Another Crossroads for the APA

“America happens to be my client. Americans are who I care about. I have no fondness for the enemy, and I don’t feel like I need to take care of their mental health needs.” — Bryce Lefever, former U.S. Navy clinical and SERE psychologist, member of the APA’s 2005 Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security

The President is a big fan of waterboarding, and worse. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called torturers “patriots.” New CIA Director Gina Haspel oversaw torture at the agency’s infamous black sites. Chief of Staff John Kelly subjected Guantanamo detainees to brutal treatment. National Security Adviser John Bolton is notorious for dismissing international law. The list is incomplete, but it’s sufficient to make one thing clear: for the Trump White House, inhumanity awaits as soon as the right opportunity arises.

This then is the political climate in which leaders of the American Psychological Association (APA) will meet next month in San Francisco at the annual convention. There they will hold two critical votes, both with important ramifications for whether the APA will again lose its way and stumble badly when next confronted with the stark choice between do-no-harm ethics on the one hand and expediency and careerism on the other.

Continue reading “Another Crossroads for the APA”

POLITICAL MIND GAMES on the Gary Null Show

It was a pleasure to join Gary Null on his WBAI/Pacifica and Progressive Radio Network show today from New York City.

We discussed my new book, POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible. You can listen to our conversation here:

“They’re Different from Us”: The Profiteers of Prejudice

“They’re Different from Us.” It’s a favorite mind game of the self-serving 1% when they want to stifle broad opposition to their agenda. By manipulating our understanding of what’s happening, what’s right, and what’s possible, this psychological appeal takes advantage of prejudice to promote distrust and division within and across communities.

Today’s greed-driven plutocrats know that solidarity with the disadvantaged and mistreated is jeopardized whenever differences like race, gender, and religion are emphasized and exaggerated. That’s why they highlight these differences while downplaying similarities in the concerns and aspirations we all share. If this ploy works, it divides groups that might otherwise form a more united and more potent resistance. When such coalitions fail to materialize, the winners are the defenders of extreme inequality who’ve long ago forsaken the common good.

What makes these they’re-different-from-us appeals psychologically effective is that we tend to view ingroup members more favorably than outgroup members. When we’re persuaded that someone belongs to the same group we do, we usually perceive them as more trustworthy, we hold them in higher regard, and we’re more willing to share scarce resources with them. In part, this positive bias reflects our belief that these individuals have a lot in common with us. Even if we’ve never met them, we imagine that their values, attitudes, and life experiences are probably similar to our own. However, if we see people as members of a different group instead, then we don’t care as much about their welfare and there’s a greater chance that we’ll view them as potential adversaries rather than allies. Such divisiveness is exactly what the 1% want.

Continue reading ““They’re Different from Us”: The Profiteers of Prejudice”

My Interview with Egberto Willies on “Politics Done Right”

On June 6th I had the opportunity to talk with Egberto Willies about authoritarians, plutocrats, racial justice, and political mind games on his “Politics Done Right” show. You can listen to the half-hour interview HERE.

Authoritarians, Plutocrats, and the Fight for Racial Justice

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump routinely lashed out at protesters brazen enough to disrupt his choreographed rallies. In Birmingham, Alabama, he shouted, “Get him out of here. Throw him out!” The next day he added, “Maybe he should have been roughed up.” In Burlington, Vermont, Trump ordered his security personnel to “Throw them out into the cold…Don’t give them their coats. No coats! Confiscate their coats.” In Las Vegas, Nevada, he told the crowd, “I’d like to punch him in the face” and reminisced about earlier days when demonstrators would be “carried out on stretchers.”

Trump’s belligerent stance toward dissent provides context for the National Football League’s decision last week: players on the field will now be required to stand during the national anthem. In adopting this restrictive policy, billionaire owners of professional sports franchises have chosen to serve as Trump’s newest security guards, responsible for keeping all reminders of today’s racial injustice and police brutality as far from the fifty-yard-line as possible. Not surprisingly, Trump was quick to publicly endorse the change: “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”

Such pronouncements from the most powerful person in the world are jaw-dropping. Yet Trump’s strongman antics haven’t actually changed very much from his days inflaming the crowds—“Lock her up! Lock her up!”—in Birmingham, Burlington, Las Vegas, and beyond. What is different now, however, is that President Trump sees the entire country—over three-hundred million strong—as his own gigantic arena. Those who share his intolerant, racist, and plutocratic agenda are always welcome to participate in his round-the-clock “Make America Great Again” soapbox performances. For anyone else, the gates are closed. The alternatives he offers range from disregard to demonization to deportation.

Continue reading “Authoritarians, Plutocrats, and the Fight for Racial Justice”

The APA Speaks Out Against Gina Haspel

The journey to redemption is long and often tempest-tossed. But the American Psychological Association (APA) took another noteworthy step last week when CEO Arthur Evans Jr. sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressing concern over President Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Amid heated debate over whether Haspel is qualified or appropriate for the position, the public record is clear on two points: She was directly involved in the CIA’s black-site torture of war-on-terror detainees, as well as the subsequent destruction of videotaped evidence of that abuse.

