Employees and volunteers of torture treatment programs have issued an extremely powerful Open Letter to American Psychological Association President Sharon Brehm and APA Director of Ethics Stephen Behnke. Not surprisingly, those who work with torture victims are not happy with APA’s refusal to take firm action against psychologists who aid those who engage in torture and abuse in America’s detention facilities.
Sharon Brehm, PhD President Stephen Behnke, PhD Director, Ethics Office American Psychological Association, 750 First Street, NE Washington, D 20002-4242
June 25, 2007
Dear Drs. Brehm and Behnke:
The undersigned are 58 psychologists and members of APA who are also employees and volunteers for organizations affiliated with the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Programs (NCTTP).NCTTP is a growing consortium with 36 member organizations. As practitioners who work to alleviate suffering resulting from torture, we know from our professional experience that such suffering is often severe and lasts a lifetime. We have learned from our work that this suffering is mainly psychological in nature and that it is no less severe when it is inflicted by means of non-physical torture, i.e. in the form of isolation, sensory deprivation and disorientation, self-inflicted pain techniques, sleep deprivation, humiliation and other forms of mental cruelty. While some of us have had exchanges with you on the subject of psychologists’ participation in coercive interrogations, the time has come that we now speak clearly and in a unified voice.
Torture is corrosive to the society that practices it and destroys its institutions. Citizens lose faith in their institutions and no longer trust their neighbors or their appointed leaders. We are witnessing this corrosive effect on our own professional organization because psychologists have participated in the interrogation of enemy combatants by means amounting to torture. To make matters worse, it is appearing increasingly likely that some of the same colleagues and their allies were then appointed as a majority to the investigating body into the ethics of these interrogation practices, the PENS Task Force. The Task Force’s proceedings have now been called into question. A case book was promised but never issued. Specific factual inquiries into psychologists’ participation in abuses have been sidestepped time and again. The perception is becoming widespread that APA’s leadership has employed a strategy of listening and recording the voices of dissent without any intention of letting it affect de facto policy.
Some of us have already left APA, others are withholding dues, and still others are simply growing more impatient and frustrated. We all believe, however, that you must initiate a reversal of the current collaboration with abusive interrogation practices, which violate APA policy as ratified in the 2006 Resolution Against Torture. It has been alleged that the 2002 Ethics Code revision, found in standard 1.02, permits psychologists to follow any law or regulation, including military regulations, even if these otherwise violate the Ethics code. If this is the case, it must be changed; if it is not the case, we urge you to say so publicly and unambiguously. We urge you to hold hearings on the exact nature of the collaboration that has been reported, and until then to unambiguously declare an end to all cooperation with detainee interrogation practices. Otherwise, we foresee an indelible stain on our profession’s reputation, amounting to the exact opposite of Dr. Brehm’s goal of raising the positive profile of psychologists. At stake is an exodus of membership and a lasting split of the profession. As long as APA offers only resolutions against torture but remains unwilling to make a change, such resolutions will ring hollow. Having worked on the subject of torture for many combined years, we have learned this: the ghosts will not go away until a full reckoning and a change in course have been accomplished. Nothing that is built on cruelty can last. Please let us know if you would like our help in bringing about the change that must occur.
Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Institute for the Study of Violence of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is a member of Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice. He maintains the Psyche, Science, and Society blog.
APA needs to take immediate action to chastize psychologists who engage in deliberately hurting anybody else. Torture is an obvious place to start. APA also needs to explore psychologists who colloborate with corporations and politicians to manipulate consumers and the public through unethical applications of psychology. Psychology needs to be for the benefit of the masses, not the elite and powerful.
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Richard Mathis (127 articles, 103 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 121 comments)
on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 10:28:23 PM
anyone who talks a psychologist (psychiatrist) ought to have his head examined.
There is some truth in that; at least unless one is personally paying for the visits, with guaranteed confidentiallity. Even then I wouldn't trust them or say anything I would not want made public or used against me.
My first experience was when I was fifteen and the school sent me to their shrinks when I refused attend any longer. I was stressed, but I wasn't crazy (not yet); what I was, was unwilling to tolerate the fascism of the school system. (That was some 45 years ago, and this current situation is hardly a surprise to me: I saw it building then).
I had two psychiatrists diagnose me as 'sick', becasue that's what the school wanted so they could shuffle me through the bureaucracy and avoid hearing what I was saying. I asked them how -- what specific diagnosis -- and they had no answer. (I already had maybe six or a dozen books on the subject under my belt -- I read a lot) One of them began shouting at me. The other one, some years later, wrote a letter to the newpaper saying that any sex education was harmful to children.
They were the ones who were crazy -- and they were my enemies. I was also sent to see a neurologist by the family doctor in connection with my problems with school. He talked to me for only ten minutes. Some years later I got and read my medical records: he diagnosed me as schizophrenic. The doctor had me taking moderately low doses of stellazine and thorazine -- which didn't seem to affect me one way or the other. I later learned how nasty can be at higher doses.
Most psychologists and psychiatrists are nuts themselves (often motivating them to study that field to start with), or dumb, or don't understand anything, or are part of the establishment, or just whores working for money. Not all -- but I would say at least over half. They di me a lot of damage, taking years for me to undo, and some of it, in terms of the interruption of my normal development, has permanent consequences. I lost some critical years then, isolating myself from the world, because of their bullying and lies.
That clinical psycologists would cooperate in torturing people surprises me not in the least. The APA stance is rather more representative of practitioners than many of them would like to believe. Gotta wonder if Zimbardo would have stopped his prison experiment as soon as he did if his girlfriend hadn't stopped by and wondered what the hell was going on....?
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Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 998 comments)
on Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 2:51:47 AM
