble with which to rebuild, only powder in the summer of 1985, just at the time a world of reversal, where destruction of human team of scientists declared bones discovered to blow away in the wind. In contrast, in Ger- beings is the norm. When I first began to inter- in a Brazilian grave to be his. many, bombed cities reconstituted themselves view Nazi doctors, and read up in great detail, I Although I had originally considered with the mosaics of their fragments, the bricks, had terrible dreams of being behind barbed wire. focusing my study on Mengele, I soon real- tiles, columns, arches that “survived” annihila- ized that such a focus could further the What made it much worse was that my wife, B.J., tion. Houses can be reconstituted on prevailing of demonic personality already surrounding and my young children were with me. Obviously, foundations. Artificial limbs can replace lost legs. him and thereby neglect the more general the barbed wire symbolized a Nazi camp of some But powder cannot be reconstituted. The brutal Nazi phenomenon of medicalized killing. kind. A friend, an Auschwitz survivor, had coffee finality of nuclear war is what drives Lifton to Not that I aim to debunk this exemplar of with me before I began the book. I told him, ‘I’m oppose this mode of “conflict resolution.” Nazi evil: while he is obscured by his demon- pleased you are enthusiastic about the work, but ic mythology, he has in many ways earned it. I’m having bad dreams.’ He looked me in the eye NAZI DOCTORS Rather, my task is to try to understand how and said, ‘Good. Now you can do the study.’ He Lifton’s work on atomic bomb survivors led him, his individual psychological traits fed, and was saying I had to take in some of the pain and perhaps inevitably, to consider the Holocaust. fed upon, the Nazi biomedical vision, and to terror in order to do significant work.”

