Torture, Psychology, and Daniel Inouye: The True Story Behind Psychology's Role in Torture

A seventeen-year-old boy is locked in an interrogation cell in Guantanamo. He breaks down crying and says he wants his family. The interrogator senses the boy is psychologically vulnerable and consults with a psychologist. The psychologist has evaluated the boy prior to the questioning and says, "Tell him his family has forgotten him." The psychologist also prescribes "linguistic isolation" (not letting him have contact with anyone who speaks his language.) The boy attempts suicide a few weeks later. On the eve of the boy's trial, the psychologist apparently fearing her testimony will only further implicate her, indicates she will plead the Fifth Amendment if she is called to the stand. The trial is postponed, leaving the boy in further limbo.

The military psychologist is merely a foot soldier in psychology's participation in torture. It goes much deeper. We now know that psychologists helped design and implement significant segments of George Bush's torture program. Despite their credo, "Above all, do no harm," two psychologists developed instruments of psychological torture. They "reversed engineered" psychological principles. They used the very therapeutic interventions psychologists use to ameliorate psychological suffering, but "reversed" their direction to create psychological distress and instability. If one's reality sense is threatened, a good therapist validates and supports it as appropriate. In reverse engineering, the environment is deliberately made more confusing and the victim's trust in his own perceptions is intentionally undermined. In extreme form, this can ultimately drive a person to insanity from which some never come back. These were the types of techniques that were used on the seventeen-year-old detainee and others.

Military psychologists also colluded with the Justice Department to help CIA operatives circumvent the legal prohibitions against torture. Under the Justice Department definition of torture, if a detainee was sent to a psychologist for a mental health evaluation prior to interrogation it was per se evidence that the interrogator had no legal intent to torture the detainee because the referral "demonstrated concern" for the welfare of the detainee.

Most remarkably of all, this whole process occurred under a protective "ethical" seal from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychologists' largest national organization. The APA governance repeatedly rejected calls from its membership for APA to join other health organizations in declaring participation in Bush detention center interrogations unethical.

Most psychologists are appalled at what the APA has done, and many, like me, have resigned from the APA. But the true story behind APA's involvement with torture has not been fully told.

I have had ample opportunity to observe both the inner workings of the APA and the personalities and organizational vicissitudes that have affected it over the last two decades. For most of the twenty-year period from 1983 to 2003, I either worked inside the APA central office as the first Executive Director of the APA Practice Directorate, or I served in various governance positions, including Chair of the APA Board of Professional Affairs and member of the APA Council of Representatives. Since leaving APA I have maintained a keen interest in the organization.

The transformation of APA, in the past decade, from a historically liberal organization to an authoritarian one that actively assists in torture has been an astonishing process. As with many usurpations of democratic liberal values, the transformation was accomplished by a surprisingly small number of people. APA is an invaluable case study in the psychological manipulations that influence our governmental and non-governmental institutions.

To explain APA's behavior two questions have to be answered. First, how did the APA develop the connections with the military that fostered the shameful role it has played in torture? Second, why did the APA governance not join other health professions in prohibiting participation in the Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogations," as APA's rank and file members were demanding?

The APA-military connection

One source of APA's military connections is obvious to anyone who has worked at APA over the last twenty-five years. Strangely, it has been overlooked by the media. Since the early 1980's, APA has had a unique relationship with Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye's office. Inouye was an honored WWII veteran, a Japanese American who himself was a medical volunteer in the midst of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He entered office in 1962. For much of the '70s, he was Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Later he became, and is currently, the chair of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which, of course, makes up the largest chunk of federal discretionary spending and is why economists often split discretionary government funding into defense spending versus "everything else." This appropriations committee covers not only all of the armed forces but the CIA as well. Put succinctly, Inouye controls the military purse strings, and is very influential with military brass.

