One 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 Lifton Read Quote
I struggled with each of these studies and I was uncertain about what they meant, and often confused, and then I tried to put together what I was seeing. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote
Every adult in the world has some sense that he or she might be obliterated at any time by these weapons that we have created. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote
That is, we are bombarded by all kinds of images and influences and we have to fend some of them off if we’re to take in any of them, or to carry through just our ordinary day’s work, or really deepen whatever we have to do or say. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote
But when I went to Hiroshima and began to study or just listen to people’s descriptions of their work, it was quite clear they were talking about death all the time, about people dying all around them, about their own fear of death. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote
It was because of my deep concerns about nuclear weapons that I went to Hiroshima. And then I was astounded in Hiroshima to find that nobody had really studied it. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote
I never quite envisioned myself a proper doctor under that white coat, but I was interested in the idea of healing and in the psychological dimension rather early on. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote
I did the first study because I had been exposed to something that I took to be important and interesting – this thought reform process – in the military. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote
It may sound terrible, but I often say that the military saved me from a conventional life in the United States and I’ve never really thanked them for it, because I haven’t exactly been pro-military in my work. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote
And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing. Robert Jay Lifton Read Quote