Robert Jay Lifton’s Prescience about Identity

article

Jonathan M. Adler

Abstract

Among Lifton’s many enduring contributions, perhaps his most prescient was the 1993 book The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation. Here, Lifton described the dance between history and identity that was orchestrated by the reigning technologies of the time. This paper amplifies Lifton’s work on “the fundamentalist self” and “the protean self” and examines their reverberations in our current social media age.

Keywords:

fundamentalist self, identity, media revolution, psychohistory, The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation, Qi Wang, Robert Jay Lifton, social media

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About the author

Jonathan M. Adler

Jonathan M. Adler, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at Olin College of Engineering and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School. He is the editor of Personality and Social Psychology Review and Chief Academic Officer of Health Story Collaborative, a non-profit aimed at elevating storytelling in medicine. He is also a theater director and a playwright who has produced works off-Broadway. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his family and grew up spending summers in Wellfleet.

How to cite this article

Adler, J. M. (2026). Robert Jay Lifton’s prescience about identity. Clio’s Psyche, 33(2), 171-175.

https://doi.org/10.70763/9965b21b3968b6abc41143236b035c8c