Psyche, Science, and Society

New York Times on interrogations controversy

The New York Times cover the psychologists-torture issue on the front page today:

Psychologists Clash on Aiding Interrogations

By Benedict Carey

They have closely studied suspects, looking for mental quirks. They have suggested lines of questioning. They have helped decide when a confrontation is too intense, or when to push harder. More than those in the other healing professions, psychologists have played a central role in the military and C.I.A. interrogation of people suspected of being enemy combatants.

But now the profession, long divided over this role, is considering whether to make any involvement in military interrogations a violation of its code of ethics.

At the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting this week in Boston, prominent members are denouncing such work as unethical by definition, while other key figures — civilian and military — insist that restricting psychologists’ roles would only make interrogations more likely to harm detainees.

Like other professional organizations, the association has little direct authority to restrict members’ ability to practice. But state licensing boards can suspend or revoke a psychologist’s license, and experts note that these boards often take violations of the association’s ethics code into consideration.

The election for the association’s president is widely seen as a referendum on the issue. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, plan a protest on Saturday afternoon.

And last week, for the first time, lawyers for a detainee at the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, singled out a psychologist as a critical player in documents alleging abusive treatment.

“It’s really a fight for the soul of the profession,” said Brad Olson, a psychologist at Northwestern University, who has circulated a petition among members to place a moratorium on such consulting.

Others strongly disagree. “The vast majority of military psychologists know the ethics code and know exactly what they can and cannot do,” said William J. Strickland, who represents the Society for Military Psychology before the association’s council. “This is a fight about individual psychologists’ behavior, and we should keep it there.”

At the center of the debate are the military’s behavioral science consultation teams, informally known as biscuits, made up of psychologists and others who assist in interrogations. Little is known about these units, including the number of psychologists who take part. Neither the military nor the team members have disclosed many details.

Defenders of that role insist that the teams are crucial in keeping interrogations safe, effective and legal. Critics say their primary purpose is to help break detainees, using methods that might violate international law.

In court documents filed Thursday, lawyers for the Guantánamo detainee Mohammed Jawad asserted that a psychologist’s report helped land Mr. Jawad, a teenager at the time, in a segregation cell, where he became increasingly desperate.

According to the documents, the psychologist, whose name has not been released, completed an assessment of Mr. Jawad after he was seen talking to a poster on his cell wall. Shortly thereafter, in September 2003, he was isolated from other detainees, and many of his requests to see an interrogator were ignored. He later attempted suicide, according to the filing, which asks that the case be dismissed on the ground of abusive treatment.

The Guantánamo court is reviewing the case. Military lawyers have denied that Mr. Jawad suffered any mental health problems from his interrogation. On Thursday, the psychologist in the case invoked Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military’s equivalent of the Fifth Amendment.

“This is what it’s come to,” said Steven Reisner, an assistant clinical professor at the New York University School of Medicine and a leading candidate for the presidency of the psychological association. “We have psychologists taking the Fifth.”

Dr. Reisner has based his candidacy on “a principled stance against our nation’s policy of using psychologists to oversee abusive and coercive interrogations” at Guantánamo and the so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The psychological association’s most recent ethics amendments strongly condemn coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign. But its current guidelines covering practice conclude that “it is consistent with the A.P.A. ethics code for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering processes for national-security-related purposes,” as long as they do not participate in any of 19 coercive procedures, including waterboarding, the use of hoods and any physical assault.

How these guidelines shape behavior during interrogations is not well understood. Documents from Guantánamo made public in June suggested that at least some of the coercive methods the military has used were derived from SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, a program based on Chinese techniques used in the 1950s that produced false confessions from American prisoners.

These techniques included “prolonged constraint,” “exposure” and “sleep deprivation,” known informally as the frequent flier program.

In this kind of environment, “health professionals, bound by strong ethical imperatives to do no harm, may become calibrators of harm,” said Nathaniel Raymond of Physicians for Human Rights, which has been strongly critical of the psychological association’s position.

According to the standard operating procedure for Camp Delta, at Guantánamo, the “behavior management plan” for new detainees “concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator.”

Some psychologists, though appalled by these techniques, emphasize that there is a danger in opting out as well.

