[Ppnews] APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Wed May 6 11:21:28 EDT 2009
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz05062009.html
May 6, 2009
A "Natural Reaction"?
APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
On Monday
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103787285&sc=emaf>NPR
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103787285&sc=emaf>broadcast
a story in which former military SERE [Survival,
Resistance, Evasion, and Escape] psychologist
Bryce Lefever openly endorsed US torture, saying
it was a natural reaction of SERE psychologists
to hearing their country was attacked by
terrorists. In the piece, Lefever makes clear
that, in his opinion, he is only stating publicly
what virtually all military psychologists thought.
Lefever explicitly renounces the quaint
psychologist ethics code with its Do No Harm
standard. If causing pain will reduce the total
harm in the world, then it is the only ethical
way to go, Lefever told NPR listeners.
Lefevers ethical attitudes are especially
interesting as he was a
<http://www.webster.edu/peacepsychology/tfpens.html>member
of the American Psychological Associations
<http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/apa_faq_coalition_comments_v12c.pdf>task
force on Psychological Ethics and National Security.
One might think that APA officials and PENS
members would be surprised by Lefevers
pro-torture positions. But that would be naive.
For Lefever expressed exactly these opinions on
the PENS listserve. In fact, he complained that
the political nature of the task force by
which he evidently means the fact that it was
designed to provide ethical cover, akin to the
legal cover provided by Justice Department
lawyers, for the Defense Department program of
abusive interrogations prevented serious discussion of his opinions:
In fact the PENS meeting was a steep learning
curve for me in that it was a far more political
process than I anticipated and I had hoped that
we would have worked out our positions via
intellectual or philosophical debate. When I
brought up the idea of harm, and what is harm, it
fell on deaf ears. I pointed out that behavioral
and psychological techniques used in training our
high-risk-of-capture students in Survival Schools
[SERE] are viewed as vital, necessary, good, and
for the greater good. Psychologists are strong
proponents of these techniques even though they
inflict psychological and physical pain. Yet the
very same behaviors are proscribed by the
Department of Defense and viewed as harmful when
applied to Americas prisoners.
Notice that Lefever appears here to be
acknowledging that SERE-based techniques were
indeed being used on US detainees, a fact
conveniently ignored by the more politically
savvy members of the task force. After all, they
well knew, the plan was to pretend that military
psychologists were protecting detainees from
torture, rather than applying well-known torture
techniques in pursuit of the greater good. And
Lefever was in a position to know about the use
of SERE techniques against detainees as he served
in Afghanistan, where he lectured to
interrogators and was consulted on various
interrogation techniques, according to his
<http://www.webster.edu/peacepsychology/tfpens.html>PENS biography.
Lefever also told the task force that the pursuit
of human rights was, by definition, unethical:
These wordsmorals and ethicsdo not mean the
ways of the individual or individual rights. Any
time the rights of the individual are placed
above what is best for the community, it is, by
definition, unethical or immoral. The discussion
of individual rights is the domain of human rights organizations (like ACLU).
While it is likely that many others involved in
the PENS process shared Lefevers opinions of
human rights, none were politically naive enough
to say so. After all, such individual opinions
might interfere with the greater good of
providing cover for the SERE-based interrogations
that had become US standard operating procedure.
Meanwhile, the APA touted the PENS report, with
its supposedly careful examination of the ethics
of psychologist aid to interrogations, as
evidence of their systematic examination of the
ethical dilemmas involved when psychologists aid
secret national security interrogations. Bryce
Lefevers comments put the lie to that carefully constructed cover story.
As
<http://psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/torture_commission.php>Psychologists
for Social Responsibility,
<http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2009-04-21.html>Physicians
for Human Rights, bioethicist
<http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2009/04/27/bioethicist-steven-mile-calls-for-investigation-of-american-psychological-association-ties-to-military/>Steven
Miles, and others have said recently, we urgently
need an independent investigation of
psychologists aid to abusive interrogations.
Such an investigation must examine the role of
the APA and its leadership in providing ethical cover for this torture program.
<mailto:ssoldz at bgsp.edu>Stephen Soldz is a
psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health
researcher, and faculty member at the
<http://www.bgsp.edu/>Boston Graduate School of
Psychoanalysis. He maintains the
<http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/ORR.htm>Psychoanalysts
for Peace and Justice web site and the
<http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/>Psyche,
Science, and Society blog. He is a founder of the
Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the
organizations working to change American
Psychological Association policy on participation
in abusive interrogations. He is also a Steering
Committee member of
<http://psysr.org/>Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR].
Freedom Archives
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