Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label American Psychological Association. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Psychological Association. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

APA decries Florida guidance calling for withholding treatment for gender non-conforming children

American Psychological Association
Press Release
Originally release 21 APR 22

Warns that Florida document is based on flawed, cherry-picked research

WASHINGTON — Following is a statement by Frank C. Worrell, PhD, president of the American Psychological Association, reacting to new guidance issued by the Florida Department of Health opposing science-based treatment for gender non-conforming children:

“This memo from the Florida Department of Health distorts the psychological science regarding the treatment of gender non-conforming children. Research into the treatment of gender non-conforming individuals has found that withholding evidence-based treatments can be psychologically damaging, especially to children and youths who are struggling with their gender identity. Rates of self-injury, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts are much higher among gender dysphoric youth, ironically attributed to stress associated with non-affirming approaches to these very real issues.   

“The Florida memo relies not on science, but on biased opinion pieces and cherry-picked findings to support a predetermined viewpoint and create a narrative that is not only scientifically inaccurate but also dangerous.  

“The American Psychological Association urges both policymakers and psychological practitioners to follow APA’s carefully researched ‘Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People (PDF, 461KB),’ which call for ‘culturally competent, developmentally appropriate, and trans-affirmative psychological practice’ with such individuals, including minors.

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Please note: Psychologists are bound by APA's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct and Practice Guidelines.

Psychologists may want to contemplate the concept of Conscientious Objector status to laws and regulations that conflict with ethical obligations and moral beliefs.

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Psychologists Are Standing Up Against Torture at Gitmo

Rebecca Gordon
theNation.com
Originally posted September 11, 2018

Sometimes the good guys do win. That’s what happened on August 8 in San Francisco when the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association (APA) decided to extend a policy keeping its members out of the US detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The APA’s decision is important—and not just symbolically. Today we have a president who has promised to bring back torture and “load up” Guantánamo “with some bad dudes.” When healing professionals refuse to work there, they are standing up for human rights and against torture.

It wasn’t always so. In the early days of Guantánamo, military psychologists contributed to detainee interrogations there. It was for Guantánamo that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved multiple torture methods, including among others excruciating stress positions, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation, and enforced nudity. Military psychologists advised on which techniques would take advantage of the weaknesses of individual detainees. And it was two psychologists, one an APA member, who designed the CIA’s whole “enhanced interrogation program.”

The info is here.

Monday, July 9, 2018

Technology and culture: Differences between the APA and ACA ethical codes

Firmin, M.W., DeWitt, K., Shell, A.L. et al.
Curr Psychol (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9874-y

Abstract

We conducted a section-by-section and line-by-line comparison of the ethical codes published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Counseling Association (ACA). Overall, 144 differences exist between the two codes and, here we focus on two constructs where 36 significant differences exist: technology and culture. Of this number, three differences were direct conflicts between the APA and ACA ethical codes’ expectations for technology and cultural behavior. The other 33 differences were omissions in the APA code, meaning that specific elements in the ACA code were explicitly absent from the APA code altogether. Of the 36 total differences pertaining to technology and culture in the two codes, 27 differences relate to technology and APA does not address 25 of these 27 technology differences. Of the 36 total differences pertaining to technology and culture, nine differences relate to culture and APA does not address eight of these issues.

The information is here.

Friday, December 1, 2017

Selling Bad Therapy to Trauma Victims

Jonathan Shedler
Psychology Today
Originally published November 19, 2017

Here is the conclusion:

First, do no harm

Many health insurance companies discriminate against psychotherapy. Congress has passed laws mandating mental health “parity” (equal coverage for medical and mental health conditions) but health insurers circumvent them. This has led to class action lawsuits against health insurance companies, but discrimination continues.

One way that health insurers circumvent parity laws is by shunting patients to the briefest and cheapest therapies — just the kind of therapies recommended by the APA’s treatment guidelines. Another way is by making therapy so impersonal and dehumanizing that patients drop out. Health insurers do not publicly say the treatment decisions are driven by economic self-interest. They say the treatments are scientifically proven — and point to treatment guidelines like those just issued by the APA.