“There’s no doubt that the psychologist’s presence can be abused,” said Robert W. Resnick, who is in private practice in Santa Monica, Calif., “but if there’s no presence at all, then there’s no accountability, and you walk away feeling noble and righteous, but you haven’t done a damned thing.”

Stephen Behnke, director of ethics at the psychological association, said in an interview on Friday that Defense Department standards for interrogation appeared to have improved in recent years.

“If you take the position that interrogation cannot be done ethically, then the discussion stops there,” Dr. Behnke said. “But if the answer is yes, then you don’t shut down the whole operation because certain individuals behaved unethically.”

Interrogators, too, are split on the question of whether psychologists provide valuable assistance. Some say that their advice can be helpful; others point out that there is no evidence that it improves the quality of the information obtained.

“I take a hybrid view of this,” said Steven Kleinman, a veteran interrogator and trainer who has worked in Iraq and strongly opposes coercive techniques. “The idea that a psychologist or psychiatrist is going to systematically unlock any prisoner’s resistance and provide some unique strategy is completely false — it’s a fantasy. Their role should be protecting the rights of both the interrogator and the prisoner. That’s far more valuable, and anything they might whisper in the interrogator’s ear, like ‘This person seems to have issues with his mother, play that up.’ ”

However the field addresses the issue, scholars say it may not alter the relationship much between psychologists and the military. Psychologists have helped screen recruits and study morale going back to World War I, and in Iraq, some military psychologists have worked long tours under fire, managing troops’ mental reactions at the front.

“American psychology really grew up with the military,” said Jean Maria Arrigo, a psychologist who has studied the profession’s relationship to military intelligence. “It was barely considered a science before the collaboration began, and the entanglement goes very deep.”

3 comments August 16th, 2008

New York Sun on interrogations controversy

The New York Sun covered the interrogations controversy on their front page Friday.

Psychologists Are Split Over Gitmo

By Joseph Goldstein

A military psychologist’s unprecedented refusal to testify when called to a Guantanamo courtroom yesterday will add to a debate that is expected to rage at this weekend’s annual convention of the American Psychological Association.

The professional organization is riven over whether to prohibit members who are in the military or who work with intelligence agencies from participating in the interrogation of suspected terrorists. That issue has prompted the first referendum in the organization’s history this month, for which voting remains open.

The issue has also spurred a New York psychoanalyst, Steven Reisner, to run for president of the APA on a platform of banning psychologists from involvement in national security interrogations “at sites where the conditions violate international law,” he told The New York Sun yesterday.

The APA has long had a close relationship with the military, which is one of the country’s largest employers of psychologists. In recent years, the APA has generally encouraged “engagement” — or involvement in national security interrogations — for the purpose of stopping “interrogations that cross the bounds of ethical propriety,” as the director of the APA’s ethics office, Stephen Behnke, wrote in a letter earlier this year. APA officials also have encouraged involvement in interrogations by psychologists on the grounds that psychologists should assist in the country’s anti-terrorism efforts.

After the American Psychiatric Association voted in 2006 not to allow psychiatrists to be part of the military’s behavioral science consultation teams, which are called “biscuit teams” and advise interrogators, the military began staffing the teams with psychologists alone.

The event that occurred in a courtroom yesterday at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is expected to add a new dimension to the debate among psychologists this weekend. When a military psychologist was called yesterday to testify about the treatment of a detainee, she pleaded the military law’s equivalent of the Fifth Amendment privilege to not self-incriminate, the detainee’s lawyer, Major David Frakt, said in a press release sent by an intermediary. The psychologist’s name is protected by court order.

It is the first time a military psychologist belonging to a biscuit team is publicly known to have been called to give testimony in a Guantanamo court proceeding. The woman’s response suggests that military psychologists are concerned about either their professional licenses or criminal liability.

Court papers filed on behalf of the detainee, Mohammad Jawad, say the psychologist had, in 2003, advised an interrogator to put Mr. Jawad in isolation in an effort to facilitate interrogation, a person familiar with the detainee’s case and who has seen the unclassified legal papers said. The interrogator had sought out the psychologist’s advice because of a concern that Mr. Jawad’s mental state was deteriorating, the person said, adding that Mr. Jawad had been observed speaking to posters on his wall. The psychologist apparently rejected that layman’s diagnosis and believed Mr. Jawad was faking and recommended isolation, the person said.