One of Inouye's administrative assistants, psychologist Patrick Deleon, has long been active in the APA and served a term in 2000 as APA president. For significant periods of time DeLeon has literally directed APA staff on federal policy matters and has dominated the APA governance on political matters. For over twenty-five years, relationships between the APA and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been strongly encouraged and closely coordinated by DeLeon.

Inouye himself has served as an apologist for the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp ("Gitmo") since the inception of the War on Terror. In a press briefing at the U.S. State Department, held shortly after his trip to Gitmo in February of 2002, Inouye affirmed Rumsfeld's propagandist vision of the site, and then remarked: "Watching our men and women treat these detainees was rather impressive. They would go out of their way to be considerate. ..."

From what we know now, that is true, but not in the benevolent way Inouye implied. Inouye's comments bore a chilling similarity to Barbara Bush's famous comments about the alleged good fortune of Katrina victims, in the Houston Astrodome. The detainees, he said, are being treated "in some ways better than we treat our people." (R. Burns, Associated Press, 2002). And he compared the Guantanamo climate to Hawaii's. (It is "somewhat warmer.")

More significantly, it was Inouye who recently stripped the funding needed for closing Gitmo from a supplemental appropriations bill. This "Inouye Amendment," threw a stick in the spokes of any U.S. movement away from the worst of global war on terror policies. In announcing the funding cut, Inouye's press release was a remarkable illustration of Orwellian "newspeak," ostensibly supporting the very opposite of what he was doing:

"But let me be clear. We need to close the Guantanamo prison. Yes, it is a fine facility. I, too, have visited the site. Yes, the detainees are being well cared for. Our servicemen and servicewomen are doing great work. But the fact of the matter is Guantanamo is a symbol of the wrongdoings which have occurred, and we must eliminate that connection." (Inouye, Press Release May 20, 2009).

DeLeon's connection with Inouye is not by any means the only APA connection with defense interests. In 1951 the military established The Human Resource Research Organization (HumRRO) to develop techniques for "psychological warfare." HumRRO was run by psychologist Dr. Meredith Crawford who spent ten years as APA treasurer and was deeply involved in APA activities for three decades. Crawford's former student, Raymond Fowler, became Chief Executive Officer of APA in 1989 and stayed in that position until 2003. Today, fifty-five percent of HumRRO's budget comes from the military.

As CEO, Fowler hired his two most important lieutenants from HumRRO, Chief Financial Officer, Charles "Jack" McKay, and in-house attorney, James McHugh. Both men have now, after lengthy APA tenures, left the APA and returned to HumRRO in very senior roles. McHugh is Chairman of the HumRRO Board of Trustees and McKay is Vice-Chairman and Treasurer. The current President of HumRRO, psychologist William Strickland, has been an outspoken supporter of APA's policies on the torture issue. He served on the APA Council of Representatives throughout the APA deliberations on torture.

Whether and how the longstanding relationships and frequent circulation of key personnel between APA and HumRRO positions have shaped APA's involvement with the military is unclear, but given recent events, it certainly warrants more careful scrutiny than it has received from psychologists. In fact, I do not believe many psychologists are even aware of these relationships.

Regardless of HumRRO's role, however, as psychologists, most APA governance members have little Washington political experience. For them, Patrick DeLeon, because of his connection with Inouye, is perceived as a canny psychology politician and political force on Capitol Hill. Regardless of the accuracy of that perception, I have no reason to think DeLeon is a corrupt or evil person. Instead, from my perspective, the most interesting aspect of DeLeon has always been his apparent preoccupation with issues of status for psychologists, irrespective of the issues' actual significance either for psychologists or the public.

DeLeon wanted to make sure a psychologist, not just physicians, for example, would be eligible to fill this or that position in the Veteran's Administration, and he campaigned for years for VA psychologists to receive a minuscule pay increase when they became board certified. On the whole, I found these matters harmless and of at least some marginal benefit to people. Using funding from the Department of Defense he has also launched a campaign for psychologists to be given legal rights to prescribe psychiatric medications.

