Blog – Page 2 – Roy Eidelson

Professional Psychology, 22 Years After 9/11

For many Americans, the weeks and months following the attacks of September 11, 2001 were a volatile mixture of unbridled fear, staggering grief, patriotic fervor, and worldwide solidarity. We were distraught over possible future attacks, we sought ways to help those in greatest need, our country’s flag suddenly appeared everywhere, and we heard expressions of support—“We’re all Americans now!”—from around the globe.

For some of us, however, there was also a dark foreboding about how our government might respond to the carnage. And we soon learned that the new “war on terror” would be propelled by vengeance, with little respect for human rights and open disdain for international law. Indeed, the Bush Administration made this apparent that very first month, warning “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” “It’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal,” and “After 9/11 the gloves come off.”

What wasn’t so clear was that my own profession—psychology—would take two sharply divergent paths during this early period, led by the American Psychological Association (APA). One was constructive, the other was not. On the high road, the APA helped to organize thousands of psychologists who offered their servicespro bono to families of 9/11 victims, to rescue workers, to schools uncertain how to help fearful and traumatized children, and more. These and similar endeavors were invaluable contributions to the country’s healing and recovery.

But the APA also eagerly sought out opportunities for psychologists to participate in counterterrorism efforts and expand the profession’s stature in the eyes of the US military-intelligence establishment. Not long thereafter, psychologists became involved in detention and interrogation operations—at secret CIA black sites, at Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere—that were characterized by routinized abuse and sometimes by torture. Yet for years the APA’s leadership insisted that psychologists helped to keep these operations safe, legal, ethical, and effective. They were actually none of these things, as one disturbing report after another has painfully revealed.

The American Psychological Association Takes Another Step—Backward

Having witnessed first-hand a crucial vote by the American Psychological Association’s governing Council of Representatives earlier this month in Washington, DC, I couldn’t decide whether to begin this commentary with a quote from Lewis Carroll or George Orwell. So here are both: 

Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass includes this memorable exchange between Humpty Dumpty and Alice:

Humpty Dumpty (scornfully): “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Alice: “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

Humpty Dumpty: “The question is which is to be master—that’s all.”

And in Politics and the English Language, Orwell wrote, “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

Both quotes seem painfully apt when trying to make sense of the Council’s approval of a set of wholly inadequate professional practice guidelines for operational psychology. If this domain is unfamiliar to you, operational psychologists are primarily involved in non-clinical activities linked to national security, national defense, and public safety. Their largest source of employment is the military-intelligence establishment, which includes the Department of Defense and the CIA. Of particular concern from the standpoint of professional ethics, in some cases these psychologists are called upon to inflict harm, to dispense with informed consent, and to operate in a covert manner such that external oversight by professional boards becomes difficult or impossible. They’re eager to have the APA’s official blessing of this weaponization of the profession because it’s a step toward achieving greater recognition and legitimacy for this kind of work.

Censorship at the American Psychological Association

The publishing process in academic psychology journals isn’t typically known for its drama or intrigue. It’s true that there can be frustrations and challenges for aspiring authors. These include obtaining timely feedback from peer reviewers; adequately addressing often-disparate concerns and revision recommendations; and waiting the many months that frequently elapse between submitting a manuscript and its hoped-for publication. Nevertheless, there’s little doubt that articles published in reputable scientific journals play an essential role in advancing our understanding of human behavior.

Sometimes, however, a manuscript can become ensnared by behind-the-scenes maneuvering and decision-making that have little to do with the merits of the article itself. In such cases, non-scholarly considerations supersede the well-established guideposts of impartial peer review and unbiased evaluation of a submission’s worthiness for publication. That was apparently the unfortunate fate of “A Military/Intelligence Operational Perspective on the American Psychological Association’s Weaponization of Psychology Post-9/11.” This article’s circuitous journey bears recounting here as a cautionary tale for the profession and for the APA.

Ron DeSantis: Yet Another Cog in Guantanamo’s Torture Machine

Recently, there have been troubling revelations about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — a leading 2024 GOP presidential aspirant — concerning his conduct as a Navy JAG officer at Guantanamo Bay. His responsibilities at the detention facility apparently included responding to claims of mistreatment from the war-on-terror prisoners there. Relatively few of these detainees had any connection with al Qaeda, and many had simply been handed over to US forces in exchange for bounty payments. But DeSantis seemingly viewed them all as wily and unrepentant terrorists.

Of particular note, DeSantis was at Guantanamo in 2006 during the brutal forced-feeding of prisoners engaged in a mass hunger strike. Years later, DeSantis acknowledged that, as a legal advisor, he had suggested this intervention as a countermeasure to what he described as the detainees’ “waging jihad” — by refusing to eat. When interviewed last month, DeSantis emphasized that he “didn’t have authority to authorize anything” and that Guantanamo was “a professionally-run prison.” His first claim — sidestepping personal responsibility — may contain elements of truth; his second is outrageously absurd.

