Tag Archives: Robert Jay Lifton’s Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of ‘Brainwashing’ in China

The Owl of Minerva Takes Flight

This week, Abbie brings back a reader favorite. First shared in an earlier column, The Owl of Minerva Takes Flight explores what it means to understand history only in hindsight, and what we might see when we try. *** “The … Continue reading

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The Case of Patricia Hearst

The Case of Patricia Hearst Usually, when I write the weekly column for “Dear Abbie,” I’m in a reasonably upbeat state of mind, but I’m moved to write this one by anger and indignation. My outrage is prompted by Dana … Continue reading

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, autonomy, chivalry, cities, class, conformism, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, films, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, journalism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modernism, mortality, nineteenth-century, oppression, past and future, poetry, political, political movements, politics, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, reductionism, relationships, roles, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social climbing, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, status, status of women, suffering, terror, terrorism, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, time, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, violence, war, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment