Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1994, Page 72
Book Reviews
The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation. Robert Jay
Lifton. Basic Books, New York, 1993, 262 pages.
The Greek god Proteus was a shape shifter able to adapt himself to every changing
situation. His name makes an apt title for this book by Robert Jay Lifton about the human
person in a changing world. One will find here a psychological description of this changing
world followed by a description of the type of person whom Lifton labels protean. Then,
there is a comparison with the chief alternative to proteanism: that is, fundamentalism.
A reader may question, “What is a review of this book doing in the Cultic Studies Journal?”
The answer lies not merely in the respect that Lifton has earned as the premier authority on
totalitarian thought control. But also, the fact is that this book offers a clear and necessary
understanding of the mind of contemporary men and women so mysteriously susceptible to
manipulation.
Everyone who works at the “cult problem” is asked continually, “What sort of people are
they who are being recruited into these controlling groups?” And we respond, more often
than not, “There is no profile anyone can be caught.” One of the most useful leaflets that
we distribute is entitled, Could this happen to you? And it clearly gives the reader an
affirmative answer. Anyone is vulnerable.
Somewhere in the course of this book Lifton says that “the dream of the human heart is
that life may complete itself in some meaningful pattern before death.” That thought
suggests another: Could it be that this common aspiration contributes to the human
susceptibility to propagandists? Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, for example, turned dreams
into nightmares.
Further on, Lifton speaks of the characteristically human search for ethical commitment. He
says that “being responsible is what it is to be human.” Paradoxically, this idealism may also
leave one open to manipulation. Long ago Shakespeare sensed this when he had Polonius
advise Laertes, “See thou character...”
Toward the end of the book Lifton cites Vaclav Havel who, imprisoned at the time by the
then totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia, discovered in himself the struggle to break out of
the context of falsity. It was in prison that Havel strove as he says, “to describe and analyze
my fundamental experience of the world and of myself.”
Every reader of the Cultic Studies Journal is aware that the list of Lifton‟s publications is a
very long one—which includes the classic Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,
as well as The Nazi Doctors, The Future of Immortality, and a dozen more. Nevertheless,
Lifton admits that the material in this particular book has occupied his thinking for 30 years.
He focuses here on “the many-sided self of modern man who seems to be in constant
motion.” He reminds us that our present world is one “marked by breathtaking historical
change and instantaneous global communication.” In the midst of earth-shaking
occurrences such as the fall of Communism, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the
tragic events of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, each individual person “has been evolving a
sense of self appropriate to the restlessness and flux of our time, a time in which human
history has become more open, more dangerous, and more unpredictable.”
In Lifton‟s view, life is no longer governed by rites of passage and therefore modern men
and women must pursue a personal search for authenticity and meaning. In actuality, the
modern pilgrimage takes place between two poles, which we can label the protean and the
fundamentalist.
Book Reviews
The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation. Robert Jay
Lifton. Basic Books, New York, 1993, 262 pages.
The Greek god Proteus was a shape shifter able to adapt himself to every changing
situation. His name makes an apt title for this book by Robert Jay Lifton about the human
person in a changing world. One will find here a psychological description of this changing
world followed by a description of the type of person whom Lifton labels protean. Then,
there is a comparison with the chief alternative to proteanism: that is, fundamentalism.
A reader may question, “What is a review of this book doing in the Cultic Studies Journal?”
The answer lies not merely in the respect that Lifton has earned as the premier authority on
totalitarian thought control. But also, the fact is that this book offers a clear and necessary
understanding of the mind of contemporary men and women so mysteriously susceptible to
manipulation.
Everyone who works at the “cult problem” is asked continually, “What sort of people are
they who are being recruited into these controlling groups?” And we respond, more often
than not, “There is no profile anyone can be caught.” One of the most useful leaflets that
we distribute is entitled, Could this happen to you? And it clearly gives the reader an
affirmative answer. Anyone is vulnerable.
Somewhere in the course of this book Lifton says that “the dream of the human heart is
that life may complete itself in some meaningful pattern before death.” That thought
suggests another: Could it be that this common aspiration contributes to the human
susceptibility to propagandists? Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, for example, turned dreams
into nightmares.
Further on, Lifton speaks of the characteristically human search for ethical commitment. He
says that “being responsible is what it is to be human.” Paradoxically, this idealism may also
leave one open to manipulation. Long ago Shakespeare sensed this when he had Polonius
advise Laertes, “See thou character...”
Toward the end of the book Lifton cites Vaclav Havel who, imprisoned at the time by the
then totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia, discovered in himself the struggle to break out of
the context of falsity. It was in prison that Havel strove as he says, “to describe and analyze
my fundamental experience of the world and of myself.”
Every reader of the Cultic Studies Journal is aware that the list of Lifton‟s publications is a
very long one—which includes the classic Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,
as well as The Nazi Doctors, The Future of Immortality, and a dozen more. Nevertheless,
Lifton admits that the material in this particular book has occupied his thinking for 30 years.
He focuses here on “the many-sided self of modern man who seems to be in constant
motion.” He reminds us that our present world is one “marked by breathtaking historical
change and instantaneous global communication.” In the midst of earth-shaking
occurrences such as the fall of Communism, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the
tragic events of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, each individual person “has been evolving a
sense of self appropriate to the restlessness and flux of our time, a time in which human
history has become more open, more dangerous, and more unpredictable.”
In Lifton‟s view, life is no longer governed by rites of passage and therefore modern men
and women must pursue a personal search for authenticity and meaning. In actuality, the
modern pilgrimage takes place between two poles, which we can label the protean and the
fundamentalist.