Nine weeks after Mr. Jawad was removed from a month of isolation, he tried to commit suicide by hanging or repeatedly banging his head, the source said.

“What is so disturbing about the Jawad case,” the source said, is that the psychologist “is calibrating the level of harm.”

Major Frakt said in the statement that the psychologist’s refusal to testify shows that she “now apparently recognizes that her conduct was criminal in nature.”

Mr. Jawad, now about 24, is accused of throwing an grenade at American forces in Afghanistan while in his late teens.

The effect, if any, of a move by the APA to forbid its members from participating in interrogations is uncertain. While the APA has no control over the licensing of psychologists, which is done by the states, the ABA can censure members on ethics charges. State licensing bodies could consider the APA’s findings in deciding license applications.

Mr. Reisner, the New York candidate for APA president, said he supports extending the APA’s current four- to five-year statute of limitations on ethics complaints in order to investigate the role of psychologists have played in national security interrogations.

Add comment August 16th, 2008

Press Release: Military Psychologist Refuses to Testify About Abusive Treatment of Detainee at Guantánamo

I was scheduled to testify at the Guantánamo Military commission yesterday. At the last moment the testimony was canceled. Here is a Press Release from the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and Psychologists for an Ethical APA explaining why.

Military Psychologist Invokes Right to Remain Silent at Guantánamo Hearing, Refusing to Testify About Abusive Treatment of Detainee

Psychologists and Human Rights Groups to Rally Saturday Against American Psychological Association’s Controversial Torture Policy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, August 14, 2008

BOSTON - A military psychologist who recommended isolation torture techniques on a Guantánamo detainee today invoked her right not to incriminate herself, refusing to testify in the case of Mohammad Jawad.

Her testimony was sought by defense attorney Maj. David Frakt in a hearing on his motion to dismiss charges based upon government misconduct in using prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, and other torture techniques against his client in an attempt to make him more pliable in interrogations. Following a month-long isolation, apparently recommended by the military psychologist, Mr. Jawad - who entered Guantánamo as a teenager — attempted suicide.

The psychologist’s testimony would have marked the first time that a member of the secretive Behavioral Science Consultation Team (known as BSCT or “biscuits”) had been called to testify in a detainee hearing. The BSCT program has been highly controversial among psychologists and other health professionals.  The psychologist invoked her rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military equivalent of the 5th amendment right against self-incrimination/right to remain silent.

“The fact that the BSCT Psychologist now apparently recognizes that her conduct was criminal in nature is very significant,” said Maj. Frakt.  “We have alleged, based on classified government records that the BSCT psychologist’s recommendation led directly to the illegal abuse and inhumane treatment of Mohammad Jawad. This invocation of the right to remain silent seems to confirm that.”

“The evidence in this case confirms our worst fears, that military psychologists are working to break down detainee’s psyches,” said Dr. Stephen Soldz, an expert psychologist who had been called by Maj. Frakt to testify that the BSCT psychologist had violated the professional credo of “Do no harm.”

“Today’s developments only confirms our view that a full accounting of the shadowy BSCT program is long overdue,” he added.  Dr. Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, and faculty member at Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.

The news comes on the eve of a rally against torture to be held this Saturday outside the Boston Convention Center where the American Psychological Association, the largest group of its kind, is meeting this weekend.  The APA has come under increasing fire for its refusal to ban its members’ participation in Bush administration coercive interrogations and torture, as the AMA and the American Psychiatric Association have done.

“The continuing silence of the APA on member involvement in torture is telling,” Dr. Soldz said. “No APA leader or official has ever uttered one word critical of actual U.S. abuse, or of the role of psychologists and psychological expertise in that abuse. They continue to stonewall on disciplining any psychologists who participated, despite promises to investigate.”

At Saturday’s rally, psychologists speaking out against the policy will be joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and American Friends Service Committee and hear songs from “Raging Grannies” and local musicians.

The torture issue is of increasing concern to all Americans, APA members say, but of particular importance to psychologists because it violates their primary ethical obligation to “Do no harm.”  As has been documented by numerous journalists and official government reports, psychologists helped develop, implement, standardize, and disseminate abusive interrogation techniques that have led to torture.

