Torture Report

I  never intended to use this blog to air my political  opinions, but I do think the recent Torture Report released  by the US Senate raises an issue that is relevant to the concerns of psychotherapy. According to the report, the CIA hired  two American psychologists , Bruce Jesson and James Mitchell, to design  an interrogation programme that would induce a profound sense of " learned helplessness" in detainees who were suspected of being terrorists. The CIA thought so highly of the two contractors that they were paid a whopping $80 million to come up with such interrogation techniques as water-boarding, rectal feeding, anal rehydration and putting prisoners in "stress positions"  by tying their elbows and ankles behind their backs and forcing them to lie face down for prolonged periods of time. Although the CIA was highly satisfied with the  the consultations provided by Jesson and Mitchell, the Senate Report  rejected CIA claims about the usefulness of these methods for gaining actionable intelligence. Since then, a number of debates--or rather, rancorous arguments--have erupted questioning both the morality and legality, as well as the effectiveness of using these illegal coercive techniques.  My interest here, however, has less to do with these important questions than it does with the use of psychology for such abhorrent purposes. In fact, using psychology for torture violates the most fundamental moral principle of psychotherapy which is respect for the experience of every human being.  So what happens when the putative insights of psychology are used for such an  intrinsically immoral  practice as torture? Can it even be called psychology, understood as  the study of human mental and emotional processes? Or, by becoming a dedicated  and systematic practice of cruelty, does it become an entirely different practice altogether?

I think  most psychologists and perhaps every psychotherapist would be affronted by the suggestion that Jeeson and Mitchell were practising  psychology, at all.  Indeed, many of us would argue that their status as psychologists is similar to Josef Mengele's standing as a physician.  Mengele claimed that his medical "experiments" (which included injecting inmates of Nazi death camps with fatal diseases) would aid the German war effort. Using an almost identical justification, Jeeson and Mitchell have claimed that they were simply using coercive techniques to extract intelligence from dangerous terrorists in order to defend the US and its allies. In other words, they were only scientists who applied pain with clinical detachment in the interest  of national defence. The nature of that science, however, deserves serious consideration. Before they began to explore the advantages of using torture against  alleged terrorists, Jeeson and Mitchell used to train American personnel to withstand torture in the event of captivity. No doubt, seeing torture from the perspectives of both torturer and victim gave Jeeson and Mitchell a certain objectivity in investigating the various thresholds of pain and humiliation that torture so artfully inflicts. But knowing what works in breaking the will of a helpless prisoner does not really require much insight into human character. It relies much more on knowing how to exploit the physical and mental vulnerabilities of people who are in no position to resist their torturers. 

The practice of torture has a history as long as that of humankind itself so one wonders what original psychological insights did Jeeson and Mitchell bring to bear in designing their regimens of torture. It certainly wasn't waterboarding. In the mediaeval city of Canterbury where I practise therapy, there is a quaint old device called a ducking stool, which extends over the River.Stour by a long wooden arm. The stool was used in the Middle Ages for women who were accused of witchcraft or prostitution. The arm would plunge a seated and bound woman into the river and hold her underwater for as long as those who operated the arm considered her submersion appropriate. Ducking was believed to be a good way of determining whether or not a woman was a witch or a prostitute, much as some people today consider waterboarding a good technique for discovering whether or not someone is a terrorist.  The  essential coercive factor in both cases is the instinctive dread of dying which all sentient creatures would feel when forced to the brink of drowning. Indeed, I suspect that  every technique that Jeeson and Mitchell advocated must have had  some precedent in the long history of torture.  For the human body has always  been as much the violated object of hatred as  it has  been the tender site of love.  But whereas torture found an ecclesiastical or royal justification in the Middle Ages, now a scientific, psychological imprimatur in the name of  national security is used to justify the same cruelties.  It was by providing the CIA with such an imprimatur that Jeeson and Mitchell were rewarded with their obscene largesse. 

It's obvious that torture and psychotherapy have nothing in common except  for an interest in the experience of the victim. But it is here that  the contrast between the two is most starkly apparent: torture administers pain; therapy attempts to ameliorate it.  And this tells us everything we need to know about the ontology of torture. Even before torture actually begins. the torturer strips the victim of his humanity as a necessary prelude to subjugating the victim to the his will.  Subsequently, the victim is made to feel inhuman by the torturer's deliberate and calculated acts of inhumanity towards him. Psychology does play a part in such a transaction, but it is by no means limited to the technology of administering pain or confined to what goes on in the mind and body of the victim.  For torturers themselves frequently suffer from post-traumatic stress due to the torture they are called upon to inflict on their defenceless victims. But this can be stated much more directly without recourse to psychological terminology: torturers can become consumed with guilt because of the cruelties they perform. Not even praising them as patriots--as Bush and Cheney have done-- may be enough to alleviate that guilt.  For torture is morally inexcusable as most people know instinctively.  

This brings us back to Jeeson and Mitchell, now rich men because of the regimens of  torture that they provided to the CIA.  It is  possible to call their work psychology as it is based on close and systematic observation of what happens to human beings under extreme duress. But there is a better name for it: a crime against humanity.