Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psychology. Show all posts

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Why do we drive as we do?

"insight into the whys and wherefores of American drivers," writes book-a-day calendar

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Good people do evil things

GN owns, not HW or PN.

Lifton is perhaps best known as the author of “Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima,” published in 1967, which received a National Book Award.

During the Korean War, Lifton served as a psychiatrist in the Air Force, where his duties included interviewing returning American P.O.W.’s subjected to psychological manipulation by their captors — what the Chinese called “thought reform” and the United States denounced as “brainwashing.” Discharged in 1954, he undertook his first research project in Hong Kong, where he interviewed Chinese refugees who had undergone Maoist mind conditioning in Communist prisons. All his subsequent research was devoted to “trying to make use of my background as a clinician to identify psychological experiences of people caught up in historical storms.” He has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of “psychic numbing,” the way some people can be oblivious to the sufferings of others. This, Lifton says, facilitates the commission and acceptance of atrocities. At bottom, “Witness to an Extreme Century” is a book about scholarship and activism, and the links between the two.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Speaking treason fluently : anti-racist reflections from an angry white male.

In this absorbing compilation of essays, Wise (White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son), an anti-racist activist and writer, continues to plumb white privilege, racism and responsibility.