APA found to be complicit in CIA torture program

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http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-worl ... e-program/
this seems very unsavory to me, and it diminishes my level of trust in members of the profession.

This topic came up at an APA conference a few years ago. https://kunsoo1024.wordpress.com/2007/0 ... hologists/

Some psychologists wanted to ban the involvement of the APA in military interrogations that deprive detainees of their human rights. Regrettably, it was voted down. Makes you really wonder about these guys. I am reminded of the abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ ... viet_Union

soviet-style abuses are not only soviet-style. it happens here also.

And, I am a conspiracy theorist?

Yet the ICD follows the DSM and many here accept the DSM as the only criteria for diagnosing Autism

I'm fairly certain the majority APA members would not endorse collaboration with CIA mind/torture methods as it clearly breaches their ethical code of practice and therefore compromises their profession.

Those who choose to collaborate may protect their reputation as their work probably falls under the guise of protecting national security and anti-terrorism. However it's a very very slippery slope and the current evidence suggests that interrogation methods used by the CIA to extract information from prisoners do not yield valuable data anyway.

it reinforces in my mind, the prescient wisdom of dr. Thomas Szacz [RIP] who considered much of American psychology in practice as more akin to practical social politics.

It isn't the first time. Dr. Ewen Cameron worked for the CIA and later became the president of the APA.

"The frequent screams of the patients that echoed through the hospital did not deter Cameron or most of his associates in their attempts to depattern their subjects completely."
- John D. Marks

"depatterning"=brainwashing or mind erasing. some of the worst evils are predicated on deceptive language.

Psychologists largely have designed these techniques.

I don't know how a lot of those folks can not be fearful of being called to account [in a higher venue] for their work assisting torture?

The 'higher venue' hire them specifically to develop these techniques.

It isn't the first time. Dr. Ewen Cameron worked for the CIA and later became the president of the APA.



It's probably relevant that prominent French psychologist Alfred Binet was a champion of the Eugenics movement which ironically provided the intellectual doctrine for the fledgling fascist movement in Germany that evolved into Nazism. '

Many sympathetic German psychologists were essential in the formulation of Nazi party strategies that gave rise to public policy doctrines. It's strange virtually nothing has been published about their role? without psychologists you cant create mass movements such as communism or fascism.

In this respect the contribution of psychologists to various CIA programs should barely come as a surprise.

While most psychologists wouldn't work for the CIA, there is no doubt they could not develop strategies without the aid of psychologists. Doctrines such as fascism and communism might have been written by philosophers such as Nietzsche and Marx, but the implementation of policy needed psychologists and their work such as the eugenicist Alfred Binet.

Lets not forget that the CIA also employees many psychologists directly as regular staff agents.

While not a psychologist, the story of bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist and CIA employee Frank Olson, Ph.D., ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Olson ) is interesting.