The torture issue is, of course, quite different. Viewed through the eyes of DeLeon's adherents, psychology's new found role as architects of a central component of the war on terror was a tremendous "victory" for the field of psychology. That it involved torture was peripheral, obscured by the headiness of being involved in high-level, important, clandestine government affairs. In discussions about APA's role in the interrogations, a senior member of the APA governance described himself as "addicted" to the television show 24. Now he had his own reality TV show.

DeLeon's influence in the APA and with many individual psychologists, especially those from Hawaii, came in very handy for Inouye in his efforts to support the Department of Defense. When the military needed a mental health professional to help implement its interrogation procedures, and the other professions subsequently refused to comply, the military had a friend in Senator Inouye's office, one that could reap the political dividends of seeds sown by DeLeon over many years.While we are only now uncovering the names of the individuals who participated most directly in the interrogations, I think a surprising number of them will turn out to be people brought into the military through Inouye's office, many by DeLeon himself.

APA's Organizational Decline

But this leads to the second and more complex question. Why did the governance of the APA let this happen under the apparent imprimatur of the world's largest organization of psychologists? Some people assume APA's horrifying recent behavior involved large sums of money changing hands. I could certainly be wrong, but I think the more likely (and more remarkable and pressing) mechanism has little to do with money. For reasons described below, the APA leaders who were making these decisions simply exercised judgment that was both bad and insensitive to the realities of human suffering. In my opinion, schooled by 25 years of experience with the APA, it was neither greed nor financial corruption that brought the APA governance into alliance with the Bush Administration. Instead, it was a malignant organizational grandiosity that first weakened the APA and then, ultimately, allowed military and intelligence agencies to have their way with the APA throughout the Bush Administration.

But how did the APA, of all organizations, get this way? What led to this grandiose culture? An organization does not rise or fall with a single event any more than the fall of Rome truly occurred in 476 AD. The culture of grandiosity was carefully cultivated for more than a decade by a few self-interested individuals.

What has been observable and unarguable about the APA of recent years is that the pluralistic and multi-faceted governance process I witnessed when first entering the APA in the early 1980's was sharply curtailed during the 1990's. Differences of opinion disappeared, and the APA suffered a terrible organizational decline. Increasingly inbred and infantilized under the tightly controlled administration of Raymond Fowler, the association agenda was primarily and at times exclusively financial, focused on making money either through real estate ventures or through what I and others felt was the unnecessarily harsh financial treatment of lower level APA employees.

Whatever one's view of APA, few can dispute that Fowler, more than any other individual, made APA what it is today. The CEO of APA for almost fifteen years, Fowler served in one capacity or another on the APA Board of Directors for twenty-five consecutive years. While his supporters would characterize him as "astute" and his critics as "devious," few could reasonably disagree that Fowler was the main mover in the APA for the fifteen years leading up to the torture debacle.

Most peculiarly, Fowler's "agenda" for APA was encapsulated in the phrase "Working Together," a noble idea that to the best of my knowledge was never attached to any actual substantive agenda. Instead, it served as a means of social control, a subtle injunction against raising any of the conflict-laden issues, challenges, or ideas that need to be addressed in any vital and accountable organization. The governance of the APA became either conformist or placid and increasingly detached from the real world.

The result was that much of the activity of the APA Council of Representatives, the legislative group with ultimate authority in the APA governance, turned away from substantive matters into an odd system of fawning over one another. Many members appeared to simply bathe in the good feeling that came from "working together." The bath was characterized by grandiose self-referents and shared lofty opinions of one another. As it became more and more detached from reality, the organizational dysfunction became more pronounced, but this was ignored and obscured by the self-congratulatory organizational style. During this period, isolated dissent from rank-and-file members was stifled with a heavy-handed letter from the APA attorney threatening legal action or by communications from prominent members of the APA governance threatening "ethics" charges if policy protests were not discontinued. (It is unethical for psychologists to lie, and I can attest that one former APA president concluded that disagreeing with him was per se "lying.")

