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I've made some drastic edits and cut most of this text:
Basically this is a POV screed which bashes Lifton for having been cited by anti-cult groups, but shows little knowledge of his work. There are several big problems here: 1. This text entirely blurs the distinction between Lifton's theory of "thought reform" and the claims of anti-cult groups who have cited Lifton's work rather selectively. The latter are what the APA and ASA disavowed, and in fact Lifton himself has spoken against such misapplications of his work. 2. It is very misleading to mention Thought Reform without mentioning its conclusion, which was that such techniques generally failed in their grand ideological ambitions, managing only to coerce short-term behavior and/or produce general nervous breakdowns—which is what he claimed had happened to Patty Hearst. 3. The "Lifton has published many books..." sentence is also very misleading; Lifton's other books often make reference to "totalism" as a feature of authoritarian ideologies, but that has nothing to do with brainwashing or thought control; those are not the focus of his work.
I hope to return to the article soon and expand it to do more justice to the breadth of Lifton's writing. ← Hob 00:04, 2004 Dec 20 (UTC)
If you want to do justice to his work then erase the entire article.
His latest - Nazi Doctors - is pure bunk. History it ain't. Rehashed myths that make for a good movie script, fiction at best - no quotes, no research, ... but very saleable. Antecdotes can come from both sides - in WW2 buddies of severely wounded GIs left their friend where the German soldiers would take him to the "NAZI DOCTORS" to save his life. Document our atrocities before you take a flight of fancy - unless you are Wiki I guess.
I spent quite a lot of time recently on the variant of psychohistory which has become associated with the name of Lloyd deMause. The article is now a merged version of two separate articles. A link to Robert Jay Lifton is included in the section titled "Notable psychohistorians". There is also a disambiguation at the top of the page for Isaac Asimov's use of the term: psychohistory (fictional).
At present, this article mentions the Wellfleet Group briefly. I did a Google search and found that more material is available. Would any of the previous contributors object if I reworked the "Influences" section to expand on the activities of the Wellfleet Psychohistory Group? It's two sentences at the moment. If there was more material about the group, the section could be renamed "The Wellfleet Psychohistory Group." -- Bookish 17:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Hob, can you supply a reference to the edit that Lifton says mental coercion or thought reform/brainwashing is "only" able to effect short-term behavior? This goes completely against what I've studied on the subject. 208.78.72.18 ( talk) 21:24, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
The following sentence seems completely out of place, what book is it referring to? Can someone put it where it belongs?
"The term thought-terminating cliché was popularized by Robert Lifton in this book."
-- Dougher ( talk) 17:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Could the contents of the Holocaust section be integrated with the structure of the article so that it did not appear to be an advertising-like placement of propaganda or provocation? DCDuring ( talk) 13:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
I propose that Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, one of Lifton's best known books, be merged here. There is already a section here that is just a slightly abbreviated version of the other article. Readers interested in the book would benefit from the background on the author, and those interested in the author would get the full information on the book. BayShrimp ( talk) 14:34, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I suggest adding the following reference: Lifton, R. (2007). Destroying the World to Save It. in "Voices of Trauma". B. Drožđek and J. Wilson, Springer US: 59-86.
An additional comment: Lifton's contribution is chapter 3 of this book and is an extended psychohistorical analysis of the sect and the guru responsible for the March 20, 1995, Aum Shinrikyō sarin gas attach in Tokyo. The author mentions extensive work in Japan ("I have been talking to young Japanese for more than four decades..." on page 80 of the book) and, not knowing who Prof Lipton is, while reading this article, I had the distinct impression that he is an expert about Japan, probably fluent in the language. I have no idea if this is actually the case, but if yes, it seems to me that this is worth mentioning in this Wikipedia entry.
Benadampapa ( talk) 18:15, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
On 3 June 2015, User:Hmak06 ( contributions) added a section about:
This remained in the article for over two months, till I deleted it a few minutes ago.
Despite its claimed exemplariness (?), Kunzelmann's work isn't mentioned in the article on H. C. Artmann (although Hmak06 got it into the German-language article about him).
Hmak06 does appear keen on the importance of Heide Kunzelmann. Her fellow editors of de:WP are not all so impressed. And here, the same.