Ignoring this evidence, the APA has repeatedly claimed that psychologists aiding interrogations keep those interrogations “safe, legal, and ethical.”  Dr. Soldz said that the actions of the BSCT psychologist in Jawad’s case, typical as they appear to be of the BSCT program, show the falsity of APA’s claim. Rather, BSCTs use their psychological expertise “to identify weaknesses in detainees that can be exploited to break them down psychologically and render them dependent upon the interrogators,” he said.

In the absence of ethical leadership from the APA, a referendum to remove psychologists from sites in violation of international law has been proposed by members; ballots went out to the membership last week and are due back in mid-September.

In a recent letter in support of the referendum, Bryant Welch, a clinical psychologist, attorney and former long-time APA official, said: “In the eyes of the world psychologists are being seen as aiders and abettors of torture. The damage to the profession grows day by day, and the shamefulness of it reflects on all of us, whether we like it or not.”

In his closing argument delivered today before the military commission in the case of U.S. v. Jawad, Maj. Frakt said: ” What has this country come to when a licensed psychologist, a senior officer in the U.S. Armed Forces, someone trained in the art of healing broken hearts and mending broken minds, someone with a duty to do no harm, turns her years of training and education to the art of breaking people, to the intentional devastation of a lonely, homesick teenage boy?”

For more information go to:

http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/index.php?s=boston+rally

www.ethicalapa.com

www.reisnerforpresident.org

1 comment August 15th, 2008

Referendum FAQ

The authors of the APA referendum on participation in Bush detention centers have created an FAQ which they have just revised to address questions being raised about the wording and the intent of the referendum [see also my Vote Against Torture Collusion]:

Q. In regard to the U.S. Constitution, the referendum says, “(where appropriate)”, why was that put in there, and what does “(where appropriate)” mean?

Where appropriate means settings where the U.S. Constitution forms the law of the land and settings in which the Supreme Court has decided it applies.  It therefore applies to the 50 states, embassies, and areas within the U.S.’ maritime and territorial jurisdiction - it also applies to U.S. citizens everywhere.  It does not apply in, say, Canada.  So a Canadian psychologist working in Canada is working ‘outside’ of the U.S. Constitution but ‘inside’ of international law.

Q. I have been told that this language will affect the work of psychologists working in jails, prisons and hospitals.

See our August 6 letter to APA members on the Psychologists for an Ethical APA homepage.  www.ethicalapa.com

Q. This is a complex answer.  Why don’t just answer that question with a simple and definitive ‘no’?

Because this is a complex situation.  If and when Guantanamo and the black sites are closed down the ‘detainees’ could be brought to the U.S. and held under similar conditions.  If Guantanamo, the facility, is ‘closed’, the equivalent of Guantanamo, the policy, could be re-established on U.S. soil. In these, and other possible cases, the referendum policy could and should still apply.

Q. If you didn’t mean to target existing U.S. prisons and jails why did you include the words ‘U.S. Constitution’ in the referendum?

We had two main reasons for doing so:

1. As we have already mentioned, we are concerned that U.S. torture policy will be brought home.

2. To make it clear that we are endorsing both the U.S. Constitution and international law, as outlined in the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, directly and without qualification.

Q.  Why is that important?

Some people strongly support and value international law.  However, the United States has taken an ambivalent stance towards international law by adding “reservations” to some international treaties it has ratified.  For example, when it ratified the Convention against Torture, the U.S. added “reservations” that exclude the law’s ban on most forms of psychological torture:

“In its reservations to the Convention against Torture, the United States claims to be bound by the obligation to prevent “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” only insofar as the term means the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, U.S. reservations say that mental pain or suffering only refers to prolonged mental harm from: (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the use or threat of mind altering substances; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) that another person will imminently be subjected to the above mistreatment. (Human Rights Watch, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/24/usint8614.htm)

We find it unfortunate that the APA has reproduced the language of the U.S. “reservations” in its official statements. Since we believe these “reservations” deserve no additional legitimacy from our organization, this referendum unequivocally endorses both international and constitutional law.

Q. Why haven’t you provided a definition of torture?

A. Our first citation includes the internationally accepted definition of torture as well as an extensive discussion of the scope and applicability of international law.  It is important to note that this definition - like many legal definitions - is in a state of flux, it changes as courts consider new cases. The jurisprudence surrounding this definition is as important as the definition itself.  Further, the definition may change as new treaties are adopted.  We would ask the question - why would we accept anything other than the internationally accepted definition?

