The dark side of psychology in abuse and interrogation

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abuse, ethical standards, interrogation, psychologists, Torture

The dark side of psychology in abuse and interrogation

This week the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) have published the most comprehensive study on the role of psychologists in the War on Terror. At 269 pages, the full report is as detailed as it is grim, concluding that American psychologists collaborated extensively with the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the CIA to develop a range of interrogation methods used in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay.

The list of methods is horrifying: beatings, exposure to extreme cold, shackling, repeated slamming into walls, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, exposure to prolonged white noise and yelling, forced nakedness, exploitation of phobias, slaps to the face and abdomen, cramped confinement, prolonged stress positions (such as having hands and feet chained to the floor), forced feeding via gastrointestinal tubing, sexual and religious humiliation, forcible restraint of the head, deprivation of basic items such as sheets, blankets and mattresses (termed “comfort items”), threats to the detainee’s family, asphyxiation, and waterboarding.

The report documents how psychologists consulted with the military under the Orwellian euphemism of “safety officers”. Their official role was to work in Behavioral Science Consultation Teams to “identify vulnerabilities of detainees and collaborate with interrogators in exploiting them”. Psychologists were selected for these positions based on professional training in clinical and forensic psychology. Yet while clearly valuing these qualifications, the military classified the psychologists as “combatants” rather than health practitioners, a move which enabled them to bypass normal ethical standards.

Those ethical standards themselves are unclear. The American Psychological Association (APA) – the official professional body for psychologists in the US – officially rejects torture but it also supports the role of psychologists in interrogation: “It is consistent with the APA Ethics Code for psychologists to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering processes for national-security related purposes”. The APA has yet to indicate which, if any, of the methods listed in the IMAP/OSF report would be consistent with its ethical policy.

The position of the British Psychological Society is even less clear. On the one hand the Society condemns torture yet at the same time remains silent on whether psychologists can assist with interrogation or other military objectives. As with the APA’s policy, the point at which interrogation becomes abuse is left unsaid, the boundaries of unethical conduct given room to move.

The report makes a number of concrete recommendations, calling for US president Barack Obama to apply more strict prohibitions on the use of “sleep deprivation, isolation, exploitation of fear, and other interrogation methods that violate international standards”. It also urges the APA to clarify its ethical policy and “repudiate the report of its Presidential Task Force…that condones the participation of psychologists in interrogation”.

These are undoubtedly vital reforms, but the facts uncovered by this study raise even more fundamental questions. In the quest for national security, is there a genuine balance to be met between the ideologies of “do no harm” and “prevent harm being done”? At what point (if any) is it morally acceptable for psychologists to be deployed as weapons of war? As important as it is for the psychological profession to clarify its policies on these issues, it is also not for psychologists alone to provide the answers. That responsibility is shared by all citizens of a free society.

It’s time to listen to the voices in your head

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auditory verbal hallucination, dissociation, inner speech, trauma, voice-hearers, voice-hearing

It’s time to listen to the voices in your head

Hearing voices in your head when there’s no one around … that’s a sign of madness, right?

In the popular imagination voice-hearing is often viewed with fear and suspicion, frequently reified as a chaotic, corrupted symptom of illness. But that is changing, with a growing acceptance of voice-hearing as a profoundly human experience that can no longer be reduced to a mere symptom of psychiatric disorder. The work of Intervoice: The International Hearing Voices Network, and the enthusiastic response toEleanor Longden’s 2013 TED talk, which recounts her own journey to recovery from a demoralising psychiatric diagnosis, indicate the growing possibilities for people living with the experience to raise their voices with a sense of power and pride.

This movement towards a better public understanding of voice-hearing has been mirrored by an increased interest in the scientific issues it raises. In recent years, academics from such diverse disciplines aspsychology, philosophy, medical humanities, cognitive neuroscience, anthropology, theology and cultural studies have begun to reclaim it as a rich, diverse and complex human experience – one that offers abundant possibilities for scientific inquiry.

Take, for example, the idea that voices often relate to trauma or adversity, particularly those suffered in childhood. This view, which has found expression in the personal stories of many voice-hearers, has been supported by a growing body of scientific evidence. But why should traumatic experiences early in life lead many years later to the experience of hearing a voice, or what psychiatrists call an auditory verbal hallucination?

Recent investigations suggest that voice-hearing may provide fresh insights into traumatic memory, and how real-life conflicts become embodied in voices via dissociation (a defensive psychological response to trauma in which thoughts, emotions and memories become disconnected from one another). In turn, the experience that many voice-hearers describe – that of a disembodied “other” dynamically interacting with and intruding upon one’s sense of self – invites exploration into how representations of selfhood are generated and maintained.

