Psychologists Vote to End Interrogation Consultations

[sabra]

Source: NY Times

Members of the American Psychological Association have voted to prohibit consultation in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or so-called black sites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency overseas, the association said on Wednesday.

The vote, 8,792 to 6,157 in a mail-in balloting concluded Monday, may help to settle a long debate within the profession over the ethics of such work. Psychologists have helped military and C.I.A. interrogators evaluate detainees, plan questioning strategy and judge its psychological costs. The association’s ethics code, while condemning a list of coercive techniques adopted in the Bush administration’s antiterrorism campaign, has allowed some consultation “for national security-related purposes.”

The referendum, first posted on the Internet as a petition in May, prohibits psychologists from working in settings where “persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the U.S. Constitution, where appropriate,” unless they represent a detainee or an independent third party. The association’s bylaws require that it institute the policy at the next annual meeting, in August 2009.

“The good part of this is that the membership has spoken, the process worked, and we’re going to follow it,” said Alan E. Kazdin, the association’s president and a psychologist at Yale University. “Will everyone be happy? Well, it’s a typical human enterprise, and there are nuanced positions on both sides. So, we’ll see.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/us/18psych.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=us&pagewanted=print

[Stanchetalarooni]

1. The Feds don't need no stinkin' pop-psychologists.

All they need do is hire the radio talk show host Michael Savage.
This is what he would ay to those interred terrorists:
'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' "

[Solly Mack]

2. I'm far too cynical ....I guess

I'm supposed to be happy about this right?

I'm supposed to tell them what good people they are for doing this and for taking a stand?


Long after the fact...only after it was exposed....and how many psychologists have been held accountable for their work aiding and promoting the torture of people?

I see they also use the national security excuse to rationalize their actions.

[clear eye]

3. Well, good, but you mean over 40% of U.S. psychologists think

it's o.k. to be involved in consulting about interrogation in illegal detentions? I think I'm going to be sick.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Something of a bellweather of our national political establishment....

that the psychologists have FINALLY turned against torture, while some six thousand of them either still think it's hunkydory to participate in torture or don't think the Association should say anything (the "nuanced" position). I hope psychologists are feeling some heat for the unethical participation of some of their members in torture. It should long ago have been condemned. The wind is now blowing the other way, and the anti-torture members were able to get a good majority (9,000 vs 6,000), but, really, the slowness of this body to condemn torture is shocking, and the participation of some of its members in torture is criminal, in my opinion. They should be prosecuted along with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and the whole lot of them who gave orders and who VOLUNTARILY joined the torture party, as too many psychologists did--out of greed or ambition or worse. I have more compassion for those in the military under orders from this fascist junta. And it was military personnel who first blew the whistle on it, some of whom put their careers, and even their lives, in great peril to get it exposed and stopped.

This policy won't be implemented until Aug 09. Better late than never, I guess. That gives collusive psychologists time to disentangle themselves from Bushwhack crime, to cover their tracks, salvage their reputations, avoid prosecution or loss of license, and stay on the government payroll. What a disgrace they are, to their profession and to our country.

[bean fidhleir]

5. One of the most disturbing realisations when I reached grad school

was how many psychologists are unashamedly right-wing. The kind of thinking characteristic of rightwingers should have no place in psychology because it puts innocent, vulnerable people at risk. Yet they routinely succeed in getting credentialed and licensed rather than shunted off into b-school or the seminary.

There are far too many cases when the rightwingers have succeeding in getting the APA to cover itself in pre-fertilizer, not glory.