Q. What do you mean by international law? Which treaties? What courts? Which cases?

A. The APA is a UN- recognized nongovernmental organization (NGO) and therefore is subject to the U.N.’s interpretation of international law. We believe that the question is not to which portions of international law should psychologists adhere, but rather why would we be seeking to opt out of some portions of the law?

Q. Isn’t this language vague?

A. That depends on what you mean by “vague.”  If, by “vague,” you mean badly or inadequately defined, the answer is “no.” We do not believe we have offered poor or partial definitions.  If you mean ‘unspecified’, then it is true that we have not specified what portions of international law to which the APA should adhere; nor do we believe that we should do so.

By way of analogy, if we had written a referendum that said: “psychologists shall at all times obey the speed limit,” we could be charged with failing to specify what speed limit psychologists should follow. In this hypothetical and admittedly absurd example it would be appropriate to respond by saying: “that information is easily found and need not be included in the referendum - it is not for us to say”. We would ask why would psychologists attempt to define torture when they could simply refer to internationally accepted definitions?

Q. I understand this referendum, but doesn’t this seem a little simple? Why have you chosen to write this in such ordinary language?

A. Two reasons:

1.           We wanted the referendum be easily read and understandable by everyone.

2.           Because the Bush administration has redefined everyday terms in ways that completely subvert the original meanings of the words. Take, for example, ‘participation’:

“For purposes of this recommendation the term “participating in interrogations” refers to the active participation by medical personnel during an interrogation. For example, asking questions would be active participation. Medical personnel who assist in developing the plan of interrogation are not deemed to be “participating in an interrogation.” Likewise, actual presence in the interrogation room may not constitute “participating in an interrogation.” For example, direct observation by medical personnel to ensure the health and welfare of the detainee is not deemed to be “participation in the interrogation.” (  http://www.defenselink.mil/news/detainee_investigations.html )

Further, we know that many of these definitions - including the current definition of torture - are secret.  We do not know what other terms have been secretly redefined.  Thus, rather than engage in an effort to define each word we were using, we chose language that is easily understood with use of a dictionary or the references we provide.

Add comment August 12th, 2008

Chronicle of Higher Ed: Psychology and Torture

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a News Analysis of the APA controversy:

Psychology and Torture

By David Glenn

Mock executions, waterboarding, and religious humiliation: Participation in those interrogation practices and more than a dozen others was banned in a resolution enacted at last August’s convention of the American Psychological Association. At the time, the association’s spokespeople said they hoped they had put to rest a lengthy debate about psychologists’ responsibility for torture at the Guantánamo Bay detention center and other sites where suspected terrorists have been held.

But as the association prepares to meet this week in Boston, feelings are running hotter than ever. For the second consecutive year, activists are planning a large street demonstration outside the convention. One of the activists scheduled to speak there — Steven Reisner, a psychoanalyst and a senior adviser in New York University’s international trauma-studies program — is running for the association’s presidency.

The lingering ill will stems in part from new revelations about how the CIA, FBI, and the Department of Defense drew on psychological research when they designed their post-September 11 interrogation systems.

The Dark Side, a new book by Jane Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, describes a 2002 incident in which Martin E.P. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a former president of the psychology association, accepted a CIA invitation to lecture at a naval training center about his theories of “learned helplessness.”

Mr. Seligman’s widely respected research suggests that when people and animals are traumatized at random intervals, they tend to give up: They stop seeking to rationally help themselves, and they stop responding to ordinary incentives. Mr. Seligman insists that his 2002 lecture was intended only to help train U.S. soldiers to resist torture if they are captured. But in his 50-person audience that day were Bruce Jessen and James Elmer Mitchell, psychologists who operate a consulting firm that helped the CIA develop interrogation techniques that some critics have called abusive. According to Ms. Mayer’s book, Mr. Mitchell has long been fascinated by learned-helplessness theory. (Through a lawyer, Mr. Mitchell denied to Ms. Mayer that his CIA interrogation techniques were inspired by Mr. Seligman’s work.)

Few people in the psychology association believe that Mr. Seligman consciously assisted in the development of detainee abuses. But many say that the association needs to make a more thorough public accounting of how the work of Mr. Seligman and other prominent members may have been misused by government agencies.