It’s bad enough that most Americans don’t have adequate mental health coverage, without also being gaslighted and told that inadequate therapy is the best therapy.

The APA’s ethics code begins, “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.” APA has an honorable history of fighting for patients’ access to good care and against health insurance company abuses.

Blinded by RCT ideology, APA inadvertently handed a trump card to the worst apples in the health insurance industry.

The article is here.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Psychologists are facing consequences for helping with torture. It’s not enough.

Roy Eidelson
The Washington Post
Originally posted October 13, 2017

In August, two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, settled a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three former CIA detainees. The psychologists were accused of designing, implementing and overseeing the CIA’s experimental program of torture and abuse (for which their consulting firm received tens of millions of dollars). The evidence against them was compelling: a detailed Senate report, multiple depositions, newly declassified documents and even Mitchell’s memoir . Prior to settling, Mitchell and Jessen denied any legal responsibility, and their attorneys argued their inculpability by comparing them to the low-level technicians whose employers provided lethal gas for Hitler’s extermination camps.

As a psychologist who has spent the past decade working with colleagues and other human rights advocates to reset my profession’s moral compass against torture, I recognize this settlement as an achievement, even if it’s not the damning finding of liability I would have preferred. The case marks the first instance of legal accountability of any kind for psychologists who abandoned ethical standards — and basic decency — while claiming they were merely following government orders on torture. Getting to this point was an uphill battle. And there’s still a long way to go before psychologists’ participation in torture is ended for good.

The article is here.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Gaslighting, betrayal and the boogeyman: Personal reflections on the American Psychological Association, PENS and the involvement of psychologists in torture

Nina Thomas
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies

Abstract

The American Psychological Association's (APA's) sanctioning psychologists' involvement in “enhanced interrogations,” aka torture, authorized by the closely parsed re-interpretation of relevant law by the Bush administration, has roiled the association since it appointed a task force in 2005. The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force, its composition, methods and outcomes have brought public shame to the profession, the association and its members. Having served on the task force and been involved in the aftermath, I offer reflections on my role to provide an insider's look at the struggle I experienced over loyalty to principle, profession, colleagues, and the association. Situating what occurred in the course of the PENS process and its aftermath within the framework of Freyd's and her collaborators ‘theory of “betrayal trauma,” in particular “institutional trauma,” I suggest that others too share similar feelings of profound betrayal by an organization with which so many of us have been identified over the course of many years. I explore the ways in which attachments have been challenged and undermined by what occurred. Among the questions I have grappled with are: Was I the betrayed or betrayer, or both? How can similar self-reflection usefully be undertaken both by the association itself and other members about their actions or inactions?

The article is here.

Friday, October 20, 2017

The American Psychological Association and torture: How could it happen?

Bryan Welch
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies
Volume 14 (2)

Here is an excerpt:

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. In fact the APA Ethics Director repeatedly advised members of the APA governance that psychologists' presence was necessary to make sure the interrogations were “safe, legal, ethical, and effective.”

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.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

The Bush Torture Scandal Isn’t Over

Daniel Engber
Slate.com
Originally published September 5, 2017

In June, a little-known academic journal called Teaching of Psychology published an article about the American Psychological Association’s role in the U.S. government’s war on terror and the interrogation of military detainees. Mitchell Handelsman’s seven-page paper, called “A Teachable Ethics Scandal,” suggested that the seemingly cozy relationship between APA officials and the Department of Defense might be used to illustrate numerous psychological concepts for students including obedience, groupthink, terror management theory, group influence, and motivation.

