The Chronicle: Debate Over Psychologists’ Role in Military Interrogations Continues at Conference Sessions
Psychologists’ roles and ethical responsibilities in relation to war, terrorism, torture, and coercion remained a hot topic of debate as the American Psychological Association opened its annual conference here on Thursday, a day after its governing council adopted a resolution condemning the use of torture.
The resolution approved on Wednesday had linked the association’s policy to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, but did not go far enough to please some members of the association. In panel discussions on Thursday, debate over the psychologists’ obligations in upholding human rights and the extent to which practitioners should be involved in military interrogations of foreign detainees remained fierce and wide-ranging, with speakers touching upon the practical concerns of carrying out the new policy and critiquing the association’s stance on the highly politicized issue.
Among those who feel the new resolution does not go far enough is Leonard S. Rubenstein, the executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, who spoke on a panel on Thursday. Mr. Rubenstein has asked the psychologists’ association to adopt a “bright line” policy, similar to guidelines issued by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, that would ban practitioners from any involvement in military interrogations.
In his comments on Thursday on “ethical dilemmas for psychologists dealing with war, terrorism, torture, and coercion,” he questioned whether it was ethically sound to allow psychologists to act as behavioral consultants in environments such as the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He described such environments as closed and “without due process, where the law allows coercive interrogations,” and where “the social psychology of the situation so much leaves the psychologist to identify with the intelligence function that ethical independence is impossible.”
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