In Memoriam: Robert Jay Lifton, MD

This obituary was prepared by John H. Krystal, MD, Chair, Yale Department of Psychiatry.

Robert Jay Lifton, MD, a member of the Yale Department of Psychiatry faculty from 1961 to 1984, died September 4, 2025, at the age of 99. A psychiatrist, historian, and social commentator, he was described as one of the nation’s leading intellectuals and a founder of the field of psychohistory.

At the time of his death, he was lecturer in psychiatry at Columbia University, distinguished professor emeritus of John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Lifton was born in the Crown Heights Section of Brooklyn, attended Cornell College at age 16 on a scholarship, and graduated from New York Medical College. At that time, he was drawn to the social circle of his father’s friend, Yip Harberg (“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”). There he met figures such as Paul Robeson, I.F. Stone, and Henry Wallace, who had been a U.S. Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt.

After completing Psychiatry Residency at SUNY Downstate, he enlisted in the Air Force. He and his late wife, Betty Jean, then were stationed in Japan. During this period, he began to study Chinese thought reform while in Korea and Hong Kong. This led to his first major publication in 1961, “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of ‘Brainwashing’.” After two years in Washington, he moved to Harvard from 1956-1961, where he worked closely with the psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson; the anthropologist, Margaret Mead; and the sociologist, David Riesman.

In 1961, Dr. Fritz Redlich, then chair of Psychiatry at Yale, recruited Lifton to Yale. While at Yale, Lifton had a deep and wide-ranging impact on psychiatry and American culture. In the 1960s, he, Erikson, Riesman, others from Yale including Peter Gay and Kai Erikson, and others outside of Yale including Daniel Ellsberg, Daniel Berrigan, Norman Mailer, and Philip Rief formed the “Wellfleet Psychohistory Group” and their discourse influenced his later work. This was time in the department when other faculty, such as the late sociologist Kenneth Kenniston, also broadly influenced American thought. Lifton rose through the ranks in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, becoming the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry.

Lifton addressed important issues that many found uncomfortable. Each of his books changed public discourse and helped us to better understand some of the most horrific events in human history. Some of his books included:

•Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China, published in 1961

•Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, published in 1968, which won the National Book Award in Science in 1969, highlighted the horror of nuclear war.

•History and Human Survival, published 1970, where he discussed psychological trauma and resilience, including a protean human capacity to reframe identity in changing social contexts.

•Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims nor Executioners, published in 1973. Among other things, this book documented his work with veterans in “rap groups”, an alternative clinical format that was particularly useful for veterans alienated by the VA at that time.

•The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, published in 2000, characterized the psychology of the physicians who contributed to the mass murders and medical experimentation in the Nazi Death Camps.

Lifton emerged as a public figure, with several television shows developing from his work. He contributed to the effort to create the PTSD diagnosis in DSM-III. He received numerous awards including the Gandhi Peace Award, the Bertrand Russell Society Award, and the Holocaust Memorial Award. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been awarded 12 honorary degrees. He was the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In 2024, the Yale Department of Psychiatry awarded him its Distinguished Alumni Award.

Lifton is survived by his partner, Nancy Rosenblum; his daughter, Natasha Lifton; his son, Kenneth Lifton; and four grandchildren.