47 Quotes by Robert Jay Lifton

When I was still in my psychiatric residency training in New York City, I was subjected to the doctor draft of that time, during the early fifties, at the time of the Korean War.

Again, I was influenced by my father, who was very much an atheist and took pride in combating the traditional or orthodox forms of Judaism, which his parents and which my mother's parents were very steeped in.

As a kid I was fascinated with sports, and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports, like books about Baseball Joe, as one baseball hero was called.

Every adult in the world has some sense that he or she might be obliterated at any time by these weapons that we have created.

I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind.

And I thought about the psychic numbing involved in strategic projections of using hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons of any kind. And I also thought about ways in which all of us undergo what could be called the numbing of everyday life.

I did the first study because I had been exposed to something that I took to be important and interesting - this thought reform process - in the military.

I struggled with each of these studies and I was uncertain about what they meant, and often confused, and then I tried to put together what I was seeing.

That is, we are bombarded by all kinds of images and influences and we have to fend some of them off if we're to take in any of them, or to carry through just our ordinary day's work, or really deepen whatever we have to do or say.