Robert Lifton: Toward Well-Being, Understanding Civic Stress and Civic Abuse

article

Robin Freeman

Abstract

Informed by Lifton and Erikson, this essay describes harmful socialized patterns as civic abuse. It posits that psychological clinicians, historians, and researchers are uniquely positioned to treat this syndrome like other social-scale abuses that have been recognized and mitigated.

Keywords:

attachment, civic abuse, civic stress, doubling, Erik H. Erikson, neuroscience, nuclearism, psychohistory, Robert Jay Lifton, social policies, trauma, urban planning, witnessing

This article is currently unavailable to the public due to its recent publication.

To access it, please become a member of the Psychohistory Forum.

Membership page

About the author

Robin Freeman

Robin Freeman, MA, is Co-Director of the David R. Brower, Ronald V. Dellums Institute for Sustainable Policy Studies and Chair emeritus of the Environmental Management and Technology program at Merritt College in Oakland, California. He may be contacted at .

Steve Rauh, MSW, is Co-Director of the Brower, Dellums Institute and Co-Founder of the Conference on the Fate of the Earth, as well as a therapist and an Executive Director of the Manitoba Centre for Families in Transition. He may be contacted at .

How to cite this article

Freeman, R., & Rauh, S. (2026). Robert Lifton: Toward well-being, understanding civic stress and civic abuse. Clio’s Psyche, 33(2), 198-204.

https://doi.org/10.70763/f6a673f09493afcd8b129a0bcf1cd5bc