By mid-July, Teaching of Psychology had taken steps to retract the paper. The thinking that went into that decision reveals a disturbing under-covered coda to a scandal that, for a time, was front-page news. In July 2015, then–APA President Nadine Kaslow apologized for the organization’s involvement in Bush-era enhanced interrogations. “This bleak chapter in our history,” she said, speaking for a group with more than 100,000 members and a nine-figure budget, “occurred over a period of years and will not be resolved in a matter of months.” Two years later, the APA’s attempt to turn the page has devolved into a vicious internecine battle in which former association presidents have taken aim at one another. At issue is the question of who (if anyone) should be blamed for giving the Bush administration what’s been called a “green light” to torture detainees—and when the APA will ever truly get past this scandal.

The article is here.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Errors in the 2017 APA Clinical Practice Guideline for the Treatment of PTSD: What the Data Actually Says

Dominguez, S. and Lee, C.
Front. Psychol., 22 August 2017

Abstract

The American Psychological Association (APA) Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) concluded that there was strong evidence for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), cognitive therapy (CT), and exposure therapy yet weak evidence for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). This is despite the findings from an associated systematic review which concluded that EMDR leads to loss of PTSD diagnosis and symptom reduction. Depression symptoms were also found to improve more with EMDR than control conditions. In that review, EMDR was marked down on strength of evidence (SOE) for symptom reduction for PTSD. However, there were several problems with the conclusions of that review. Firstly, in assessing the evidence in one of the studies, the reviewers chose an incorrect measure that skewed the data. We recalculated a meta-analysis with a more appropriate measure and found the SOE improved. The resulting effect size for EMDR on PTSD symptom reduction compared to a control condition was large for studies that meet the APA inclusion criteria (SMD = 1.28) and the heterogeneity was low (I2 = 43%). Secondly, even if the original measure was chosen, we highlight inconsistencies with the way SOE was assessed for EMDR, CT, and CPT. Thirdly, we highlight two papers that were omitted from the analysis. One of these was omitted without any apparent reason. It found EMDR superior to a placebo control. The other study was published in 2015 and should have been part of APA guidelines since they were published in 2017. The inclusion of either study would have resulted in an improvement in SOE. Including both studies results in standard mean difference and confidence intervals that were better for EMDR than for CPT or CT. Therefore, the SOE should have been rated as moderate and EMDR assessed as at least equivalent to these CBT approaches in the APA guidelines. This would bring the APA guidelines in line with other recent practice guidelines from other countries. Less critical but also important, were several inaccuracies in assessing the risk of bias and the failure to consider studies supporting strong gains of EMDR at follow-up.

The article is here.

Monday, August 21, 2017

Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process: Publisher won’t retract two papers, despite university’s request

Alison McCook
Retraction Watch
Originally published August 4, 2017

Jens Förster, a high-profile social psychologist, has agreed to retract multiple papers following an institutional investigation — but has also fought to keep some papers intact. Recently, one publisher agreed with his appeal, and announced it would not retract two of his papers, despite the recommendation of his former employer.

Last month, the American Psychological Association (APA) announced it would not retract two papers co-authored by Förster, which the University of Amsterdam had recommended for retraction in May, 2015. The APA had followed the university’s advice last year and retracted two other papers, which Förster had agreed to as part of a settlement with the German Society for Psychology (DGPs). But after multiple appeals by Förster and his co-authors, the publisher has decided to retain the papers as part of the scientific record.

The information is here.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Ethical and legal considerations in psychobiography

Jason D Reynolds and Taewon Choi
American Psychologist 2017 Jul-Aug;72(5):446-458

Abstract

Despite psychobiography's long-standing history in the field of psychology, there has been relatively little discussion of ethical issues and guidelines in psychobiographical research. The Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association (APA) does not address psychobiography. The present article highlights the value of psychobiography to psychology, reviews the history and current status of psychobiography in the field, examines the relevance of existing APA General Principles and Ethical Standards to psychobiographical research, and introduces a best practice ethical decision-making model to assist psychologists working in psychobiography. Given the potential impact of psychologists' evaluative judgments on other professionals and the lay public, it is emphasized that psychologists and other mental health professionals have a high standard of ethical vigilance in conducting and reporting psychobiography.

