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Today's Top News
In Protest of APA Torture Stance, Author Returns Award
For several years, psychologist members of the American Psychological Association (APA) have been fighting to change the APA's policies allowing psychologists to participate in interrogations widely reported to be abusive. As the association's 2007 Convention opened last week, the American Civil Liberties Union called upon the APA to stop psychologists' participating in abusive interrogations:
"The history of torture is inexorably linked to the misuse of scientific and medical knowledge. As we move fully into the 21st century, it is no longer enough to denounce or to speak out against torture; rather, we must sever the connection between healers and tormentors once and for all. As guardians of the mind, psychologists are duty bound to promote the humane treatment of all people. We strongly urge the APA to adopt the strongest possible stance and issue a moratorium on the participation of its members in abusive treatment."
At the convention the APA decisively rejected this call, as well as that of hundreds of APA members at a rally and in numerous debates on the issue. The APA's Council of Representatives rejected, by an approximately 85% to 15% vote, the simple statement that:
"Be it resolved that. the roles of psychologists in settings in which detainees are deprived of adequate protection of their human rights, should be limited as health personnel to the provision of psychological treatment."
As an alternative, the association passed a resolution, proposed initially by the Board of Directors, declaring use of some of the most egregious techniques to be unethical. While the Board resolution constituted progress for the APA, the resolution unfortunately contained enough caveats and loopholes, many added at the last minute without discussion with moratorium supporters, that observers were uncertain whether it condemned the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques, as Physicians for Human Rights has argued, or whether, in fact, it continued abetting the CIA's torture, as Salon's Mark Benjamin wondered.
While the APA had undoubtedly hoped for a major public relations boost from their resolution, putting the controversy behind them, the reverse seems to have occurred. Democracy Now! went to San Francisco and provided detailed coverage before and after the convention, including the electrifying claim by association member Jean Maria Arrigo that a key APA ethics taskforce on which she served had been covertly controlled by the military-intelligence establishment, while Agence France-Presse, perhaps tongue in cheek, entitled their report "US psychologists limit roles in torture of military prisoners" and Salon entitled Mark Benjamin's convention report "Will psychologists still abet torture?"
In the days since the convention ended, the APA has taken another hit as the first editorial in mainstream paper, the Houston Chronicle, stated quite clearly: "Psychologists have no place assisting interrogations at places such as Guantanamo Bay."
"The worst argument for psychologists' presence at interrogations comes from U.S. Army Col. Larry James, director of the psychology department of a military medical center" the Chronicle went on to explain.
" 'If we lose psychologists from these facilities, people are going to die,' he said at the APA meeting. Psychologists, James suggested, can rein or report overzealous violators.
Any interrogation system that teeters so close to atrocities needs more than a psychologist. It requires thorough overhaul and specific bans of the most extreme methods. The Department of Defense has listed such prohibitions. The CIA has not.
Torturing prisoners doesn't produce reliable data. It does, however, violate human rights and strip Americans of the right to protest torture of its own men and women. Above all, it blurs our credibility as a democracy worth defending.
No American psychologist should have a part in an interrogation system with the potential to devolve into murder. No American should."
An even more dramatic development in the struggle occurred this week when psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Mary Pipher (author of Reviving Ophelia among many other books) decided to return her Presidential Citation award from the American Psychological Association in protest. Here is her letter to APA President Brehm explaining her decision:
August 21, 2007
American Psychological Association, 750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242
President Brehm:
I am writing to inform you that I am returning my Presidential Citation dated 2/02/06 and awarded to me by then President of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Gerald Koocher. I have struggled for many months with this decision, and I make it with pain and sorrow. I was honored to receive this award and proud to be a member of APA. Over the years I have spoken at national conventions many times and had enjoyed an excellent relationship with the APA and its staff. With this letter, I feel as if I am ostracizing a good friend.