As a general matter, the forced-feeding of mentally competent individuals violates international standards of medical ethics and constitutes inhuman and degrading treatment. This was especially so in the case of the Department of Defense, which opted to employ extreme, punitive measures — even described as torture by United Nations investigators — when force-feeding the prisoners at Guantanamo. These measures included a restraint chair that immobilized the detainee’s entire body for hours at a time, and the use of tubing that was inserted through the nose into the stomach and then removed and reinserted multiple times each day, often causing sharp pain and bleeding. A defense attorney for Guantanamo prisoners subjected to forced-feeding has written, “Only a sadist could impose and witness such treatment without grave concern and soul-sickness.” It’s hard to argue with that blunt assessment. But there are also two larger truths we shouldn’t overlook.

New Timeline: Torture, Psychology, and the War on Terror

January 11, 2023 marks Guantanamo’s 21st anniversary as a “war on terror” prison where hundreds of men and boys have been subjected to degrading treatment, indefinite detention, and, in some cases, physical and psychological torture.

In my view and that of my colleagues at the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the defining tragedies of this two-decade era has been the involvement of members of our own profession in the brutal detainee operations that became an enduring symbol of the US government’s abandonment of international law and human rights. Equally disturbing from our perspective, over much of this period the American Psychological Association (APA) repeatedly failed to stand as a firm bulwark in defending the profession’s do-no-harm ethics and in opposing the weaponization of psychology.

Recognizing that the passage of time can dim memory and awareness, especially when powerful forces seem committed to distorting or denying the past, we have created a new interactive timeline — “Torture, Psychology, and the War on Terror.” The timeline identifies dozens of categorized key events, many with hyperlinks for further background, that span the past 20+ years from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to the present day.

It is the Coalition’s hope that the timeline will be a valuable resource — for those who simply want to better understand what transpired; for those who want to conduct in-depth research; and for those who want to protect the profession and the APA from repeating similar missteps in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

The interactive timeline is available here: http://www.ethicalpsychology.org/timeline/

Apology and Reparation: Two Steps the American Psychological Association Should Take Today

This past May, in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the United Nations International Day in Support of Torture Victims, the executive committee of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence (Division 48 of the American Psychological Association) voted to endorse a brief statement. The statement calls upon the APA’s leadership to (1) apologize to the victims of U.S. war-on-terror prisoner abuses, and (2) make recurring financial contributions to organizations that provide support for torture victims and their families.

As the statement explains, “Over a period of years, predominantly Muslim and Arab men and boys imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, CIA black sites, and other locations were subjected to physical and psychological torment and degradation…These operations relied significantly on the involvement of psychologists. That involvement was tragically preserved and promoted, in part, by the APA’s own misguided actions and inaction.”

In the three months since the statement was issued, nearly two dozen organizations have also endorsed it, and additional groups are currently engaged in discussions about endorsement. The full list of endorsers to date appears below. It includes several APA divisions as well as internationally recognized organizations such as Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Victims of Torture, Physicians for Human Rights, and Veterans for Peace.

Thus far, the APA’s board of directors has not responded to this call for action. Next week the APA will hold its annual convention. With thousands of members gathering in Minneapolis, the convention would be an ideal time for the APA’s leadership to issue an overdue apology and make a public commitment to providing support to victims of torture.

The “Operational Psychology Professional Practice Guidelines” Are Deeply Flawed — the American Psychological Association Needs Your Comments

Through February 15th, the American Psychological Association (APA) is soliciting online comments from psychologists, the public, and interested organizations in response to a new draft proposal for Professional Practice Guidelines for Operational Psychology. Here I would like to briefly share some thoughts about why this is important and deserving of readers’ attention.

The drafters of the Guidelines define operational psychology as the “application of psychological science to the operational activities conducted in support of national security, national defense, and public safety.” To be sure, this is a challenging arena of professional work, so developing practice guidelines would certainly seem to be a worthwhile endeavor. But after closer inspection, I believe that the APA’s approval of these particular Guidelines would risk lending unwarranted legitimacy to highly problematic areas within the larger domain of operational psychology — areas that still require extensive discussion and evaluation by a range of stakeholders much broader than the task force members who have produced these Guidelines.

Context for the new Guidelines is crucial. For years there has been incontrovertible evidence linking psychologists working for the U.S. military and intelligence agencies to “war on terror” abuses at CIA black sites, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. Tragically, psychologists were directly involved in designing and implementing cruel, inhuman, degrading, and torturous detention and interrogation practices. Among the abuses suffered by prisoners were prolonged solitary confinement, disorienting sleep and sensory deprivation, painful stress positions, physical beatings, cultural and sexual humiliation, waterboarding, and indefinite detention.

