Speaking Out Against Torture
Jan. 22, 2008, Oakland CA
Ruth Fallenbaum, Phd, Ethical APA
You may be wondering what shrinks have to do with the
so-called “war on terror.” It’s a long
story, and at my conclusion, you will find websites with links to books,
articles, and other materials for the full story. But in any event, I will try to give you a
capsule account of how psychologists like me became involved in one aspect of
the struggle against torture.
Over the past few years a number of my colleagues and I have
become increasingly aware of a rather unholy alliance between our profession as
represented by our venerable national organization, the American Psychological
Association, and what has to be the
nastiest government this country has suffered in my lifetime – and that’s
saying something. That alliance is
manifested in the utilization of psychologists for the purposes of assisting in
the planning and implementation of methods of interrogation that must be
described as torture. And though we psychologists tend to be a relatively
mild-mannered bunch, we”re pretty angry.
In truth, the history of
psychological expertise being used for military and CIA purposes, mainly
nefarious, dates back at least to the post-World War II era. The Bush Administration did not invent
coercive interrogations and torture. Nor
did APA approval of such use of psychologists begin with the “War on Terror”. But somehow, this dirty little side of our
beloved profession did not make it onto the radar screens of most of our
members, myself definitely included. Most of us in APA paid our dues to the
national organization, maybe purchased our malpractice insurance through the
APA system, attended conferences, and gave and read papers and journals within
our divisions of interest within the larger parent organization. The ins and outs of national APA politics and
certainly of the relatively small branch of military psychology within APA were
of zero interest.
Many of us, like you,
however, did react with disgust and anger as the news about the abuses
at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib,
and secret CIA black sites emerged. So
that when, in 2005, the New England
Journal of Medicine and the NY Times
revealed that mental health professionals were serving as consultants
on
Behavioral Science Consultation or BSCT
teams to advise interrogators, some of my alert colleagues took
notice. It seemed clear that with all we knew about
the illegality and cruelty of the detention facilities being operated
by the US in this war,
psychologists did not belong at any of them and were outraged that the
professional
credibility of our discipline was being given to these abusive
enterprises. They
leapt into action and went to the leadership to push for the APA to
prohibit
the presence of psychologists at these detention sites. It seemed like
a no-brainer. Discussions were
held, a task force appointed to look at the issue. Discussions and a
task force. As you might be able to predict, this “no-brainer”
was confronted with a politely resistant but mule-like opposition. It
began to become evident that APA at its
upper levels had no intention of taking such a stand and that, to the
contrary,
it was fully committed to the continued use of psychologists by the
government
for these purposes. In a 2005 report by
its task force on psychological ethics and national security, known as
the PENS
task force, APA took the position that, “It is consistent with the APA
Ethics
Code for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation
and
information-gathering processes for national security-related
purposes.” We later discovered that this appointed task
force was comprised of a majority of military-affiliated psychologists,
representing a tiny minority of the APA membership, and most of whom
had
actually been involved in the interrogation business. In other words,
the task
force was preselected and rigged to come up with a pro-military
position.
In contrast, it should be noted, that by the summer of 2006,
the American Psychiatric Association had endorsed a policy absolutely
prohibiting psychiatrists from taking part in interrogations at Guantanamo
or elsewhere.
Slowly the word among psychologists began to spread. I actually first heard about psychologist
involvement at Guantanamo
on Democracy Now in 2006. I was shocked and enraged. “No way am I going to continue to pay my dues
to this organization!” After nearly 20 years of APA membership, I wrote a
letter indicating my intention to withhold my dues, until APA reversed its
stand. I began talking to colleagues to
find out what others thought and were doing. Through my own division in the APA, the
Division of Psychoanalysis, I connected with others who were similarly
outraged. A dynamo in NY named Ghislaine
Boulanger, who, not coincidentally, has recently published an excellent
scholarly book on her work with victims of adult-onset trauma, had begun a fledgling
group of dues withholders. A listserv
and website were set up, and withholdapadues.com was launched. From our work together, we did what we could
to spread the word. Panels were set up,
letters to professional journals and newsletters written. And when APA held its annual national
convention in San Francisco
in August 2007, we had formed a coalition of Psychologists for an Ethical APA
and were ready with volunteers distributing
flyers throughout the four-day convention.
We held a lively rally and teach-in, endorsed by about two dozen mental
health and social justice organizations, across the street from the convention at the Yerba Buena
Gardens.
By the end of the convention, the ACLU had written
a public
letter to APA urging it change its stance.
And author and psychologist Mary Pipher, who wrote Reviving Ophelia,
had publically turned in her APA medal. News of the protest spread
through the bit of
media coverage we received, so that many more APA members became aware
of what
their organization was doing. The number of people deciding to withhold
their
dues or outright resign increased and continues to do so. Our list has
grown 10-fold from inception. That’s
the good news.
The bad news is that when it came time at the
convention for
the Council of Representatives to vote on a proposed ban on
psychologists
participating in interrogations at sites where human rights are
violated, we
were back to square one: a resounding
defeat. Instead, the council passed an
APA-drafted substitute resolution that did bar psychologists from
participation
in torture, and listed all sorts of specifics, but because of seemingly
innocuous little qualifiers inserted at the last minute, and over which
APA
leadership refused to budge, the resolution passed with loopholes
designed to
keep psychologists in the interrogation and torture game. The
qualifiers were the phrases, “that cause
significant pain” or “that cause lasting harm,”
put at the end of lists of torture techniques like sleep deprivation,
isolation, sensory overload or deprivation. Thus left in was
wiggle-room to
suggest that, for instance, not all sleep deprivation or sensory
overload will
meet the bar of causing lasting harm, and that which doesn’t reach that
bar, as
determined by “a reasonable person,” is fine for psychologists to work
on. The techniques aren’t banned outright. Sounds very Bushy, doesn’t
it.
