Psychology, Law, and Torture: A Group Dialogue and Its Deeper Meaning for Us All
A Symposium at the XVIII Congress of the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes, at the Hotel Caribe, Cartagena, Colombia
Friday, July 20, 2012, from 3:30 PM until 5:15 PM
The objective of the Symposium is to address the theme of how mental health professionals and lawyers have planned, carried out, and justified the practice of torture for the United States and other nations in the name of national security. The panel will be a continuation of previous international symposia that have addressed detention, interrogation, torture and the role of these professionals who contribute to the perpetuation of these abuses despite being a violation of international laws. In addition, we shall investigate the consequences of torture and political assassination on its victims and their families, as well as the psychological consequences for the the torturers and their families---across generations.
The symposium will include a panel of specialists. Each panelist will present examples from his or her current practice as they relate to the theme of the Symposium. The panelists will engage in conversation among themselves and with the audience. The purpose of the dialogue is to deepen our understanding of how psychology, law, and torture form our identity as citizens. This Symposium will be bilingual, Spanish and English, with simultaneous translation.
The panelists shall be:
Ursula Hauser, Professor of Ethno-psychoanalysis, University of Costa Rica;
Instructor of Training and Supervisor for Psychodrama in Costa Rica, Cuba,
El Salvador, Switzerland, Gaza/Palestine; Didactic Psychoanalyst in Clinical Practice, San Jose, Costa Rica; Member of the Committee for Ethics and Professional Standards, International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes.
Gregorio Armañanzas Ros is a psychiatrist, group analyst, psychodramatist, and consultant for organizations, in private practice in Pamplona (Navarra), Spain. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes and chairs the Organizational Consultancy Section. His professional focus is the transgenerational transmission of trauma.
This symposium has been organized by Bill Roller, Chair of the Committee for Ethics and Professional Standards of the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes ; President of the Berkeley Group Therapy Education Foundation, Berkeley, California; and Past-Chair of the Group Therapy Symposium of the School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco; Email Address: Vivbill@aol.com
PAST ITEMS OF INTEREST
Boalt Hall Symposium on U.S. Law and Torture
A Symposium on United States Law and Torture took place November 4, 2010 at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. Look here for videos of the Proceedings to be posted soon.
Workshop in Richmond, Virginia
Vivian Nelson and Bill Roller presented a weekend workshop for the Mid-Atlantic Group Psychotherapy Society the weekend of October 22-25, 2010, in Richmond, Virginia. The title of the workshop was "THE ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF THE CO-THERAPY RELATIONSHIP."
Among other topics, our workshop addressed the benefits which clincians derive from the practice of co-therapy and the deep bonds that ensue from its practice. Co-Therapists learn from each other, they console each other in times of crisis and loss, and by their empathy and respect for each other, they can overcome the sense of loneliness that can envelope the practitioner who works alone. All of these considerations touch on the ethical dimensions of group therapy treatment.
THE
LUCIFER EFFECT:THE
COMPLICITY OF MENTAL HEALTH CLINICANS IN RATIONALIZING TORTURE AS AN
INSTRUMENT OF STATE
The
mental health professions have been challenged by recent revelations that
clinicians have participated in the planning, design, and execution of
torture, both physical and psychological, by agents acting under the
authority of the national security state. This symposium will elucidate
some of the psychological processes which underlie the complicity of
psychologists, group therapists, family therapists and other mental
health professionals in these acts of torture.
We shall focus on three
factors:
1. The intergenerational
transmission of trauma by which traumatized parents transmit
theirtraumatic stress disorder to their offspring which then can lead to
acts of abuse.
2. The use of
rationalization by clinicians to justify acts of abuse.
3. The application of
projective identification by which clinicians see their own aggression in
others, identify them as enemies, and fight against them by all means,
including torture.
The title of our symposium,
THE LUCIFER EFFECT, refers to a book by Philip Zimbardo, Professor
Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University. In this book, Professor
Zimbardo recounts the outcome of the Stanford Prison Experiment in which
students were divided into prisoners and guards and the way those in the
role of guards quickly became abusers of those in the role of prisoners.
