Death in Life; Survivors of Hiroshima

New York: Random House, 1967. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good. viii, 594, [4] pages. Footnotes. Appendix. Notes. Index. List of Survivors quoted. Signed and dated with comment by author on fep. Name of previous owner in ink on fep. Scuff mark where sticker removed from covering previous owner's signature. Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is an American psychiatrist and author, known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence and for his theory of thought reform. He was a proponent of the techniques of psychohistory. Several of his books featured mental adaptations that people made in extreme wartime environments: Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, Home from the War; and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Regarding Hiroshima and Vietnam survivors or Nazi perpetuators, Lifton believed that the psychic fragmentation experienced by his subjects was an extreme form of the pathologies that arise in peacetime life due to the pressures and fears of modern society. In the Hiroshima and Vietnam studies, Lifton concluded that the sense of personal disintegration many people experienced after witnessing death and destruction on a mass scale could ultimately lead to a new emotional resilience. In Japan, "hibakusha" means "the people affected by the explosion--specifically, the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in 1945. In this classic study, winner of the 1969 National Book Award in Science, Lifton studies the psychological effects of the bomb on 90,000 survivors. He sees this analysis as providing a last chance to understand--and be motivated to avoid--nuclear war. This compassionate treatment is a significant contribution to the atomic age. One observes, incidentally, that national and even racial emotions of anger, humiliation, and hostility are superficial in comparison to these emotions of anxiety and guilt-the basic liabilities, first of life and then of love.