Our struiggle to change American Psychological Association policy on interrogations has been given an enormous boost in recent months by our pro bono media consultant. Emily Whitfield, who was the top press person for the ACLU for many years appeared and volunteered to help us in the month before the APA Convention. Largely, though not exclusively, thanks to her we have had remarkable success getting our message out, including my Op Ed in the Boston Globe, a front page article in the New York Times, another front-pager in the New York Sun, a story on NPR’s All things Considered, an NPR’s Talk of the Nation show, and a Democracy Now! interview. Now we have a Boston Globe editorial. And this is just the beginning.
I would like to extend an enormous “Thank You!” to Emily for all her wonderful efforts in promoting an ethical psychology and ending the regime of torture.
August 30th, 2008
The Democratic platform has nice sounding words on torture. If Obama wins, it will be up to us to keep the pressure on to make them a reality:
We reject torture. We reject sweeping claims of “inherent” presidential power. We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years. We will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine duly enacted law. [...]
We will not ship away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries, or detain without trial or charge prisoners who can and should be brought to justice for their crimes, or maintain a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law. We will respect the time-honored principle of habeas corpus, the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention that was recently reaffirmed by our Supreme Court. We will close the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, the location of so many of the worst constitutional abuses in recent years. With these necessary changes, the attention of the world will be directed where it belongs: on what terrorists have done to us, not on how we treat suspects.
August 30th, 2008
In her customary succinct style, Jean Maria Arrigo has expressed in a few words the reason why the APA Referendum focuses upon banning participation in certain setting [US detention centers] rather than the actions of individual psychologists. This statement complements yesterday’s statement by the Referendum authors:
Why does the referendum focus on the national security settings of interrogation rather than on the conduct of individual psychologists? Because we are psychologists!
Because we all know the studies of Solomon Asch on conformity, of Stanley Milgram on obedience, and of Phil Zimbardo on prison behavior-plus bystander, minority deviance, and whistle blower research. Where is the psychological research supporting the APA model of the morally autonomous BSCT psychologist? Unlike the randomly selected and disinterested experimental subjects of Asch, Milgram, and Zimbardo, the military and government-contract psychologists were selected for conformity, obedience, and role acceptance in national security settings; the career and financial stakes are very high; they have prior loyalties to co-workers in these settings; and there are legal constraints on disobedience.
The place for national defense psychologists to show their mettle as morally autonomous agents was in the PENS task force meeting itself. In fact, all six present as task force members-in spite of the obvious moral reservations of some-supported a psychological ethic that adhered to the permissive U.S. definition of torture. They did not vote their consciences, so to speak, but their institutional positions. We cannot expect more individualistic acts of dissent from BSCT psychologists at detention centers.
Jean Maria Arrigo
August 30th, 2008
In a major development, the Boston Globe today editorialized against the participation of psychologists in US abuses. It calls for major change in American Psychological Association policies. It endorses both the APA Referendum and the Presidential campaign of Steven Reisner.
These votes are providing association members with a chance to end any ambiguity about their profession’s abhorrence of abusive techniques. Many came out of the playbook of totalitarian states and could easily be used against US personnel in future clashes. Psychologists should leave no doubt they are opponents, and not enablers, of these methods
The editorial is so good, it’s as if we wrote it.
The circumstances in a place like Guantanamo are by their very nature abusive and should rule out psychologists’ participation even in “good cop” questioning. Guantanamo-style interrogation is hard to square with the psychological association’s ethics code: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.”
This editorial follows by two weeks my Op Ed in the Globe. It follows by a week the the APA’s disingenuous and dishonest response. The Globe has clearly read both and conducted their own careful examination of the issues. Their verdict is in. The APA cover story does not pass the smell test. Our case is vindicated in all essential details.
Here is the complete Globe editorial:
Psychologists and torture
By Boston Globe
August 30, 2008
FROM THE moment US military and civilian officials began detaining and interrogating Guantanamo Bay prisoners with methods that the Red Cross has called tantamount to torture, they have had the assistance of psychologists. This has been a source of anguish to many members of the profession, who want to join their colleagues in other professional organizations and draw a clear line against psychologists’ involvement in interrogation of detainees.
Many psychologists fault their own professional organization, the American Psychological Association, for not taking a firmer stance and for not punishing association members who in the past have helped interrogators in using techniques like sleep deprivation to raise prisoners’ stress levels or in finding their emotional weak points. When the association convened a task force on the subject in 2005, a majority of members turned out to have ties with the military or US intelligence.
In its defense, the association points to a current policy statement that prohibits “direct or indirect participation” in torture or “cruel, degrading, or inhuman treatment or punishment.” The association should go further and forbid - as the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have - any involvement at all by medical professionals in interrogation.
The circumstances in a place like Guantanamo are by their very nature abusive and should rule out psychologists’ participation even in “good cop” questioning. Guantanamo-style interrogation is hard to square with the psychological association’s ethics code: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.”
In the coming weeks, association members will vote on new leadership, and one candidate for president wants psychologists banned from participating in interrogations at US detention centers that violate human rights and do not adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Members are also voting on a resolution banning psychologists from working in such facilities “unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.”
These votes are providing association members with a chance to end any ambiguity about their profession’s abhorrence of abusive techniques. Many came out of the playbook of totalitarian states and could easily be used against US personnel in future clashes. Psychologists should leave no doubt they are opponents, and not enablers, of these methods.
August 30th, 2008