The association has so far rejected calls for formal inquiries. In a public statement last summer, Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts who chaired an association task force on psychological ethics and national security, argued that the association is not equipped to sift through the military’s decision making in 2002 and 2003. The association “has neither subpoena power nor the necessary security clearances,” she wrote, “so an ‘investigation’ would be pointless.”

Beyond disputes about the past, calls to toughen the association’s interrogation policies still persist. Last year’s anti-torture resolution permits psychologists to work as advisers and therapists at Guantánamo-style detention centers, as long as they do not assist in or tolerate coercive interrogations. But some activists say that the general conditions at Guantánamo and similar sites are intrinsically abusive, and that psychologists should have nothing to do with them.

Those activists have forced a mail ballot on a resolution that would forbid the association’s members from working in any capacity “in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either international law … or the U.S. Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.” Ballots were distributed on August 1, and results are expected in late September.

The referendum’s authors say that if psychologists want to provide mental-health services to detainees, they should do so through outside agencies such as the Red Cross, not as direct employees of military or intelligence agencies.

But it is not clear that the government would welcome independent therapists into the detention centers. Many leaders of the association insist that if military psychologists leave Guantánamo, the detainees’ situation will only get worse. Even Michael Gelles, a former Navy psychologist who famously left Guantánamo after protesting abuses, has said that it would be a serious mistake for his colleagues to withdraw entirely. This debate seems likely to tear at the association well after the Guantánamo Bay facility itself is closed.

1 comment August 11th, 2008

Psychologists for Social Responsibility endorses APA referenndum

Psychologists for Social Responsibility has just voted to endorse the American Psychological Association referendum against psychologist participation at US detention sites in violation of international law. It is time for all progressive psychologists to join PsySR and make it a stronger, more active organization. [Truth in advertising: I am Co-Chair of the PsySR End Torture Action Committee and a member of its Steering Committee. Please join me.]

UPDATE: Here is a statement from Anthony Marsella, President of PsySR:

Dear PsySR Members & Friends:

I am writing to announce that the PsySR Steering Committee has voted in favor of endorsing a “yes” vote on the Referendum. The Steering Committee supports the the call for a referendum and encourages its members to vote “Yes” in accord with the PsySR Steering Committee decision.

The Steering Committee is the representative body for PsySR and is the primary source of major PsySR policies and decisions.

Best wishes, Tony

Add comment August 11th, 2008

Valtin on APA referendum

Psychologist blogger Valtin gives his perspective on the APA referendum and the fightback against it. His conclusion:

But the defense of supermax prison jobs, and the concern about U.S. prison conditions rings hollow, being a disingenuous attempt to back institutional concerns in alliance with the Department of Defense and the CIA. In political terms, the coalition between so-called peace psychologists and pro-military types within APA represents a classic rotten bloc.

Add comment August 11th, 2008

Globe Op Ed: Ending the psychological mind games on detainees

I have a Op Ed in the Boston Globe today:

Ending the psychological mind games on detainees

By Stephen Soldz

WHEN MOST people think of psychologists, they think of a professional helping them with life’s emotional difficulties, or of a researcher studying human or animal behavior. Since the Bush administration and the war on terrorism have transformed our country, however, a new, more ominous image of psychologists has slowly seeped into public consciousness.

Psychologists have been identified as key figures in the design and conduct of abuses against detainees in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA’s secret “black sites,” and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychologists should not be taking part in such practices.

Yet a steady stream of revelations from government documents, journalistic reports, and congressional hearings has revealed that psychologists designed the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques, which included locking prisoners in tiny cages in the fetal position, throwing them against the wall head first, prolonged nakedness, sexual humiliation, and waterboarding.

Jane Mayer, in her new book, “The Dark Side,” reports that the central idea was the psychological concept of “learned helplessness.” Individuals are denied all control over their world, lose their will, and become totally dependent upon their captors.

At Guantanamo, the Red Cross described a system of psychological abuse as “tantamount to torture.” Psychologists, and some psychiatrists, helped interrogators “break down” detainees by exploiting information in their medical records. Thus, someone with an intense fear of dogs would be threatened with snarling dogs, while a person with a fear of being buried alive might be threatened with being sealed in a coffin.

When reports of these abuses surfaced, we psychologists looked to our largest professional organization, the American Psychological Association, to take the lead in condemning them and taking measures to ensure that they would not recur. After all, these actions by psychologists violate the central principle of the APA’s ethics code: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.”

