Why Torture Made Me Leave the APA

By Jeffrey S. Kaye, Ph.D., Invictus. Posted March 6, 2008.

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

Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D.,
President, American Psychological Association
750 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002-4232

Dear Dr. Kazdin,

I hereby resign my membership in the American Psychological Association (APA). I have up until now been working with Psychologists for an Ethical APA for an overturn in APA policy on psychologist involvement in national security interrogations, and I greatly respect those who are fighting via a dues boycott to influence APA policy on this matter. I hope to still work with these principled and dedicated professionals, but I cannot do it anymore from a position within APA.

Unlike some others who have left APA, my resignation is not based solely on the stance APA has taken regarding the participation of psychologists in national security interrogations. Rather, I view APA's shifting position on interrogations to spring from a decades-long commitment to serve uncritically the national security apparatus of the United States. Recent publications and both public and closed professional events sponsored by APA have made it clear that this organization is dedicated to serving the national security interests of the American government and military, to the extent of ignoring basic human rights practice and law. The influence of the Pentagon and the CIA in APA activities is overt and pervasive, if often hidden. The revelations over the Constitution and behavior of the 2005 Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) panel are a case in point. While charged with investigating the dilemmas for psychologists involved in military interrogations in the light of the scandals surrounding Guantanamo's Camp Delta and Abu Ghraib prison, it was stacked with military and governmental personnel, and closely monitored and pressured by APA staff.

I strongly disagree with APA's current position on interrogations and am unimpressed with recent clarifications of that position that allow for voluntary non-participation in specifically defined cases where torture and abuse of prisoners is proven to exist. I have discussed my reasoning for this elsewhere, both in public and blogging on the Internet. In 2007, I was a panelist in a "mini-convention" held at the APA Convention in San Francisco, which examined the dispute over interrogations, presenting my findings on secret and non-secret psychologist research into isolation, sensory deprivation and sensory overload.

The following is a review of my objections to APA policy and practices:

1) APA's position on non-involvement in torture allows psychologists to work in settings that do not allow the basic right of habeas corpus, in addition to practices of humane confinement as delineated in the Conventions of the Geneva Protocols and various international documents and treaties.

2) APA maintains, in private communications, that relegating various modes of psychological torture (sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, isolation) and the use of drugs in interrogations to something less than outright prohibition in recent APA position papers does not mean APA had any intention of providing a "loophole" for interrogators in the practice of coercive interrogations. APA also promises to clarify its position on these matters in an "ethics casebook." When it has found it exigent, as with the PENS resolution, to step outside normal procedure to clarify its position, it has done so. I find it noteworthy that recent APA clarifications of its position are treated as something requiring less than direct organizational expression.

3) APA continues to propagate a position that it knows is false: that psychologists operate in interrogation settings to prevent abusive interrogations. While sometimes citing the compelling conclusions about context and behavior outlined by Zimbardo, and stemming from his famous Prisoner Experiment, it twists the representation of this research by making psychologists a quasi-police force monitoring abusive interrogations. On the contrary, the Zimbardo research leads to a more unsettling conclusion, i.e., that human beings in general are susceptible to participation in abusive behavior based upon contextual factors. In fact, the Zimbardo research argues, as Dr. Zimbardo himself has done, against participation in these kinds of interrogations.

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Jeffrey Kaye is a psychologist active in the anti-torture movement. He works clinically with torture victims at Survivors International in San Francisco, CA. As "Valtin," he regularly blogs at Daily Kos, Docudharma, American Torture, Progressive Historians, and elsewhere.

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