Via the Washington Post comes word that the American Psychological Association ruled Sunday that its members can no longer be associated with many of the “alternative” interrogation techniques in use at US facilities around the world. The ruling also calls on psychologists who witness the use of these techniques to intervene. The penalty for not doing so is ejection from the APA.
The ruling stopped short of banning APA members from working at all interrogation sites, for which a vocal faction inside the organization had been advocating. The issue was the subject of protests at this past week’s APA Conference in San Francisco.
It’s come out over the last year that psychologists were instrumental in the development of the torture-in-everything-but-name tactics that have been described by the Bush Administration as “an alternative set of procedures.”
According to the Post, here’s what the APA now says psychologists can’t be involved with: mock executions, simulated drowning, sexual and religious humiliation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, exploitation of prisoners’ phobias, the use of mind-altering drugs, hooding, forced nakedness, the use of dogs to frighten detainees, exposing prisoners to extreme heat and cold, physical assault and threatening the use of such techniques against a prisoner or a prisoner’s family.
Now someone has to tell Jack Bauer.
-Greg Dahlmann