A seventeen-year-old boy is locked in an interrogation cell in Guantanamo. He breaks down crying and says he wants his family. The interrogator senses the boy is psychologically vulnerable and consults with a psychologist. The psychologist has evaluated the boy prior to the questioning and says, "Tell him his family has forgotten him." The psychologist also prescribes "linguistic isolation" (not letting him have contact with anyone who speaks his language.) The boy attempts suicide a few weeks later. On the eve of the boy's trial, the psychologist apparently fearing her testimony will only further implicate her, indicates she will plead the Fifth Amendment if she is called to the stand. The trial is postponed, leaving the boy in further limbo.
The military psychologist is merely a foot soldier in psychology's participation in torture. It goes much deeper. We now know that psychologists helped design and implement significant segments of George Bush's torture program. Despite their credo, "Above all, do no harm," two psychologists developed instruments of psychological torture. They "reversed engineered" psychological principles. They used the very therapeutic interventions psychologists use to ameliorate psychological suffering, but "reversed" their direction to create psychological distress and instability. If one's reality sense is threatened, a good therapist validates and supports it as appropriate. In reverse engineering, the environment is deliberately made more confusing and the victim's trust in his own perceptions is intentionally undermined. In extreme form, this can ultimately drive a person to insanity from which some never come back. These were the types of techniques that were used on the seventeen-year-old detainee and others.
Military psychologists also colluded with the Justice Department to help CIA operatives circumvent the legal prohibitions against torture. Under the Justice Department definition of torture, if a detainee was sent to a psychologist for a mental health evaluation prior to interrogation it was per se evidence that the interrogator had no legal intent to torture the detainee because the referral "demonstrated concern" for the welfare of the detainee.
Most remarkably of all, this whole process occurred under a protective "ethical" seal from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychologists' largest national organization. The APA governance repeatedly rejected calls from its membership for APA to join other health organizations in declaring participation in Bush detention center interrogations unethical.
Most psychologists are appalled at what the APA has done, and many, like me, have resigned from the APA. But the true story behind APA's involvement with torture has not been fully told.
I have had ample opportunity to observe both the inner workings of the APA and the personalities and organizational vicissitudes that have affected it over the last two decades. For most of the twenty-year period from 1983 to 2003, I either worked inside the APA central office as the first Executive Director of the APA Practice Directorate, or I served in various governance positions, including Chair of the APA Board of Professional Affairs and member of the APA Council of Representatives. Since leaving APA I have maintained a keen interest in the organization.
The transformation of APA, in the past decade, from a historically liberal organization to an authoritarian one that actively assists in torture has been an astonishing process. As with many usurpations of democratic liberal values, the transformation was accomplished by a surprisingly small number of people. APA is an invaluable case study in the psychological manipulations that influence our governmental and non-governmental institutions.
To explain APA's behavior two questions have to be answered. First, how did the APA develop the connections with the military that fostered the shameful role it has played in torture? Second, why did the APA governance not join other health professions in prohibiting participation in the Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogations," as APA's rank and file members were demanding?
The APA-military connection
One source of APA's military connections is obvious to anyone who has worked at APA over the last twenty-five years. Strangely, it has been overlooked by the media. Since the early 1980's, APA has had a unique relationship with Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye's office. Inouye was an honored WWII veteran, a Japanese American who himself was a medical volunteer in the midst of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He entered office in 1962. For much of the '70s, he was Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Later he became, and is currently, the chair of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which, of course, makes up the largest chunk of federal discretionary spending and is why economists often split discretionary government funding into defense spending versus "everything else." This appropriations committee covers not only all of the armed forces but the CIA as well. Put succinctly, Inouye controls the military purse strings, and is very influential with military brass.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bryant-welch/torture-psychology-and-da_b_215612.html
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