Abstract
Torture is used not only by deranged individuals but by many states, including presumably democratic ones. This chapter examines two cases in point—apartheid South Africa and the US post-9/11—and how to prevent psychologists’ involvement in or support for torture. The South Africa case illustrates how most psychologists failed to speak out against the government’s blatant violations of human rights on a wide scale. The US case illustrates the dangers of allowing national law to trump international law and human rights standards, particularly the UN Convention Against Torture. It shows that psychologists played a direct role in torture, while the American Psychological Association collaborated with the Department of Defense in ways that supported torture, thereby undermining human rights and politicising psychology. Efforts to prevent psychologists’ support for torture include, among others, human rights education, strengthening codes of professional ethics, engaging with government in ways that reduce psychologists’ involvement in torture and mistreatment, international monitoring of professional ethics codes, encouragement and support for whistle-blowers, and vigorous prosecution of psychologists who support or engage in torture. Ultimately, all psychologists must take a stand against torture.
Keywords
- Torture
- UNCAT
- Human rights
- Prevention
- Codes of professional ethics
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
References
American Psychological Association. (2005). Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security. Washington, DC: Author.
Amnesty International. (2011). Guantanamo: A decade of damage to human rights and 10 anti-human rights messages Guantanamo still sends. London: Amnesty International Publications.
Arrigo, J. M. (2006). Unofficial records of the APA PENS Task Force Meeting, June 14-16, 2005, Washington, DC. Stanford: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.
Basoglu, M., Jaranson, J. M., Mollica, R., & Kastrup, M. (2001). Torture and mental health: A research overview. In E. Gerrity, T. M. Keane, & F. Tuma (Eds.), The mental health consequences of torture (pp. 35–62). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Basoglu, M. D., Livanou, M., & Crnobaric, C. (2007). Torture vs other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Archives of General Psychiatry, 64, 277–285.
Bell, T., & Ntsebeza, T. (2001). Unfinished business. South Africa, apartheid and truth. Cape Town: RedWorks.
Brownlie, I. (Ed.). (1992). Basic documents on human rights (3rd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon.
Burman, S., & Reynolds, P. (Eds.). (1986). Growing up in a divided society. The contexts of childhood in South Africa. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.
Bybee, J. S. (2002). Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.
Caplan, G. (1964). Principles of preventive psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
Capshew, J. H., & Hilgard, E. R. (1992). The power of service: World War II and professional reform in the American Psychological Association. In R. B. Evans, V. S. Sexton, & T. C. Cadwallader (Eds.), 100 years: The American Psychological Association, a historical perspective (pp. 149–175). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Casese, A. (2009). Affirmation of the principles of International Law recognized by the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal. United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law.
Cooper, S., Nicholas, L. J., Seedat, M., & Statman, J. M. (1990). Psychology and apartheid: The struggle for psychology in South Africa. In L. J. Nicholas & S. Cooper (Eds.), Psychology and apartheid (pp. 1–21). Johannesburg: Vision/Madiba.
Danner, M. (2004). Torture and truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the war on terror. New York: New York Review of Books.
Danner, M., & Eakin, H. (2015). The CIA: The devastating indictment. The New York Review of Books, LXII(2), 31–32.
Dawes, A. (1985). Politics and mental health: The position of clinical psychology in South Africa. South African Journal of Psychology, 15, 55–61.
Dawes, A. (1987a). Security laws and children in prison: The issue of psychological impact. Psychology in Society, 8, 27–47.
Dawes, A. (1987b). Children in prison Plenary address to the International Conference on Children, Repression and the Law in Apartheid South Africa. Harare, Zimbabwe.
Dawes, A., Tredoux, C. G., & Feinstein, A. (1989). Political violence in South Africa: Some effects on children of the violent destruction of their community. International Journal of Mental Health, 18(2), 16–43.
Eban, K. (2007). Rorschach and awe. Vanity Fair, July 17, 2007.
Eidelson, R. J. (2015). “No cause for action”: Revisiting the ethics case of Dr. John Leso. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 198–212.
Foster, D. (1990). Expert testimony on collective violence. In D. Hanson & E. D. van Zyl (Eds.), Towards justice (pp. 154–172). Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
Foster, D. (2008). Critical psychology: A historical overview. In C. van Ommen & D. Painter (Eds.), Interiors. A history of psychology in South Africa (pp. 92–122). Pretoria: UNISA Press.
Foster, D. (2014). Musings and memories: 30 years of psychology in society. Psychology in Society, 46, 9–14.
Foster, D., Davis, D., & Sandler, D. (1987). Detention & torture in South Africa: Psychological, legal & historical studies. Cape Town: David Philip Publisher.
Foster, D., & Sandler, D. (1985). A study of detention and torture in South Africa: Preliminary report. Cape Town: Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town.
Gade, P. A., & Drucker, A. J. (2000). A history of Division 19 (military psychology). In D. A. Dewsbury (Ed.), Unification though division: Histories of the divisions of the American Psychological Association (Vol. V, pp. 9–32). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Hoffman, D. H., Carter, D. J., Lopez, C. R. V., Besmiller, H. L., Guo, A. X., Latifi, S. Y., et al. (2015). Report to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association: Independent review relating to APA ethics guidelines, national security interrogations, and torture. Chicago: Sidley Austin LLP.
