Psyche, Science, and Society

Valtin on ICRC, psychology, and torture

March 22nd, 2007

Valtin at Daily Kos reports on the new leaked International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on the torture of the “high-value” detainees recently transfered to Guantanamo from the CIA’s “black site” prisons [aka, "torture centers"]. Valtin then goes on to mention the recent Michael Gelles letter to the APA supporting their policies [and kindly links to this site].

Valtin concludes with some observations on the state of our society where torture and abuse are routinely tolerated:

But I fear the main reason is a moral rot, an emptiness that has taken root in the society and spread throughout the body politic.

It strikes me that many of my colleagues are morally dead. Psychologists are supposed to seek knowledge and enlightenment, and to share that knowledge for the benefit of all humanity. But something terrrible happened. And then, what was worst, a silence grew. In secret, terrible things happen.

There is a justifiable uproar over the secrecy Bush and Gonzales are maintaining over Executive Branch plots to usurp the machinery of the Justice Department. I wrote only yesterday on the behind the scenes push to bring the Unitary Executive into complete power, using the Patriot Act to stymie the judiciary and Congress.

But there is another secrecy, one that comes to the surface, one that we are afraid to look at because it is so awful. It explains why diaries on torture regularly only get a few dozen recommendations, or why this explosive report by the ICRC — “the first independent accounting of the detainees’ allegations against the CIA since its detention and interrogation program began in 2002″ — will be forgotten by almost everyone by tomorrow.

The secret is this: there is a moral nothingness at the heart of this society. A black hole. And like a black hole it threatens to suck everything into its obliterating maw.

The time is almost too late. The clock is ticking backwards. The hours are being swallowed up.

Are we even alive?

Entry Filed under: APA, Guantanamo, Psychology, Rights and Liberties, Torture, War Crimes