The article is here.

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Do No Harm: The American Psychological Association wavers on its detainee policy

Susan Greene
The Colorado Independent
Originally published August 04, 2016

The American Psychological Association is wavering on a year-old policy designed to prevent psychologists from working with military or national security detainees.

Meeting in Denver for its annual convention, the nation’s largest professional association of psychologists this week considered and then postponed a decision on whether to allow members of the profession back to work at Guantanamo Bay, other military detention centers and CIA sites.
After a vote planned for Wednesday and then today, the group’s 173-member governing council tabled the discussion until February.

The debate stems from psychologists’ controversial role assisting the U.S. military and intelligence agencies in so-called “enhanced interrogation” efforts during George W. Bush’s administration. The post-9/11 program tried to squeeze information out of terror suspects detained at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantánamo in Cuba and other sites by waterboarding, isolation and sleep deprivation – methods that international law deems to be torture. Bush’s justice officials were able to legally justify the interrogations on grounds that doctors’ mere presence assured that the tactics were safe.

The updated article is here.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

“We Didn’t Know”: Silence and Silencing in Organizations

Nina K. Thomas
International Journal of Group Psychotherapy 
DOI:10.1080/00207284.2016.1176489

Abstract

This article examines the dynamic processes within organizations that contribute to systemic silence and silencing and the “we didn’t know” defense, particularly for those groups in which secrecy replaces transparency to the detriment of the organization and its members. The events of the past more than 10 years within the American Psychological Association (APA) surrounding the role of psychologists in interrogation of detainees, including advising on and monitoring interrogations that have been construed as torture, will serve as a case example of the systemic forces that may contribute to leading an organization away from its principal mission. I explore how what was done was turned into its opposite. That is: “We are protecting psychologists by providing them with ethical guidelines in detention centers with detainees” became the explanatory rubric for a position that violated the association’s stated mission and exposed the organization and individual members to public shame. In addition, I explore how self-silencing becomes a way of adapting to a culture that censures dissent.

Introduction

We didn't know" is the all too common legitimizing trope used to establish distance from disturbing events of a sociopsychological and political nature.  Is such a plea of ignorance consciously or unconsciously motivated lest the speaker be implicated in the acts being opposed?  "We didn't know" typically is invoked when a threat of shame, culpability, or punishment of a sort hangs in the balance.  It may be utilized when social service agencies fail to respond to negligent, abusive, or violent behavior toward those for whom they are responsible for care, or in instances of sexual abuse in military, academic, or religious institutions.  Examples also may be found in the justifications of neighbors of concentration camps during the Second World War, or corporate officers deaf to workers' complaints of malfeasance or corruption within an organization.  It is a widespread self- justificatory response to situations in which the individual might have known, even ought to or could have known what was going on, but for a variety of reasons turned away from knowing.

The article is here.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Pentagon Wants Psychologists to End Ban on Interrogation Role

By James Risen
The New York Times
Originally posted on January 24, 2016

The Pentagon has asked the American Psychological Association to reconsider its ban on the involvement of psychologists in national security interrogations at the Guantánamo Bay prison and other facilities.

The Defense Department reduced its use of psychologists at Guantánamo in late 2015 in response to the policy approved by the association last summer.

But in a letter and accompanying memo to association officials this month, Brad Carson, the acting principal deputy secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, asked that the group, the nation’s largest professional organization for psychologists, revisit its “blanket prohibition.”

Although “the Department of Defense understands the desire of the American psychology profession to make a strong statement regarding reports about the role of former military psychologists more than a dozen years ago, the issue now is to apply the lessons learned to guide future conduct,” Mr. Carson wrote.

The article is here.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Professionalism and Conflicting Interests: The American Psychological Association’s Involvement in Torture

By Nikhil A. Patel and G. David Elkin
AMA Journal of Ethics
October 2015, Volume 17, Number 10: 924-930.
doi: 10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.nlit1-1510.

