How Psychic Numbing Weirdly Helps You… Or Doesn’t

If you read a lot of spy novels or watch a lot of action-adventure movies, you’re used to scenes involving at least the threat of torture. Now, we know torture might happen in real life. As a dramatic element, however, it has very limited appeal. This is especially true in shows that want a family-friendly rating.

How do writers deal with this? They bring us right up to the edge of the actual torture and maybe a little beyond because that’s the extent where the scene is useful. Then, they need to figure out a plausible way to remove the actors from the stage (and keep them intact). Most often, one of the characters says, “If you torture them too much, they’ll either tell you anything to stop the pain or just become numb to the pain.”

Since we’re all familiar with—or at least think we’re familiar with—the standard of employing torture, it’s easy to think this excuse isn’t true. Believe it or not, so-called “psychic numbing” is a very real thing. It occurs when suffering is so bad that those subjected to it, in effect, ignore it.

Robert Jay Lifton, then a professor of Psychology at Yale University, introduced the term in his 1967 book Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. Lifton offers an operational definition by quoting one atomic bombing survivor who says, “About life and death… How shall I put it? … I couldn’t have any reaction… I don’t think I felt either joy or sadness… My feelings about human death weren’t really normal… You might say I became insensitive to human death…”

The scale of the carnage in Hiroshima overwhelmed those who lived. Such awful experiences had gone from rare to common to expected. According to Lifton, “In the olfactory realm psychic numbing could enable one not only to accept the ‘smell of death’ but even to require it.”

In the early 1980s, I was fortunate enough to sit down with a dozen or so other students to talk to Professor Lifton about his studies on Hiroshima survivors. Although the seminar dealt with much broader issues, I fixated on the concept of psychic numbing.

Here’s why. At that time in my life, I had just fully transitioned from my pre-adult “Spock” phase to my adult “Kirk” phase. (That’s the easiest way for me to describe it.) It is the “Spock” phase that’s most relevant here. For those who are not familiar, Spock thrived on a non-emotional analytical level. (He was also “passive” as opposed to Kirk’s “active,” which accounts for my transition.) In a sense, when it came to emotion, Spock was “physically numb.” It was a condition I trained myself to replicate.

Much to the dismay of my children, I succeeded. Yes, they paid for my stoic adolescent indifference. When their teacher asked them to ask their parents how they responded to peer pressure when they were teenagers, I truthfully answered, “I ignored it.” My kids faithfully reported my response, to which the teacher said they failed to complete the assignment. She said they made it up. I repeatedly had to explain, no, they didn’t. Twice. By the third child, the teacher finally believed the response.

Oddly enough, Professor Lifton would have probably responded the same way the teacher did. After the class, I hung back and let the other students fawn over him. He seemed to enjoy it. He also seemed to just be going through the motions. It was as if he was blandly playing the part life had assigned him. As the host professor began shooing everyone out (the weekly seminar was held in the living room of his on-campus residence), I made my move. I asked Lifton how psychic numbing might be used as a competitive advantage. His demeanor told me he didn’t like the premise. His words said the same. To him, psychic numbing can only come from inhuman experiences (like those associated with either man-made or natural mass casualty events). Still, he liked the challenge of something different. He even allowed me a counterpoint. He didn’t agree with it, but I could tell he appreciated the thought.

Here’s my counterpoint. I believed then—and still believe today—that emotions get in the way of rational behavior. If you were to eliminate emotions, you could better accomplish the task at hand. This is precisely what Lifton described in Death in Life. He told how people sought to divorce themselves from the death and destruction all about them by diving into their work.

It’s a common response that doesn’t require a nuclear blast. Many people lose themselves in a task as a way to ignore bad news. They intentionally try to numb themselves to the misfortune they’ve just experienced. This gives them the time to distance themselves from the event.

And you know what they say about time: it heals all wounds.

This is how psychic numbing can act as a coping mechanism. It offers you an immediate defense when confronted with devastating events. That’s a good thing. Lifton pooh-poohed the idea.

But don’t blame him. At the time I spoke to him, the idea of psychic numbing had gone from Hiroshima and the Holocaust to the Vietnam War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. An undue emphasis on the negative reigned. With psychic numbing can come societal disengagement, a lack of empathy, and a general lack of accountability. Psychologists see this today in extreme cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

PTSD was just coming into view through Vietnam War veterans when I talked to Lifton, and he was at the forefront of that. A year after I spoke to him, Lifton published “Beyond Psychic Numbing: A Call to Awareness.” This paper adapted his research to current issues. It focused on the anxiety caused by preparing for nuclear war and the bad behavior that results from the associated psychic numbing. (In our seminar, we talked about this fear being the impetus for the post-World War II beatnik/hipster movement.)

In “Beyond Psychic Numbing,” Lifton focuses on the downside. Rather than acting as a defensive mechanism that permits us to act rationally without fear, he claims it was causing us to ignore the realities of nuclear war. Instead, he advocated we embrace the “hope” of eliminating nuclear armaments. In other words, rather than reducing fear through psychic numbing, Lifton wanted to stoke the fire of fear through what some might consider radical protests.

Remember, this was at the height of the Cold War. Lifton’s position conflicted with the diplomatic tactics of the Reagan administration. Arguably, had Lifton’s position prevailed, Reagan might not have successfully negotiated with the Soviets at Reykjavik, the resulting economic pressure might not have led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and America might not have won the Cold War.

Most of us don’t have the pressure of working in the stressful environment of geopolitics with the fate of the world in our hands. Still, our humble lives can benefit from a little psychic numbing. It can help us calmly reduce our expectations, peacefully carry on with our lives, and serenely wait for what it is we want.

We can get through the worst of times—or at least what seems like the worst of times—whether it be disappointment at work, a soured friendship, or a tight end who lets a sure first down pass slip through his eager arms.

Not to mention “wide right.”

No.

Really.

Don’t mention it.