Deliberations on Torture

This same grandiosity was ubiquitous in the governance's rhetoric at the heart of the Association's discussions on torture. Banning psychologists' participation in reputed torture mills was clearly unnecessary, proponents of the APA policy argued. To do so would be an "insult" to military psychologists everywhere. No psychologist would ever engage in torture. Insisting on a change in APA policy reflected a mean-spirited attitude toward the military psychologists. The supporters of the APA policy managed to transform the military into the victims in the interrogation issue.

In the end, however, it was psychologists' self-assumed importance that carried the day on the torture issue. Psychologists' participation in these detention centers, it was asserted, was an antidote to torture, since psychologists' very presence could protect the potential torture victims (presumably from Rumsfeld and Cheney, no less!). The debates on the APA Council floor, year after year, concluded with the general consensus that, indeed, psychology was very, very important to our nation's security.

We psychologists were both too good and too important to join our professional colleagues in other professions who were taking an absolutist moral position against one of the most shameful eras in our country's history. While the matter was clearly orchestrated by others, it was this self-reinforcing grandiosity that led the traditionally liberal APA governance down the slippery slope to the Bush Administration's torture program.

During this period I had numerous personal communications with members of the APA governance structure in an attempt to dissuade them from ignoring the rank-and-file psychologists who abhorred the APA's position. I have been involved in many policy disagreements over the course of my career, but the smugness and illogic that characterized the response to these efforts were astonishing and went far beyond normal, even heated, give and take. Most dramatically, the intelligence that I have always found to characterize the profession of psychology was sorely lacking.

Outside the self-absorbed culture of the current APA governance, to the rest of the world, the APA arguments simply do not pass the red-face test for credibility. Instead, their transparent disingenuousness only made the APA sound embarrassingly like apologists for the Bush Administration.

Conclusion

The inability to deliberate rationally on the torture issue was but the tragic denouement of an organizational process that was actually set in motion in the early 1990's, largely to serve the convenience of a very small number of individuals. As a result of the management style of the 90's, the governance of APA was ill prepared for thoughtful deliberation on a matter as important as the torture issue. The governance was simply over its head in trying to effectively address such a socially and ethically consequential issue. This was especially true in a debate in which one side had organized support from powerful military interests, then-current APA presidents like Gerald Koocher and Ronald Levant, and Senator Inouye's office all pushing for APA involvement in the interrogations. Few people stood up to them, and those who did were people who were inexperienced in the duplicity and manipulative style of politics that characterized APA.

With the increasing uproar from the membership and the media, APA's more recently elected leaders and the current CEO, Norman Anderson, have been extraordinarily quiet on the subject of psychologist and APA involvement in the torture issue. Instead, second level APA employees have been put out front to defend the APA position to the membership and to the public. These are almost exclusively people hired by Fowler to fit into his carefully designed model of an organization that would be controllable, if somewhat non-dynamic and uncreative. Thus, the public relations staff Fowler hired, the staff legal and psychological expertise he hired, and most remarkably his ethics director have all served as the "face of APA" on the torture issue in recent years. Not surprisingly, forced to function under the watchful eye of the public they have not acquitted themselves in credible fashion.

In a recent book, I used several organizational examples to illustrate that many of the same techniques of political manipulation used in the Bush Administration were used in other organizational settings. Many of those examples were drawn from the APA. At the time of writing I never dreamed the techniques would lead to APA's complicity in torture.

But such is the fate of a regressed and chronically manipulated organization. Despite being an organization of psychologists, APA has been subjected to considerable manipulation but to very little analysis. The people who run APA have "reverse engineered" the very field of psychology itself and used it against its own membership.

