# Jensen 1995 — The Culture Wars and Psychology: Robert Jay Lifton's *The Protean Self* *Lene Arnett Jensen, "The Culture Wars and Psychology: Robert Jay Lifton's *The Protean Self*," Culture & Psychology, Vol. 1, No. 3 (SAGE, 1995), pp. 393–401. Book review essay of Lifton's [[The Protean Self]] (Basic Books, 1993). Author was, at the time, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago's Committee on Human Development; later professor of psychology at Clark University and a leading developmental cultural psychologist (most cited for *Encyclopedia of Cultural Psychology*).* ## What the Paper Is A short critical review of Lifton's 1993 book that re-frames the book itself as an *expression* of the contemporary American culture wars rather than a neutral psychological analysis. Jensen draws on James Davison Hunter's *Culture Wars* (1991) — the canonical sociological account of the orthodox-vs.-progressivist split in late-20th-century American moral life — to read Lifton's protean/fundamentalist distinction as a culture-wars artifact: the protean self is the *progressivist* self, the fundamentalist self is the *orthodox* self, and Lifton's psychological language is doing political work the book does not acknowledge. The review is unusually clean methodologically: Jensen accepts that Lifton's protean self is real and well-described, accepts the value of his attempt to locate identity in change rather than stability, and accepts that fundamentalist worldviews differ structurally from progressivist ones. What she rejects is the *therapeutic asymmetry* — the move from "these worldviews differ" to "the protean is healthy, the fundamentalist is unhealthy." ## Core Arguments ### 1. The protean/fundamentalist distinction is about ideology, not psychology Lifton's surface claim is that the two selves differ in their *capacity for change*. Jensen's reading after 200 pages: the actual difference is in the *source of moral authority* (human-immanent vs. divine-transcendent) and the *political worldview* (progressivist vs. orthodox). Each self changes plenty *within* its worldview's parameters; what each self *cannot* easily do is adopt the other's worldview. Calling the inability to adopt your opponent's worldview a "failure of psychological capacity" is the move Jensen identifies as the culture-wars deployment of psychology. ### 2. Protean exemplars come from one side of the culture war Lifton's protean profiles are drawn (the sample size isn't disclosed) from "social activists" and "civic leaders" whose causes are uniformly liberal: pacifist, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-lesbian, feminist, socialist. Jensen does not dispute that these subjects exhibit fluid identity. She disputes that *fluidity itself* is what they share. What they share is a *progressive political worldview* that, like all worldviews, sets the parameters within which change happens. ### 3. The "Habits of the Heart" mapping Citing Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton's *Habits of the Heart* (1985), Jensen locates Lifton's protean self in the dominant ideology of white middle-class American progressivism — *expressive individualism* (the goal is to express one's inner identity to the fullest) plus *utilitarian individualism* (the goal is to maximize one's interests; society is an arena for individual pursuit). Lifton's protean exemplars repeatedly seek "authenticity," "self-expansion," "unbridled self-expression," and "doing what's right and complete for me." This is a culturally specific value system, not a value-neutral psychological capacity. ### 4. Fundamentalists *do* change Jensen's interviews with 70 self-identified fundamentalists across four Baptist churches document substantial personal change inside the fundamentalist worldview: people quit gossiping, change careers, become missionaries willing to "go anywhere, bear any burden, sever any tie," develop reproductive biotechnology, work as government statisticians regulating agricultural markets. The change is *bounded by the worldview* (fundamentalists do not generally become pro-choice feminists) but the same is true of Lifton's proteans (who do not generally become pro-life conservatives). Lifton's claim that fundamentalists are "unprotean" survives only if "protean" smuggles in the destination, not the capacity for movement. ### 5. The tendentious sourcing problem Jensen documents specific cases where Lifton's evidence does not bear the weight of his conclusions: - He concludes that fundamentalists "obliterate" humor with no specific evidence - He bases his account of Islamic fundamentalism on Salman Rushdie's *Satanic Verses* — fiction by a target of Islamic-fundamentalist persecution, hardly a neutral source - He misreads Nancy Ammerman's careful ethnographic *Bible Believers* (1987), pulling quotes about