AT ITS annual meeting last month, the American Psychological Association (APA) adopted a resolution and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Among those whom psychologists must protect, the organisation included 鈥渆nemy combatants鈥� 鈥� the term the US administration uses for suspected terrorists. It said that neither war, political instability, public emergency nor any laws, regulations or orders can ever justify torture or abuse. It banned its members from taking part in any of a long list of interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, sexual or religious humiliation, the use of psychotropic drugs, hooding, aggressive dogs, physical assault and threats of harm or death.
Despite this, the association decided to allow psychologists to continue to be involved in interrogations at US detention centres, including those carried out 鈥渙utside normal legal channels鈥�, such as at Guantanamo Bay.
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Interrogations carried out in secret and without legal oversight can lead to horrific treatment being inflicted on prisoners, as photographs taken inside Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq proved in 2004. The Red Cross, United Nations and Amnesty International say such practices continue at Guantanamo Bay and at US-run 鈥渂lack sites鈥� in Thailand, Afghanistan and eastern Europe.
Those who support psychologists鈥� involvement argue that the APA resolution as passed ensures that none of the organisation鈥檚 148,000 members would facilitate such abuses. Some go further, arguing that there is an ethical imperative for psychologists to be involved in these interrogations because they can help to stop abuse 鈥� as whistle-blower Michael Gelles and military psychologist Larry James did at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. James has told Agence France-Presse: 鈥淚f we remove psychologists from Guantanamo, innocent people are going to die.鈥�
This is superficially persuasive, but it misses the bigger picture. When psychologists work in situations as coercive and secretive as CIA-run black sites, the situation is far more likely to corrupt the psychologist 鈥� no matter how highly trained and ethically aware they are 鈥� than the psychologist is to correct the situation. To make matters worse, the psychologists鈥� presence lends legitimacy to these settings and whatever takes place within them.
If any group should be aware of the corrupting power of such situations, it is psychologists. Decades of their own research, starting with in the 1960s and Philip Zimbardo鈥檚 infamous , has shown time and again that when healthy, normal people are put into situations that legitimise and systematise abuse they consistently and readily come to act abusively themselves (New Scientist, 14 April 2007, p 42).
Most people are vulnerable to this effect, but some individuals fill their roles so fully that they demonstrate what Zimbardo calls 鈥渃reative evil鈥�. Within a few days, for example, Zimbardo鈥檚 college-student 鈥済uards鈥� invented some of the same forms of sexual abuse that surfaced decades later at Abu Ghraib.
Psychologists and other professionals are not immune from such corruption. In his recent book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil, Zimbardo ruefully describes how he did not realise how far his experiment had spiralled into abuse until he was confronted by a colleague who was not part of the experiment and was sickened by what she saw. 鈥淚t was a slap in my face,鈥� Zimbardo writes, 鈥渢he wake-up call from the nightmare I had been living.鈥�
More recently, psychologists have been intimately involved in the development and refinement of interrogation and 鈥渟oftening up鈥� techniques used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. 鈥淚f we look at the history, psychologists are not noted for being protectors of the ethics of these situations,鈥� says Steven Reisner, a psychologist at Columbia University鈥檚 International Trauma Studies Program in New York City. 鈥淭he strategies of abuse that have been carried out by the CIA and Department of Defense have been created, supervised and spread by psychologists, according to the department鈥檚 own reports, eye witnesses from the CIA, and the press.鈥�
鈥淧sychologists are not noted for being protectors of the ethics of interrogation situations鈥�
Given what their own research has shown, and the degree to which some psychologists have been implicated in ethically questionable forms of detention and interrogation, it seems remarkably naive 鈥� or arrogant 鈥� for psychologists to believe they are immune from situations far more nightmarish than the Stanford basement 鈥減rison鈥� in 1971.
Both the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have recently prohibited involvement in any type of interrogation, stating that their members may only use their skills to care for patients or to train others. The sooner the country鈥檚 psychologists join them, the better.