The APA, however, failed to take clear action. While the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association quickly and unequivocally condemned any involvement by its membership in such activities, APA leaders quibbled over whether psychologists had been present at the interrogations and questioned the motives of internal critics.

When the leadership appointed a task force on the ethics of psychologist involvement in interrogations, the report was strangely unsigned, and the members’ names were kept secret from APA members and the media. Finally, it was revealed that a majority of members were from the military-intelligence establishment, with four having served in chains of commands implicated in detainee abuses. Three of the four nonmilitary members have since denounced the task force process and two have called for the report to be rescinded.

The APA has since passed several antitorture resolutions - all of them full of loopholes - but has failed to take ethics enforcement action against a single psychologist for participating in abuses, despite publication two years ago of a detailed interrogation log showing the participation of a military psychologist in the abuse amounting to torture of a Guantanamo detainee.

Not surprisingly, unrest among APA members is growing. Many members, including the founder of the APA’s Practice Directorate and the former head of its Ethics Committee, have resigned in protest.

This month, ballots went out for a first-ever referendum to call a halt to psychologist participation in sites where international law is violated. And dissident New York psychologist Steven Reisner, a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, is running for the APA presidency. His principal campaign platform is for psychologists to be banned from participating in interrogations at US military detention centers, like Guantanamo Bay, that violate human rights and function outside of the Geneva Conventions. In the nomination phase Reisner received the most votes of the five candidates.

At our annual convention in Boston this month, other APA members and I will rally against association policies encouraging participation in detainee interrogations. We will be joined by community activists, human rights groups, and civil libertarians to demand that APA return to its fundamental principle of “Do no harm.” Psychologists owe it to their profession and to the cause of human rights to oppose abuses, not participate in them.

Stephen Soldz, psychologist and psychoanalyst, is professor and director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.

1 comment August 10th, 2008

Intermittent posting next two weeks

Due to travel plans, and the American Psychological Association Convention in Boston, which will keep me busy, posts will be intermittent, at best, over the next two weeks. Don’t forget to come to our rally at the APA on Sturday, August 16, 12:00-2:00. More information is here, while a printable flyer is here.

Add comment August 10th, 2008

Bryant Welch on the APA referendum

Bryant Welch expresses his thoughts on the American Psychological Association’s referendum on psychologists’ participation in interrogations:

Vote to End the Shame APA has Inflicted on all Psychologists

By Bryant L. Welch, J.D., Ph.D.

In the eyes of the world psychologists are being seen as aiders and abettors of torture. The damage to the profession grows day by day, and the shamefulness of it reflects on all of us, whether we like it or not.

This is the third consecutive annual convention in which APA has presented new reasons for refusing to explicitly state that psychologists are not to participate in detention centers where torture is being used. In 2006 we were told, among many things, that torture was not occurring, and that it was sufficient for APA to reiterate its 1986 resolution “opposing torture.” Last year we were told that psychologists’ presence at the detention centers was actually necessary to prevent the torture whose very existence these same APA officials denied the previous year. Bizarrely, APA outlawed nineteen specific forms of torture, as if in some way the large number of proscribed techniques would cripple torture efforts.

As a result, for the first time in APA history, APA rank and file members have secured the necessary signatures to petition the APA and force APA to submit the torture issue to a referendum by the membership.

Persisting in its support for psychologists’ participation in Bush detention centers and appearing insensitive to the moral concerns of its members, APA leaders are now advising APA members to oppose the referendum because the language of the referendum might be interpreted to preclude psychologists working in certain institutional settings. This argument is based on scenarios that are extremely far fetched and could readily be addressed even were they to occur. To the public, of course, the message would be that psychologists are not willing to stop torture now if there is even a remote risk of losing jobs in the future.

Since the Bush Administration will be out of office by the next time APA meets, this will be the last opportunity psychologists will have to remove this terrible stain from our reputation and our history

Torture is not a nuanced issue. Vote No to torture. Vote YES on the referendum. For more information see Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psychological Association.

Bryant Welch, J.D., Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and licensed attorney. In 1985 he proposed and developed the APA Practice Directorate which he ran from 1985-93. He is the author of State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2008). He can be reached directly at welchfirm@aol.com.

1 comment August 9th, 2008