From Hiroshima to the Nazi Doctors

Abstract

When we gather as an intellectual and moral community in connection with our concern about traumatic events and posttraumatic responses, we seek to have good emerge from the bad. Although I feel this is especially true in my work, which involves so many destructive, indeed evil, events, I think it is also true for all of us. The logical aspect of that paradox for us is that, as we pursue our work, we seek the moment when our work is less necessary. We seek and work toward the cessation of destructive events on a massive scale, such as the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, or Hiroshima. As a result, we must keep a watchful eye on perpetrators, even as we pursue our work to help victims and survivors. At the same time, we have to keep a sharp moral and psychological distinction between victimizers and victims. In that regard, I refer to my own study of Vietnam veterans, Home from the War that I subtitled Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners (Lifton, 1973/1992). This title reflects my understanding, as I began to work with Vietnam veterans, that they had been cast into the two roles that Albert Camus warned us never to assume. Those with whom I worked subsequently struggled courageously to extricate themselves from the roles of executioner and of victim. One does not want to be a victim any more than one wants to be a victimizer.