Psychologists are amongst the most moral and ethical people I know. They deserved better from their national organization, just as Americans throughout that same era deserved better from their government.
_____________________________________________________________________
Bryant Welch is a clinical psychologist and attorney living in Hilton Head, SC. He is the author of State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind, St. Martins Press, 2008.)

Comments

[StillAmused]

As a now-inactive CSW who spent the late '60s and '70s -- with a small group of colleagues -- blowing the whistle on our public-agency employers in New York (both the then State Department of Mental Hygiene and a large county Department of Social Services), I found the most insidious and common phenomenon in both settings to be the licensed exercise of "power".

The seductive appeal of having "control" over a patient or client population is more than many can handle with humility, empathy or professional ethics. Frankly, I saw many inadequate personalities working out their own "issues" by putting patients or clients in a psychological hammerlock and 'working' that hammerlock to assert their own authority and validate themselves.

For those seeking such validation, I imagine you can't beat the 'rush' conferred by collaboration with the military and intelligence establishments.

Your description of the toxic relationship between APA and the military sounds hauntingly familiar, and I believe that, at it's root, one could easily find (in addition to any pecuniary gain) diligent pursuit of grandiosity, particularly on the part of psychologists (and, for that matter, psych social workers) who see themselves locked in a relevance battle with psychiatrists, the perceived masters of the domain.

It's all so petty, so sad and so tragically damaging to those who believe they're entrusting themselves and their emotional burdens to 'helping' professionals.

You've written a powerful piece. I hope it gets the attention it deserves... but I'm not holding my breath.

[MikeRdg]

Your comments are well founded -- it will take voices from within the field of psychology and social work to correct this issue, holding ones breath, as you know as a whistle blower, does not work-- no one can hear your tune.

Mitchell and Jessen were groomed within a religious organization which is flawed with psychological abuses among its membership and leadership, if they were decent souls they would not have done what they did. The LDS influence was already being felt with the pressure to retract and earlier opinion of mind control. Right there tells the level of influence being interjected and setting the stage for Mitchell and Jessen practices to be accepted.

You are correct there are many flawed people working inside the psychology and SS.

[dlo2]

Seems like the APA needs to find a soul, an ethics guideline, and a design that allows this association to sanction the kind of amoral behavior, illustrated in this article, of psychology PhDs who chose the military as their avenue of abuse. Every profession needs a moral framework and it appears that the APA is in default.

[blood1]

I have been trying to keep up with all the information coming out about the torture techniques that were used in this "so called war"...as war was never authorized. In the Armed Services Report, someone very early on was thinking about using psychologists...and 2 named in one of these post repeats them.
So as a generic American will never which came first: chicken v. egg. Did the Psychologists suggest or did someone draw them in.

The shocking part of the Armed Service Report is how the mentality even within the military was changed...as General after General eventually authorized torture techniques which violate the UCMJ.

ProPublica showed the Pens Group emails...and it too showed how the civilians were bullied by the military. The military psychologist focused the agenda to a very tight spot...it was quite an amazing read. It was also interesting that those psychologists in the Pens group who refused to "sign off" on the final report were then ridiculed by the military psychologist.

A great article and it needs to be included in the information about the Psychological Manipulation.

[MikeRdg]

Links to two articles from
http://www.propublica.org/article/a-secret-e-mail-argument-among-psychologists-about-torture-508

“Col. Louie M. Banks, also a task-force member, pointed out that psychologists who support interrogations do not provide mental health care to detainees, "thereby preventing 'doubling' of their roles." Banks was the leading psychologist for the Army's Special Operations Command as well as the "Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape" (SERE) program.” --- ok. The SERE reversal program is Mitchell and Jessen’s baby

[MikeRdg]

2nd article

“In the winter of 2001, the report says, retired Air Force SERE psychologist Dr. James Mitchell asked then-senior JPRA SERE psychologist Dr. John “Bruce” Jessen to study documents about al Qaeda resistance training. Within weeks, Jessen and the JPRA, which had “no training or experience in intelligence collection,” according to the Report, were running “crash” courses on interrogations for intelligence personnel, likely including CIA interrogators [7]. (Mitchell and Jessen declined our request to speak with them.)”

