The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating clichรฉ. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.
Robert Jay LiftonOne reason that I embarked on a study of Nazi doctors was that in this personal journey, I had the feeling increasingly that I did want to do a Holocaust study and that increasingly I wanted it to be of perpetrators, which I thought was more needed.
Robert Jay LiftonWhen 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.
Robert Jay LiftonI don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind.
Robert Jay LiftonThe scientists who made the atomic bomb are, in my sense, people with a tragic destiny. You know, there was the US race with Nazi Germany and good evidence that the Germans were more advanced in nuclear physics, and we had to get the bomb first. But then there was the use of that dreadful weapon, or instrument of genocide, and many of the more sensitive scientists turned quickly into anti - nuclear people - and very effective ones.
Robert Jay LiftonIn early psychoanalytic thought, narcissism was - and still, of course, is - self-love. The early psychoanalysts used to talk of libido directed at the self. That now feels a little quaint, that kind of language. But it does include the most fierce and self-displaying form of one's individual self. And in this way, it can be dangerous. When you look at Donald Trump, you can really see someone who's destructive to any form of life enhancement in virtually every area. And if that's what Fromm means by malignant narcissism, then it definitely applies.
Robert Jay Lifton