24
ROBERT
JAY
LIFTON
of their "straight" slogans and goals. And on an international scale,
I would say that, during the past decade, Russian intellectual life has
been enriched by a leavening spirit of mockery - against which the
Chinese leaders are now, in the extremes of their "Cultural Revolu–
tion," fighting a vigorous but ultimately losing battle.
Closely related to the sense of absurdity and the spirit of mockery
is another characteristic of protean man which can be called "suspicion
of counterfeit nurturance." Involved here is a severe conflict of depen–
dency, a core problem of protean man. I first began to think of the
concept several years ago while working with survivors of the atomic
bomb in Hiroshima. I found that these survivors both felt themselves
in need of special help, and resented whatever help was offered them
because they equated it with weakness and inferiority. In considering
the matter more generally, I found this equation of nurturance
with a threat to autonomy a major theme of contemporary life. The
increased dependency needs resulting from the breakdown of tradi–
tional institutions lead protean man to seek out replacements wherever
he can find them. The large organizations (government, business,
academic, etc.) to which he turns, and which contemporary society
more and more holds out as a substitute for traditional institutions,
present an ambivalent threat to his autonomy in one way; and the
intense individual relationships in which he seeks to anchor himself
in another. Both are therefore likely to be perceived as counterfeit.
But the obverse side of this tendency is an expanding sensitivity to
the unauthentic, which may be just beginning to exert its general
creative force on man's behalf.
Technology (and technique in general), together with science,
have special significance for protean man. Technical achievement of
any kind can be strongly embraced to combat inner tendencies toward
diffusion, and to transcend feelings of absurdity and conflicts over
counterfeit nurturance. The image of science itself, however, as the
ultimate power behind technology and, to a considerable extent, be–
hind contemporary thought in general, becomes much more difficult
to cope with. Only in certain underdeveloped countries can one find,
in relatively pure form, those expectations of scientific-utopian
deliverance from all human want and conflict which were charac–
teristic of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western thought. Prote–
an man retains much of this utopian imagery, but he finds it increas–
ingly undermined by massive disillusionment. More and more he