Mitchell and Jessen had NO training in interrogations. And Mitchell tapped***, fellow Mormon Church member Jessen.---

http://www.propublica.org/article/tortured-profession-psychologists-warned-of-abusive-interrogations-505

I was reading the other issue with the tortures designed by Mitchell and Jessen, and not discussed, was the combination of the various techniques used together, water boarding and going without sleep for days or other combination of tortures used to develop learned helplessness responses.

The apples are not falling far from the tree on the individuals who approved, wrote memos, designed and supported torture, most came for a church group which had been under question on using mind control techniques, to mentioned however, is in this same group the use of bullying, mental abuse, threats to fellow church members, wives and children which is implemented by faith priesthood holders and stupid women who think they will become the wife of a GOD on these unfortunate victims. We noticed a systematic use of this type of abuse.

[Bryant Welch - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you. I couldn't agree with you more. The public needs to be better educated about the more sophisticated forms of psychological manipulation that have infected many of our institutions.

[wef100]

The AP has stood in the way of many postivie public policy initiatives. Dr. Welch's Practice Directorate actively fought managed behavioral health in the name of "quality". It also oppopsed other health care reform efforts in the early nineties. This opposition helped accelerate the mess the health care system finds itself in today. Make no mistake, the APA has been, and continues to be, a guild whose primary purpose is to secure the income of psychologists. Self interest in not always a bad thing, but when it is not in the public interest, it is. I left this organization in the late 1980's because of this attitude. There is much blame to go around about APA's failings, including the policies of Dr. Welch, who was supported by Raymond Fowler for many years.

[Bryant Welch - Huffpost Blogger]

You are absolutely correct that I was probably one of the earliest critics of managed health care. I am not sure how you feel that contributed to our health care mess. In fact, to some extent managed health care personifies our current health care mess. In addition, I was quite supportive of major reforms of health care during the period you mention. There is a fairly substantial public record documenting that. Raymond Fowler was not to blame for any positions I took protesting the abuses of managed health care.

[MikeRdg]

Part One

http://www.alternet.org/rights/78909

Any exposed to the LDS community, one develops a sense of ‘smell’ of a hand behind the scenes. As I read the article my questions was. what influenced the APA? Inouye’s name appeared in the article. Wow! Inouye! Sandy Skousen worked for Inouye as his spokesperson. A fine LDS name. like Mitchell and Jessens names are.

What going in the APA, anything else? Well yes, there was in 2008 Jeffery S. Kaye, PH.D. left the APA, this is the beginning of his letter:

“After two years of working to reform the position of the American Psychological Association, which supports psychologist participation in the interrogations of detainees at Guantanamo, CIA "black site" prisons, and elsewhere, I realized that I had been pursuing a utopian objective. On January 27th, I penned my resignation to APA. The rationale for my choice is outlined in the resignation letter, which is reproduced here.”
--Jeffrey S. Kaye, Ph.D
January 27, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/rights/78909

[MikeRdg]

part two con't.

Two years, he said. Two years, anything happening within the APA within the two to three years of Kaye's leaving, any other influences going on within the APA?
Was there some influenced exerted on any other issues?

“After a yearlong campaign by two Mormon psychologists, the American Psychological Association has apologized to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for likening Mormon practices to “brainwashing” and “mind control”

That’s what made the notice in last year’s APA program so inflammatory for church members. For the next year, two psychologists in St. George, Utah — Gary L. Groom and Chauncey Adams, who are Mormons and members of the APA — pursued an apology and a retraction. - 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9067837/

Make it a cake walk for Mitchell and Jessen.

