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ROBERT JAY LIFTON
characterized by intenninable exploration and flux, by a self-process
capable of relatively
easy
shifts in belief and identification - a life
style that is postmodern and in some ways post-Freudian. Protean
man has been created, not only by the dislocations I have men–
tioned, but by the revolution in mass media as well. I have in mind
I
the flooding of imagery produced by the extraordinary flow of post–
modem cultural influences over mass communication networks, so
that each individual can be touched, and at times significantly af–
fected, by virtually everything, and presented with endless partial
alternatives in every sphere of life, whether superficial messages, un–
digested cultural elements, or moving evocations.
These two concepts - symbolic immortality and Protean man–
provide a way of returning to where we began, to psychologists and
historians in the midst of a difficult struggle to create a new psycho–
history.
To be sure, the theory of symbolic immortality can hardly re–
solve the many-sided dilemmas of historical causation. But it does
seem to me a potentially useful way of looking at man in history,
most specifically as a framework for the study of revolutions and
of a variety of related problems of historical continuity and discon–
tinuity. The general point of view seems
also
to be given force by
the death-dominated times in which it emerges; history does much
to create the ways in which we, at any particular moment, decide
to study it.
Concerning the Protean style, I bring it up, not only as a way
of epitomizing contemporary experience, but for another reason as
well. Since I believe this style in some degree inhabits us all, I
as–
sume further that it affects our relationship to ideas - the ways
in which we respond to them, believe them, and attach them to our
sense of self. Protean man
is
continuously open to new ideas and
can move among them rather freely. His difficulty lies in giving last–
ing allegiance to any particular idea or idea-system. And I do not
believe that scholars are immune from precisely this pattern. Hence
the intellectual restlessness within most disciplines - the dissatisfac–
tion with established concepts, together with the failure of newer con–
cepts of equal authority to appear.
Those working in the area of psychohistory, where established
concepts hardly exist, are especially likely to encounter such rest-
