In his new book, 97-year-old Robert Jay Lifton shares the 'survivor wisdom' he's learned from those who've lived through terrible events — the Holocaust, Hiroshima, POW camps.
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has studied Auschwitz survivors, Vietnam war veterans, survivor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and people who'd been subjected to repression by the Chinese government. He reflects on what he's learned in his new book,In 1968, at the age of 42, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton sat down to write, a book about his experiences interviewing survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."I was not prepared for the things I heard," he wrote then.
I wrote this book out of a conviction that my understanding of survivor power could contribute to surviving catastrophe in general. I tried to present a combination of the survivors' struggles and an avenue of hope because survivors can be at the center of resilience and renewal. I think what's key here is the transformation from the helpless victim to the agent of survival.
We human beings are meaning-hungry creatures. For survivors that's doubly so. When people undergo very great trauma, they either close down or open out. I called the closing-down"psychic numbing," by which I mean a diminished capacity or inclination to feel. There are times when people need to be silent because it isn't possible for them to speak.
There are phases, sometimes even lifelong phases of Auschwitz survivors, many of whom I interviewed, during which they are unable to talk about what they went through. Because the pain is too overwhelming and it's a reminder of being back in Auschwitz. It becomes important for most of them to find a way to articulate what they saw and experienced. Otherwise, they can be stuck in their trauma, and stuckness means lacking the capacity to confront or articulate what they had been through.
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