Psyche, Science, and Society

Charleston Gazette on APA, psychologists, and torture

July 8th, 2007

The story of the role of psychologists and the American Psychological Association in the development and maintenance of the US torture regime is beginning to break through to the mainstream. Yesterday the Charleston [WV] Gazette editorialized on the issue:

The Charleston Gazette: Torture.
Psychologists involved

Shamefully, some American psychologists participated in interrogating and abusing Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq.This disturbing news is contained in a newly declassified report by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General. Titled “Review of DOD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse,” the report — requested by 110 members of Congress — documents the central role U.S. psychologists played in developing “the abusive interrogation paradigm” at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other prisons.

Many current interrogation techniques were developed through the military’s “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape” program, or SERE, which was created to help U.S. soldiers resist interrogation if they are captured in combat situations. Then SERE techniques were also used to break down Muslim detainees, after former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved the plan in late 2002.

During certain types of SERE questioning — such as “waterboarding,” in which water is continuously poured over the face of a detainee strapped to a board — a psychologist must be present, military rules say. SERE interrogation techniques also include extreme isolation, prolonged sleep deprivation, “noise stress,” abuse by dogs, as well as sexual and cultural humiliation.

Washington-based Physicians for Human Rights wants Congress to investigate prisoner abuse and the roles played by psychologists and other health professionals.

Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of the physicians’ group, asked the American Psychological Association in June to condemn SERE interrogations and the “collaboration” and “complicity” of psychologists in those practices.

Two years ago, then-APA President Gerald Koocher created a nine-member Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security. That group defended SERE and found that psychologists are in “unique position to assist in ensuring that such processes are safe and ethical for all participants.” But when names of task force members became public, six turned out to have direct ties to military or intelligence agencies.

Last month, after the OIG report was released, two of the three civilian members said the former APA report “should be annulled” because its investigative process was flawed.

Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo, one of those members, called for a moratorium in the involvement of psychologists in any military interrogations. Dr. Koocher himself condemned SERE practices as “torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

APA’s current leaders, however, have taken no public position about collaboration by some psychologists with inhumane questioning of prisoners.

Many political leaders and newspapers are calling for the closure of Guantanamo and for humane treatment of prisoners.

The American Psychological Association should condemn torture and censure any of its members who participate in it.

Now that the mainstream media is starting to understand the psychology-SERE-torture-APA connections, how many days, weeks, months, or years will it be until the leadership of the APA begins to get it? If the Charleston Gazette understands the meaning of the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General’s report, maybe, just, maybe, our distinguished President and Ethics Director might take a read. They might even try paying attention to what it says and not just to the latest spin needed to distract the their fellow leadership and some of the membership from the horrors that were perpetrated by their psychologist colleagues. Perhaps the Charleston Gazette editorial board could provide reading lessons to the APA leadership. My colleagues and I have attempted to provide such lessons, but it appears that APA’s leaders are even less able to read and understand anything we say than they are the mainstream media.

Of course, the APA membership might decide, rather, to replace a leadership that is completely deaf to the numerous reports that psychology and psychologists are central players in America’s torture regime. Perhaps the membership could choose a leadership that has a sense of right and wrong rather than one steeped in arcane “ethics” rules cleverly designed to let the abusive status quo continue indefinitely.

Entry Filed under: APA, Guantanamo, Interrogation, Mainstream media, Psychological Torture, Psychology, SERE, Torture