I do not want an award from an organization that sanctions its members' participation in the enhanced interrogations at CIA Black Sites and at Guantanamo. The presence of psychologists has both educated the interrogation teams in more skillful methods of breaking people down and legitimized the process of torture in defiance of the Geneva Conventions.
The behavior of psychologists on these enhanced interrogation teams violates our own Code of Ethics (2002) in which we pledge to respect the dignity and worth of all people, with special responsibility towards the most vulnerable. I consider prisoners in secret CIA-run facilities with no right of habeas corpus or access to attorneys, family or media to be highly vulnerable. I also believe that when any of us are degraded, all of human life is degraded. This letter is as much about us as it is about prisoners.
In our Ethics Code we agree to promote honesty and accuracy. Our involvement in these projects has been secretive and dishonest. Finally, as psychologists we vow to do no harm. Without question, we violate this oath when we allow people in our care to be deprived of sleep or subjected to sensory over-stimulation or deprivation.
I cannot accept the August 19, 2007 Reaffirmation of APA's Position Against Torture (Substitute Motion Three.) Under this motion, psychologists will be allowed to continue working on interrogation teams that are not subject to the Geneva Conventions. This motion places our organization on the side of the CIA and Department of Defense and at odds with the United Nations, The Red Cross, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association. With this reaffirmation we have made a terrible mistake.
I know that the return of my Presidential Citation from Dr. Koocher will be of small import, but it is what I can do to disassociate myself from what I consider to be a heinous policy. All of my life I have tried my best to stand up for those with no voices and no power. The prisoners our government labels as enemy combatants are in this category.
I return my citation as a matter of conscience and in the hopes that the APA will reconsider its current unethical position. We have long been a wonderful organization that respected human rights and promoted tolerance, kindness, and peace. Nothing is more fundamental to our core orientation and professional service to others than our commitment to all people's inherent dignity, safety and welfare. I hope my letter may be useful in restoring the APA to its long-respected and important stance as a beacon of integrity and kindness for all human beings.
Respectfully,
Dr. Mary Pipher
The Lincoln Journal Star has an article on Pipher's action: Pipher returns award in protest in which she explains the origins of the Letter:
"A report on Monday, by "Democracy Now," a national, daily, independent news program heard in Lincoln on radio station KZUM, set Pipher in motion.
The report said the American Psychological Association's policymaking council had voted to reject a resolution at its annual convention Sunday that would have banned members from participating in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. detention centers around the world often referred to as "black sites." In its place, the council had approved a resolution prohibiting psychologists from direct or indirect participation in 19 "unethical" interrogation techniques and called on the U.S. government to ban their use.
The list includes mock executions, simulated drowning or suffocation, sexual humiliation, exploitation of phobias, exposure to extreme heat or cold and isolation or sleep deprivation "that represents significant pain or suffering, or in a manner that a reasonable person would judge to cause lasting harm." The resolution left what Pipher sees as loopholes on such techniques as sensory and sleep deprivation, which cause people to fall apart very quickly. And it stopped far short of banning psychologists from participating in the interrogations of prisoners at the military sites, she said.
The vote upset Pipher, who has worked with victims of torture and has seen the lifelong harm it can inflict."
It is to be hoped that other prominent psychologists will join Dr. Pipher and hundreds of other psychologists in thier efforts to restore ethics and integrity to the profession of psychology, and to end the US regime of abuse and torture of detainees.
Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is one of the founders of the Coalition for an Ethical APA. He maintains the Psyche, Science, and Society blog, providing extensive coverage of the issue of psychologist involvement in interrogations.
Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is one of the founders of the Coalition for an Ethical APA. He maintains the Psyche, Science, and Society blog, providing extensive coverage of the issue of psychologist involvement in interrogations.
