** The APA has not sanctioned any member for involvement in abusive detention or interrogation operations, despite assurances almost a decade ago from the director of the APA's Ethics Office -- and from every APA president since 2006 -- that clear and direct action would be taken in response to unethical behavior. In the most prominent case to date, a 2008 U.S. Senate report on detainee treatment, a leaked interrogation log, an Army investigative report, previously classified meeting memoranda, and recent reports from The Constitution Project and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession all clearly implicated an APA member in designing and participating in abusive and torturous interrogations at Guantanamo. In one well-documented case, a detainee was subjected to almost daily 20-hour interrogations over the course of nearly two months; was held in isolation without contact with other detainees; was forcibly injected with excessive fluids until his limbs swelled; was frequently hooded; was stripped and forced to stand naked with female interrogators present; was straddled by a female interrogator; was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head; was terrorized by military dogs; and was led around by a leash and forced to perform dog tricks. Despite this evidence, after seven years of delays the APA Ethics Office recently decided not to discipline this member. Indeed the case was never even referred to the full ethics committee for review and resolution. In its subsequent defense of this decision, the APA offered strikingly inconsistent claims in statements from the Ethics Office, the APA Board, and the APA's public affairs department.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it is more than sufficient to convey an uncomfortable reality. Following the 9/11 attacks, the APA tragically and repeatedly supported ethically fraught CIA and DoD operations while continuing the further militarization of American psychology. During an era when organized psychology in the U.S. might have stood firmly and publicly as a bulwark against torture, the misuse of psychology, the degradation of professional ethics, and the abandonment of universal principles of human rights, the APA took a very different path.
The release of additional material from the Senate's CIA report will provide us with one more opportunity to investigate the U.S. torture program and hold perpetrators accountable. In this context, the complicity -- through acts of omission and commission -- of various sectors of civil society, including the press, the legal profession, and the health professions still awaits fuller examination. Given that psychologists have been central figures in the abuse and torture of our country's "war on terror" detainees, and that the APA has worked to guarantee psychologists' positioning in detention and interrogation roles, examining the APA's involvement is an appropriate starting point for this crucial work. An honest and forthright assessment is now long overdue -- not only for the victims of brutality and for a trusting public, but also for future psychologists who are compelled to grapple with the deeds of their predecessors.
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This essay first appeared in Counterpunch.
A PDF version of this statement is available on the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology website at http://www.ethicalpsychology.org/materials/Coalition-Statement-on-Complicity-Psychology-and-War-on-Terror-Abuses.pdf.
Roy Eidelson is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, associate director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.
Trudy Bond is a counseling psychologist in independent practice in Toledo, Ohio. She is a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and on the steering committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.
Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He has written extensively on the involvement of psychologists in the U.S. torture program. Soldz is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations and is a former president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He served as a psychological consultant on several Guantanamo trials.
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