Psychologists and Torture by Scott Horton

Oct. 15, 2010

A former president of the American Psychological Association and the current director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Martin Seligman is one of the field’s preeminent figures. (In his September cover story, Gary Greenberg noted the warm reception that Seligman received at a recent conference.) He is closely associated with the theory of “learned helplessness” now widely respected by professional psychiatrists. And, as the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported, two of his adherents, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, crafted the Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” and apparently engaged with the theory’s author. Seligman has, however, denied any involvement in the program, insisting that his contacts with Mitchell and Jessen were innocent.

Now Salon’s Mark Benjamin reports that the Pentagon gave Seligman a fat no-bid contract:

The Army earlier this year steered a $31 million contract to a psychologist whose work formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush Administration’s torture program. The Army awarded the “sole source” contract in February to the University of Pennsylvania for resilience training, or teaching soldiers to better cope with the psychological strain of multiple combat tours. The university’s Positive Psychology Center, directed by famed psychologist Martin Seligman, is conducting the resilience training.

Army contracting documents show that nobody else was allowed to bid on the resilience-training contract because “there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.” And yet, Salon was able to identify resilience training experts at other institutions around the country, including the University of Maryland and the Mayo Clinic. In fact, in 2008 the Marine Corps launched a project with UCLA to conduct resilience training for Marines and their families at nine military bases across the United States and in Okinawa, Japan.

SNIP* Stephen Soldz of the Coalition for Ethical Psychology notes that Seligman would be the second former APA president in close proximity to the Bush-era torture programs. The other is Patrick DeLeon, who “was part of a Pentagon briefing on a highly classified Special Access Program involving detainee interrogations that centered on ‘deception detection.’” The group has called for a full investigation of Seligman’s relationship to the torture programs and of his no-bid contract with the Defense Department. In the meantime, it is becoming easier to understand APA’s awkward silence and inaction on the issue of psychologists involved in torture and acts of official cruelty.

in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/10/hbc-90007738

http://historypsychiatry.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/apa-condemns-psychologist-implicated-in-torture/

Psychologists in the United States have been warned by their professional group not to take part in torturing detainees in U.S. custody.

Now the American Psychological Association has taken the unprecedented step of supporting an attempt to strip the license of a psychologist accused of overseeing the torture of a CIA detainee.

The APA has told a Texas licensing board in a letter mailed July 1 that the allegations against Dr. James Mitchell represent “patently unethical” actions inconsistent with the organization’s ethics guidelines.

If any psychologist who was a member of the APA were found to have committed the acts alleged against Mitchell, “he or she would be expelled from the APA membership,” according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. APA spokeswoman Rhea Farberman confirmed its contents.

As for the Seligman contract controversy, psychologists are debating the issue "hot & heavy." I don't know enough about the details of the contract or about Seligman's purported connections to the torturers, but I do think that the general idea of teaching personal resilience skills to troops is a good idea. There is some evidence, for example, that resilience skills help prevent PTSD. Remember, we're gonna have to live with those guys after they get home. If not for their sake, then for ours, it's better if they come home a with a little less psychological damage.