138 PROVINCETOWN ARTS 2007 Lifton, through his training, knew the signif- sion for what William James icance of each stage of the psychiatric interview, called “the moral equivalent of in which, perhaps, twenty essential bits of infor- war.” Later in the afternoon, mation have to be extracted via a series of astute Lifton, B.J., and Jingly often take questions. There is a protocol, with each ques- a walk together, which is, he men- tion asked in a general order. Lifton greatly tioned, “more social.” modified the clinical interview, making the It was the middle of Febru- inquiry more of a dialogue. He insisted, as a doc- ary, a chilly late afternoon on a tor, “You talk to them about the experiences Tuesday, when I visited the they’ve had, and then about their lives. For good Liftons’ Cambridge home. I had interviewing of any kind, it should be human come armed with dog treats. and flowing, not formal and distant. The better From visits in Wellfleet, I knew I teachers I had would emphasize that.” would encounter Jingly, who I wondered how he talked to the Nazi doctors barks for a daunting amount of that he interviewed in Germany while he was time whenever I appear before researching his book. When I went to visit him in her. This time she took a biscuit Cambridge, he explained that his relations with from my hand and went off to these doctors were “not collegial.” Sometimes the chew it happily in a comfortable doctors would suggest professional rapport with corner of their living room, Lifton, as fellow physicians, but Lifton was while Robert and I made our “wary,” holding to his role as an interviewer. He way upstairs to his office. did not attack them verbally, but was relentless in Compared to his spacious his probing questions. He mainly listened— Wellfleet work space, the feeling though, at times, he told me he felt like shouting. in Lifton’s office is cramped, however finely concentrated he is CAMBRIDGE CONVERSATION on the current work at hand— the memoir of his life. A scan of Although he has an office at Harvard, Lifton the books on the shelves shows LIFTON WITH B.J. IN HIROSHIMA, 1995 likes to work at home. For the past five years, he the books he is currently work- has been living in Cambridge, near Harvard ing with. The battered volume of Square. B.J., he said, misses New York, where they Robert Lowell’s collected poems is on the shelf, “That’s right, in a way. But I need my own eyes as lived for many years when he held research posi- perhaps the same volume I had seen in his shelf in well. I’m not a ‘blind’ witness. I am witness to their tions at Yale and the City University of New York. Wellfleet. Four or five books he means to read are witness. They are survivors and I’m the person Lifton, who is very fond of Cambridge, may miss on a table that is an extension of his desk. Barack who comes and seeks the special knowledge, and only their view of the Central Park reservoir from Obama’s book is there, and when I ask about it, wisdom, of survivors. Yet they must sense that I their former apartment on the Upper West Side. he tells me he has not yet read it, but means to. I know something about, and have some sympathy What Lifton craves greatly is to live by a body of ask questions, and we often lapse into dialogue: and empathy for, what they have been through.” water. Something about the fluidity of water must attract him. He is, after all, the author of Did you study with Erikson? Does empathy come naturally to you? The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Frag- “I never studied formally with him, but became mentation. (An interview with Lifton about this “You know, I have been going through all these very close to him. He was a very important men- book was published in Provincetown Arts in 1999.) documents at the New York Public Library, tor to me. He came to the Wellfleet meetings for Water adapts, becoming ice in the cold and vapor which collects my papers. Fortunately, I’m in the years. We had exchanges also in California, where in the heat, and Lifton’s concept of contempo- habit of dictating detailed notes, elaborate he lived, in Stockbridge, Cambridge, New Haven, rary identity is derived from the mythological sea notes, not only after interviews, but after meet- everywhere. I learned from Erikson that psycho- god Proteus, who knew all things—what was ings with people that I was interested in. I am analysis could be brought into the larger world.” past, passing, and to come. To force Proteus to amazed how I moved so strongly into this work, reveal what he knew, the curious had to catch Psychiatrists typically treat a skewed population, the without much hesitation, when it presented him by surprise and hold him fast, even as he diagnostically wounded—those who have come for- itself to me. Even while I was in psychiatric train- assumed new shapes within their clutch. In the ward as “patients.” But some victims do not merely ing, I had an impulse toward humanizing the same way, Lifton sees a way for us to become like survive—they thrive. Robert Coles wrote in Children interview, as much as I could, and more so when water, and assume new shapes. The reformation of Crisis how, in study after study, traumatized chil- I began to talk to people in Hong Kong and is akin to understanding and, eventually, healing. dren became successful adults. Hiroshima. I had to develop a certain disci- Lifton lives only a reflective stroll away from pline—the exchange has to be human, flowing, “Coles and I have certain parallels in our work. the Charles River, which he aims for most morn- natural, and spontaneous, yet rigorous. I am We’re doing interviews with people who aren’t in ings, with Jingly, their white standard poodle, tug- constantly aware that I am seeking information any way pathological. Most, not all, of the people ging at the leash in anticipation of her run at a that I need in order to accurately express that I’ve interviewed have been through traumatic nearby park. Returning home, Lifton begins work, person’s feelings.” experiences. It’s very important to avoid the but postpones his workday by making breakfast pathological perspective emphasized in one’s For example, in your early book on thought reform, for his late-rising wife, who is a “night person.” training. That’s what Coles is saying in his work you isolate eight elements, and offer a conceptual Lifton, when he was younger, played multiple about meeting talented or resilient people, whose grasp of the process of indoctrination. All of your sports, but tennis is the sport that has been his struggle one wants to describe, have some insight books do this categorizing. In Superpower Syn- lifeblood. On the Outer Cape, he has played with about, but also bear witness to. Bearing witness is drome you discover a syndrome to psychoanalyze the writers Martin Amis and Alec Wilkinson. Daily very much part of my work, and I would say it is contemporary American foreign policy. physical activity may be crucial to balance the part of Coles’s, too.” activity of Lifton’s psyche. Although he no longer “That’s an example of bringing my previous plays competitive tennis, he recalls the “loss of These people are witnesses to historical events. work to bear on the present. In other words, I self” that accompanies intense immersion in They’ve been there. Perhaps you are like a blind per- think I’ve learned something from all those dra- sports, and perhaps sports are his practical pas- son who needs their eyes to see the experience? conian studies I’ve done.”

