Psychohistory Forum Meeting
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2026
Time: 12:00–3:00 pm ET
Format: Virtual Live
RSVP is required (see the RSVP form below)
NB: Zoom link will be provided to you after you complete the RSVP form.
About the Meeting
Robert Jay Lifton (1926–2025) was one of the most influential psychohistorical thinkers of the past century, and a major voice in understanding violence, trauma, totalism, and human resilience. This Psychohistory Forum meeting will be devoted to celebrating his life and carefully evaluating his legacy — as a clinician of the human condition, a pioneering psychohistorian, and a moral witness to some of the darkest and most consequential events of modern history.
We will bring together several speakers to reflect on Lifton’s work, its impact on their own scholarship and practice, and its continuing relevance for understanding today’s world.
Lifton’s Importance and Legacy
From Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China (1961), which introduced “totalism” and “brainwashing” into public discourse, to his late reflections in Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic (2023), Lifton consistently confronted the urgent moral and existential challenges of modern life.
Over more than six decades, his work traversed:
At the heart of these inquiries was a recurring question:
How do individuals and societies face death, catastrophe, and radical threat without losing their humanity — and sometimes even discovering new forms of meaning and renewal?
Lifton’s legacy is also organizational and communal. As leader of the Wellfleet Group (1966–2015), he convened generations of psychohistorians, clinicians, and scholars in a sustained dialogue about violence, history, and human survival. At the Center for the Study of Violence and Human Survival (1986–2002), he gathered public intellectuals and researchers to grapple with the psychology of war, genocide, atrocity, and the potential for repair. Though often cautious about the label “psychohistory,” he remained — after Erik Erikson — its most recognized public face.
This meeting will honor both the person and the method: Lifton’s way of listening, interviewing, and bearing witness; his concepts such as totalism, psychic numbing, doubling, symbolic immortality, the survivor mission, the protean self, nuclearism, and the climate swerve; and his insistence on a morally engaged, empirically grounded psychohistory.
The program will feature a video montage of Robert Jay Lifton’s presentations at various conferences, as well as several speakers:
– Inna Rozentsvit: Robert Jay Lifton and the Moral Method of Psychohistory.
– David Lotto: Robert Lifton – An Appreciation from a Participant in the Wellfleet Seminars.
– Charles B. Strozier: Robert Jay Lifton as Friend and Mentor/Guru and his Place in Psychohistory.
– Jeffrey B. Rubin: Taking Lifton Seriously: Psychoanalytic Listening and the Unfinished Project of Moral Witnessing.
– Paul H. Elovitz: Psychobiographical Reflections on Robert Jay Lifton and His Impact on Psychohistory.
There will be plenty of time for discussion and the Q&A.
Connection to the Call for Papers
This meeting is part of a broader project to honor Robert Jay Lifton’s life and work, including the Spring 2026 special issue of Clio’s Psyche devoted to his legacy.
We encourage attendees to:
Call for Papers: Honoring and Remembering Robert Jay Lifton (1926–2025)
https://psychohistoryforum.com/call-for-papers-honoring-and-remembering-robert-jay-lifton-1926-2025/
Symposium Article: “Robert Jay Lifton and the Moral Method of Psychohistory” by Inna Rozentsvit
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ihtqsdk8302hutsvpawvv/Robert-Jay-Lifton-and-the-Moral-Method-of-Psychohistory-by-I.-Rozentsvit-Peer-reviewed-for-Commentaries-11-22-25.pdf?rlkey=wdwl36kgp84404t9yig74wxut&dl=1
Who Should Attend?
– Anyone for whom Lifton’s work has shaped thinking, teaching, activism, or clinical practice
– Psychohistorians and historians
– Psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and mental health professionals
– Students and scholars of trauma, genocide, and political violence
– Those interested in nuclearism, climate anxiety, and apocalyptic movements
RSVP form
We look forward to your participation in what promises to be an insightful and reflective session on the intersection of personal experience and psychohistorical inquiry.
Sincerely yours,
Inna (inna.rozentsvit@gmail.com) and Paul (cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com)
The Psychohistory Forum is a scholarly organization dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of the interaction of psychological and historical forces. For more information about the Forum and Clio’s Psyche, please explore their websites.
