Robert Jay Lifton

Born in New York 1926, medical degree for New York Medical College 1948, Air Force psychiatrist serving in the United States, Japan and Korea 1941-53. He is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, The City University of New York and Director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, having held a research professorship of psychiatry at Yale University for more than two decades. His writings, published in more than twenty contemporary classics, cover issues such as genocide, Nazi doctors, nuclear weapons and their impact on death symbolism, Hiroshima survivors, Chinese thought reform and the Cultural Revolution, the Vietnam War experience and veterans. He has received dozens of prestigious awards, and no less than 12 honorary degrees. He has been an active member of Physicians for Social Responsibility since 1962 and is a founding member of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He has written "Indefensible Weapons" together with another TFF Associate, Richard Falk. Robert Jay Lifton is also a cartoonist by avocation, having published two books of humorous bird cartoons. See also this biography.

Robert Jay Lifton taught for many years at the John Jay College of the CUNY. He is currently a lecturer in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. His book "Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima" won the National Book Award. He is also the author of "The Nazi Doctors." His latest book is "Superpower Syndrome."

Robert Jay Lifton became a TFF Associate in 1992.

Address	Lecturer on Psychiatry Psychiatry-Cambridge Hospital Cambridge Health Alliance Cambridge Hospital Psychiatry 1493 Cambridge St - Cambridge, MA 02139 U.S.A.
Phone	+1-617-503-8443
Fax	+1-617-503-8470
E-mail Website	rlifton@challiance.org Robert Jay Lifton

Articles by Robert Jay Lifton

The most recent on top

Robert Jay Lifton, April 25, 2011
Fukushima and Hiroshima

Conditions of Atrocity

Evil, the Self, and Survival
Conversations with Jay Lifton at Berkeley University

Walter A Davis about Robert Jay Lifton, March 15, 2005
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia - Responses to 9/11 and the American Aftermath
Lifton's Superpower Syndrome:America's Apocalyptic Confrontation With the World (Nation Books, 2003). We all owe a great debt to Robert Jay Lifton. In a remarkable series of books, he has studied the most horrifying events of the past century.

Apocalyptic violence - The dangers of fundamentalist religious cults operating within governments

Doctors and Torture

American Apocalypse (The Nation)

Doctors and Torture

Interpreter of organized evil - with and about RJL

Three interviews about cults, September 11 and Aum Shinrikyo RealAudio

Giving Meaning to Survival - about responding to Sept 11

Champion of human survival tries to awaken academics to the nuclear menace

Evil, the Self and Survival - Conversations

Home

New

PressInfo

TFF

Forums

Features

Publications

Kalejdoskop

Links