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35 Comments so far
Show Allyou'd think a bunch of psychologists would know that the purpose of torture is torture, not info gathering or any other rationalization jack bauer types come up with. individuals torture b/c they enjoy it. states torture to demonstrate the arbitrary, totalitarian power of the state, the boot stamping on a human face forever, as 1984 put it. people, individuals & gov'ts, torture to demonstrate their unrestrained power & authority. state sanctioned torture shows that the individual and his/her rights mean nothing before the power of the state.
that a group of professional healers, well-educated in their profession, would not see thru this crap is astounding. the torture/terror/war mongers are afflicting all areas of public discourse, including the healing professions.
Again, so-called "representative democracy" shows that it's BS. The creeps who defeated the prohbition not only ought to be thrown off the Council, they ought also to be stripped of their professional credentials.
Doctors are part of some elite Americans who are protected by the government. At least as long as they follow orders. Dr. Pipher has the fortitude to think for herself and to act according to her conscience. But she is rare in America where most people follow willingly like sheep.
Hoa binh
That caveat the American Psychological Association inserted without review "that represents significant pain or suffering, or in a manner that a reasonable person would judge to cause lasting harm." creates an opening big enough to throw an elephant. Now why would they do that?
It wouldn't have anything to do with "the electrifying claim by association member Jean Maria Arrigo that a key APA ethics taskforce on which she served had been covertly controlled by the military-intelligence establishment", would it? Are we proud to be Americans yet?
The American Psychological Association has been part of the problem for a long time.
They are facists.
Have you ever read the DSM1V manual?
If they had their way - We would all be diagnosed with "anger disorder", heavily medicated and locked up in Rehab!
The DSM is produced by The American Psychiatric Association, not The American Psychological Association. It does not contain a listing for "anger disorder".
The only answer is to decisively vote this council of representatives OUT at the next election. The stand of the present council is beyond outrageous! Council members send out summaries of their positions before each election. As a long time APA member, I will not vote for anyone who does not pledge to end participation in interrogations.
Ericdoc, I am also a longtime APA member. I am struggling with how to most effectively protest this stand by the council. I considered resigning from the APA, but unless there is a widespread threat to do so, I don't see how the organization would benefit from simply losing the members who oppose psychologists participation in inhumane, harmful treatment of people. I wonder if there is a way for us to take action that is louder than merely voting, action more specifically and clearly directed at this issue. Perhaps if we all wrote letters like that of Dr Pipher, or started a petition to the council with similar content, we might have impact. What are your thoughts? Condoning participation in such interrogation on the basis of "it would be REALLY bad if we weren't there" is a mockery of the ethics code and of human morality. This is unacceptable.
Was it the Hypocritic Oath? First, see no evil.
It seems that the purpose of the APA like Room 101, the Ministry of Information Retrieval and the Inquisition is to extract a false confession used to 'justify' conquest and plunder.
Mengala would be proud.
ballsy:
"a group of professional healers, well educated in their profession"?
In what country is that? Shrinks are, overall, among the most psychologically disturbed, and disturbing, collection I have ever had to deal with.
dwatkins9: The DSM is used by psychologists, as well.
If the psychological profession steadfastly refuses to take an even marginally ethical stance on such egregious violations of ethics and international and American law, there is but one way the public can get their attention: BOYCOTT. Other professionals such as doctors, clergy, attorneys, nurses, etc., should refer patients to psychiatrists, clinical social workers, mental health counselors and other professionals in preference to APA member psychologists.
Members of an organization which permits professionals in its ranks to participate in torture are ethically unfit to treat patients and must be shunned. If appeals to logic, law and human decency fail, perhaps financial pressure will succeed in getting the shrinks' attention.
A big 'three cheers' to Dr. Mary Pipher for her patriotism to humanity rather than just a narrow nationalistic viewpoint. It's just too bad her courageous statement will likely be undercovered, or quickly covered up by a complicit main stream media.
"The DSM is produced by The American Psychiatric Association, not The American Psychological Association. It does not contain a listing for "anger disorder"."
OOPS!...sorry, my mistake.
Whatever - they all want to control the population with medication. Where are people like Dr. C.G. Jung who used to actually talk to his patients and warned us about the coming of facism in Europe? He would not have accepted the award either. "anger disorder" must have been my idea - check DSM in the future it might catch on.