Inna Rozentsvit, MD, PhD, MBA, MSciEd, is a neurologist and neurorehabilitation specialist trained in psychoanalysis. She serves as Associate Editor of Clio’s Psyche and Associate Director of the Psychohistory Forum. Dr. Rozentsvit is founder and neuropsychoeducator at the non-profit NeurorecoverySolutions, Inc., Programs Director at the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and Editor-in-Chief of the ORI Academic Press, MindMend Publishing Co., and MindConsiliums, the interdisciplinary journal. She may be contacted at inna.rozentsvit@gmail.com or www.innarozentsvit.com.
David Lotto, PhD, is a veteran psychologist, psychoanalyst, and psychohistorian who is a longtime member of the Psychohistory Forum. He practices psychotherapy in Western Massachusetts, edits The Journal of Psychohistory, and may be reached at dlotto@nycap.rr.com.
Charles B. Strozier is a Professor Emeritus of History, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, The City University of New York; a Training and Supervising Analyst at the TRISP Institute and Foundation; and a practicing psychoanalyst. He is the author of the definitive biography, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (2001), and more recently the lead author with several others of The New World of Self: Heinz Kohut’s Transformation of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (2022). He is also the co-author of The Fundamentalist Mindset (2010); and the author of Apocalypse: The Psychology of Fundamentalism in America (1994); Until the Fires Stopped Burning: 9/11 and the World Trade Center Disaster in the Words of Survivors and Witnesses (2011); two books on Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln’s Quest for Union: A Psychological Portrait (1982, revised edition in 2001) and Your Friend Forever, A. Lincoln (2016); and several other books and close to 100 articles. He is the lead author of two current books in progress, the first with Orly Shoshani, Idealization: Psychological, Spiritual, and Political Meanings, and the other with David Terman, et.al, is How Self Psychology Actually Works. He can be reached at Chuck@charlesbstrozier.com.
Jeffrey B. Rubin, PhD, practices psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy in New York City and North Salem, NY. He teaches at The Object Relations Institute of NY, The American Institute of Psychoanalysis, and the C. G. Jung Institute of NY. He is considered one of the leading integrators of the Western psychotherapeutic and eastern meditative traditions. A Sensei in the Nyogen Senzaki and Soen Nakagawa Rinzai Zen lineage and the creator of meditative psychotherapy, a practice that he developed through insights gained from decades of study, teaching and trying to helping people flourish, he is the author of eight books (Psychotherapy Case Studies: Escaping the Prison You Didn’t Know You Were In, Meditative Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Pathways to Healing and Transformation, A Psychoanalysis for Our Time; The Good Life, Psychotherapy and Buddhism, The Art of Flourishing, Meditative Psychotherapy, and Practicing Meditative Psychotherapy). He has taught at various psychoanalytic institutes and meditation and yoga centers and lectured around the country and abroad on psychoanalysis and psychoanalysis and Buddhism/meditation. Jeffrey is most interested in a pluralistic psychoanalysis that respects the genuine insights and practices from each analytic tradition and draws on the best that has been thought and said from all psychoanalytic schools as well as history, art, literature, anthropology and anything that illuminates the human condition. His pioneering approach to therapy was featured in the New York Times Magazine:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/
Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, became a psychohistorian while teaching at Temple University in the late 1960s. began organizing scholarly meetings when he started as a faculty member at Ramapo College and then as convener of the Institute for Psychohistory Saturday Workshops (1975-1982). In 1982 he founded the Psychohistory Forum to nurture psychohistorical research and continues to lead its Executive Council. In 1994 he created Clio’s Psyche (cliospsyche.org) to publish its scholarship, of which he is Editor-in-Chief. Prof. Elovitz is a historian, psychoanalytic researcher, and author of about 400 publications, covering presidential psychobiography, teaching, documenting the field of psychohistory, and much more. After taking his doctoral degree in history, he trained and practiced as a psychoanalyst, and in 2019 was made the first Research Psychoanalyst by the New Jersey Institute for Psychoanalysis. Elovitz is the author of The Making of Psychohistory, editor of The Many Roads of the Builders of Psychohistory and edited or wrote eight other books. He is a founding member and past president of the International Psychohistorical Association (1978-) who serves on its leadership council and presents at all meetings. Prof. Elovitz was a founding faculty member at Ramapo College who previously taught at Temple, Rutgers, and Fairleigh Dickinson universities. He may be contacted at cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com.