PROVINCETOWN ARTS 2007 139 You call them “draconian”? You mean not just the viewed it as a liberating and transcendent experi- sides. In my experience with Erikson, it was the subject matter, but your harsh judgments. ence, more powerful than anything they had reverse, although I went through a period of experienced in their lives before, and, in a certain being deeply immersed in his influence. From “They can be. If Superpower Syndrome tries to be sense, even afterwards. I learned about the appeal our very first meeting, it was clear to me that he very bold in its projections, it tries to be rigorous in that various forms of totalism can have.” was interested in something I could offer, even its thoughts and concepts. Similarly, as you men- though I was a neophyte. I had read one of his tion, in a chapter at the end of that very first book Such as the charisma of the leader? essays in a psychological journey— ” on thought reform are what I called the ‘eight “That was a subject I learned a great deal more deadly sins,’ meaning the characteristics of ideo- That’s a good slip for “journal.” about—the whole guru phenomenon and the logical totalism, which became not only a way of idea of merging with the guru, and taking on the “The article was called ‘The Problem of Ego summarizing what I’d learned in thought reform, guru’s power—an immortalizing power. Between Identity,’ and I had a kind of eureka experience but a way of connecting that knowledge with the my first study of thought reform and the later reading it. It was exactly what I needed for the world. Much to my surprise, later on, people work- one on Aum Shinrikyo, I had done a lot of work conceptual structure of my first study on Chi- ing with kids coming out of cults began to use involving death and immortality. I tended to nese thought reform. This was a coercive shift of that chapter. In fact, it became an underground bring some of that into my later work on mind identity that I could place in the Chinese tradi- document in their so-called ‘deprogramming.’ manipulation with Aum Shinrikyo, and to tion from the filial son to the filial Communist. Sometimes they used it in ways that embarrassed emphasize it more, so I could see the guru as I became friendly with some prominent people me, though I couldn’t be responsible for how they bequeathing immortality to his disciples.” in psychiatry, and I asked one if he could intro- used it. Young people, conflicted about whether to duce me to Erikson. I wrote to Erikson about my join or stay in a cult, read that chapter. The charac- Is not our desire for immortality also a religious work, and Erikson was fascinated with what I teristics of totalism apply to the cults they were impulse? Are there not cult-like similarities with a had studied in thought reform. He was begin- drawn to, or had been drawn to, even though it person who puts faith in Christ? Religion is a belief ning to work on Young Man Luther, and he felt it was a different setting from Chinese thought mode, sustained while alive, with the faithful confi- related to Luther’s own training in the Catholic reform, from which I had derived it. My work can dent that they will transcend their mortal lives. One Church. I met him at his home in Stockbridge, reach out beyond areas it is literally describing.” can experience God, I think, in the absence of organ- and it was a dialogue from the start, even ized religion. How do your books access religion? Your book on Aum Shinrikyo, the cult that released though I was a young person who had, as yet, sarin gas into the Tokyo subways in March 1995, is “Almost all my books have much to do with reli- done very little in the world. I was fascinated, called Destroying the World to Save It. You find a gion, though I’ve never made religion, per se, my and learned a great deal. But the fact that this new instance for the syndrome you unraveled earlier. subject. What you say about cults resembling reli- was a dialogue prevented the totalistic dimen- Your book on Aum Shinrikyo is really a continuation gion is connected to Asahara, the guru of Aum sion that can be a danger in mentoring.” of your book on thought reform, but there was a long Shinrikyo. Though primarily Buddhist, he also I flash to thoughts of Freud’s difficulties with his disci- gap between books. Did you advance your thinking embraced an apocalyptic form of Christianity. ples, and his wont to control the elements of their the- about the psychological process of thought reform in this Through his machinations and violence, he ories, rather than allowing, or encouraging, challenge. recent cult? Did new categories or new elements arise? believed that he was bringing about a biblical Armageddon. I remembered conversations I’d “Freud was bent on establishing his psychoana- “There is a way that my work, over the years, has had with Erikson about the importance of reli- lytic paradigm, and disciples could be sacrificed.” taken shape for me, so that everything I’ve done gion—so many intense forms of experience and feeds subsequent work. It does change. It changes, Freud was an “atheist,” I heard someone say recent- thought are inseparable from religion. Any work but there is a return, somewhat circular, perhaps ly. I would never have thought to describe the author that probes deeply makes its way to religion.” more like a mosaic. My books are mosaics. Work- of The Future of an Illusion in that curtly dismis- ing with former members of Aum Shinrikyo in The son’s relation to his father may influence the sive manner. If Freud did not believe in God, did he the nineties, forty years after I had done my first mentors the son seeks to study with. Is not being not possess a powerful spiritual life? study of thought reform, I learned, again, that trained as a psychiatrist a form of indoctrination? “He surely did. I, too, have considerable religiosi- these people were deeply drawn to the very Here exists a kind of “thought reform,” except the ty. I don’t believe in any religious dogma. In terms authority that was applying this method to them. goal is to free persons instead of imprisoning them. of a belief system, I could be considered an athe- In Aum Shinrikyo, people were put through what “I’ve considered that mentoring can resemble ist, but I work closely with religious people in var- they called ‘mystical experiences,’ which, at the thought reform, if one is transfixed by the men- ious political activities—antinuclear activities, time, they didn’t view as a coercive process. They toring, and if it’s absolute, on either or both antiwar efforts with Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish activists. We share a religious dimension without my embracing a particular belief system.” When I spoke about religious feeling with the poet Stanley Kunitz, for an interview in the Paris Review, he told me that he believed in a “psychologi- cal” God, and I continue to ponder what he meant. “One can write without any clear religious beliefs, yet feel and express a religious dimension that has come down through literature. My sense of Jewishness is in a mostly secular tradition, but I am also influenced by Christianity. You have to when you live in a Christian country. When Stan- ley Kunitz says he believes in a psychological God, what he is saying is that God is a creature of the human imagination.” Well, here you connect imagination with the symbol- making capacity of humans. Let me “illustrate” the connection with one of your own drawings from your

FROM PSYCHOBIRDS book Psychobirds. Your birds—not birds, but stark,

140 PROVINCETOWN ARTS 2007 LIFTON PLAYING TENNIS IN WELLFLEET, C. 1982 stick-figure sketches of birds—have brief, telling doing them in the late ’50s when I exchanges, like cartoon figures with their speech sus- was here at Harvard as a research pended in balloons above their heads. Each page has associate, my first real position. two birds talking, and one bird is usually taller than the These birds are mouthpieces of other, the big one being more absurd while the smaller mine. I’ve also done clay birds. one seems wiser. The birds could be colleagues at a psy- When my daughter was six, I took chiatric conference, taking time out to note a particu- her and her friend to a clay model- larly bizarre exchange, perhaps brought on by a ing class at Castle Hill in Truro. I moment in the proceeding that you have called “ritual- sat with them and did clay birds, istic nonthought.” Here is your drawing: one bird asks, and the little girls asked me why I LIFTON DANCING WITH HIS DAUGHTER, NATASHA, AT HER WEDDING IN “Is it possible to live forever?” and the other responds, only made birds. They made other WELLFLEET, 1997 “Yes, symbolically.” things. I told them I made birds “In my two bird books, I make fun of my own because the birds were ‘in the clay.’ ” ideas. People make fun of me, when they say, right- God made man out of clay. It’s a good material for relation to the event. Certain Americans, in rela- ly, that it is great to live on symbolically, but what making symbols. Birds are birds, but clay birds can tion to 9/11, could take the destruction to mean good does that do me when I really die? I know also be spiritual messengers and emblems of the soul. our humiliation and our mission one of revenge. that, and I’m not free of those feelings. The birds Here we are talking about making things, and I won- The Jewish Defense League invoked the Holo- are my underbelly of mockery and self-mockery.” der how this relates to those whose lives have been shat- caust in saying ‘never again,’ but equated any They offer a witty repartee between self and soul, a tered. Is vengeance the way to reformulation, restruc- Arab or Islamic who seemed to get in their way kind of intra-psychic dialogue, if you will—you are turing, rethinking, resetting goals, targeting new mis- with the Nazis. So they gave this meaning to the both birds. The birds are always drawn in profile. One sions, rebalancing the compass that guides our ship? Holocaust: they were entitled to seek out any such person and apply violence. Another group shows the left cheek, the other the right cheek, making “My own approach to vengeance focuses on the a fuller picture of the body politic. of Auschwitz survivors came to me at the time of psychology of the survivor. Vengeance is a form the revelations of the massacre at My Lai. They “I started doing these drawings just to have fun. I of survivor meaning and survivor mission, the said, ‘That’s too close to what we experienced in was really expressing my sense of absurdity at most destructive form. The meaning that you Auschwitz. Can you join us in making a state- meetings or grand rounds or case studies. I began give an event involves the mission you take on in ment?’ Here are two opposite survivor meanings, two antithetical responses to the Holocaust. “No event, no matter how extreme, has any inherent meaning. All meaning depends upon what survivors and others construct with the extraordinary instrument we call the human mind. That’s what symbolization is about—con- structing meaning. You can have opposite sur- vivor missions for the very same event. The mes- sage of those Auschwitz survivors was to oppose violence in Vietnam. The violence at My Lai was objected to by immigrants in America, given refuge by America. They treasured America, but they were upset about what America was doing. Their message, learned from Auschwitz, is that one should never engage in the massacre of one’s