Amen to the person who said "shrinks are disturbed". They are in the "New World Order". Now primary care doctors are handing antidepressants out like lollipops. I hope the few nice counselors that are left cancel their memberships.
Imagine going through graduate school - then realizing the only jobs left are standing by and watching people be tortured. I'd become a cab driver or a bartender instead and actually help people. This is very disturbing... Oops, I beter not say anymore - they might lock me up in Rehab!
RE: ascott August 26th, 2007 9:02 pm
Agreed. With stances like this by a "professional" (?) representative body is it any wonder millions of people see psychology as a bunch of hooey?
does it remind you of the good German doctors who were only following orders under the Nazis?
Come now, there are many uses for psychologists. Where would the advertising industry be without child psychologists to help them manipulate children's minds with commercials?
To be fair, there are also many ethical and therapeutic psychologists out there as well. But it does seem that the American Psychological Association has a serious problem with it's own standards of ethical behavior. That is, it doesn't have any.
To be fair, there are also many ethical and therapeutic psychologists out there as well. But it does seem that the American Psychological Association has a serious problem with it's own standards of ethical behavior. That is, it doesn't have any.
********************
Good points Kathyodat--also the turning down of the prize is just as significant as CARE rejecting US food aid. It shows that at least some people do have standards which mean something to them--mean enought to them that they cannot be bought off by flattery or money.
In the previous wars the USA was involved in, there evidently was some inhumane treatment of prisoners used. However most of our citizens had no idea that those methods of getting information were anything but isolated incidents. Certainly our own government did not openly flaunt the rules of combat until the Bush-Cheny-Gonzales outlaws took over. The American people still believed that our military and intelligence -gathering operations were above using torture. Consequently, they could hold their heads up proudly when the flag went by, knowing that our nation still stood for human dignity. Now it appears that our country has sunk to the level of those whom we have despised for using such tactics, and it is sad that many of our people are now trying to accept them as necessary.
Good for Mary Pipher for sticking to her principles!!
Revengegirl,
Maybe when you wrote "anger disorder" you were thinking of ODD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, "an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures that goes beyond the bounds of normal childhood behavior."
i certainly have an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior toward authority figures. i don't think my behavior goes beyond the bounds of anything. And of course, perhaps the authority figures are beyond the bounds of something.
With every passing decade, more feelings and behaviors are classified as diseases, with drugs to prescribe. Depression is disease, anxiety is disease, attention deficit is disease, oppositional defiance is disease...
i certainly don't have all the answers to anything, but i don't trust the psycho-pharmcological industry's influence on medical diagnosis.
RE: webwalk August 27th, 2007 12:26 am
Yes, they even have a pill for Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It's administered through mostly TV and called the MSM. It's as hard a pill to swallow as the set it comes out of LOL. It usually puts people with a brain to sleep.
PaulMagillSmith, I prefer the term (coined by someone else, I forget who), corporate media instead of MSM. It just feels more precise.
Well, at least someone has ethics; too bad none are evident in this cur administration.
And, I do mean CUR!
Dr. Mengele, I presume
Kathyodat, I stand corrected. Actually, with 25% of people now getting their news on-line the days of MSM or 'corporate' media might be numbered. That is if they don't shut the internet down as they surely would like to, AND will try to.
Psychologists who participate in inhumane and harmful treatment of people should have their licenses revoked for violating the code of ethics within their profession.
