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- ROOTS OF THE THEORY
- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE
Robert Jay LiftonI'll never forget that December day. Preparing for the two-tournament California swing, I'd been up all night cutting and briefing evidence. Weary from lack of sleep, I stumbled out of the Lewis and Clark debate squad room to get some fresh air. I'd been reading tons of evidence about nuclear weapons, the risk of accidental launch and potential for massive retaliation before anyone knew what was happening. For some reason, as I looked off in the distance, I visualized what it would be like to see a mushroom cloud going off over the horizon. The weird thing, however, was that I didn't feel particularly moved by the image. Now that's scary, imagining the ultimate human holocaust and not freaking out. But that's what most of us do subconsciously every day through a series of psychological phenomena examined by noted psychologist Robert Jay Lifton. Lifton, the Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the City University of New York and Director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is interested in how living with the bomb on a day-to-day basis affects peoples' minds and mental health. I had read one of Lifton's books - THE GENOCIDAL MENTALITY: NAZI HOLOCAUST AND NUCLEAR THREAT - prior to the escapade I just described, but didn't put together his description of the phenomenon until about a year later. As one of his intellectual successors, Ashis Nandy, describes the procedure, the fear of nuclear conflict "seeps into public consciousness (and) creates a new awareness of the transience of life. It forces people to live with the constant fear that, one day, a sudden war or accident might kill not only them, but also their children and grandchildren, and everybody they love. This awareness gradually creates a sense of the hollowness of life. For many, life is denuded of substantive meaning." I apologize for starting the essay off with such a heavy trip, but hey, it's not like we're talking about Teletubbies here. We're talking about weapons that quite literally have the potential to end all life on earth, weapons that most human beings are aware of. You may be saying to yourself, "But wait! I don't think about the nuclear threat every day, or even every month. Sure, I'm aware of it on some level - but it's not as if it haunts my thoughts." The first part of that sentence is true for most people, and generally, people would agree with the second part of the statement as well. But doesn't it seem odd to you that you wouldn't think about the ever-present danger around? Lifton purports to explain why we don't - consciously - think about the nuclear arsenals which surround us every day, and poses a challenging explanation for why people don't think they are haunted by the weapons. They are, he says - but the kind of "psychic numbing" which the threat engenders tends to dull the pain. ROOTS OF THE THEORYLifton has always been interested in human wrongdoing and the dangers we present to each other. Like most people of his generation, the Nazi Holocaust of World War II was an omnipresent backdrop to the psychology work he was doing. Few would dispute that the German national Socialist regime were right up there with the most evil people ever to live. After all, they slaughtered millions in gruesome manners, invading countries to impose their will on other races. But what struck many intellectual observers of the age was what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil" during her writings on the Nuremberg trial of Nazi leader Adolph Eichmann. When you go to a capital trial for genocide, you probably expect to see the equivalent of a fire-breathing monster, or a Hannibal Lecter-esque serial killer seated in the defendants chair. That's not what Arendt saw: she saw a harmless enough looking old man. Lifton, too, had his equivalent encounters. For his book THE NAZI DOCTORS, he interviewed a series of the men who performed horrifying medial experiments upon their prisoners. Their crimes have been exhaustively documented, and I won't repeat them here - though I suggest reading histories of the event and Lifton's book, if you don't mind a nightmare or two. What struck him, as Arendt, was the essential averageness of these people. For the most part, they were men who loved their families; came home after eight hours of unspeakable violence and horror to walk the dog and ask the wife and kids how their day was. I first read this book eight years ago, and my jaw still drops open at this prospect - as I hope some of yours are dropping right now. How, I wondered, could everyday people be so persuaded to commit genocide - not just unseen genocide committed by soldiers far away, but clear and present genocide with their own two hands? The human mind is an amazing thing, as we all innately know. It is capable of performing remarkable feats of wonder and mystery. And sadly, it can make us capable of feats of terror and murder. I don't know any of you reading this personally. (Or maybe I do. If so, hello, please call or write.) But I feel confident that most of you are saying, "I am not capable of doing anything like the Nazi doctors did. No way, no how." I hope you're right. But Lifton's study of how these men's brains betrayed them suggests that we are all capable of more than we'd like to admit. Through a series of psychological coping mechanisms, the Nazi war criminals were able to mentally disassociate themselves with the crimes the committed. For some, wartime propaganda was a factor. For others, a cultural obedience to authority. For none is there any excuse. There is, however, an opportunity to learn from this horrific chapter of history so that it never happens again. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDEHere are some of the mental phenomena Lifton noticed in his subjects: first, he noticed a "splitting" technique, where people tended to disassociate what they did at work with the men they were. That is, you go to work, and you're one man; you go home, and you're another. This should not be confused with schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder - it's a different thing, where people simply don't talk about work at home and rarely talk about the work they're doing at all, except in coded terms. That hints at another aspect of the genocidal mentality, which is not only exhibited by the Nazi doctors, but by ordinary Germans living during the Holocaust. People became numb to the presence of the deadliness around them. This occurred of necessity - no one can deal with an avalanche of suffering and pain on that level - and was achieved through a variety of mechanisms: the uses of coded language to refer to the projects they were working on, the dehumanization of the people they were slaughtering, etc. Besides creating the necessary preconditions for genocide, these mental processes cause negative psychological consequences in the people who are affected by them. Generally, these can be described as loss of hope, depression, a sense of resignation and inevitability. These, too, have psychological functions: it is easier to roll over in the face of adversity and terror than it is to fight that adversity or terror. If the mind convinces you that the adversity and terror is inevitable, then you are relieved of your obligation to rail against it. Of course, that has other mental troubles which come with it - cynicism and depression being just the foremost among them. 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