#he

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

#astounded #because #concerns #deep #find

Again, I was influenced by my father, who was very much an atheist and took pride in combating the traditional or orthodox forms of Judaism, which his parents and which my mother's parents were very steeped in. ↗

— Robert Jay Lifton

#atheist #combating #father #forms #his

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

#arrange #both #brainwashing #china #chinese

But I spent just two calendar years at Cornell University, though it was covering more than three years of work, and then went to medical school and did become interested in psychiatry, and even helped form a kind of psychiatry club in medical school. ↗

— Robert Jay Lifton

#calendar #club #cornell #covering #did

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

#around #began #clear #death #descriptions

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

#any #created #every #might #obliterated

I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war. ↗

— Robert Jay Lifton

#especially #i #learned #lot #own

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

#confused #each #i #i tried #meant

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

#bombarded #carry #day #deepen #fend

The other thing that happened was my last military assignment - this was in the air force; I had enlisted in order to avoid being drafted as a private, and of course I only practiced medicine or psychiatry in the air force so I was never in any kind of violent combat. ↗

— Robert Jay Lifton

#air force #any #assignment #avoid #being