24AR29-07

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AR 29:7 - "I really dislike most religious groups." R J Lifton

In this issue: "

LIFTON, ROBERT JAY - his work and influence reviewed

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION - students "coerced to engage in Hindu religious practices and rituals"

Apologia Report 29:7 (1,648)
February 17, 2024

LIFTON, ROBERT JAY

Writing for The New Yorker Interview series (Nov 12), Masha Gessen chats with 97-year-old Lifton, who is widely respected in the greater cult watching community - especially within the social sciences. <www.tinyurl.com/AR-on-Lifton> 

   Lifton comments: "In 1954, my wife and I had been living in Hong Kong for just three months, and I'd been interviewing Chinese students and intellectuals, and Western scholars and diplomats, and China-watchers and Westerners who had been in China and imprisoned. I was fascinated by thought reform because it was a coercive effort at change based on self-criticism and confession. I wanted to stay there, but at that time, I had done [(i.e., published)] nothing. ... Also, my money was running out. ... It was a crucial decision [to stick it out] because it was the beginning of my identity as a psychiatrist in the world."

   Earlier in the interview, Lifton says "I've had a long interaction with psychoanalysis. Erik Erikson taught me how to be ambivalent about psychoanalysis. ... I knew it was important, but I also knew it could be harmful because it was so traditionalized. ... But now, in my older age, the analysts want me. A couple of them approached me a few years ago to give the keynote talk at a meeting on my work. I was surprised but very happy to do it. They were extremely warm as though they were itching to, in need of, bringing psychoanalysis into society, and recognizing more of the issues that I was concerned with, having to do with totalism and fixity. ... It's satisfying, because psychoanalysis has been so important for my formation."

   Gessen introduces Lifton this way: "Lifton is fascinated by the range and plasticity of the human mind, its ability to contort to the demands of totalitarian control, to find justification for the unimaginable - the Holocaust, war crimes, the atomic bomb - and yet recover, and reconjure hope."

   She is most interested in his five famous "interview-based books" among the many he has authored. "In the first half century of his career, Robert Jay Lifton published five books based on long-term studies...." 

   The first was Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China, <www.tinyurl.com/4mw97yh3> written "to understand the psychological - rather than the political or ideological - structure of totalitarianism. His next topic was Hiroshima; his 1968 book Death in Life, <www.tinyurl.com/muav9c6p> based on extended associative interviews with survivors of the atomic bomb, earned Lifton the National Book Award. He then turned to the psychology of Vietnam War veterans and, soon after, Nazis. In both of the resulting books - Home from the War <www.tinyurl.com/32pmenhd> and The Nazi Doctors <www.tinyurl.com/2rtdfexx> - Lifton strove to understand the capacity of ordinary people to commit atrocities. In his final interview-based book, Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, <www.tinyurl.com/bdhkz4sk> which was published in 1999, Lifton examined the psychology and ideology of a cult."

   Lifton explains: "We are all survivors of Hiroshima, and, in our imaginations, of future nuclear holocaust," he wrote at the end of Death in Life. How do we live with such knowledge? When does it lead to more atrocities and when does it result in what Lifton called, in a later book, 'species-wide agreement'?"

   It is this last question that appears to tie in with another aspect of Lifton's interests. "Lifton was also a prolific political activist." Gessen asks: "Your book The Climate Swerve, published in 2017, seemed very hopeful. You wrote about the beginning of a species-wide agreement."

   It is surprising to learn that "Lifton's big books, though based on rigorous research, were written for popular audiences." Another discovery for many is that "Lifton's impact on the study and treatment of trauma is unparalleled."

   Much of Gessen's piece is related to "some terms that seem key to Lifton's work. I thought I'd start with 'totalism.'" (There are several other terms that are covered as well.)

   Lifton: "Totalism is an all-or-none commitment to an ideology. It involves an impulse toward action. And it's a closed state, because a totalist sees the world through his or her ideology. A totalist seeks to own reality.

   Gessen: "And when you say 'totalist,' do you mean a leader or aspiring leader, or anyone else committed to the ideology?

   Lifton: "Can be either. It can be a guru of a cult, or a cult-like arrangement. The Trumpist movement, for instance, is cult-like in many ways. And it is overt in its efforts to own reality, overt in its solipsism.

   Gessen: "How is it cult-like?

   Lifton: "He forms a certain kind of relationship with followers. Especially his base, as they call it, his most fervent followers, who, in a way, experience high states at his rallies and in relation to what he says or does.

   Gessen: "Your definition of totalism seems very similar to Hannah Arendt's definition of totalitarian ideology. Is the difference that it's applicable not just to states but also to smaller groups?

