Turning Swords Into Plowshares: Robert Jay Lifton and Vamık Volkan

The biblical prophet Isaiah wrote of a time when “they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (2:4). Unfortunately, this day has not yet presented itself to mankind. In our modern times we still wage wars and suffer the consequences of our actions. Psychiatrists Robert Jay Lifton (1926-) and Vamık Volkan (1932-) are among those dedicating their lives to alleviate humankind from our destructive tendencies. Both these individuals use their personal and professional skills to further aid our collective understanding of war and the mechanisms in which individuals and nations use in justifying, preparing, and engaging in war. They, especially Volkan, have gone beyond understanding conflict to work to lessen enmities leading to warfare.

Their proactive approach relies heavily on psychoanalysis, history, and other disciplines in pursuing the “why” of war with great depth and vigor. Each man has published extensively and built communities of scholars to further the process of peacemaking: Lifton left his Sterling Professor-

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ship of Psychiatry at Yale to found and head The Center for the Study of Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College (1985-2003) of CUNY before retiring to a Senior Lectureship at Harvard. At his summer home on Cape Cod he continues the Wellfleet psychohistory meetings started in the 1960s around Erik Erikson and his work (This by invitation only group, represent the oldest continuous psychohistory organization). As a psychiatry professor at the University of Virginia, Volkan created and headed the Center for Mind and Human Interaction (1987-2002) whose publication was Mind and Human Interaction: Windows Between History, Culture, Politics, and Psychoanalysis (1987-2003). Each man has written or edited well over 20 books.

Robert Jay Lifton

As a United States Air Force military psychiatrist in Japan in 1951 Lifton, enjoying the novelty of being in a foreign land, had his personal and professional interests piqued by the issue of the coping mechanisms of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear survivors, leading to the publication of Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967) based on the work he stared in 1951-3. Its principal hypothesis is the notion of the “survivor mission.” He suggests that if an individual is going to come to terms with the horrors of extreme suffering (as in the Holocaust and at Hiroshima), the individual at some inner level decides to become a “survivor” of that holocaust and take on the “survivor mission” to contribute to something beyond it. Lifton refined his theories concerning the survivor mission with his work on Vietnam, and amidst controversy produced Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans—Neither Victims nor Executioners (1973). In it his focus on atrocity producing situations, different forms of guilt, and varying forms of recovery for the “survivor” are perhaps his most important contributions to the field of psychohistory.

His discussion of “atrocity producing situations” is

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vividly highlighted by the in-depth interviews and the use of support groups “rap groups” with their emphasis on informal discussions monitored by health professionals, which composed the primary sources for the research conducted in Home from the War. In it, Dr. Lifton describes the various preconditions for situations likely to produce atrocities. The essential component is the “dehumanizing the enemy.” The U.S. soldiers viewed the Vietnamese enemies as “sub-human” cowards who hid among and behind the local populations and who were unmanly (as when men friends held hands with each other). This dehumanization culminated in American soldiers partaking in horrible acts of violence toward the Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

The psychohistorian describes the consequences of these actions on the soldiers in Vietnam, the “post-slaughter rationalizing” and varying forms of guilt. He illustrates the use of “static guilt” vs. “animating guilt” and how the latter allows for personal growth while the former suppresses it. He utilizes his concept of the “protean man” to describe returning Vietnam veterans as individuals shifting in attention and identification with causes. He joined with many other health professionals, such as the psychohistorian Chaim Shatan, in helping returning Vietnam veterans with personal struggles centered on denial, guilt, and reentry into civilian life. Lifton identifies situations that can culminate in atrocities and the routes that the participant may use to rationalize his actions. More importantly, he offers a solution or method of dealing with these issues through his theory concerning the varying forms of guilt and how to identify and deal with them in a safe and healthy manner. Beyond theory, at his Center on Violence and Human Survival Robert Jay Lifton fruitfully brought together professionals from many fields including governmental officials and United Nations peacekeepers.

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Vamık Volkan

The unique experiences of Vamık Volkan’s birth and childhood as a Turkish national on the predominantly Greek island of Cyprus left him with vivid memories of the subtleties of group identifications and enmities, as well as a desire to bridge these centuries-old conflicts. Professor Volkan has produced valuable theories concerning the application of individual Freudian psychology to the dynamics of group psychology. Specifically, he has hypothesized that the structures individuals learn as children and adolescents are simply not static, but are quite fluid and the underlying principles of externalization, projection, and displacement all have identifiable applications in the dynamics of group psychology.

Arising from the coping mechanisms mentioned above, Volkan theorized that the group, (e.g., nation, ethic minority/majority) when presented with external danger such as war, will inevitably be represented by an “object” (i.e., external representations of the self) or conflict in which case the group will pit “good objects” (e.g., national flag, familiar foods, clothing) against “bad objects” (e.g., immigrants, foreign customs). This is done in order to justify war via the protection of the good objects which the individual and group have a vested interest in, while simultaneously ridding the group of the bad objects. According to Volkan, the beginning of the conceptualization of a societal enemy is undertaken when “bad objects” are identified and targeted, which strengthens the group’s cohesion while further dehumanizing the enemy.

The targets are also important since they are layered so that the group can attack via non-violent methods or at the extreme end engage in physical confrontations, all pointing to the crucial theory which Volkan highlights as “symbol formulation” (the need to have enemies as external stabilizers and conversely the need to have allies as internal stabilizers). Volkan also addresses the issues concerning neighboring

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countries where the external representations of differences are exaggerated and magnified in a process Freud referred to as the “narcissism of minor differences” (e.g., trivial differences in clothing, accents, foods, etc.). This maintains a perceived psychological gap between “us” and “them.” Volkan, having had personal experience in working with various nations and their ideological differences (e.g., U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the 1980s), has also identified the risk that national leaders pose to their nations based on their personal attributes. For example, charismatic leaders tend to be dangerous while transactional leaders tend to lead by consensus. Prior to his retirement, for approximately two decades Dr. Volkan traveled to centers of potential conflict, or “hot spots,” in Asia and Europe to work to diffuse the hatreds which so often spill over into war. He wrote about these issues in The Need to Have Enemies & Allies: From Clinical Practice to International Relationships (1988) and numerous other volumes.

Conclusion

Vamık Volkan and Robert Jay Lifton are both vital contributors to the field of psychohistory due to their decades of work, through which they have combined their professional skills as medical doctors and psychoanalysts with a historical approach to the “why” of war. They do not merely identify the roots of the problem, but also provide the reader with comprehensive theories as to the possible approaches in dealing with war and mankind’s obsession with it through their various works. Their psychohistorical approach to war is aimed at making our world a less dangerous place, helping the diplomat, the policy maker, and the citizen in further understanding how to bring about the day when our swords will no longer be needed.

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