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.
Robert Jay LiftonAs 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.
Robert Jay LiftonTrump has a mind that in many ways is always under duress, because he's always seeking to be accepted, loved. He sees himself as constantly victimized by others and by the society, from which he sees himself as fighting back. So there's always an intensity to his destructive behavior that could contribute to his false beliefs.
Robert Jay LiftonThe 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 LiftonThe American president has particular power. This makes Trump the most dangerous man in the world. He's equally dangerous because of his finger on the nuclear trigger and because of his mind ensconced in solipsistic reality. The two are a dreadful combination.
Robert Jay LiftonThere's an all-enveloping destructiveness in Donald Trump's character and in his psychological tendencies. But I've focused on what professionally I call solipsistic reality. Solipsistic reality means that the only reality he's capable of embracing has to do with his own self and the perception by and protection of his own self. And for a president to be so bound in this isolated solipsistic reality could not be more dangerous for the country and for the world. He's not psychotic, but I think ultimately this solipsistic reality will be the source of his removal from the presidency.
Robert Jay Lifton