× Expand Debra Sweet A protest in front of the White House in 2015, honoring the 13th anniversary of the opening of the prison camp at Guantanamo.

Update: On August 8, 2018 the American Psychological Association Council voted 61 to 33 percent to keep its existing policy that prohibits military psychologists from counseling detainees at Guantanamo and similar sites.

Should psychologists be allowed to counsel detainees at Guantanamo and other sites where torture has taken place? That’s an issue confronting the American Psychological Association.

The controversy is part of a wider debate on how psychologists were involved in CIA and military torture in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Two prominent psychologists were instrumental in developing the torture program at Guantanamo, and others participated in torturing detainees there.

Current American Psychological Association (APA) policy not only prohibits engaging in torture, but also counseling detainees—unless the psychologists work for the detainees personally, or for independent third parties such as human rights groups.

Supporters of the current policy say it is necessary because of past involvement in abusive interrogations by military psychologists.

A small group of military psychologists, backed by some leaders of the APA, disagree, arguing that current policy prevents detainees from receiving proper psychological treatment. They have introduced a resolution allowing psychologists to counsel detainees to the APA’s Council of Representatives, which will meet at the APA’s upcoming convention in San Francisco, August 9-12.

‘This is a struggle for the soul of the APA.’

Carrie Kennedy, a Navy psychologist and member of the APA’s leadership council, wrote in a letter that the current policy “effectively remove[s] access to psychological care from a vulnerable population, and the abrupt removal of psychologists from that role was akin to patient abandonment.”

Stephen Soldz, professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, opposes Kennedy’s view. In an interview, he told me that, in the past, the expertise of military psychologists was used to extract information from detainees in Guantanamo.

“There’s incredible situational pressure that makes it problematic to act ethically. When push comes to shove, their loyalty is to the [military] commanders.”

The U.S. military has a long history of torture, dating back at least to the Spanish American War, when U.S. troops used waterboarding. The CIA widely used kidnapping and torture as part of its infamous Operation Phoenix program during the Vietnam War.

Under President Bill Clinton, the CIA kidnapped and tortured suspected terrorists at secret prisons outside the United States. After September 11, 2001, the George W. Bush Administration vastly expanded the program. The CIA seized suspected terrorists, and tortured and held them without trial in secret sites, a program euphemistically called “extraordinary rendition.”

Gina Haspel, now the Trump Administration’s director of the CIA, oversaw a black site in Thailand and later helped destroy videotape evidence showing the CIA use of waterboarding.

“People were caught up in the idea that everything was different after September 11,” Alice LoCicero, president of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, a division of APA, told me. “Psychologists were caught up in that, and that was part of the problem.”

In 2002, the APA changed its ethics code to allow psychologists to abandon their ethical obligations under pressure from legal authority, which could include military orders to participate in torture.

But progressive psychologists fought back, wanting to ensure that psychologists didn’t participate in torture or otherwise accede to illegal interrogations. In 2010, they succeeded in amending the 2002 resolution, and in 2015 the APA passed a resolution prohibiting military psychologists from counseling any detainees in facilities where international or U.S. law is violated.

The U.S. military has a long history of torture, dating back at least to the Spanish American War, when U.S. troops used waterboarding.

In response, the Department of Defense stopped military psychologists from counseling detainees in Guantanamo. The APA’s Committee on Legal Issues argues the APA should change its policy because the presence of trained psychologists will insure against abuse.

“Psychologists can provide guidance on best practices to promote the humane treatment of detainees during efforts to gather information from these individuals,” the committee wrote in a memo to the board of directors.

Dan Aalbers, a psychologist who helped form APAwatch: Alliance for an Ethical APA, told me that, as a practical matter, individual military psychologists have not refused orders to participate in torture sessions.

“None of the people who served at Guantanamo or the black sites have been held responsible for witnessing or participating in torture,” he says.

On August 8, the APA Council of Representatives voted 61 to 33 percent to keep its existing policy that prohibits military psychologists from counseling detainees at Guantanamo and similar sites. Both sides agree the vote is just one more skirmish in an ongoing struggle.

Sally Harvey, Former Army psychologist, says, “This is an issue that has great passion on both sides.”

Or, as psychologist LoCicero puts it, “This is a struggle for the soul of the APA.”

Editor’s note: This article was updated to include the result of the APA Council’s August 8 vote.

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