Leach, M. M., Stevens, M. J., Lindsay, G., Ferrero, J., & Korkut, Y. (Eds.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of international psychological ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Long, W. (2013). Rethinking “relevance”: South African psychology in context. History of Psychology, 16(1), 19–35.
Miles, S. (2006). Medical oaths betrayed. Washington Post, July 9.
Olson, B., Soldz, S., & Davis, M. (2008). The ethics of interrogation and the American Psychological Association: A critique of policy and process. Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, 3(3). doi:10.1186/1747-5341-3-3.
UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. (1984). (Reprinted in I. Brownlie (Ed.). (1992) Basic documents on human rights (3rd ed., pp. 38–51). Oxford: Clarendon Press). Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CAT.aspx.
Ougrin, D., Gluzman, S., & Dratcu, L. (2006). Psychiatry in post-communist Ukraine: Dismantling the past, paving the way for the future. Psychiatric Bulletin, 30, 456–459.
Pew Research Center. (2014). About half see CIA interrogation methods as justified. Washington, DC: Author.
Physicians for Human Rights. (2007). Leave no marks: Enhanced interrogation techniques and the risk of criminality. Washington, DC: Author.
Redress. (2009). Rehabilitation as a form of reparation under international law. London: Redress.
Risen, J. (2014). Pay any price: Greed, power, and endless war. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Samelson, F. (1979). Putting psychology on the map: Ideology and technology in intelligence testing. In A. R. Buss (Ed.), Psychology in social context (pp. 103–168). New York: Irvington.
Seedat, M., & MacKenzie, S. (2008). The triangulated development of South African Psychology. In C. van Ommen & D. Painter (Eds.), Interiors. A history of psychology in South Africa (pp. 63–91). Pretoria: UNISA Press.
Senate Select Committee. (2015). The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program. New York: Melville House.
Shallice, T. (1972). The Ulster depth interrogation techniques and their relation to sensory deprivation research. Cognition, 1(4), 385–405.
Smith, M. B. (1986). War, peace and psychology. Journal of Social Issues, 42(4), 23–38.
Soufan, A., & Freedman, D. (2011). The black banners: The inside story of 9/11 and the war against al-Qaeda. New York: Norton.
Stover, E. (2005). The witnesses. War crimes and the promise of justice in The Hague. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Stover, E., & Nightingale, M. D. (Eds.). (1985). The breaking of bodies and minds. New York: W. H. Freeman.
Straker, G., Moosa, F., & Team, S. C. (1988). Post-traumatic stress disorder: A reaction to state-supported child abuse and neglect. Child Abuse & Neglect, 12(3), 383–395.
Sveaass, N. (2009). Destroying minds: Psychological pain and the crime of torture. New York City Law Review, 11(2), 303–324.
Sveaass, N. (2013). Gross human rights violations and reparation under international law: Approaching rehabilitation as a form of reparation. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 4, 17191. Retrieved from http://www.eurojnlofpsychotraumatol.net/index.php/ejpt/article/view/17191’\t‘_blank.
Sveaass, N., Agger, I., Sønneland, A. M., Elsass, P., & Hamber, B. (2014). Surviving gross human rights violations: Exploring survivors’ experience of justice and reparation. In S. Cooper & K. Ratele (Eds.), Psychology Serving Humanity. Proceedings of the 30th International Congress of Psychology (Western Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 66–84). New York: Psychology Press.
Targum, S. D., Chaban, O., & Mykhnyak, S. (2013). Psychiatry in the Ukraine. Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience, 10, 41–46.
U. S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (2014). The Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture: Committee study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program. New York: Melville House.
UN CAT. (2006). Conclusions and recommendations of the Committee against Torture to report submitted by United States of America, CAT/C/USA/CO/2. Retrieved from http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CAT%2fC%2fUSA%2fCO%2f2&Lang=en.
UN OPCAT. (2014). Optional protocol to the convention against torture and other cruel, in human or degrading treatment or punishment. Retrieved from www.un.org/law/avl, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/OPCAT/Pages/OPCATIndex.aspx.
UN CAT. (2014). Conclusions and recommendations of the Committee against Torture to report submitted by United States of America, CAT/C/USA/CO/3-5/. http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CAT%2fC%2fUSA%2fCO%2f3-5&Lang=en.
Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles for Psychologists, adopted in Berlin in 2009.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (1948). Reprinted in I. Brownlie (Ed.). (1992). Basic documents on human rights (3rd ed., pp. 21–27). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Van Bowen, T. (2009). Victims’ rights to a remedy and reparation. The United Nations basic principles and guidelines. In C. Ferstman, M. Goetz, & A. Stephens (Eds.), Reparations for victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity (pp. 19–41). Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijoff.
Vogelman, L. (1987). The development of an appropriate psychology: The work of the Organisation of Appropriate Social Services in South Africa. Psychology in Society, 7, 24–35.
Yankovsky, S. A. (2013). Medicalizing suffering: Postsocialist reforms of the mental health system in Ukraine. PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee. http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1798.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wessells, M., Sveaass, N., Foster, D., Dawes, A. (2017). Do No Harm? How Psychologists Have Supported Torture and What to Do About It. In: Seedat, M., Suffla, S., Christie, D. (eds) Enlarging the Scope of Peace Psychology. Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45289-0_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45289-0_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45287-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45289-0
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)