Robert Jay Lifton

Robert Jay Lifton is a pioneer in the field of psychohistory. He is particularly interested in the effect of momentous historical events on individuals' psyches. He also draws bird cartoons.

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton (1926-) was born in New York City, attended Cornell University, and received his medical degree from New York Medical College in 1948. After his internship and residence he became  an Air Force psychiatrist serving in the United States, Japan, and Korea from 1951-53. He has worked at Harvard since 1956, and has also worked at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he helped to found the Center for the Study of Human Violence. Among his books are The Protean Self; Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation (1993) and Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (1995). and an economically sustainable world.