[NYTr] Psychologists Against Torture: Why Mary Pipher Returned Her APA Award

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Aug 25. 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz08252007.html

version with URL citations at ZNet also Aug 25, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=13625&sectionID=57

Psychologists Against Torture

Why Mary Pipher Returned Her APA Award

By STEPHEN SOLDZ

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:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/31355prs20070817.html

    "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.
http://www.apa.org/governance/resolutions/councilres0807.html

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,
http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2007/08/22/apa-torture-and-the-cia/
that observers were uncertain whether it condemned the CIA's "enhanced
interrogation" techniques, as Physicians for Human Rights has argued,
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2007-08-19.html
or whether, in fact, it continued abetting the CIA's torture, as
Salon's Mark Benjamin wondered.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/21/psychologists/index.html

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,
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/17/1324205
http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20070820 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, 
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/20/1628234
while Agence France-Presse, perhaps tongue in cheek, entitled their
report "US psychologists limit roles in torture of military prisoners"
http://www.enews.ma/psychologists-limit_i65385_6.html and Salon
entitled Mark Benjamin's convention report "Will psychologists still
abet torture?"
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/21/psychologists/index.html

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."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/5076433.html

"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 ran an article on Pipher's action in which she
explains the origins of the Letter:
http://journalstar.com/articles/2007/08/23/news/local/doc46ccf4d458103603645050.txt

    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 psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher,
and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He
maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site at 
http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/ and the Psyche, Science, and
Society blog athttp://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/ ]