APA’s opposition to Haspel is consistent with its stated mission of advancing psychology to benefit society, improve people’s lives, and promote human rights. Dozens of other organizations with similar commitments—including the Center for Victims of Torture, the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Physicians for Human Rights, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and Torture Abolition and Survivors Support International—have also weighed in strongly against the Haspel nomination.

For health professionals, this stance reflects a shared understanding: Torture is a barbaric assault on human dignity, and it is therefore intrinsically and profoundly psychological. For survivors, the demons of deep psychic wounds continue without end. Overwhelming feelings of helplessness, brokenness, and disconnection from other people are the direct result of having been subjected to agonizing abuse and humiliation at the hands of another human being. Haunting flashbacks and nightmares are abiding reminders that safety and solace are exceedingly difficult if not impossible to attain.

Continue reading “The APA Speaks Out Against Gina Haspel”

The DCCC’s Mind Games and the Ballad of Roy Moore

It’s bad enough that the business-friendly Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and other establishment Democrats are aggressively tipping the scales in favor of their hand-picked “moderate” candidates in primary contests around the country. It’s even worse that they’ve now taken to defending this strategy by comparing unwelcome progressives to the likes of Roy Moore.

We learned this last point just last week, with the release of a secretly taped conversation between Levi Tillemann and Democratic Party bigwig Steny Hoyer. Tillemann is running for Congress in a Colorado primary against DCCC-backed corporate attorney Jason Crow. In their meeting, Hoyer tells Tillemann that he wants him to drop out of the race, that regardless the DCCC will continue shoveling money into Crow’s campaign coffers, and that the DCCC’s meddling is in order to prevent a Roy Moore scenario, where someone deemed unelectable in the general election was allowed to win the primary.

Hoyer’s invocation of Moore is offensive and worrisome. The former Alabama judge, who lost a special Senate election last December to Democrat Doug Jones, has justly earned his pariah status among those concerned about basic decency and democratic values. That’s not only because of well-documented allegations that he sexually molested young teenage girls. It’s also because he’s claimed that homosexual activity should be outlawed, Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to serve in Congress, and the US Constitution should be ignored in deference to the Ten Commandments.

Continue reading “The DCCC’s Mind Games and the Ballad of Roy Moore”

My Interview about POLITICAL MIND GAMES with Bill Newman of WHMP Radio

In late April I had the pleasure of being a guest on Bill Newman’s WHMP Radio Show. Bill and I spent 20 minutes discussing the political mind games that the super-rich and powerful use to advance their selfish agenda while betraying the common good. You can listen to the interview below, beginning at the 5:00-minute mark:



**POLITICAL MIND GAMES is available through IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online outlets, and neighborhood bookstores.**

The 1%’s Mind Games: Psychology Gone Bad

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” — Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Manipulating Our Core Concerns

While millions of Americans grasp for lifelines amid the unforgiving currents of extreme inequality, multi-millionaires and billionaires comfortably ride the waves and add to their enormous wealth and power. The contrast is jarring to be sure, but it persists nonetheless because self-interested representatives of the 1% have become masters at using manipulative psychological appeals — I call them “mind games” — to defuse and misdirect our outrage. And when they succeed, we regrettably lose our bearings about what’s happening, what’s right, what’s possible, and what we must do.

Exploring this phenomenon as a psychologist, my research has led me to a focus on five concerns that are particularly influential in our daily lives: namely, issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority and helplessness. Each is associated with a basic question we routinely ask ourselves: Are we safe? Are we treated fairly? Who should we trust? Are we good enough? Can we control what happens to us?

For multiple reasons, these concerns are especially important in this context. First, singly and in combination, they’re essential lenses through which we personally interpret events, evaluate our circumstances, and decide what actions, if any, to take. Second, these five concerns extend from individuals to groups; as a result, they’re relevant in a very wide range of settings: our interpersonal relationships, family relationships, work relationships, community relationships, and political relationships in local, national, and international spheres. Third, these same concerns have the potential to undermine our capacity for careful and critical thinking because they’re frequently linked to hard-to-control emotions, including fear, anger, suspicion, contempt, and despair.

Continue reading “The 1%’s Mind Games: Psychology Gone Bad”

POLITICAL MIND GAMES: My Appearance on Rob Kall’s Bottom Up Radio Show

I recently had the pleasure of appearing on the Bottom Up Radio Show hosted by Rob Kall of OpEdNews. Rob and I spent an hour in a wide-ranging discussion about my new book, POLITICAL MIND GAMES: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible. I’ve posted the YouTube video below. Various options for listening to the audio only are available here.

Watch the interview:

**POLITICAL MIND GAMES is available through IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, other online outlets, and neighborhood bookstores.**