We just got back from Toronto,
where we attended the annual convention of the American Psychological
Association (APA). I’ve written about this conference before—sometimes about the
interesting sessions I attended, and sometimes about personal lessons I gleaned from my time there. The site was lovely—Toronto is a beautiful city and
our hotel overlooked Lake Ontario.
But this year’s conference was a
different sort of experience from most APA conventions because APA has been in
the news big time—and not happily so. In case you’ve missed the nasty business
that has rocked APA to its core—and with it, potentially, the field of
psychology for some time to come—let me offer the Cliff Notes on a scandal.
As you know, since 9/11, this
country has been absorbed with concerns about safety, security, danger, risk—the
whole package that comes with such a terrifying and disorienting event,
especially when the understandable fear is fanned by policies that magnify the
threat of “terror.” Among those have been the detention and “enhanced interrogation”
of “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo and so-called “black sites” elsewhere around
the world. We now know that some of those interrogations involved what has come
to be acknowledged, even by some of Bush’s cronies, as torture. Obama ended the
most egregious practices shortly after he entered office (although some folks
argue that unethical practices persist, even under his government).
Enter psychology. Nearly all
major health care and mental health organizations—professional organizations
representing doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, social workers, and others—actively,
publicly repudiated these practices and prohibited their members from
participating in them, invoking the historic bottom-line absolute dictum of
healthcare providers, “First, do no harm.”
I say “nearly all” such
organizations because psychology’s largest professional organization, the American
Psychological Association (APA)—my professional
organization—failed to issue such a prohibition. Instead, when challenged, APA conducted
“thorough reviews” that found nothing amiss. They established a committee to
review the Association’s relevant ethics policy, and then insisted that all was
well.
Still, lots of folks were
unconvinced. For over a decade, some members of APA have tried to call APA to
task for this ethical violation. They have been ignored, maligned, and
subjected to personal attack. They persisted anyway, and finally got the attention
of prize-winning author James Risen. His book, Pay Any Price: Greed,Power and Endless War,
specifically identified the role of psychologists in enhanced interrogation.
The media scrum that followed finally forced APA to commission an independent
report—with dramatic and disturbing results.
A quote from that report: “The evidence supports the conclusion
that APA officials colluded with DoD [the Department of Defense] officials to, at
the least, adopt and maintain APA ethics policies that were not more
restrictive than the guidelines that key DoD officials wanted. . . . APA chose
its ethics policy based on its goals of helping DoD, managing its P.R., and
maximizing the growth of the profession.” The report also highlighted internal
problems—insular governance, failure to attend to critics, insistence on
allegiance, and so on—that point to systemic failures.
So, this recent conference of APA
happened smack in the wake of the independent report and all the publicity it
generated (for examples, look here, here, here, here, and here).
I went to the conference every bit as much to see what it “felt” like as to go
to informational sessions. How would people be, I wondered—preoccupied,
indifferent, ambivalent, anxious, angry, defensive? Would they talk about this
crisis or just do their usual work, as if it weren’t in the air? The answer
was, not surprisingly, all of the above. In some circumstances, people went
about their business as if nothing were amiss. But it was always easy to engage
people in conversation about this situation. No one I spoke with was unaware of
it (though that observation may be biased by the company I keep) or hesitated
to talk about it.
On Friday, several days into the
meetings, the elected representatives passed a resolution clearly prohibiting
the participation of psychologists in military interrogations. The details of
the resolution matched the hopes that had long been expressed by the group who
had pursued this issue so vehemently. Most members (and likely, most in
governance) heaved a collective sigh of relief. Now, it seemed, we could get
down to the business of cleaning up the mess. A few folks were unhappy,
especially some military psychologists, but most seemed proud of the decision …
as if we had made it personally.
One friend, knowing that I had
resigned from APA several years ago over this very issue, asked if I felt
vindicated. I said I didn’t because I didn’t actively do anything other than withhold my dues, instead leaving the active
protesting to others. “Vindicated” should apply to the rather small group of
folks who were active in their dissent, who repeatedly distributed information
to the governing bodies—information that those in governance chose to disregard or discredit—and
finally raised enough awareness to expose the truth. I did feel betrayed, angry—and
at the same time relieved that this truth finally saw the light of day. I was
also worried, fearing that psychologists' genuine, positive work may have
suffered a damaging blow. And I felt a bit hopeful that maybe, just maybe, this would be a
turning point. And I was a bit skeptical as well, not daring to believe that so
many problems could be managed without a major upheaval.
With all of that in mind, I
attended the “town meeting” scheduled for open discussion of the report and the
way forward for APA. (You can read about that meeting and prior teach-ins here.) Projected on screens at the front of the very large hall
was a word cloud showing the words that people had used to describe their
reaction to the report, with larger lettering indicating more uses of a
particular word. Here’s what those screens looked like:
Sitting between two such screens
were the past president of APA and next year’s president (the current president
didn’t participate, as he was mentioned in the report). I can only imagine how
uncomfortable these two women must have felt. They began with an apology to APA
members, on behalf of all of those who had been involved in governance over the
years, for the actions and inaction identified in the report. One of them borrowed
a quote from Warren Buffet: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5
minutes to destroy it." Psychology has been building its reputation for
about 135 years now, and it was mightily damaged, if not destroyed, in a decade. The facilitators' comments suggested that folks had spent a lot of time and psychic energy trying
to begin healing the damage, envisioning a way forward.
The discussion that followed was very
civil throughout, though it included both “dissenters” (the title they prefer
for their group) and military psychologists, both current members of governance
and people who (like me) had left APA over this, both long-time APA members and
graduate students just entering the profession. The facilitators were informative,
open, and surprisingly non-defensive. The discussion lasted for almost two
hours, and only a little of it seemed redundant.
I left feeling more upbeat, if
cautious. If these two women, the former and future presidents, roughly represent
the commitment of others, then there may be hope. Among the goals they committed
to, in addition to an end to psychologists’ involvement in torture, were these:
intentional efforts to include more diverse voices at all levels of governance;
creation of leadership development programs to bring new people into
governance; attention to critics, no matter how uncomfortable their message
(this is easier sworn than performed, IMHO); active enlistment of students and
early-career members to bring fresh perspectives; an open letter of apology to
the communities that have been harmed by the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab
undertone of the whole “interrogation” program; increased attention to the role
of race in how the association operates; and more.
It’ll take time before we know
the full impact of this whole process. What will this mean for psychology’s
relationship with the public? Will people even know about this scandal? Will
they care? Will they trust us less? And what will this do to the relationship
between APA and its members? Will lots of people leave the organization in
disgust? Will potential new members (e.g., current students in training) shy away?
We’ll see. Time will tell whether
people feel they can trust psychologists again. Whether I can trust APA again.
Right now, I am not proud to call myself a psychologist. I imagine people
saying of anything associated with the field, “Psychology! Why would you trust psychology
to help? They help with torture, that’s what they help with.” Why wouldn’t
people think that? Why shouldn’t they?
As someone at the
Town Hall said, psychology is better than its worst moments. This has, for
sure, been one of my profession’s worst moments. I’m eager to see whether we
can find our way again.
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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