Overview

• Lifton died Thursday at his home in Truro, Massachusetts, according to published obituaries.
• The 1986 study The Nazi Doctors documented physicians’ roles in the Holocaust after extensive interviews with SS doctors and survivors.
• His work ranged from Hiroshima survivors and Vietnam veterans to Chinese thought reform, terrorism, nuclear anxiety, Aum Shinrikyo, and capital punishment.
• He introduced influential concepts including survivor guilt, the protean self, malignant normality, psychic numbness, and doubling.
• Honors included a National Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award; he taught at Yale, Harvard, and CUNY, advocated for adding PTSD to the DSM, published Surviving Our Catastrophes in 2023, criticized Donald Trump, and is survived by two children, his partner Nancy Rosenblum, and four grandchildren.