The ease with which normal subjects abused their power and persecuted
their peers became the subject of a film produced by Zimbardo, called “A
Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment.” This film demonstrates the
phenomenon of abuse quite shockingly. The findings of this experiment and
the earlier experiments of Stanley Milgram (Obedience to Authority) and
the studies of A.G. Miller (The Obedience Experiments) are the
theoretical basis for exploring the psychological processes at work in
the behavior of those who participate in torture. In this symposium, we
shall focus on three of these processes.
Bill Roller, Chair,
Berkeley Group Education Foundation, Berkeley, California
Howard D.Kibel, New York
Medical College, Valhalla, New York
Raymond Battegay, School of
Medicine, Basel, Switzerland
Videos for
sale at the International Congress Rome 2009
Two examples of how our own
aggression can be projected onto others
QUIET RAGE AND THE PROMISE OF GROUP THERAPY:
Two Videos
of Group Process
1. A
Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment (50 minutes) was
produced by Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford
University. The video recounts the group process and outcome of the
Stanford Prison Experiment in which students were divided into prisoners
and guards and the way those in the role of guards quickly became abusers
of those in the role of prisoners. It documents the ease with which
normal subjects abused their power and persecuted their peers. The
projective identification by which guards projected their own aggression
onto the prisoners partially accounts for this phenomenon.
2. The
Promise of Group Therapy is a six hour video series of a time
limited spontaneous group process. The third part of this 3 DVD series shows a 17
minute segment from the latter phases of the group process. This
particular segment demonstrates the phenomenon of projective
identification in which two members of the group mutually act out the
aggression of their mothers---and also become frightened of the
aggression they project onto each other.
For more information and to
purchase DVDs please visit
PETITION TO END CAGING PRISONERS IN GROUPS AT
DEPARTMENT OF CALIFORNIA
A Call for
Governor Brown to stop abusive practices in prisons
Group therapy emerged as both a science and an art in the cities
of Vienna and New York early in the last century. Its theory and practice
reflected the core ideas of the Western Enlightenment: that human beings
would be treated as equals and worthy of respect as they endeavored to
change their lives by listening and learning from the lives of others.
Participation in group therapy would be an act of personal liberation
based on the development of trust and cooperation among its members.
These principles are all but obliterated by the techniques now
foisted on some inmates by the California Department of Corrections under
the guise of "group therapy." Prisoners are assembled in
separate "cages" (euphemistically called “therapeutic cubicles”)
to which they are individually brought in chains by guards. The cages are
plexiglass boxes and ostensibly "protect" the prisoners from
each other. The so-called "group therapists", who are not in
cages, lead the assembly of caged prisoners in some activity. But
whatever the activity, it in no way meets the criteria for group therapy
defined above. What the citizens of California are paying for is a
travesty of treatment, a form of degradation and humiliation that has no
clinical justification whatever and has nothing to do with the goals of
group therapy.
The mentally ill must not be locked away in isolation as is
currently the practice in our prisons -- nor must they be locked in cages
like animals. It does not matter if this technique is reserved for prisoners
in administrative segregation or supermaximum security units which
contain 6% to 8% of prisoners in the California Department of Corrections
at any given time. No prisoner should ever have to endure such conditions
and no judge should ever mandate such practices. If a prisoner is thought
to be of danger to self or others, he is not a suitable candidate for
group therapy and ought to be given an alternative form of clinical
intervention.
We call on Governor Brown to stop this circus of caged
prisoners immediately and undertake bona fide treatment of mentally ill
prisoners in California.
Bill Roller, Fellow, American Group Psychotherapy Association
Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus Stanford University
Additional Petitioners please email Bill Roller atvivbill@aol.com
SAAD IBRAHIM ACQUITTED OF ALL CHARGES IN CAIRO, EGYPT AS OF APRIL 17, 2003
Almost three years after his initial arrest, sociologist and
rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim was declared not guilty of all charges
by Egypt's highest appeals court. To read more on Saad Ibrahim,
visit:
"I will resume my fight for freedom and
democracy," said an ebullient Ibrahim following the
verdict, March 18, 2003.
Ibrahim said the verdict justified his
supporters' assertion that the State Security courts that
convicted him were politically motivated. "It shows that
these courts must go," Ibrahim said in a brief interview.
"They are a scandal in the face of the Egyptian
judiciary."
But the prosecution of Ibrahim still had a
chilling effect on political life in Egypt, he added.
"People must be able to speak their mind without fear of
prosecution and going to jail, and that right has been
compromised."
Check the link above for further updates on Saad Ibrahim.