Z fellow human beings.” T N E M

E Two other figures who influenced you, not psychia- R K

L trists, were Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer, who L I J

Y investigated the philosophy and aesthetics of symbolism. B

O T O

H “Cassirer and Langer are my baseline. Cassirer P LEFT TO RIGHT: NATASHA, KEN, ROBERT, B.J. AROUND JACK KEARNEY’S SCULPTURE OF A BULL, 1996 was Langer’s teacher. She Americanized symbol-

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LIFTON WITH BASKET, JINGLY’S PREDECESSOR, IN CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK CITY, 1990 ization theory. Cassirer wrote about large nation- first draft on the first two of these segments: one certain things that you leave behind. I’ve often al issues in relation to symbolization. They in Hong Kong on thought reform, and in thought about losing them, and about what hap- taught me that symbolization is the method of Hiroshima on atomic bombings and nuclear pens to what is lost. Of course, much of what I’ve adult human mentation. We are incapable of not weapons. These segments are associative—I go done is in print in my books and presumably can symbolizing—that’s why the cartoon may be back and forth in themes. I’ve written a lot of last a while. But when one is close to the end of funny. There’s nothing more real than the sym- pages, but I’m still not very far into the work.” life, there is deep meaning in reexamining what bolizing process.” one’s life has been. In going back and trying to Is your personality your object of interest, or is it imagine myself in those times, I bring a newly Literature, to be literature, must be symbolic. your work? personal perspective to the notes and papers I’ve “That’s why it is so hard to produce literature “It’s an intellectual memoir, not exactly analyz- dictated over the years.” and films, and have them be accepted by sur- ing my personality, but describing what I experi- vivors of large, destructive events. It was very enced and what I felt in doing the work and in THE TALKING CURE hard for Hiroshima survivors to allow for the making certain decisions. The book begins with On Friday afternoon during the Wellfleet meet- symbolism that an artist needs. There was an a moment in Hong Kong. We had been there for ings last fall, I was mesmerized by the presenta- impasse because no literature could be com- about three months. We were running out of tion of Karl Meyer, a writer and editor of the pletely accepted and people had to make litera- money, and had to decide to stay or make our World Policy Journal. Meyer discussed the impact ture. That contradiction can be creative.” way back to the reality of the United States. B.J. of General Orders 100, issued in April 1863 by was game either way. I took a long walk around The memoir you are writing shifts the object of scruti- Abraham Lincoln. Meyer mentioned that, like the Kowloon area of Hong Kong, and came to a ny from the other to the self—yourself. How scary is Shakespeare, who was able to create a code of decision. I didn’t see how we could stay. The next that? You are returning to your beginnings. How do chivalry, even in battle, Francis Lieber, author of morning I was busy preparing, with B.J.’s help, an you go about it? the “Lieber Code,” Instructions for the Government application for a research grant. I was acting on of Armies of the United States in the Field, believed “My method, in all the books I’ve written, is to what I had not been able to articulate, even to fair play was possible in warfare. The order Lin- pour out a fairly loose and crude first draft. myself, my inner decision to stay. We did stay, liv- coln issued is followed today as the foundation Some writers like to write carefully, sentence by ing for sixteen months in Hong Kong. That’s for rules of “civilized” combat. I learned that sentence, and they don’t have to revise much. how the book starts.” Lieber sided with the North during the Civil I’m the opposite. It’s partly because I dictate. I Writing this book, do you have a feeling that is differ- War, despite his part-time residency in South dictate everything.” ent from writing your other books? Carolina. Lieber’s son joined the Confederacy and died at the Battle of Williamsburg. The I didn’t know that. “It’s more difficult. I’m always in my other Lieber Code became the first laws of war, and “I talk into the tape recorder and my assistant books—I’m not a phantom; sometimes I describe America became the first country to write down types it for me. Then I re-dictate new drafts and my reactions—but my books are essentially not the codes of restraint and our contracts with corrections. It’s laborious, but it’s the way I about me but the people I’m interviewing. I’m honor and dignity, including the free move- work. I’ve divided the memoir into, perhaps, five not used to writing about myself. I’ve had to ment of the Red Cross. Lieber stated, “Men who segments, structured around my main research struggle to learn to do that. At the same time, I’m take up arms against one another in public war studies. By seeing it this way, I could be free to deriving great pleasure from recovering much of do not cease on this account to be moral beings, start working on it. I’m close to completing a my life. When you live as long as I have, there are responsible to one another and to God. . . . Mil-