the "sheltering canopy" of fundamentalist belief and converting them into claims of ideological "totalization" Ammerman herself does not make - He extrapolates from Ammerman's quote that fundamentalists believe "those who are most faithful to God are singled out by Satan" into the conclusion that fundamentalists, when "encountering decency and kindness," will read these as Satan's manifestations — a leap Ammerman never authorizes ### 6. The methodological lesson Jensen's closing argument — and the reason this paper is in the KB — is the broadest: > The language of therapy and psychology often serves the purpose of passing moral judgment for the progressivist/Liftonian protean, the way that the language of faith serves that purpose for the orthodox/fundamentalist. In the social sciences where the therapeutic language is common and fundamentalism (in the orthodox sense) is rare, we might do well to acknowledge our own ideological assumptions. Otherwise psychology risks taking on the tone of buttons sold in college-town stores. The "button" reference is Jensen's opening device: she opened the review describing a college-town button reading "SECULAR HUMANIST: FUNDAMENTALISTS CAN GO TO HECK." Her conclusion is that Lifton's *Protean Self* is a more sophisticated version of the same button. ## Why This Matters for the RWKB The paper is methodologically load-bearing for three of the KB's analytic positions: **On the *Cult of Trump* debate.** [[Steven Hassan]]'s 2019 application of the BITE Model to the Trump movement is a much later instance of the same methodological problem Jensen names in 1995. The cultic-studies framework illuminates real structural features of the MAGA movement; it also risks doing exactly what Jensen flagged — using clinical language to deliver moral judgment on cultural-political opponents while claiming the authority of clinical neutrality. The KB's posture on Hassan ("use the framework analytically without uncritically adopting the cult-of-Trump conclusion") is, traced back, Jensen's posture on Lifton. **On the protean/fundamentalist mapping.** Lifton's framework — even with Jensen's critique applied — is genuinely useful for understanding the *psychological style* gap between contemporary American progressivism and the religious-right movements the KB tracks. The "fundamentalist self" Lifton describes is not a fair portrait of all fundamentalists, but it is a recognizable portrait of the totalist subset (the [[New Apostolic Reformation]] dominionist, the [[Christian Reconstructionism]], the QAnon adherent) who have moved beyond ordinary religious commitment into doomsday-totalist territory. Jensen's critique tells the analyst *where the line falls*: between fundamentalist worldview (legitimate religious commitment, capable of change within parameters) and totalist closure (the cult-adjacent endpoint). **On the asymmetry of clinical-political language.** The KB's broader research agenda — analyzing right-wing movements with clinical, psychological, and structural-pathology vocabulary — must repeatedly answer Jensen's question: *am I describing or am I judging?* The honest answer is usually "both," and Jensen's discipline is to keep that visible rather than letting clinical terminology hide the moral commitments behind it. ## Limitations of Jensen's Critique The paper has its own limits worth noting: - Jensen's 70-fundamentalist sample is geographically and denominationally narrow (Baptist churches in unspecified location); she does not engage seriously with Lifton's actual sources, only with his Ammerman misreadings - The paper was published before Aum Shinrikyo's March 1995 Tokyo subway attack and before Lifton's *Destroying the World to Save It* (2000) developed the apocalyptic-totalism framework that locates the actually-dangerous fundamentalisms (which Jensen's everyday-Baptist sample doesn't capture) - The "protean self as just one cultural worldview" critique applies to most psychological frameworks; it is not specifically devastating to Lifton These limits don't dissolve the methodological core. They locate it. ## Citation Jensen, L.A. (1995). The culture wars and psychology: Robert Jay Lifton's *The Protean Self*. *Culture & Psychology, 1*(3), 393–401. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X9513008 ## See Also - [[The Protean Self]] — the concept Jensen is reviewing - [[Robert Jay Lifton]] — the author of the book under review - [[Cults]] — Lifton's foundational frameworks for the field - [[Doomsday Cults]] — the framework Lifton developed *after* this paper, which addresses some of Jensen's critique by locating the actually-totalist subset - [[Christian Fundamentalism]] — the worldview Jensen is defending against tendentious portrayal - [[Christian Eschatology]] — the eschatological structure Jensen argues Lifton oversimplifies