Here is an excerpt:

A violation of medical ethics. “Primum non nocere” (first, do no harm) is a central ethical tenet that applies to all health care professionals, including psychologists. Society trusts us to provide high-quality, ethical care to those who seek our help. While we may not be able to heal all of our patients, this principle of nonmaleficence is a pillar of bioethics that must be considered in deciding whether we are doing “right” by those under our care. As the United Nations (UN) declares: “It is a contravention of medical ethics for health personnel, particularly physicians, to be involved in any professional relationship with prisoners or detainees the purpose of which is not solely to evaluate, protect or improve their physical and mental health”. The fact that the ethics leadership at the APA ensured that the ethical guidelines would be written with the operational interests of the DoD in mind is an affront to the independence and integrity of the profession of psychology.

The guidance that psychologists should defer to legal authority in conflict with professional norms has an alarming similarity to the “Nuremberg defense,” in which doctors on trial after the horrors of the Holocaust argued that they were simply following the orders of their commanding officers and that their actions were legal at the time. An action’s being legal for citizens in general or military officers does not make it ethically acceptable for members of a healing profession.

The article is here.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Beyond the APA: The Role of Psychology Boards and State Courts in Propping up Torture

By Deborah Popowski
Just Security
Originally posted August 24, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Licensing boards are legally mandated to protect people from the unsafe practice of psychology. This includes patients, all people with whom psychologists work, and the broader public. Yet, presented with evidence that their licensees had participated in or enabled torture, these state boards seemed to turn a blind eye. To truly understand how a profession dedicated to healing came to sanction brutality, we need a full investigation into how and why these boards dismissed misconduct complaints against psychologists James Mitchell, John Leso, Larry James, and Diane Zierhoffer. Did the state boards handle these complaints properly and in good faith, or did they, like the APA, strain their reading of the law to reach conclusions that would not restrict the government’s interrogation program — even if it included torture and cruelty? To what extent did they rely on compromised APA ethics policies and the now-discredited officials responsible for them?

The entire article is here.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Psychologist's Work For GCHQ Deception Unit Inflames Debate Among Peers

By Andrew Fishman
The Intercept
Originally posted August 7, 2015

A British psychologist is receiving sharp criticism from some professional peers for providing expert advice to help the U.K. surveillance agency GCHQ manipulate people online.

The debate brings into focus the question of how or whether psychologists should offer their expertise to spy agencies engaged in deception and propaganda.

Dr. Mandeep K. Dhami, in a 2011 paper, provided the controversial GCHQ spy unit JTRIG with advice, research pointers, training recommendations, and thoughts on psychological issues, with the goal of improving the unit’s performance and effectiveness. JTRIG’s operations have been referred to as “dirty tricks,” and Dhami’s paper notes that the unit’s own staff characterize their work using “terms such as ‘discredit,’ promote ‘distrust,’ ‘dissuade,’ ‘deceive,’ ‘disrupt,’ ‘delay,’ ‘deny,’ ‘denigrate/degrade,’ and ‘deter.’” The unit’s targets go beyond terrorists and foreign militaries and include groups considered “domestic extremist[s],” criminals, online “hacktivists,” and even “entire countries.”

The entire article is here.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Meeting the Challenge of Change

By Ken Pope
Excerpted from Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling: A Practical Guide, 5th Ed. 
Forthcoming January 2016.

Here is an excerpt:

When complicity with torture, violations of human rights, misleading the public, and other vital matters are at stake, organizations must address not only personnel, policies, and procedures but also the powerful incentives from inside and outside the organization, sources of institutional resistance to change, conflicting ethical and political values within the organization, and issues of institutional character and culture that allowed the problems to flourish for years, protected by APA's denials.