I've deleted the section from this article, as trivia and/or advertising. -- Hoary ( talk) 00:02, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
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Cheers. — cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 08:59, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Here is a link that confirms he has a M.D. degree. Let's add it. https://www.nymc.edu/school-of-medicine-som/som-alumni-profiles/robert-j-lifton/
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Robert Jay Lifton article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
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I've made some drastic edits and cut most of this text:
Basically this is a POV screed which bashes Lifton for having been cited by anti-cult groups, but shows little knowledge of his work. There are several big problems here: 1. This text entirely blurs the distinction between Lifton's theory of "thought reform" and the claims of anti-cult groups who have cited Lifton's work rather selectively. The latter are what the APA and ASA disavowed, and in fact Lifton himself has spoken against such misapplications of his work. 2. It is very misleading to mention Thought Reform without mentioning its conclusion, which was that such techniques generally failed in their grand ideological ambitions, managing only to coerce short-term behavior and/or produce general nervous breakdowns—which is what he claimed had happened to Patty Hearst. 3. The "Lifton has published many books..." sentence is also very misleading; Lifton's other books often make reference to "totalism" as a feature of authoritarian ideologies, but that has nothing to do with brainwashing or thought control; those are not the focus of his work.
I hope to return to the article soon and expand it to do more justice to the breadth of Lifton's writing. ← Hob 00:04, 2004 Dec 20 (UTC)
If you want to do justice to his work then erase the entire article.
His latest - Nazi Doctors - is pure bunk. History it ain't. Rehashed myths that make for a good movie script, fiction at best - no quotes, no research, ... but very saleable. Antecdotes can come from both sides - in WW2 buddies of severely wounded GIs left their friend where the German soldiers would take him to the "NAZI DOCTORS" to save his life. Document our atrocities before you take a flight of fancy - unless you are Wiki I guess.
I spent quite a lot of time recently on the variant of psychohistory which has become associated with the name of Lloyd deMause. The article is now a merged version of two separate articles. A link to Robert Jay Lifton is included in the section titled "Notable psychohistorians". There is also a disambiguation at the top of the page for Isaac Asimov's use of the term: psychohistory (fictional).
At present, this article mentions the Wellfleet Group briefly. I did a Google search and found that more material is available. Would any of the previous contributors object if I reworked the "Influences" section to expand on the activities of the Wellfleet Psychohistory Group? It's two sentences at the moment. If there was more material about the group, the section could be renamed "The Wellfleet Psychohistory Group." -- Bookish 17:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Hob, can you supply a reference to the edit that Lifton says mental coercion or thought reform/brainwashing is "only" able to effect short-term behavior? This goes completely against what I've studied on the subject. 208.78.72.18 ( talk) 21:24, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
The following sentence seems completely out of place, what book is it referring to? Can someone put it where it belongs?
"The term thought-terminating cliché was popularized by Robert Lifton in this book."
-- Dougher ( talk) 17:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Could the contents of the Holocaust section be integrated with the structure of the article so that it did not appear to be an advertising-like placement of propaganda or provocation? DCDuring ( talk) 13:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
I propose that Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, one of Lifton's best known books, be merged here. There is already a section here that is just a slightly abbreviated version of the other article. Readers interested in the book would benefit from the background on the author, and those interested in the author would get the full information on the book. BayShrimp ( talk) 14:34, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I suggest adding the following reference: Lifton, R. (2007). Destroying the World to Save It. in "Voices of Trauma". B. Drožđek and J. Wilson, Springer US: 59-86.
An additional comment: Lifton's contribution is chapter 3 of this book and is an extended psychohistorical analysis of the sect and the guru responsible for the March 20, 1995, Aum Shinrikyō sarin gas attach in Tokyo. The author mentions extensive work in Japan ("I have been talking to young Japanese for more than four decades..." on page 80 of the book) and, not knowing who Prof Lipton is, while reading this article, I had the distinct impression that he is an expert about Japan, probably fluent in the language. I have no idea if this is actually the case, but if yes, it seems to me that this is worth mentioning in this Wikipedia entry.
Benadampapa ( talk) 18:15, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
On 3 June 2015, User:Hmak06 ( contributions) added a section about:
This remained in the article for over two months, till I deleted it a few minutes ago.
Despite its claimed exemplariness (?), Kunzelmann's work isn't mentioned in the article on H. C. Artmann (although Hmak06 got it into the German-language article about him).
Hmak06 does appear keen on the importance of Heide Kunzelmann. Her fellow editors of de:WP are not all so impressed. And here, the same.
I've deleted the section from this article, as trivia and/or advertising. -- Hoary ( talk) 00:02, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to one external link on
Robert Jay Lifton. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If necessary, add {{
cbignore}}
after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{
nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}}
to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers. — cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 08:59, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Here is a link that confirms he has a M.D. degree. Let's add it. https://www.nymc.edu/school-of-medicine-som/som-alumni-profiles/robert-j-lifton/