The American Psychological Association’s “Psychology PAC” Must Do Better

Contributions to the campaign war chests of Republican Party politicians who hold contemptuous views of democracy are unsurprising from mega-corporations and right-wing billionaires. The top priority for these donors is to have their self-aggrandizing agenda front-and-center in the halls of Congress. So even when democracy itself is under attack, they’re going to place profits over people and bestow gifts on any candidate willing to do their bidding.

The American Psychological Association’s (APA) affiliated “Psychology PAC” certainly isn’t in the same boat when it comes to political giving. That’s some measure of good news. But a little research reveals that this PAC does have a history of making some highly questionable choices when it comes to deciding where to direct its financial resources.

According to Psychology PAC, it solicits voluntary contributions from APA members and staff as a way for these donors to “participate in the democratic process.” More importantly, the PAC states that the donations it makes are “consistent with APA’s values and mission to benefit society” and that it fights for the APA’s priorities, including “for ending violence; for criminal justice; for promotion of social justice issues, and for the fight against bigotry and racism.”

These virtuous aspirations would seemingly eliminate donations to a broad swath of today’s politicians in Washington, D.C. Yet, as I wrote earlier this year, among the recipients of Psychology PAC dollars during Donald Trump’s presidency were eight GOP members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s victory: Michael Burgess (Texas), Tom Cole (Oklahoma), Chuck Fleischmann (Tennessee), Morgan Griffith (Virginia), Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma), Devin Nunes (California), Adrian Smith (Nebraska), and Jason Smith (Missouri). Along with colleagues, these lawmakers promoted baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud despite repeated court rulings that concluded otherwise. Such false accusations were the impetus behind the violent January 6th insurrection in which a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building, endangering lives, destroying property, and threatening the democratic process that Psychology PAC extols.

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The American Psychological Association Still Owes Guantanamo’s Victims an Apology

Next month will mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the years since January 11, 2002, nearly 800 “detainees”—few with any meaningful connections to international terrorism—have been imprisoned there, where they have been subjected to abuse and, in some cases, torture. From the outset, members of my own profession—psychologists—played key roles in operations at Guantanamo, CIA “black sites,” and other overseas detention facilities. Their involvement included designing and implementing inhumane conditions of confinement and brutal techniques of interrogation.

Among the most pervasive of the methods used were solitary confinement, where prolonged isolation could extend for weeks or months, sometimes in empty cells and total darkness; sleep deprivation, in which prisoners were kept awake for days at a time by bright lights, loud music, intermittent slaps, or other noxious means; sexual and cultural humiliation, including forced nudity and sexually provocative and insulting behavior by interrogators; and the use of threats to generate fears of injury and death, ranging from snarling military dogs to confinement in coffin-like boxes to mock executions.

This, then, was the context six years ago when an extensive independent investigation uncovered compelling evidence that leaders of the American Psychological Association (APA)—the world’s largest organization of psychologists—had failed to adequately defend the profession’s fundamental do-no-harm ethical principles. Instead, they had opted to support and preserve the continuing involvement of psychologists in these operations, despite mounting reports of their complicity in “war on terror” excesses. In response to the investigation’s disturbing findings, the APA instituted a series of valuable ethics reforms and apologized to its membership and to psychologists worldwide for having abandoned the profession’s core values.

Continue reading “The American Psychological Association Still Owes Guantanamo’s Victims an Apology”

U.S. Psychology’s Unfinished Journey from 9/11

As the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001 nears, there will be many valuable reflections about that horrific day and about the subsequent “global war on terror” that devastated countless lives around the world. My own focus here is narrower: to briefly consider this disturbing two-decade period in relation to the American Psychological Association (APA) and professional psychology in the United States.

In the days following the terrorist attacks that targeted New York City and Washington, D.C., it quickly became apparent that the White House, the Department of Defense, and the CIA were prepared to ignore well-established international laws and human rights standards in pursuit of our adversaries. But at that time, it was less immediately obvious that some members of my own profession—fellow psychologists—would choose to embrace and participate in the merciless “dark side” operations that took place at secret overseas “black sites,” at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, and beyond. And then, as events unfolded further, it became even more surprising that—through acts of commission and omission—these abusive and sometimes torturous operations would also find support within the leadership of the APA.

At any point, the APA could have joined with concerned human rights groups in seeking to constrain a U.S. military-intelligence establishment set on unbridled retribution that brutalized prisoners and diminished the country’s moral standing around the world. But for the world’s largest organization of psychologists, that tragically proved to be the proverbial road not taken.