[tomas0808]

Seems like they've been busy working on politically correct ways to torture people. Just like the way Wall St has been working on politically correct ways to take everyone's money. F that

[boredwell]

Hmmm, Fowler and Deleon have given a whole new meaning to "empathic connect!" They empathized with military psychologists "everywhere." Worried about "insulting" them. Refused to come out saying participation in "reversed engineered" methods and other enhanced interrogation techniques could never be condoned professionally, ethically, morally or individually on a case-by-case basis! Ok, now will the APA accuse the Iranian demonstrators of "lying" to their Supreme Leader?

[grey sells]

A particular vulnerability of psychologists is, in contrast to other powerful health care professional groups, was and is their desire to be the 'equals" of physicians. Wannabes, if you will. Some of the motivation of the APA seem to be that they wanted desperately to be 'players at the table" when it came to the national security of the US. To do so, the APA needed to keep their membership under control and the public in the dark all in the name of National Security.. This is a shamefull period that has irreperably harmed the many devoted and practising professional members of the APA. The redemption, if any, given the seriousness of the allegations about the willing participation in torture, is an investigation into the actions of members of the APA who participated and those who claimed to be psychologists but were not. Time to step up and be responsible.

from a retired member of an allied health profession sympathetic to Psychology but not a Physician.

[wordvarc]

Psychologists lose their ability to practice or be called 'psychologist' for ethics violations such as over-familiarity with those who pay them. Yet torture is just fine with the APA. Until 1980 it was more difficult to enter a Psychology Phd program than get into medical school. Since that time 'professional' graduate schools have cranked out PhD's like factories making widgets. DeLeon et al should have there licenses revoked on ethics charges and litigation should be brought by the APA to prevent themselves from being called 'psychologists.' Instead, the APA panders DOD monies as blatently as some offer their services on Craig's list.

[Bryant Welch - Huffpost Blogger]

Many, many psychologists are supporting exactly the kind of investigation you are suggesting.

[Jon Richard]

An excellent and morally important article on the corruption of organized psychology. Explains all the reasons I resigned from APA 2 years ago and began donating the membership dues equivalent to Amnesty International. It is so shameful and painful that APA became a corporate culture of Quislings for the Bush torture machine. ---

[Acmepsych]

So Dr. Welch,

Tangential to your overall article but I wonder if you would comment on this....

Given the reported organizational pathology, (1) can APA be saved, especially for real public needs and for practicing psychologists who try to do the good work daily? (2) Should it be saved?

Thanks,
A practicing psychologi­st/current APA member/division board member

[Bryant Welch - Huffpost Blogger]

Its a good question. Psychology needs a national organization. I built and ran the APA Practice Directorate which i proposed on the Council floor in 1985. While in that role I was simply dazzled by the opportunities it presented to do constructive things. It was also a tremendous forum from which to make psychological understanding more available to people. And with issues like national health insurance, we have got to have as big a presence on Capitol Hill as possible. I was very lucky to have a strong base of support. The bottom line is that these organizations like the APA can be used for good, they can be used for evil, or they can sometimes just sit and atrophy. While I thought APA was just atrophying, it was really getting into something much,much worse than I would have ever dreamed possilbe. Leadership is everything. In my opinion APA has had very poor leadership for several years now. Starting a new organization is possible but very difficult. Thus, I hope we can regroup and the members reclaim control of the APA. and select better learders. Whether that will happen or not, I simply don't know right now. It will require some very energetic (i.e. younger) psychologists who are willing to do the grass roots organizing that will be needed to bring new people into the governance structure. And then the trick is to keep them from being "socialized" into the old APA system.

[tyrdofwaitin]

Post Script: I am unhappy to see this blog torn from the "front page" so quickly. Hmmmmmm!

