APA and Torture

From Ellen

This blog seems to be expanding from survival stories to feminist grannies and now to psychologists and torture. I am sure there is a thread here and I hope those of you following along will bear with me as I allow myself to be moved by the events around me which I actually believe is the essence of blowing on embers. Here's the latest.

I am an infrequent attendee at The American Psychological Association (APA), but yesterday I went to the rally led by a group of active APA members protesting APA's current policy on psychologists' participation in interrogation and torture. Having known about this from a distance I had been concerned, but not involved. Listening to the details close up has made it imperative for me to take action. If you would like to know more about these details please go to: www.ethicalapa.com.

On Sunday morning at 10 A.M. the APA Council will vote on whether or not to support a moratorium on psychologists participating in torture and interrogations of prisoners held in illegal settings.

Many APA members, me included, are withdrawing our dues from APA as we protest its actions. I encourage other AFTA members who are also APA members to consider doing the same. I had thought that my liability insurance was dependent on my APA membership. This is in fact not the case. Also it will be very helpful for anyone concerned to contact APA Council members expressing your dismay. To find their names go to: www.apa.org/governance.

There are more than 150,000 psychologists who are members of APA. These psychologists and any other psychologists and mental health professionals who do not speak out against this policy are complicit in its effects.


From Jack Saul
Director International Trauma Studies Program Mailman School of Health, Columbia University

I want to thank Ellen for her note on the American Psychological Association's moratorium on participation of psychologists in torture and abusive interrogation. Below is an oped piece written by my colleague, Steve Reisner, who has been one of the key spokespersons opposing the APA's position.What I find most disturbing about this issue is that since the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association came out against participation of doctors in interrogations on ethical grounds,the US government turned to the APA to support psychologists to stand in as the "medical personnel" on site to insure that the practices are safe and effective. In essence, the APA in its stance has created the legal basis for the military to continue to carry out such practices, which according to international law would be defined as torture. There is also a piece in Vanity Affair on how psychologists developed some of the current practiceshttp://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707As a psychologist running a torture treatment program, I felt it was imperative to stop paying dues to the APA.

OPED SUBMISSION-RE: PSYCHOLOGISTS AND U.S. TORTURE.CONTACT:Steven Reisner
office: 212-633-8391Cell: 646-415-1413SReisner@psychoanalysis.netBrad OlsonCell: (773) 308-6461b-olson@northwestern.ed

Psychologists’ Tortured Ethics by Steven Reisner and Brad Olson
Steven Reisner, Ph.D. is Senior Faculty at the International Trauma Studies Program, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School. Brad Olson, Ph.D. is Assistant Research Professor, Northwestern University, and President of the APA's Divisions for Social Justice. Both are founding members of the Coalition for an Ethical APA.

The American Psychological Association (APA) is in crisis. In 2005, the APA authored an ethics report that not only allowed but encouraged psychologists to participate in US interrogations of suspected terrorists. This week, Vanity Fair revealed what psychologists were doing at CIA Black Sites, at Guantánamo, and other national security facilities: they were committing torture.The APA and the nation were warned as early as 2004 that detainees were being tortured and that military and intelligence psychologists and other medical professionals were suspected of developing the techniques of abuse and overseeing their application. The APA leadership could have followed their colleagues in the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, who convened special sessions to decry abuses and prohibit their membership from any direct participation in, supervision of, or assessment of prisoners for, coercive or abusive interrogations. But instead, the APA took a decidedly different tack than its fellow healing professions. When the APA leadership formed a Task Force to investigate the charges of psychologist-assisted abusive interrogations, they turned to military and intelligence psychologists to assess the allegations and to write the ethical guidelines for participation in those interrogations.We now know that six of the nine voting members of the Task Force were involved directly or indirectly in military or CIA interrogation strategies and practices; four were in the chain of command of the very military and intelligence services responsible for instituting and supervising these abusive CIA and DoD interrogation strategies at Guantánamo, in Iraq, and at CIA ‘Black Sites.’

The result was that the APA Ethics Code was turned on its head. The Task Force positioned a secondary ethical principle, “responsibility to society,” above what has been the first principle of every healing profession for millennia: “Do no harm.” And in a move that should have been unthinkable after Nuremberg, the APA affirmed that psychologists “have an ethical responsibility to be informed of, familiar with, and follow the most recent applicable regulations and rules” and may do so, even when these conflict with ethical principles or basic human rights.This week, Vanity Fair provided evidence that in fact psychologists had turned torture techniques developed to train our soldiers to resist torture, into the “standard operating procedures” of abusive military and CIA interrogations. In other words, to be “familiar with, and follow the most recent applicable regulations and rules” at Guantánamo, or Iraq, was to practice legal, but abusive interrogation techniques. The APA Task Force rendered such abuse within bounds of APA ethics. As Vanity Fair reports, “Psychologists weren't merely complicit in America's aggressive new interrogation regime. Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the C.I.A.”

The APA must immediately revise its ethics code and restore to its proper preeminence the psychologist’s obligation to “do no harm.” The Association would do well to take a page directly from the United Nations’ Principles of Medical Ethics which, in response to reports of health personnel facilitating torture, declared that it is against “medical ethics for health personnel…to apply their knowledge and skills in order to assist in the interrogation of prisoners and detainees in a manner that may adversely affect the physical or mental health or condition of such prisoners or detainees…”The APA must now rescind the infamous ethical clause, cited in the PENS Report, which protects psychologists who follow law and military regulation even when these conflict with their ethical responsibilities. In its place we must add a new ethical standard guaranteeing that psychologists uphold basic human rights even when law, orders, regulations, or research protocols condone or encourage their violation.Further, the APA leadership must hold itself to account. It makes no difference if they consciously knew that they were putting the foxes in charge of the hen house, or if they did so in an act of brazen disregard of the facts. Either way, the APA leadership has clearly contributed to what has become the greatest scandal in the history of the American Psychological Association.The APA has an enormous task ahead if we are to repair the damage we have done to our profession and to the field of psychology. If we do not act swiftly and comprehensively to restore our good name, American psychology is in danger of joining the disgraced healers of South Africa, Chile, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, where law led health professionals astray and only their adherence to the ethics of the healing profession brought them back.