Organizations facing ethical scandals often publicly commit to admirable values such as accountability, transparency, openness to criticism, strict enforcement of ethical standards, and so on. These institutional commitments so often meet the same fate as our own individual promises to a program of personal change. We make a firm New Year's resolution to lead a healthier life. We pour time, energy, and sometimes money into making sure the change happens. We buy jogging shoes and a cookbook of healthy meals. We take out a gym membership. We discuss endlessly what approaches yield the best results. We commit to eating only healthy foods and to getting up five days a week at 5 a.m. for an hour of stretching, aerobics, and resistance exercises. But one, two, and three months later, the commitment to change that had taken such fierce hold of us and promised such wanted, needed, and carefully planned improvement has loosened or lost its grip.

The entire article is here.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Thoughts on Psychologists, Ethics, and the Use of Torture in Interrogations

Zimbardo, P.G. (2007). Thoughts on Psychologists, Ethics, and the Use of Torture in  Interrogations: Don’t Ignore Varying Roles and Complexities.
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (ASAP) Online SSPSI Journal. Vol. 7, pp. 65-73.

Here is an excerpt:

Such considerations lead me to conclude that PENS has utilized the wrong model for its ethical deliberations about psychologists as consultants to military interrogations. The model featured in this task force report is that of a psychologist working for the military as an independent contractor, making rational moral decisions within a transparent setting, with full power to confront, challenge and expose unethical practices. It is left up to that individual to be alert, informed, perceptive, wise, and ready to act on principle when ethical dilemmas arise.

Instead, I will argue that those psychologists are "hired hands" working at the discretion of their military or government agency clients for as long as they provide valued service, which in the current war on terrorism is to assist by providing whatever information and advice is requested to gain "actionable intelligence" from those interrogated. PENS notes that psychologists often are part of a group of professionals, rarely acting alone. They can become part of an operational team, experiencing normative pressures to conform to the emerging standards of that group. They cannot make readily informed ethical decisions because they do not have full knowledge of how their personal contributions are being used in secret or classified missions. Their judgments and decisions may be made under conditions of uncertainty, and may include high stress. Moreover, definitions of basic terms are not constant, but shifting, so it becomes difficult or impossible to make a fully informed ethical judgment about any specific aspect of one's functions.

In addition, PENS does not recognize the reality that in field settings, the work of Ph.D./Psy.D. psychologists is often substituted by, or made operational by, numerous paraprofessionals, such as mental health counselors, personnel officers, psychological assistants and interns, and others trained in psychology. If they do not belong to professional associations, such as APA, they are relieved of the professional consequences of engaging in unethical actions. Thus, our concerns must extend to these psychologist paraprofessionals as well as those professionals within APA.

The entire article is here.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

What, exactly, does yesterday’s APA resolution prohibit?

By Marty Lederman
Just Security
Originally posted August 8, 2015

By an overwhelming vote of 156-1 (with seven abstentions and one recusal)–so lopsided that it stunned even its proponents–the American Psychological Association’s Council of Representatives yesterday approved a resolution that the APA describes as “prohibit[ing] psychologists from participating in national security interrogations.”

What does Approved Resolution No. 23B do, exactly?  As I read it, it does three principal things, in ascending order of importance:

1.  It reaffirms an existing APA ethical prohibition that psychologists “may not engage directly or indirectly in any act of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,” a prohibition that “applies to all persons (including foreign detainees) wherever they may be held”; and it “clarifies” that “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” (CIDTP) should be understood not (or not only) as that term is defined in the U.S. Senate’s understandings of, and reservations to, the Convention Against Torture, but instead in accord with the broadest understanding of CIDTP adopted by any international legal body at the relevant time:  the definition “continues to evolve with international legal understandings of this term.”

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3.  Finally, and most significantly, the Resolution establishes a new prohibition that “psychologists shall not conduct, supervise, be in the presence of, or otherwise assist any national security interrogations for any military or intelligence entities, including private contractors working on their behalf, nor advise on conditions of confinement insofar as these might facilitate such an interrogation.”

The entire article is here.