WEBWALK & REVENGE GIRL: It's especially convenient when a society can lable certain anti-establishment behaviors as being pathological. The nazis were very good at this, in Soviet Russia the dissidents were always a problem to be stamped out. I remember viewing a film about a movie actress, FRANCIS FARMER and how she was considered mentally ill for being defiant, and forced on medication. Then of course there was the brilliant, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. I link both of these films with a scathing article in Harper's several months ago that spoke of the teaching of HAPPINESS courses at university. How many CD readers remember the article suggesting that Republicans report being happier than democrats, giving rise to the issue of what basis is used to calculate happiness? If it stops with ego, i.e. "personal real estate" boundaries, and I need not consider things as depressing as global warming, the state of the US economy, the evisceration of the Constitution's checks and balances, the growing scourge of DU, etc ad nauseum, MAYBE I would be happier. MANY new age pundits talk about training the mind to be positive, and there truly can be results that benefit the individual as a result of such personal training. BUT... if these devices only succeed in winning perks for the person to the degree they turn off the true status of the world, it just becomes another take on "what profiteth a man to gain the world and lose his soul," i.e. tribute to mammon.
In other words, it is VERY VERY dangerous when natural mental states that grow out of organic opposition to things that are blatantly wrong, are taken out of context and used as a basis to drug, sedate or dumb down individuals of conscience. Orwell style, now served with a diabolical chemical-industrial-military-prison complex twist!
Why would they care if the ethical and honorable ones resign? The net effect would be the same as having all of these informed and educated protesters permanently leaving the country. It leaves those in power even more able to run roughshod over those left behind. Why is it that our first knee-jerk reaction to heinous crimes within our ranks, to high tail it? Aren't we responsible to do something about it?
Hi Siouxrose and webwalk thanks for your more articulate support!
I have been a chronic pain patient for 10 years and was denied diagnostic tests and treatment by my HMO for the first five. I was given a toxic combo of pharmacuiticals instead.
I went to a so called "pain hospital" and asked for help and was drugged and abused. My civil rights and the Patient's Bill of Rights were violated. I was diagnosed as "alcohol dependent" and I don't drink.
The Dr. Mengele at the hospital said if I left it would go in my record that I was "non-complient"
The judge stated for the record in my disability case that the hospital "stretched the truth in order to justify the cost of treatment". When I finally got the diagnostic tests I had three herniated discs, two bone spurs, a torn tendon and a dislocated shoulder.
I have just diagnosed myself as ODD - thanks to webwalk!
Revenge girl: Sorry for your ordeal. Use the internet or health food stores to learn about herbs and vitamins that will facilitate healing. The drug thing keeps people on chemical maintenance programs frequently capable of masking symptoms without ever removing CAUSE. It's like paying chemical rent for your own body when nature has inborn systems designed to heal, if properly assisted. Lifestyle choices, diet, refraining from substance abuse, and good diet all facilitate that magical healing capacity inborn to most things living.
The work of Stephen Soldz and his colleagues at a Coalition for an Ethical APA can be found at: http://www.ethicalapa.com
I think they are doing great work.
Thank you Siouxrose.
My mother was a healthcare professional and I worked in her office. One day in 1973 an insurance company rep. came in and started telling her how to treat patients according to their rules - or else be excluded from the list of doctors the insurance company refers their corporate clients to. She threw him out of her office and said "This will be the end of medical ethics". She was right. All I can do is warn healthy people of the nightmare that may ensue if they get sick. I will never really be able to trust a doctor again. I'm one of the 25,000 who wrote to Michael Moore and I'm just beginning to heal.
Your advice is right on. Getting pissed off really helped too. The for profit US Healthcare system made me feel like a pod in The Matrix. I don't think that is very psychologically healthy.
PaulMagillSmith, please, I wasn't intending to correct you, just sharing my own preference. You can call the media anything you like. I don't mind.
revengegirl, so sorry to hear about your horrific experience. Sounds like a story out of the former Soviet Union. I would also like to suggest you check out the website www.nmt.md for energy healing. It works, and you can ask if any practitioners use a sliding scale for fees if that is a problem.
kathyodat
Thanks so much for your help. This story just reminded me of how I was treated like a thing instead of a human being.
