In early psychoanalytic thought, narcissism was - and still, of course, is - self-love. The early psychoanalysts used to talk of libido directed at t…

- Robert Jay Lifton

The one-sided exploitation of existential guilt is thought reform's trump card, and perhaps its most important source of emotional influence over its…

- Robert Jay Lifton

With the nuclear threat we know that if sufficient weapons are used, human civilization - all of humankind - could be extinguished literally by "nucl…

- Robert Jay Lifton

While Donald Trump doesn't have any systematic ideology, he does have a narrative, and in that narrative, America was once a great country, it's been…

- Robert Jay Lifton

In sum, doubling is the psychological means by which one invokes the evil potential of the self. That evil is neither inherent in the self nor foreig…

- Robert Jay Lifton

For anyone with the traits - of feeling himself victimized, of seeking to be the strongman who resolves everything, yet sees truth only through his o…

- Robert Jay Lifton

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are …

- Robert Jay Lifton

There is a movement of more people recognizing global warming as a danger, recognizing the human contribution to global warming, recognizing the nece…

- Robert Jay Lifton

There's an all-enveloping destructiveness in Donald Trump's character and in his psychological tendencies. But I've focused on what professionally I …

- Robert Jay Lifton