142 PROVINCETOWN ARTS 2007 itary necessity does not admit of cruelty—that SUNDAY MORNING intelligent narrator responds to our reasonable is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suf- questions: Sunday is the third day of the Lifton conference, fering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wound- traditionally devoted to somewhat cosmic issues. ing, except in fight, nor torture to extort confes- Some readers may notice that I first spoke of Over the past few years, Norman Mailer, a faith- sions. . . . It admits of deception, but disclaims that exceptional event as if I were the one in ful conference attendee, has taken Sunday as the acts of perfidy.” the connubial bed. Now I state that I was day for his presentation. Last fall, Mailer, whose This astonishing document goes on, delin- not. Nonetheless, in referring to my partici- voice was hoarse from speaking engagements, eating in 157 articles the rules of war. Embedded pation, I am still telling the truth. For even felt incapable of doing a good job reading, and he in routine regulations are major principles: as physicists presently assume to their scien- asked Michael Lennon, Mailer’s archivist and “Article 28: Retaliation will, therefore, never be tific confusion that light is both a particle authorized biographer, to read for him. Lennon resorted to as a means of protective retribution, and a wave, so do devils live in both the lie began to read a passage from Mailer’s novel The and moreover, cautiously and unavoidably; that and the truth, side by side, and both can Castle in the Forest, which was not yet published exist with equal force. is to say, retaliation shall only be resorted to after last fall. Mailer animates Hitler’s banal upbring- careful inquiry into the real occurrence, and the ing by reporting in detail every foul, insidious, As Lennon read, Mailer interjected, “Don’t character of the misdeeds that may demand ret- incipiently monstrous act of the future Führer read so fast! Let people take time to think.” ribution. Unjust or inconsiderate retaliation during the first sixteen years of his life. (The Lennon now read more slowly, but Mailer, whose removes the belligerents farther and farther novel is reviewed elsewhere in this issue.) The eyes are sensitive to camera flashes and other from the mitigating rules of regular war, and by youth of Hitler was enough to foreshadow the bright illumination, interrupted again, “This rapid steps leads them nearer to the internecine demon the adult became, and Mailer left well light’s a brute!” Lennon turned off the desk lamp. wars of savages.” enough alone when he ended his book before the Quietly, Lifton said, “You need more dark- Meyer pointed out that the Lieber Code clear- Holocaust began. That became Lifton’s task in ness, Norman.” ly distinguishes retribution from revenge and The Nazi Doctors. When the reading ended, wild flutters of humiliation. The test of retaliation must be Mailer’s novel may be ironically called a “stan- comments were thrown about. Norman Birn- “proportional response,” the use of the same rel- dard” biography of the young Hitler. “It is as baum said, “God is not perfect. He’s Jewish!” ative force that was used against you. Although accurate as I could make it,” the impish author Another questioned whether organized religion Grant’s army destroyed Southern towns to dis- said with a straight face. Although he complains was the best way to experience God, and Mailer able supply lines, Lieber stated that the govern- now of difficulty in hearing, Mailer’s ears are the wondered if organized religion was the citadel of ment’s goal in seeking retribution is not to esca- organs of his astute apprehension, keenly con- the Devil. Then, out of the blue, Mailer said that late violence, but to leave open a mode of for- scious of the sense a speaker is making. Lifton is he was “more opposed to Buddhism than any- giveness and forgetfulness by being moderate a tall, soft-spoken man. He speaks in slow sen- body in this room.” enough to allow further life. tences that reveal his style of thinking, and one “Except Larry!” Lifton said, with surprising When Meyer finished his presentation, Lifton feels the fairness in his thoughts. A desk lamp verve, which made me think he was getting an opened discussion around the table. Norman spread a cone of light on the splayed pages. idea for another of his “bird conversations.” Mailer suggested that a theme of the conference Lennon read