Obituary, Robert Jay Lifton, Queen of Canada, Legal, Astrology
"Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who peered into some of the darkest corners of contemporary history, including Hiroshima, the Holocaust and the Vietnam War, in search of lessons about individual and collective consciousness, died on Thursday at his home in Truro, Mass. He was 99.
His death was confirmed by his daughter, Natasha Lifton.
Dr. Lifton was fascinated by "the reaction of human beings to extreme situations," as the psychiatrist Anthony Storr wrote in The Washington Post in 1979. That interest began with his study of brainwashing by the Chinese Communists in the 1950s and continued through his analysis of the American fight against terrorism after Sept. 11, 2001. He wrote, helped write or edited some two dozen books and hundreds of articles about the meanings of what The Times Literary Supplement of London called "the seemingly incomprehensible."
Lifton's often somber quest was inspired and guided by mentors and friends like the psychologist Erik Erikson, the anthropologist Margaret Mead and the sociologist David Riesman.
It led him from troubled Vietnam veterans to the trial of Patricia Hearst, at which he was an expert witness on thought control — testifying, as he wrote in The New York Times in 1976, on "the crucial question of her voluntary or involuntary participation" in an armed bank robbery by a politically radical group that had abducted her. He examined the Japanese cult that released deadly sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995 and the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American troops at Abu Ghraib during the Iraq war.
Perhaps his most vivid work concerned the role of medical doctors in the Nazi genocide. Reviewing Dr. Lifton's book "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide" (1986), Bruno Bettelheim, the psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor, worried that the empathy Dr. Lifton displayed in illuminating the psyches of the killers might seem tantamount to forgiveness."
CBC: 'Queen of Canada' rearrested, charged with violating conditions of release
16 people were arrested in a raid yesterday, 13 imitation handguns seized.
"Romana Didulo, the so-called "Queen of Canada," was rearrested on Thursday a day after she and 15 of her followers were taken into custody and promptly released following a police raid on her cult's compound in rural Saskatchewan.
All 16 had been released without charges earlier on Thursday, the RCMP said in a statement, though five were released under certain conditions.
Didulo, 50, was rearrested for violating her conditions, as was 61-year-old Ricky Manz, the man who owns the former elementary school in Richmound, Sask., where Didulo and her followers have been living for two years, the Mounties said.
The Conversation: Astrology's appeal in uncertain times
"TikTok astrology accounts have exploded. Astrology apps have multiplied. Dating profiles feature sun signs. And forecasters predict the astrology market will grow from $12.8 billion in 2021 to $22.8 billion by 2031.
What's fueling the resurgence of a decidedly bunk belief system?
Sociologists Shiri Noy, Christopher P. Scheitle and Katie E. Corcoran decided to dig deeper into the trend. In a study, they found that LGBTQ people, women and Gen Zers are most likely to seek guidance in the stars.
The timing of the astrology boom makes sense. Trust in institutions like the media and universities has withered. Participation in organized religion has dropped. People feel overwhelmed with information and uncertain about the future."
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
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