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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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500 |
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| THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE
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[subse…] quent symbolization over the course of
childhood and adulthood, intellectual and ethical principles become combined
with images of body and person. Pitfalls along the way are various forms of
dissociation and doubling resulting in a “disembodied self” in which
these various elements no longer cohere. Our understanding of the embodied self
includes a continuous symbolic or formative process, with constant creation and
re-creation of images and forms; an awareness of larger social and historical
projects around one; and a capacity to confront the idea of one’s own
death as related to broader principles of life continuity or larger human
connectedness. A sense of the embodied self enables us to say, with William
Barrett, “We are always more than any machine we may construct.”140
It must be emphasized that the problem
is never merely, or even primarily, one of individual psychology. Collective
currents either press large numbers of people in the direction of dissociation
and disembodiment or, in contrast, encourage or even nurture the more
integrated, embodied self. Individuals nonetheless vary in degrees of what I am
calling embodiment, and therefore in the capacity to avoid the destructive
forms of doubling associated with victimization and genocide.
Prophylaxis against the genocidal directions of the self, therefore,
must always include critical examination of ideologies and institutions in
their interaction with styles of self-process. We have seen this to be true in
special ways for professionals. For instance, the physician with a strong sense
of embodied self has a greater chance to hold on to universal healing
principles in the face of ideological pressures to the contrary. He or she
would be less susceptible than were most Nazi doctors either to a technicized
professional identity (“I am a professional healer and nothing else, in no
way responsible for Auschwitz; so I go along with it and heal when I can”)
or to an ideologized professional identity (“As a doctor to the Volk
and a cultivator of genes, my participation in killing is in the service of
healing the Nordic race”). But if the destructive ideological and
behavioral pressures are sufficiently great, virtually any professional self
may be susceptible to moving in genocidal directions.
The professional
does well to prepare for such exigencies by maintaining a balance of what I
call advocacy and detachment, of clear ethical commitment and technical skill.
A physician’s “calling” would include commitment under all
conditions to Hippocratic principles of healing. The embodied self requires
both constant critical awareness of larger projects demanding allegiance and
equally pervasive empathy, fellow feeling, toward all other human beings.
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THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
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Back |
Page 500 |
Forward |
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