passages in which the narrator pres- Lifton was referring facetiously to Lawrence should be not the “psychology of vengeance,” but ents himself as an agent of the Devil—a high- Shainberg, a novelist, nonfiction writer, and prac- the “therapy of revenge,” since we had not dis- placed assistant, but not the Devil himself. He is ticing Buddhist who wrote about his religious cussed the cathartic benefits of war. Kai Erikson, conscious that people regard Hitler with detesta- anxiety in his book Ambivalent Zen. Everyone a sociologist and son of Erik Erikson, brought up tion, but he knows they lack “understanding.” burst into cascades of laughter. Something the issue of ethnic conflict and how emotions Mailer’s assistant to the Devil does not assume ridiculous and wonderful seemed released in the commit humans to violent action. It was noted that God has gender, but he does consider God room. Just then, the door blew open and Jingly that poison was used as a weapon during our to be a creative artist, subject to failures and dif- rushed in upon us—as if her animal energy was colonial war, though it was later outlawed in the ficulties, like any artist. Lennon read from Book unconstrained in its curiosity about the intellec- Lieber Code, and George Washington was IV, The Intelligence Officer: tual commotion in the room. Noonday sun praised for his humane treatment of prisoners flooded the room, and Jingly stole the show from during the Revolutionary War. Yes, I am an instrument. I am an officer of Norman Mailer. Everybody seemed woken from a The death penalty was discussed next. the Evil One. And this trusted instrument dream. Salt air made people hungry. Presently there are four thousand people on has just committed an act of treachery: It is In a rather existential opportunity to pay death row in the thirty-nine states where the not acceptable to reveal who we are. homage to Lifton, Mailer, whose eyes have the death penalty is legal. The actress and war same dark zones of energy that Picasso’s pos- activist was seated at the table and But Mailer’s narrator does reveal that in 1938 sessed, looked calmly at Lifton, as if he had never stood up to offer the radical idea that nobody in he could “pretend” to be a trusted aide to Hein- before met his friend. Then he said, “You are the room had raised the issue of gender as a rich Himmler when he “inhabited” the body of a heroic. You have trudged through two levels of cause of war. When she raised her arm skyward real SS officer. Devils have the power to access trauma, the horror of terror, and the horrible to hammer her point—“What about masculine “human abodes,” and to attend events where writing you were obliged to read.” toxicity!”—she charmed the white-headed, white they were not present. They practice “dream- Lifton’s concept of “psychic numbing” males who predominated in the room. Her per- etching,” planting the seeds of bad deeds. He seemed summoned by Mailer to cast radiant sonal charisma made the case for a feminist argues that a “minority of intellectuals” may still insight into the motivation people must seek in framework for a study of war. With a singular ascribe to the existence of God, but they cannot order to pass through numbness and back into dedication, Jane Fonda has put her neck (and find acceptable a belief that there is an “opposed sensation. Death is the final loss of sensation, but her waistline) on the line, and her presence at the entity equal to God or nearly so.” Mailer’s revela- the message of hope here was also uttered by conference was not simply one of casual com- tion is that the Devil exists with a force as strong Nietzsche when he urged his reader “to not mitment to just causes. as God, but, like God, is riddled with hidden throw away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your God’s revenge, someone else blurted out, may weaknesses. The narrator, who possesses “fly- highest hope!” be to give us exactly what we want—“Look what over” powers—similar to the angel Gabriel’s pres- happened to Midas!” The death penalty, the ence at the Immaculate Conception of Jesus— CHRISTOPHER BUSA is editor of Provincetown issue of gender and violence, and the idea of did witness Hitler’s incestuous conception, and Arts. some “cosmic revenge” or fate, all seem perti- did observe that he was born with one testicle, a nent to Lifton’s work in various ways. scientific correlation with incest births. Mailer’s

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