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Psychologists’ Group Maintains Ban on Work at Military Detention Facilities

August 9, 2018

Members of the American Psychological Association voted against allowing psychologists to resume work at certain detention centers like the one in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

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Psychologists’ Group Maintains Ban on Work at Military Detention Facilities

Thursday, August 9th, 2018

After an escalating debate about the role of psychologists in military prisons, the American Psychological Association voted on Wednesday to reject a proposed change in policy that would have allowed members to treat detainees held at sites that do not comply with international human rights laws.

The proposed change would have reversed a 2015 determination by the association that prohibited such work, effectively blocking military psychologists from sites like the military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, maintained by the United States.

That decision followed revelations that in the early 2000s the association had finessed its ethics guidelines so that psychologists could aid interrogations by suggesting lines of questioning, for example, or advising when a confrontation had gone too far or not far enough.

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Image: By Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy – (copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg so that the image can be used on Wikinews.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=774059

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NY Times

Independent commission recommends major reforms to the APA

October 5, 2017

In light of its problematic response to US torture, the APA established an independent ethics commission, members include our Leonard Rubenstein, which has issued its findings

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Independent commission recommends major reforms to the APA

Thursday, October 5th, 2017

At its August 2015 meeting, the Board of Directors (BoD1 ) recommended, and the APA Council of Representatives (CoR) approved, the establishment of a Blue Ribbon Panel
(which became known as the “Ethics Commission”) as one of the first steps in a series of recommendations following the APA Independent Review (IR, Hoffman Report). The
APA leadership took 19 specific actions, including the establishment of this Ethics Commission, in order to address the concerns identified in the report.

The purpose of the Ethics Commission (hereafter referred to as the “Commission”) was to examine the APA ethics processes and recommend changes. The charge of the Commission was stated by the APA as follows:

The scope of work of the Commission is to evaluate and recommend changes to APA’s ethics processes, including, but not limited to: (1) the relationship between ethics education and adjudication function, (2) the efficacy and utility of the investigative and adjudication processes, and (3) the establishment of a Chief Ethics Officer. The Commission’s work should be based on an assessment of current practices and procedures, attend to the potential conflicts between human rights and other considerations, and the benchmarking of APA’s ethics processes against those of other professional organizations.

… Read the Report

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American Psychological Association Commission on Ethics

Psychologists Open a Window on Brutal C.I.A. Interrogations

June 21, 2017

Revelations about the C.I.A. practices, which were a radical departure for the United States, set off global denunciations and bitter divisions at home. They led to an eventual ban on the techniques and a prohibition by the American Psychological Association against members’ participation in national security interrogations

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Psychologists Open a Window on Brutal C.I.A. Interrogations

Wednesday, June 21st, 2017

Fifteen years after he helped devise the brutal interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects in secret C.I.A. prisons, John Bruce Jessen, a former military psychologist, expressed ambivalence about the program.

He described himself and a fellow military psychologist, James Mitchell, as reluctant participants in using the techniques, some of which are widely viewed as torture, but also justified the practices as effective in getting resistant detainees to cooperate.

“I think any normal, conscionable man would have to consider carefully doing something like this,” Dr. Jessen said in a newly disclosed deposition. “I deliberated with great, soulful torment about this, and obviously I concluded that it could be done safely or I wouldn’t have done it.”

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NYTimes

Psychologists’ Group Maintains Ban on Work at Military Detention Facilities

Psychologists’ Group Maintains Ban on Work at Military Detention Facilities

Independent commission recommends major reforms to the APA

Independent commission recommends major reforms to the APA

Psychologists Open a Window on Brutal C.I.A. Interrogations

Psychologists Open a Window on Brutal C.I.A. Interrogations

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