[APASucks]

Excellent read sir. I too can attest to these point and warn anyone interested in working for this "organization". While the Executive Management Group all make close to a 1/4-1/2 Million in annual salary, most of the middle level managers and lower level employees are forced to work 2 jobs to make ends meet and have no empowerment whatsoever. That create sa very poor work environment for those doing their best to be a good employee. And everyone knows your not far from unemployment. They hire and fire on "whims" and have no concern for unity. Most selfish group of people I've ever had the displeasure to be around. So glad I'm out of their. Their whole Top 100 companies to work for campaign makes me laugh everytime.

[Bryant Welch - Huffpost Blogger]

Yes, I don't know which years you were there, but for much of the period I am discussing there was a profound disrespect for rank and file employees. Alleged "financial crises" were balanced on the back of mid and lower level employees with draconian reductions in appropriate compensation while at the same time the leadership was boasting about the organization's accumulation of increasing wealth ostensibly due to their managerial frugality. I am sorry you had to go through this.

[pwatson8890]

Here is the reality show comment, which I spied in an earlier version of this same article posted on other blogs: "In discussions about APA's role in the interrogations, a senior member of the APA governance described himself as "addicted" to the television show 24. Now he had his own reality TV show." I found it a gratuitious and bizarre comment.

I note as well that you didn't provide any evidence that Fowler exerted social control via manipulation or quashing of dissent. Rather, you merely reiterated that Fowler had a great deal of influence. Surely you see the (certainly legally as in defamation) significant difference between these two ideas. If this piece had been professionally edited and fact-checked, my guess is that editors would have pounced on many of these statements and sent them back to you for further clarification. You are coming perilously close to unfairly smearing a group of people with overwrought allegations. In doing so, you undermine the strong legitimacy of the dissenting position. You render all of us dissenters open to the charge of ad hominem attack, careless critique and axe-grinding to suit our own agendas (or promote our books). Far better for us to focus on nailing APA to the wall--from the leadership to the Board to the Council--for taking the wrong position, morally, ethically and factually. Allegations of nefarious social control by long past leaders do us NO favors.

[Bryant Welch - Huffpost Blogger]

I am sorry you found the comment about the reality tv show bizarre. I think most people understood it to be an anecdotal illustration of one of the higer ups loss of perspective on the reality and seriousness of what was transpiring. If people read it in full context they can, of course, make up their own mind about whether it was gratuitious or bizarre. Similarly, they can decide whether I provided a compelling explanation of how a professional organization could reach such a horribly dysfunctional state as APA obviously has. I made clear it is just my view of what happened. I can assure you I had no doubt that folks would express the rage that you are expressing. I am, however, intriqued that you profess to be a "dissenter" (I assume meaning that, like me, you oppose the actions of APA on the torture issue. I hope that in any future comments you will reveal your identity; I do smell a whiff of mischief here.

[pwatson8890]

If you have been reading the threads, and if you have been following my posts elsewhere, you will "smell" two things consistently. First, my anger at the APA for taking an immoral position, grievously, disastrously, unjustifiably, at the level of the collective. Readiness to hold APA's feet to the fire on their own terms--if they stupidly assumed there were no psychologists involved in interrogation, then they ought to revise the policy now to rectify that ridiculous mistake. But second, anger at those of us on the left who consistently overplay our hand, allowing ourselves to be painted as the loony fringe on an ideological mission. Time and time again, I see the left snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, by doing just the sort of thing you are doing--pushing the position past the point of credibility, being uncareful, often for purposes of self-aggrandizement or polemic venting, undercutting our own strength. This is a plea for some sort of disciplined engagement so that the issue plays as it should in mainstream media. Wouldn't it be more productive to engage on the issues rather than to undercut my critique from the left by "smelling mischief?"

[PoliticalAnimal]

Why is the military using all of the tools of war against the American civilian populace that helps pay for their expensive programs? Why are they attacking the populace they are sworn to defend? Who are they allied with, if not the American people? All patriotic Americans should be alarmed and concerned. All humans should be disgusted by what has been done. And psychology should be ended as a discipline - it has become a tool of those seeking to subjugate the American people to the very fascist rule we fought against in World War II!