Robert Jay Lifton

Looks at Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subways, and examines the mind of the man behind the religion. By the author of Death in Life. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism

Destroying the World to Save It

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'brainwashing' in China

A Study of "brainwashing" in China

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism

On Cults and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry

Losing Reality

Survivors of Hiroshima

Death in Life

Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Surviving Our Catastrophes

Describes a psychological trend that sees the self as becoming fluid and many-sided as a resilient answer to confusion and changing moorings of modern living.

Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation

The Protean Self

Home from the War

A Study of Brainwashing in China

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalitarianism

Donald E. Miller

Marc Nichanian

Yair Auron

Yves Ternon

Eric Markusen

Stephen Astourian

Levon Marashlian

Hilmar Kaiser

Ara Sarafian

Rubina Peroomian

Lorne Shirinian

Roger W. Smith

A fresh look at the forgotten genocide of world history.

The Case of the Armenian Genocide

Remembrance and Denial

Eric Olson

The Wellfleet Papers

Explorations in Psychohistory

Peter Balakian

Henry Morgenthau

This edition brings back into print the classic memoir by the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire who not only documented but also tried to stop the genocide of the Armenian people.

Ambassador Morgenthau's Story

Richard A. Falk

Gabriel Kolko

A Legal, Political-documentary, and Psychological Inquiry Into the Responsibility of Leaders, Citizens, and Soldiers for Criminal Acts in Wars

Crimes of War

The unique human awareness of our own mortality enables us to ensure our perpetuation beyond death through our impact on others. This continuity of life has been profoundly shaken by the advent of wars of mass destruction, genocide, and the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. In The Broken Connection, Robert Jay Lifton, one of America's foremost thinkers and preeminent psychiatrists, explores the inescapable connections between death and life, the psychiatric disorders that arise from these connections, and the advent of the nuclear age which has jeopardized any attempts to ensure the perpetuation of the self beyond death.

On Death and the Continuity of Life

The Broken Connection

Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims Nor Executioners

Longlisted for the PEN America/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing "Well worth the read. . . . [A] prescient handoff to the next generation of scholars." —The Washington Post From "one of the world’s foremost thinkers" (Bill Moyers), a profound, hopeful, and timely call for an emerging new collective consciousness to combat climate change Over his long career as witness to an extreme twentieth century, National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual Robert Jay Lifton has grappled with the profound effects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. Now he shifts to climate change, which, Lifton writes, "presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind," what he describes as the task of mobilizing our imaginative resources toward climate sanity. Thanks to the power of corporate-funded climate denialists and the fact that "with its slower, incremental sequence, [climate change] lends itself less to the apocalyptic drama," a large swathe of humanity has numbed themselves to the reality of climate change. Yet Lifton draws a message of hope from the Paris climate meeting of 2015 where representatives of virtually all nations joined in the recognition that we are a single species in deep trouble. Here, Lifton suggests in this lucid and moving book that recalls Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell, was evidence of how we might call upon the human mind—"our greatest evolutionary asset"—to translate a growing species awareness—or "climate swerve"—into action to sustain our habitat and civilization.

Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival

The Climate Swerve

A definitive account of the psychology of zealotry, from a National Book Award winner and a leading authority on the nature of cults, political absolutism, and mind control In this unique and timely volume Robert Jay Lifton, the National Book Award–winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual proposes a radical idea: that the psychological relationship between extremist political movements and fanatical religious cults may be much closer than anyone thought. Exploring the most extreme manifestations of human zealotry, Lifton highlights an array of leaders—from Mao to Hitler to the Japanese apocalyptic cult leader Shōkō Asahara to Donald Trump—who have sought the control of human minds and the ownership of reality. Lifton has spent decades exploring psychological extremism. His pioneering concept of the “Eight Deadly Sins” of ideological totalism—originally devised to identify “brainwashing” (or “thought reform”) in political movements—has been widely quoted in writings about cults, and embraced by members and former members of religious cults seeking to understand their experiences. In Losing Reality Lifton makes clear that the apocalyptic impulse—that of destroying the world in order to remake it in purified form—is not limited to religious groups but is prominent in extremist political movements such as Nazism and Chinese Communism, and also in groups surrounding Donald Trump. Lifton applies his concept of “malignant normality” to Trump’s efforts to render his destructive falsehoods a routine part of American life. But Lifton sees the human species as capable of “regaining reality” by means of our “protean” psychological capacities and our ethical and political commitments as “witnessing professionals.” Lifton weaves together some of his finest work with extensive new commentary to provide vital understanding of our struggle with mental predators. Losing Reality is a book not only of stunning scholarship, but also of huge relevance for these troubled times.

On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry

This new edition of Revolutionary Immortality coincides with two interesting rediscoveries in American intellectual life--that of China and that of death. The book happens to be about both.

Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Revolutionary Immortality

Robert Jay Lifton

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