June is Torture Awareness Month. That’s two months from now, but in order to help get activists warmed up for June’s anti-torture actions, I am updating the Torture Awareness web site, which is sponsored by Irregular Times.
One of the more important anti-torture activist efforts that’s going on right now is at the American Psychological Association, the group that administers the professional standards for psychologists. There’s been a great deal of controversy in recent months about psychologists who work for the military in order to keep black site prisons running so that torture and other forms of coercive interrogation can continue.
Psychologist Steven Reisner is currently running for the position of President of the APA, with a platform of opposing psychologists’ involvement in such interrogations.
Reisner writes,
“My candidacy calls for a clear departure from the complicity of psychologists in state-sponsored abuses of human rights, whether these take place at Guantánamo, CIA black sites, or domestic supermax prisons.
I have been told that psychologists might fear for their jobs if we hold to a principled stance on detainees’ basic human rights. I fear for our nation and our profession if we don’t. And I hope that there are enough psychologists who feel similarly to me, so that the APA might at last join the other health professions in unambiguously opposing the practices that have brought shame to our profession and our nation.”
Dr. Reisner’s appeal for strong standards against psychologist connections to coercive interrogations makes a lot of sense to me. Of course, preventing torture is in itself a worthy cause. More selfishly, however, psychologists ought to consider the worth of their professional credibility. When the APA allows its members to work for the military or for other government agencies in order to keep secret torture prisons running smoothly, it leads to a reasonable question of whether the title of psychologist ought to confer any trust at all. How can a patient trust a psychologist to provide assistance, when psychologists’ professional organization allows its members to get involved in schemes to orchestrate psychological torment?
Here’s a simple piece of activism for you: If you happen to know any members of the American Psychological Association, give them a call and tell them that you’d like to see them cast a mail-in ballot in favor of making Steven Reisner President of the APA.
