Letters to the Editor
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Psychologists Should Take A Stance Similar To The Red Cross
The APA should encourage their members to get involved as observers, evaluators, and revealers, rather than as torturers. Other organizations should do the same (AMA, the psychiatrists, and so on).
In my generation, Nazis were portrayed in literature and movies as evil torturers. In the next generation, we Americans have taken over that evil role.
Please, let us correct this for the next generation plus one.
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Pyschologists are nothing but a bunch of money-grubbing quacks
The only reason they are condemning torture is because they haven't found a way to make money off of it.
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Slap their wrist, or kick them out?
The administration won't care if the APA condemns torture. We know torture will continue anyway. It's a nice gesture, but if the APA really wants to make a difference, they should call for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
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What Do We Believe In?
Having just read Judith Mayer's New Yorker article about the American torture policy as run by the C.I. A., and seen Charles Ferguson's new documentary No End In Sight leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the American management of Iraq after the invasion, and our torture polices are both dismal failures and inhumane as well.
When Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, says that he wouldn't want any U. S. citizen to go through what we do to others, I am convinced that we have lost our way. No longer can we say that our policies and values should be respected and emulated. We have become a laughingstock. What a legacy.
For a group such as the APA, which claims, I am sure, to be interested in the well being of all people to fail to come out with a wholesale condemnation of our torture policies would be a deep and bitter disappointment.
It certainly shows how far we have fallen from having good and decent values if we can't declare just how heinous these torture practices are. And if we can't depend on our most respected institutions to speak up for what is right we have sunk pretty low.
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Reasons Why the APA is Lagging
In my opinion, from the inside (though rather peripherally so, so take this with a grain or five of salt), we're lagging behind other organizations in condemning the administration's torture policy and establishing concrete consequences for members who participate in it because:
1) We are less secure about ourselves and our role in the medical community. We are not medical doctors, unlike psychiatrists, and tend to be lower on the totem pole in clinical settings. Also, our work is usually based on social rather than hard science which, at least in my experience, tends to make us a bit sheepish and tentative in the shadow of those other organizations. This also makes us vulnerable to the scientific equivalent of fuzzy math, which less ethical individuals can hide behind to protect their well-paying government jobs and political connections. Ahem.
2) The degree to which a psychologist who is not working in a clinical setting with obvious patient/doctor relationships is really a healer versus a researcher, assessor, or some other type of independent agent is very unclear (and sometimes it's not so clear even where there is a patient/doctor type relationship). The APA is not solely comprised of people dedicated to the betterment of humankind through a healing relationship with an individual.
3) The APA is afraid of losing influence as an organization both in the psychological community (as the article points out), and in the culture of the current political elites, who would probably not blink an eye if the opportunity to support an alternative organization came around; we've made some decisions as an organization that, to say the least, conservatives do not like. But we do very much want to stay in their good graces enough to be the exclusive licensor of therapists working in government facilities, hence reserving the cushiest positions for those who have attended our sanctioned schools and passed our sanctioned exams, now don't we? Ahem and ahem.
These are by no means excuses, but they may help to explain some of the chickenshit-itis that we seem to be displaying. That and I wonder about how many of us are Democrats (myself included) and are hence getting rather too used to chickenshit-like behaviors in general.
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Most of us aren't quacks, actually, but you couldn't tell that by how some of us are behaving, could you.
Let me dwell on just a tiny portion of the sad, sad, ridiculous farce that is psychological participation in CIA interrogation and torture programs.
I wonder how in heaven's name one determines that psychological damage is transitory or not, given that symptoms of post traumatic stress can lie fallow for months or even years? What psychologist with even a passing knowledge of DSM-IV criteria would watch someone go through waterboarding and report to his or her supervisor, "it's alright, no big deal, he was terrified for his life for a minute or two there, but he's clearly gotten over it entirely."
Also, does anyone think that the CIA is employing psychologists with even passing familiarity with the religious and cultural contexts from which these prisoners come? Because anyone who's had a basic course in Multicultural Competency knows that you can't evaluate someone's psychological state (and hence the psychological damage being done to that person) reliably if you don't understand anything about the way that person's culture expresses emotions and acts out social relationships.
Does anyone with the slightest bit of psychological insight into human nature think for a second that psychologists ostensibly employed to improve non-coercive interrogation techniques would not, if asked by their well-paying and powerful employers, find it tempting to cross the line into advising about more sinister practices? I can just hear it now: "Hypothetically (wink wink), Dr. So-and-so, what if we ..."
Oh, and take it from me, we can't actually tell when people are lying. Not all the time and not reliably, at least. Everyone who's successfully lied to your therapist, raise your hand.
Am now typing with one finger ...
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Can someone please tell me...
...why we (the United States) are torturing? Why? Why? Why?!?
I am so ashamed of my country. So, so sad we have come to this. How is it we can now be lumped in with El Salvador, Chile, Russia, and other countries we condemn for their extreme human rights violations? How in the hell can we live with ourselves?
And echoing the above poster who quoted,
he insisted that the pressure did not amount to torture and there would be no permanent damage to prisoners, but admitted that "I would not want a U.S. citizen to go through the process"
I want to add my howl of rage and despair. We signed the Geneva Convention in an effort to end torture worldwide. So that we, too, as Americans would be protected from human rights violations. We have taken an enormous step backward into the middle ages albeit using "new and improved" psychological tools of torture.
This administration is fully aware of the illegality of their program, hence the "black sites." I'm hearing the fear and despair of a Salvadorian woman I met in the 90's who escaped, barely, with her life after most of her family had been "disappeared." And now we, Americans, are disappearing people. Quoting the ICRC rep:
He also said his organization remains concerned about people who have been held by the CIA since 9/11 but seem to have disappeared. In June, six human rights groups published the names of 39 such individuals believed to have been held by the CIA in secret locations.
What's to stop them from disappearing and torturing me or you? As far as I can tell, nothing. The fact that Bush is defending torture is unbelievable to me. How did this happen? Salon posters, please help me to understand this. Maybe you know something I don't. Can someone please tell me why we are torturing human beings?