Robert Jay Lifton, the psychiatrist who shed light on the darkest chapters in modern history including Chinese brainwashing, Hiroshima, the Holocaust and the Vietnam War, has died aged 99.
His later investigations into war crimes and the experiences of Vietnam veterans in the early 1970s led him to formulate his theory of the “atrocity-producing situation” in which he believed ordinary people could commit acts of such extraordinary cruelty as the My Lai massacre.
His book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide was based on interviews with both perpetrators and victims. He argued the Nazi doctors committed their crimes using a process of personality “doubling”, whereby the moral medical practitioner was psychologically divided from the immoral “killing self”. The book drew criticism from those who felt Lifton’s approach was too forgiving. Lifton responded that humanity best serves the future when it confronts its own potential for evil rather than dismissing it as “unexaminable”.
The research for Nazi Doctors took an emotional toll, and he had frequent nightmares in which he or his family were imprisoned in camps. On hearing this, a friend and Auschwitz survivor remarked: “Good, now you can do the study.” It remained an important lesson for Lifton. “One has to offer the self to the suffering in some degree,” he said.
He was born 16 May 1926, no birth time, in New York, a week after |David Attenborough and three weeks after Queen Elizabeth 11, so he shared their stalwartly enduring Fixed chart. In his case his Taurus Sun exactly conjunct Algol was opposition Saturn square Neptune opposition Jupiter.
His Pluto exactly conjunct Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) was in a courageous and determined trine to Mars in Pisces with Mercury sextile Mars which fits with writing about the darkest of subjects.
See previous post on Algol: Greg Wise – an Algol that breeds empathy 24th March 2024 by Marjorie
‘Despite Algol’s malevolent reputation for destruction it has another purpose which is to force us to face suffering and horror and not brush it aside.’
Lifton believed that mankind needed to develop species consciousness in order to survive the multiples crises of our time. I understand this means that we must take the interests of humanity as a whole and of all forms of life on the planet to heart. We must alos develop a much deeper understanding of evil, which is once again dominant for a while. It is useless to say never again when wars and genocide are recurring. There are three ways to defeat evil, as illustrated by the myth of Dracula (Nosferatu): faith, knowledge but above all love.
One of the first things that the members of the BMA voted on was to allow themselves to inherit from patients they will have helped to die. On this, they should have steered clear of, if they didn’t want to be considered the same as Dr Harold Shipman. Amoral people do amoral things. And it doesn’t have to be a war-time situation to bring it out in people. But it does become more noticeable.
Taurus sun with algol opposite saturn n Neptune means both these r in transformative or pluto ruled, phoenix famed Scorpio which is 8h in astrology and where saturn forces one to face and vanquish ones fears. With Neptune,the nurse of planets ,also ruling psychology as confused and limitless like thoughts to memories mixed with trauma and fantasies…saturn keeps eye on 3 houses it looks at hence it was natural for him to become the revealer of traumas and darkness induced on the mind with Neptune alongside healing.
As we are taught, everything has a purpose. Allgol here was to awaken world about torture begins from the mind, first.
Surely how Algol is used will depend on the personality of the person? The above chart is very Earth/Water orientated. With sextile’s between earth and water planets – Sun/Moon, Mars/Pluto, Pluto /Moon . Giving in a sense of purpose, along with a Saturn trine Moon and a Saturn opposition Taurus. . Venus in Aries, with Mars in Pisces, may have an energetic love of getting inside other people’s heads to explore their hidden depths? His Sun/Mood midpoint falls in Gemini at circa 23 degrees trining Jupiter on the descendant in Aquarius. Perhaps a philosophical approach to give an understanding of group think psyche to the people?
Wow. Never heard of the man before this post. Remarkable. Will read up on him during this winter when weather is conducive to staying in curled up with a good book. Thank you Marjorie.