   Lifton: "It's like a psychological version of totalitarianism, yes, applicable to various groups. As we see now, there's a kind of hunger for totalism. It stems mainly from dislocation. There's something in us as human beings which seeks fixity and definiteness and absoluteness. We're vulnerable to totalism. But it's most pronounced during times of stress and dislocation. Certainly Trump and his allies are calling for a totalism. ...

   Gessen: "What would be an example from Trumpism?

   Lifton: "The Big Lie [that his 2020 election was stolen. See <www.bit.ly/Big-Lie-Birth> for an eerily familiar look at the term's long-lived brazen history]. Trump's promulgation of the Big Lie has surprised everyone with the extent to which it can be accepted and believed if constantly reiterated. ...

   Gessen: "Is religion important to you?

   Lifton: "I don't have any formal religion. And I really dislike most religious groups. ... I see religion as a great force in human experience. Like many people, I make a distinction between a certain amount of spirituality and formal religion. One rabbi friend once said to me, 'You're more religious than I am.' That had to do with intense commitments to others. I have a certain respect for what religion can do. ... It can serve humankind and their spirit and freedom and it can suppress their freedom. Every religion has both of those possibilities. So, when there is an atheist movement, I don't join it because it seems to be as intensely anti-religious as the religious people are committed to religion. I've been friendly with [the theologian] Harvey Cox, <www.tinyurl.com/mssmvp3x> who was brought up as a fundamentalist and always tried to be a progressive fundamentalist, which is a hard thing to do. He would promise me every year that the evangelicals are becoming more progressive, but they never have. ...

      Gessen: "You called the twentieth century 'an extreme century.' What are your thoughts on the twenty-first?

   Lifton: "The twentieth century brought us Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The twenty-first, I guess, brought us Trump. And a whole newly intensified right wing. Some call it populism. But it's right-wing fanaticism and violence. We still have the catastrophic threats. And they are now sustained threats."

   Gessen concludes the feature: "Is there anything I haven't asked you about?

   Lifton: "I would say something on this idea of hope and possibility. My temperament is in the direction of hopefulness. ... But for me to sustain that hopefulness, I require evidence. And I seek that evidence in my work." <www.tinyurl.com/23ezsxj2>

 ---

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION

"'I don't kneel': Student sues Chicago schools over candlelit rituals during class" (no byline, Black Chronicle News Service, Nov 5 '23) -- "Mariyah Green was a junior when she transferred during the 2018-19 school year from a charter school to Bogan High School.... 

   "She told Chalkboard that students were made to participate in the district's Quiet Time program, where instructors encouraged students to participate in transcendental meditation, including initiation rites conducted in a darkened classroom. ...

   "Students were told not to tell their parents about their 'mantra' words, according to Green. ...

   "Mariyah said when she started at Bogan, a transcendental meditation instructor would pull 3-5 students at a time out of class and take them to a darkened classroom to purportedly teach them how to meditate 'the proper way' over the course of several days. ...

   "Green said whether she meditated in class was linked to a participation grade. If her grades were too low, she could not participate in sports. She filed a lawsuit in February this year alleging her rights were violated. ...

   "The lawsuit claimed students 'were coerced to engage in Hindu religious practices and rituals in violation of their rights under both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.

   "Green was not the only student to file suit against CPS over allegations it violated their religious freedom, according to her lawyers at Mauck & Baker. Several others have brought suits against the school, including a Christian and Muslim student." <www.tinyurl.com/53tbtetk>

A related Nov 7 '23 Christian Post story includes additional detail: "Christian student paid $150K settlement over school's 'demonic' Transcendental Meditation program" by Jon Brown -- notes that Green "sued the Chicago Board of Education ... over a Quiet Time program that was implemented in some urban public schools with the help of the University of Chicago and the David Lynch Foundation, which were also named in the lawsuit.

   "The Chicago Board of Education and the David Lynch Foundation will each pay $75,000, according to the judgment issued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Oct. 23, her lawyers announced last week. ...

   "In 2015, the University of Chicago's Crime Lab rolled out a multiyear study of Quiet Time, the David Lynch Foundation's school program that implemented Transcendental Meditation, according to a 2016 article from Smithsonian Magazine. One of the largest randomized studies on meditation and children, the project involved 6,800 subjects in Chicago and New York and looked into the practice's effects on crime and violence, the magazine reported.

   "Green and her lawyers alleged to CP that the Quiet Time program expected students to chant a mantra and pay homage to Hindu deities in a 'Puja' ceremony, which they claim was fundamentally 'demonic' in its character, as well as a violation of Green's Christian beliefs and rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

   "Green, who was a minor at the time, told CP that an instructor would take students four or five at a time into a darkened room she characterized as 'spooky.' She remembered that the presence of candles and an image of a guru in front of an altar indicated to her 'a weird scenario' that made her uncomfortable."" <www.tinyurl.com/5etah4h3> 

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