The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 58, No. 24, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 15, 1971 Page: 4 of 8
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Psychiatrist Lifton analyzes effects of wartime atrocity
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by ANDY HURLEY and
CHARLES MAYNARD
"Living in Atrocity" was the
title of a speech given Tues-
day afternoon in the RMC by
Robert Lifton, professor
of psychiatry at Yale Uni-
versity. Dr. Lifton's work
in the recent past has cen-
tered on a study of two
groups of people whose lives
have been influenced by a con-
frontation with atrocity. In the
early sixties, Lifton spent six
months interviewing and study-
ing victims of the atomic bomb-
ing of Hiroshima and more re-
cently he has been involved with
Vietnam Veterans Against the
War and with individuals who
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IT HAS TO Bt SEEN TO BE BE L It VE O
have returned from Vietnam
His general approach is that
of a psycho-historian in the line
of Erick Erikson. He is con-
cerned, like Erikson and others
such as David Halberstang
with "the man in history,"
with the way the man changes
history and with the way being
conscious of living in a histori-
cal moment (and the moment
itself) changes the man. His
way is not that of the historian
standing above the events of
history. Rather Lifton is con-
cerned to preserve his "moral
passion," his sense that one
cannot divorce himself from his
ethical biases; and so he re-
ports facts and reacts to them,
In his speech, Dr. Lifton de-
veloped a system of explana-
tion for the observed reactions
of Hiroshima victims and of
Vietnam veterans. He sees 1945
as a kind of turning point in
history, for it was then that the
first atomic bomb was used
against men, and then that man
first encountered unreality in
the form of meaningless or ab-
surd death, of impersonal war
leading to total devastation, of
unjustifiable and remote anni-
hilation. It was 1945 that made
inescapably present to men the
consciousness of living on the
brink of not-living, of living at
the whim of an incomprehensi-
ble power.
For Lifton, it was 1945 that
brought to the world the im-
possibility of imagining, the
atrocity of death in war. Grotes-
queness — physical and on-
tological — characterizes war
now, and deaths in war. Lifton
saw in Hiroshima four stages
of what he terms as death-im-
mersion, each stage partaking
of the psychology of the gro-
tesque. The four stages are:
1) Recollection of the ex-
perience of Hiroshima,
which was horrible and
incomprehensible, and
psychically painful in a
way that forced
2) Psychic numbing. This
numbing, or desensitiza-
tion effect came (about as
a response to the inabil-
ity to react commensu-
ately to the experience as
it unfolded before the
eyes of the victims.
3) Residual guilt, which
results from seeing* the
multitude of deaths and
finding oneself alive, and
encountering a statistical
probability of increased
susceptibility to leukem-
ia or other kinds of can-
cer.
4) Struggle to find mean-
ing for experience. This
last stage is perhaps the
hardest for the victims,
and somehow the least
productive, for in the fall
of the atomic bomb,
which came as a moment
of apocalypse without
explanation or warning,
meaning -would itself have
to be apocalyptic, and yet
is not felt to be present.
For Lifton, psychic numbing
is the most interesting phenom-
enon which resulted from the
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Hiroshima bombing. This numb-
ing led to depressions/languish
which covered years, withdraw-
al from daily commerce and
interactions. He admitted that
part of the cause of his inter-
est in this psychic numbing was
his personal experience inter-
viewing the victims. He found
that after a few days he had
desensitized himself to the har-
rors being related to him and
could tolerate the recitals with
more calm, less disgust, than
he had for the first two or
three days. He felt it natural,
then, that he should turn to a
study of the Vietnam War and
My Lai in particular when the
story begun to be told and
when the veterans began . re-
turning in large numbers.
For Lifton, the same phe-
nomena he encountered in Hiro-
shima also characterize the
Vietnam experience in America.
He sees America as living un-
der a set of national illusions:
that we are defending a dem-
ocratic government; that we are
fighting an illegal revoltion-
ary force; that Vietnamization
can work; that American virtue
is the rationale behind the war,
and is sufficient justification
for it.
These mythic notions ("my-
thic" understood pejoratively)
are being "seen through" by
the G.I. in Vietnam now. G.I.'s
see the corruption that perm-
eates Vietnamese government
and society. They cannot find
the enemy, because he is ev-
erywhere and nowhere. They
realize that the Vietnamese can-
not or will not fight. They sub-
stitute for the virtue of being
an American, respectable and,
above all, a winner, the anti-
virtue of the body-count.
In this.way, My Lai typifies
American involvement in Viet-
nam. In the conventional war,
when a man's buddy is killed,
he can compensate by retribu-
tion — killing the enemy, be-
ing courageous, a hero. And
when a man's buddy is killed
in Vietnam, much the same sur-
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vivor reaction sets in, but with
the difference that there is no
palpable enemy to confront.
The soldier becomes "desper-
ately hungry for an enemy,"'
And My Lai results, in which
"the enemy" is lined up and
confronted in a "battle." This
incident is typical not statisti-
cally, but psychologically, of
Vietnam, for it is the manifesta-
tion of an illusion about the na-
ture of war and the Vietnam
war specifically. It is bodies that
count, and many bodies were
produced at My Lai.
A grotesque competition be-
tween companies and platoons
is the result of the stress on
bodies as an evaluative criterion.
Lifton estimates ("conservative-
ly") that one and a half mil-
lion civilians have been killed
due to this stress. He charac-
terizes this as an "atrocity-
producing situation" which does
not require psychological aber-
ration, but rather is endemic to
the kind of conflict being car-
ried on.
For these reasons, no out-
come to the Calley trial could
have dealt fairly with the ques-
tion of atrocity in Vietnam. The
American public is confused
about the case for several rea-
sons: because he is seen as a
scapegoat, and therefore un-
justly prosecuted; because, in
the minds of Americans, the
change from the perception of
America as virtuously involved
to America involved in an evil
way is a difficult mental transi-
tion to make; because the ques-
tion of responsibility is a
thorny one, not easily answered.
The veteran is a new kind of
war survivor, a survivor who
must find a meaning for his
participation in this confusing
conflict, a justification. On re-
turning, he is filled with a rage
which the Vietnam Veterans
Against the War organization
attempts to channel. They at-
tempt to face the feeling of
taintedness that the veterans
feel, the ostracism they are
forced into by an unsympathetic
or even antipathetic populace.
Their rage is strongest against
the "chaplains and shrinks"
who try to help the men adjust
to the absurdity of the situation,
to legitimize it or spiritualize
it. The men feel that they have
been victimized by the Vietnam
war.
Lifton ended his speech not
with any kindness for Amer-
ica or for us in the audience,
but with a quotation from
Theodore Roethke which might
offer a ray of optimism: "In
a dark time, the eye can see."
He hoped for the possibility
of awareness of the existence
of atrocity and for an end to it.
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Mauldin, John. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 58, No. 24, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 15, 1971, newspaper, April 15, 1971; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245105/m1/4/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.