The American Psychological Association’s actions since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington have generated swift responses from psychologists objecting to APA’s role as government agent. Although I hadn’t been an APA member for some time, in October 2001 Isaac Prilleltensky and I wrote a short statement objecting to APA’s self-serving response. A month later a few psychologists affiliated with RadPsyNet organized a meeting in Boston; our letter to the APA Monitor (about halfway down this page), signed by 46 psychologists, ended with this:
[W[e think it is important to work with others in our communities and institutions to find out what we have to offer that is useful to our collective struggle for a less violent and more just and humane world. In this way, we might find our way back from a view of psychology as a manual of techniques to a deeper understanding of it as an area of inquiry and a social practice with both an ethical and a scientific mandate.
Our early concerns about APA’s institutional direction grew as the APA became a willing partner in the expanding and never-ending deceptive and dangerous War On Terrorism. Psychologists across the country and in many of APA’s own divisions opposed APA’s support for psychologists who helped design and oversee torture techniques used against US-held detainees. I was glad to see RadPsyNet members and others I’ve known or known of through various critical psychology projects using their APA membership to take on key roles against APA policy.
And it’s been good to see several successful outcomes. Although it’s not yet online, Vicky Steinitz and Elliot Mishler describe much of this history in “Critical Psychology and the Politics of Resistance,” the concluding chapter in my co-edited book Critical Psychology: An Introduction. Steinitz and Mishler – two of the people who organized the November 2001 Boston meeting I mentioned above – place this internal APA struggle within the broader work by critical psychologists over the decades.
Despite some victories, however, the struggle is not over. Psychologists for an Ethical APA continues to lead the fight, now spurred on by new evidence that psychologists heavily involved in military interrogations helped form APA’s weak policy stance. You can read more about this on Stephen Soldz’s blog, connected to Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice.
Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) has just issued its own call for an independent investigation to determine whether APA “knowingly cooperated with the Department of Defense and the CIA in helping to plan, facilitate, provide official justification for, or hide the use of harsh interrogation methods.” PsySR asks six questions:
- Did the APA’s 2005 Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) provide an independent evaluation – without outside interference – of the ethics of psychologists’ participation in these interrogations?
- Has the APA responded appropriately and adequately to official ethics complaints registered against APA members regarding their involvement in abusive interrogations?
- Was the APA’s sponsorship of post-9/11 invitation-only workshops with security agencies such as the CIA consistent with its “do no harm” core principles?
- Why did the APA adopt unrealistic assumptions about the impact and autonomy of psychologists present in detainee settings in spite of well-known psychological research to the contrary?
- Have financial and career considerations – such as the funding of psychological research and practice by the defense-intelligence establishment – influenced APA actions and policies in regard to psychologists’ participation in abusive interrogations?
- What was the basis for the APA’s revision of Standard 1.02 of its Ethics Code in 2002 to the effect that psychologists may ignore the code where it conflicts with the regulations of an undefined “governing authority” – and why was this standard not modified after APA Council identified its potential to allow for torture?
Good questions. Answers? Not yet.
Technorati Tags: American Psychological Association, critical psychology, torture, PsySR
I am writing a research paper on the general subject of why American Psychology cannot seem to extricate itself from entangelment with the structure of power and economics as they presently operate in the US. This condundrum of how the APA came to harbor it’s “torture” panel and wound up acting as a front for the CIA/Pentagon is of course shameful regardless of the rationel. Although not from this discipline I am wondering why more practitioners in the theraputic arts end of this buisness do not recognize it’s moral perfidity and allience with false science and a debased status quo characterized by class bias and false values.