To put these word games in perspective, consider the first
line of the first principle of our Code of Ethics: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with
whom they work and take care to do no harm.”
Does it say, “Do no lasting harm?”
No, it does not. It says “Do NO harm.”
How then does the APA square
their position of supporting psychologists” participation in interrogations at Guantanamo with their
ethical code? Well, they think they”ve
got that covered. In 2002, a committee
was convened to go over the ethics code and make some changes. Not unusual.
Apparently revisions are periodically made to tighten or adjust the code
to changing situations etc. However one
change made in 2002 is relevant here.
Section 1.02, dealing with Conflicts Between Ethics and Law,
Regulations, or Other Governing Legal Authority, was amended as follows: “If the conflict is unresolvable via such
means (i.e. bringing to attention the ethical conflict to the authorities),
psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other
governing legal authority.” As Stephen
Soldz, a Boston
psychoanalyst who has been tireless in this campaign, has said, “What sorts of
experts on ethics write the Nurenberg defense into their code of conduct?”
You have probably been wondering, as I often have, what’s in
it for the APA leadership to protect this cozy relationship with the Bush
regime? Why, in 2002, adjust the ethics
code in such a way as to read that a psychologist can abandon her or his code
of ethics, including or perhaps especially, the principle of “do no harm,” in order to follow “legal”
orders ? I don’t know. Is it a genuine
belief in Bush and his war on terror, as occasional quotes from some of its
defenders seem to indicate? Maybe. Is it as venal as turf , funding, and
jobs? Probably.
So where are we now?
Officially, APA continues to maintain that psychologists belong in
interrogations, and claim that, in fact, psychologists” presence promotes what
they refer to as “safe and ethical interrogations.” At that council vote that defeated our
resolution to bar psychologists from interrogations, one military psychologist
claimed, apparently convincingly given the vote, that if psychologists were removed,
“people will die.” APA apologists
blithely ignore the obvious fact that there can be no such thing as an ethical
interrogation in settings where people are detained indefinitely with no
protection of law or due process. So our
work continues.
We are struggling to
find ways to reach the entire membership of APA. We continue to reach out to
colleagues, speaking, writing, and more speaking and more writing. An exciting recent development for those of
us in California,
completely independent of our efforts, has been the work of American Friends
Service Committee and Physicians for Social Responsibility. They have worked diligently with Calif. State
Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas of the L.A. area, and chair of the state senate
Committee on Business Professions and Economic Development, who has introduced
a resolution that calls on the licensing boards of Calif. Health professionals
to bar their practitioners from participating in interrogations, based on the
history of abuse and torture surrounding those interrogations. The
first hearing before his Committee took place January 14, and
the senator eloquently linked the timing of his introduction of the bill as
appropriate – the day before Martin Luther King’s birthday. Testimony in support of the resolution was
powerful, with witnesses citing the evidence of the destructive impact of
psychologist participation in interrogations to both detainees and
practitioners, who are so vulnerable to the Zimbardo phenomenon of ethical
drift in the abusive environment of a detention center. Of all people, psychologists should know
this. The resolution passed, but the
committee later met to consider amendments to the wording proposed at the
January 14 hearing, and – you guessed it – APA sent its flak from Washington to
the Sacramento hearing to propose inserting just one teeny-tiny qualification
to Senator Ridley-Thomas” resolution:
that the bar be against participating in interrogations “that involve torture.” More letter-writing, this time to Senator
Ridley-Thomas, urging him NOT to accept APA’s proposed changes in the wording.
I am happy to report that the committee made some minor changes to wording, but
rejected the APA amendment. The next
step is for a vote in the full State Senate.
Keep your ears perked for this one, because if the licensing boards
become involved, the threat of losing one’s license for participating in
interrogations becomes a powerful tool in getting psychologists out of the
torture and interrogation business.
For more than a decade now I have worked with survivors of
torture and persecution, and I have learned two things: 1. In the chaos and lawlessness of environments
like the civil war in El Salvador, or the struggles between Ethiopia and
Eritria, and the US global war on terror, people are picked up and detained, beaten,
tortured, etc in the most arbitrary ways.
You can be fingered by a jealous neighbor, you can be mistaken for a
cousin with the same name, you can be
stopped with a flyer stuffed in your pocket that was handed out at a rally, or basically
you can be at the wrong place at the wrong time. These are our “suspected terrorists.” In other words, they are us. 2. The
shape of torture is sickeningly similar world-wide and it affects people in
universally tragic ways. It breaks
people, and often they can never really be repaired again, which is difficult
for a psychotherapist to admit. Should they be able to start life over in
relative physical safety, and if they have the right support and the assurance
of ongoing mental health treatment (and often medical treatment as well), they
may have a manageable chronic condition, and be able to lead productive and
satisfying lives.
By going to www.ethicalapa.com,
you will find links with plenty of good material and background on this
issue. www.withholdapadues.com will also
give you information on our movement.
Ruth Fallenbaum, Ph.D.