Psychologists' Group Under Fire

As reported by Forbes and elsewhere

The American Psychological Association is under fire from some of its members and other professionals for declaring that it is permissible for psychologists to assist in military interrogations. An online petition against the group's policy has garnered more than 1,300 signatures from members and other psychologists. Protest forums are being planned for the APA's convention next month in New Orleans. And some members have threatened to withhold dues or quit.

The unrest stems from an APA policy, issued last year, that says that while psychologists should not get involved in torture or other degrading treatment, it is ethical for them to act as consultants to interrogation and information-gathering for national security purposes.

That stand troubles some members of the organization in light of the reported abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

"The issue is being couched as psychologists helping out with national security at the same time that psychologists are opposed to the issue of torture," said Chicago psychologist William Gorman, an APA member who signed the petition and works with refugee survivors of torture. "That stance in the present context appears to me incongruous."

News reports have said that mental health specialists who are helping U.S. military interrogators have helped create coercive techniques, including sleep deprivation and playing on detainees' phobias, to extract information.

The American Medical Association last month adopted what many view as a stronger stand against physician involvement in prisoner interrogation, echoing a position held by the American Psychiatric Association, whose members are medical doctors. The U.S. military has indicated it will therefore favor using psychologists, who are not medical doctors and are not bound by the other groups' policies.

The Physicians for Human Rights, a Cambridge, Mass.-based advocacy group, issued a statement Wednesday urging APA leaders to "explicitly prohibit psychologists from participating in interrogations."

Salon.com reported Wednesday that six of the 10 people on the APA task force that drafted the psychologists' policy have close military ties, including four who have worked at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or Afghanistan.

New York psychologist Steven Reisner, an APA member and vocal opponent of the policy, said those ties make the group's stance even more troubling.

Gerald Koocher, APA's president, said that none of the task force members was involved in torture and that their military ties were not a conflict of interest.

Some professionals, including Reisner, a faculty member at Columbia University's International Trauma Studies program and at New York University's medical school, want the 150,000-member organization to rewrite the group's ethics code to bar psychologists from any involvement in detainee interrogation.

Reisner said fliers and forums are being prepared for the group's Aug. 10-13 convention "to generate a momentum of embarrassment and outrage that the APA has thus far been facilitating these interrogations rather than stopping the violations of human rights."

Responding to member concerns, the APA's ethics committee is drawing up guidance on what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior by psychologists involved in interrogations, Koocher said.

The APA also said that its governing council is expected to vote on a resolution on Aug. 9, a day before the convention, reaffirming the group's opposition to torture and other inhumane treatment.

The group also has invited Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the Army's surgeon general, to attend the convention and answer questions about military use of psychologists.

I suppose it depends on if they enjoy their work, or if they are being forced into this line of work.

I am glad to see that at least some folks are considering the idea of torture as ethically troublesome.