Faculty Member Dr. Stephen Soldz took on the American Psychological Association, confronting social denial and co-leading the movement to remove psychologists from abusive interrogations.
For over nine years, BGSP faculty member Dr. Stephen Soldz searched for the truth about psychologist involvement in national security interrogations. With the recent release of the Hoffman Report, to which Soldz and his colleagues contributed extensive research, Soldz says that the American Psychological Association was forced to lift its veil of secrecy and denial.
On August 7, 2015, the APA voted overwhelmingly to ban psychologist participation in national security interrogations.
As a psychoanalyst-activist, Soldz advocated for years against APA ethics policies that protected government psychologists involved in abusive interrogations from scrutiny. Psychoanalysts, he comments, tend to have a “deep skepticism about the use of violence (such as torture) to solve social problems.”
An equally great struggle, Soldz says, was to counter the APA’s elaborate public relations strategy denying its collusion with the Department of Defense and other government agencies, and the resulting blindness of uninvolved leadership and membership.
Soldz’s recent successes in forcing change in the American Psychological Association build directly upon his work for the past decade in three areas of research and advocacy:
- The role of psychologists in national security interrogations, including torture;
- Collusion between the APA and the security sector; and
- The appropriate ethical boundaries for psychologists working in national security settings.
With his colleagues, Soldz has worked over time to build alliances between activists, human rights oriented psychologists, and other sectors of the human rights community. He actively helped to reveal the roles of psychologists Mitchell and Jessen in the CIA’s torture program and likewise facilitated revelations of unethical behavior by Behavioral Science Consultants at the US detention center in Guantánamo. Through his advocacy, he has cast attention upon unethical research by the CIA and questionable research by other sectors of the intelligence community and unveiled the collusion behind the APA’s PENS Task Force, highlighted in the Hoffman Report.
Since the release of the investigation report, the APA implemented several of the recommendations of Soldz and his colleague Steven Reisner, including firing the APA Ethics Director. The report also resulted in the early retirement of the APA’s CEO and Deputy CEO, the resignation of its Director of Public Relations, and the resignation of a former APA director as Provost of Alliant International University. Most critical, however, was the 157 – 1 vote of APA’s Council of Representatives to ban psychologist participation in national security interrogations, bringing psychologists finally into line with the medical profession, which has an established ban on such activities.
Regarding these painful changes, Soldz asserts, “It is a real challenge to get through the social denial of the organization, to the truth.” As in psychoanalysis, he adds, it takes a lot of mettle to “face up to your deficits and come to terms with who you are.”
Soldz’s next project is a conference hosted by BGSP and funded by the Meyer Foundation to call attention to the broader issues of the ethics of operational psychology – that is, what guidelines should “helping professionals” follow when consulting with security professionals?
To hear more from Dr. Soldz:
Interviews
Articles