In 1968, at the age of 42, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton sat down to write Death in Life, a book about his experiences interviewing survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "I was not prepared for the things I heard," he wrote then. He spent hours with several dozen people, including a man who had been a 13-year-old shopkeeper's assistant at the time of the blast and got trapped beneath his collapsed house. He could still hear the moans and screaming of his neighbors. There was a physicist who was temporarily blinded by the blast and thought that the world was ending, a Protestant minister who at first thought everyone was dead and figured it was God's judgment on man, and several dozen more.
The interviews left Lifton "profoundly and emotionally spent" and propelled him on a lifelong journey to understand how human psychology affects and is affected by historical events.
Over the course of his career, Lifton studied not only survivors of the atomic bombings but Auschwitz survivors, Vietnam war veterans and people who'd been subjected to repression by the Chinese government. He's served on the faculty of several universities, including Harvard University and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The COVID pandemic prompted him to reflect on what he'd learned about mass trauma and resilience – that telling stories about trauma, and even trying to influence policy, can often help people recover. Now 97, Lifton has just published his 13th book, Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the Covid-19 Pandemic.
He dedicates the book to "survivors who witness catastrophe and bring us hope." In two phone interviews, he expounded on his observations. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