Another approach that has proved fruitful is the idea that voice-hearing relates to one very ordinary aspect of people’s experience: their inner speech. Most of us report talking to ourselves silently in our heads as we go about our business, and it has been proposed that voices result when a person generates a bit of inner speech but, for whatever reason, doesn’t recognise it as their own. This view has received support from numerous studies with voice-hearing psychiatric patients, including findings that similar networks in the brain are activated when people hear voices as when they produce inner speech.

Many problems remain however, including the fact that we know very little about the phenomenal properties of ordinary inner speech, such as whether it has the qualities of a dialogue or a monologue, whether it is fully expanded like ordinary conversation or whether it sometimes has a compressed, note-form quality. Voice-hearing itself comes in an even more baffling array of varieties, from experiences that have the fullperceptual force of listening to a person speaking to those that are much more ephemeral and thought-like.

Perhaps most importantly, the view of voices as disordered inner speech does not ring true with many voice-hearers’ experience. And yet, at some level, an explanation of voice-hearing must have something to do with how language operates in the brain. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing research in this area is to try to link, and draw on the relative merits of, the trauma and inner speech models. How can adverse experiences early in life, perhaps through the complex, multifaceted mechanisms of memory, lead to alterations in the way words are processed in the brain, and in turn to the sense that one’s self has been overtaken by other selves? Whatever the future for research in this area, it will require a continued focus on voice-hearing as a complex, heterogeneous phenomenon with many scientific secrets to reveal.

Lack of support for parents who live in fear of their teenagers, study shows

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domestic violence, parenting, parents, shame, stigma, support, teenage violence, Teens, violence

Lack of support for parents who live in fear of their teenagers, study shows

Parents living in fear of their abusive and violent teenagers are being left without support because of a lack of understanding of adolescent violence directed at parents, according to the first academic study into the issue.

Data from the Metropolitan police revealed that there were 1,892 reported cases of 13- to 19-year-olds committing violence against their own parents in Greater London alone over a 12-month period from 2009-10.

Dr Rachel Condry, lead researcher at the University of Oxford, which carried out the study, said there was little support for parents in such circumstances from police, youth justice teams or other agencies.

“The problem has, until now, gone largely unrecognised, which can mean that parents can find it very difficult to get help,” she said.

“The parents we spoke to said they were stigmatised and felt ashamed – they were experiencing patterns of controlling behaviour that were similar to domestic violence. One woman told us she would get up in the middle of the night to make her teenager dinner because she feared the consequences if she didn’t; others talked about walking on eggshells.”

Britain’s incoming director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, warned last month that teenage violence in the home was a hidden aspect of domestic violence: “There is a lack of respect and a lack of regard for authority. When I was growing up the thought of striking a parent was beyond the pale. Is that peers? Is that TV? Is that the general environment in the house? You are not born to commit domestic violence.”

Nicola, a mother in West Yorkshire who did not want to be named, said her daughter first started to behave violently towards her when she was 13. “She’d push me, punch me, lose her temper and smash the house up – it got to the stage where I was scared stiff,” she said.

“I thought it was me, my mothering skills. People were asking me why I couldn’t control her, but what was I supposed to do? Beat her up?”

Nicola was sent on a parenting course, but felt there was no one to help her. “I’ve got three other kids and none of them were like this – it wasn’t like I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said.

The study, co-authored by Caroline Miles, found that 87% of suspects in the London study were male and 77% of victims were women, although fathers could feel more reluctant to report the issue, said Condry.

The study found that, in the reported cases analysed, 60% of victims were classified as white European, while 24.3% were African-Caribbean. It says: “Families reporting adolescent-to-parent violence are likely to be at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale”.

Of those who recorded a profession, 46.7% were unemployed, 11.6% described themselves as housewives, while 3.4% were teachers and 2.9% were nurses.

Condry said it was a problem that could hit families in any demographic. “It is not the fact of being a single parent that is causing this issue, but parenting an adolescent is difficult and perhaps if a parent is on their own there is more potential for things to go awry.” The study found that a range of issues, including exposure to domestic violence, peer influence, mental health issues and drug problems had played a role, but there was no one reason for adolescent violence against parents.

“There may be issues around what we think of as poor parenting but many families we spoke to did not have those type of histories – that is uncomfortable for society, but we have to get a handle on the complexity of this issue,” she said.

When asked what she thought had provoked her daughter’s behaviour, Nicola said: “She has always seen me dominated, but I’m having counselling now and I’m starting to stand up for myself.”

Eventually she got support from the Rosalie Ryrie Foundation, a charity that deals with family violence. “They were fantastic; they showed me different techniques and it’s much better – she still loses her temper but she’s not as violent,” she said.

“It’s hard to ask for help. Other people should remember that it’s easy to say stand up to them, but it’s much more difficult when you are in that position.”

Condry said: “We want our victims to be entirely blameless. We think parents should be in control of their own children – but this is not an issue that can simplistically be blamed on bad parenting.”