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 …
Tag Archives: American Psychological Association
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 …
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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Psychologists Should Now Lead the Call to Close Guantánamo
Last week, Mansoor Adayfi, Moazzam Begg, Lakhdar Boumediane, Sami Al Hajj, Ahmed Errachidi, Mohammed Ould Slahi, and Moussa Zemmouri published an open letter in the New York Review of Books. Noting that many Guantánamo detainees had been abducted from their homes, sold to the United States for bounties, and subjected to physical and psychological torture, these …
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Is the American Psychological Association Addicted to Militarism and War?
When hijacked planes hit their targets on the morning of September 11, 2001, the American Psychological Association (APA) sprang into action. Within hours, through its disaster response network the APA mobilized expert practitioners and worked with the American Red Cross to provide psychological support to families of the victims and to rescue workers. The APA’s …
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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 …
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 …
Facing History: My Reply to APA CEO Arthur Evans
In a recent Washington Post commentary, I made four points. First, psychologists played essential roles in the government-authorized torture and abuse of “war on terror” detainees. Second, the American Psychological Association (APA) facilitated this involvement — by secretly accommodating CIA and Defense Department interests; by contesting evidence of wrongdoing with deceptive public statements; and by …
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