The US Healthcare system is full of corruption and fraud. People are being over medicated by Doctors who don't have the time to know who they are, or care to find out what the problem is - unless the patient is well insured. While the doctors get kickbacks from the drug companies, the patients are labled with a "disorder". Later the patient is blamed for taking the medicine by another big business called Rehab. (Presented as "pain clinics" so they can entrap people and commit fraud). I never met so many self agrandizing hypocrites in my life! There were people in the hospital who were not allowed to leave. People with serious injuries were told by manipulative counselors to mortgage their homes to pay cash for "treatment".
Medical establishments are run by buisnessmen who are only interested in the bottom line. They close pre-natal clinics while flying themselves to "corporate traning" vacations to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile state health insurance programs are billed for Millions of dollars for antidepressants - so that people like me can be controlled. This causes spending cuts for real healthcare and diagnostic tests for the working poor who don't have good insurance.
The Supreme Court (which is in the pockets of corporations) exempts HMO's from lawsuits! Then individual Doctors have astronomical malpractice insurance, and some of them don't like their patients. And the neo-con government blames the victims of this system - the patients- for "frivolous lawsuits"! If people had healthcare and the insurance companies, pharmacuitical companies and businessmen would get out of the practice of medicine this problem would go away.
In the process of discovering the black hole that the US healthcare system has become - I was forced to take medication and they would not tell me what it was. I was abused. My medical records were fabricated by corrupt Psychologists and Doctors. I was forced into a degrading psychological exam by Social Security. I was accused of lying by a Social Security doctor (with a red light over his door) whom I never met. Currently the wait for a Disability hearing is more than three years (not 18 months like it says in the media - that's just the wait after the first denial). In the process of waiting for a disability decision, since I was in too much pain to work, I lost my job and my insurance. My car was repod and I had to sell my home to pay debt - This is partly because I had to pay for the diagnostic tests that my HMO denied, on my credit card, and cash for medication.
The strange thing about all this is that everyone, except me, seems to know all this - including the doctors and psychologists. When I contacted the Board of Medical Examiners they were rude. (They all go to the same country clubs doncha know!) Disabled people, contrary to popular opinion, are treated really badly in America.
I was just a dolphin caught in a tuna net but as long as people continue to participate in this corrupt system because of their own SELF INTEREST, medical ethics will not be possible. Any Psychologist who willingly participates in something so horrid as torture and abuse of patients is a pure hypocrite.
Dear revengegirl,
So very sorry to hear about your horrific experience with the corporate medical system. Your mother was absolutely correct.
I am a social worker (NOT a psychologist) and have done a lot of research into sources of pain. Siouxrose has made several good suggestions, but if you haven't read John Sarno's books, especially the Mindbody Connection and The Divided Mind, please check them out! There is a non-medical cure for the vast majority of chronic pain conditions (which are of epidemic proportions in the U.S.), and his approach works like a miracle! I myself and many, many others I know who have suffered with chronic pain conditions (including herniated discs, bone spurs, etc.) have been healed. All that is required is an open mind.
Energy healing (see Donna Eden and David Feinstein's work on this subject) may also be of help to you.
Please check out the work of the alternative healing community, which is enormous. There is help available to you........outside the box of the western medical model, which is clueless when it comes to chronic conditions.
Dear luciddreaming,
I'm going to check that out, and the other suggestions people have kindly written. Thank you. Imagine, total strangers helping me! What a great website this is!
The healthcare system seems to me like a metaphor for industrial production where hoards of essentially disinterested "specialists" who are just doing their job, tinker with the patient's body and mind and send them down the line. This kind of vampire-like mentality is rationalistic self justification to the torturer and the vivisectionist too. They don't have empathy for the sentient being right in front of them who is in pain, which is why this story upset me.
What began as an injury to my body ended up damaging my mind and emotions because of this system. But there's one mistake I won't make again when someone invites me to partake of corporate pharmacology they always tempt me over the threshold with the line: "This helps with pain" and I won't fall for that line again..no thank you Mr. Dracula! I am now in recovery from Western Medicine and from this Civilization.