Message from discussion Brehm's Bedlam: Brehm's Bedlam: Clinical Director of Survivors International SF, Uwe Jacobs, Says Farewell to American Psychological Association aka Koochers K00KS & Killers

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Subject: Brehm's Bedlam: Brehm's Bedlam: Clinical Director of Survivors International SF, Uwe Jacobs,  Says Farewell to American Psychological Association aka Koochers K00KS & Killers
Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 15:16:49 -0800
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http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/real-mensch-leaves-apa.html

Thursday, December 6, 2007
A Real Mensch Leaves APA

Uwe Jacobs is the clinical director of Survivors International in San 
Francisco, California. SI is regional torture treatment center, and one of 
the best in the country. A typical non-profit struggling to survive itself 
in a hostile political and economic environment, Dr. Jacobs work and 
dedication is one of the main reasons it still exists and thrives.

Dr. Jacobs is a clinical psychologist, and an eminent member of the 
profession. He has been prominent in the struggle against torture, and in 
particular against participation by medical and mental health professionals 
in U.S. coercive interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere.
He's done more than speak. Dr. Jacobs assisted in the preparation of the 
currently existing international guidelines for the examination of torture, 
the "Istanbul Protocol," published by the UN High Commissioner. He also took 
a major role in helping write the handbook on assessment of asylum seekers 
for Physicians for Human Rights. He has spoken on the torture issue from 
both a political and a treatment perspective. A really unique individual.

You would think any psychological organization worth its salt would be proud 
to have him as an exemplary member. But the tawdry organizational and 
political activities of the American Psychological Association around the 
torture issue have driven many to withhold their dues from that 
organization, or to quit. Now Dr. Jacobs joins those who have left the 
organization.

What follows is his letter of resignation to APA, posted here with 
permission, as originally posted at Psyche, Science and Society.

Farewell to the APA

After a couple of years of struggling with the leadership of the American 
Psychological Association over the issue of its complicity with the 
government s torture politics, I have decided to leave the APA for now. As 
the latest resolution against torture was passed by the APA Council this 
summer, there was on one side the appearance of a compromise between 
different factions within the organization and an outcome that received 
sufficient praise for it to pass as an honest human rights effort in public 
opinion. On the other side, there was my private sense of resignation and 
queasiness over the dirty pool that had been played. Much could be said 
about all that but suffice it to summarize the deciding moment, which came 
when I learned from an article in Salon that Dr. Stephen Behnke, the 
Director of the Ethics Office, "insisted on Saturday that Physicians for 
Human Rights had suggested some qualifying language with respect to sleep 
and sensory deprivation."

Since those of us who were involved in the process knew that Len Rubenstein 
of PHR had, in fact, pleaded with Behnke in a series of letters to drop the 
language in question, not to retain it, I asked for clarification. Rather 
than making a claim of misunderstanding, Dr. Behnke did not even deny having 
made that statement to Salon. However, nobody missed a beat in the aftermath 
and everyone prepared for their next statement or press release. The show, 
or as Robin Williams would have it, the hoe, must go on.

I conclude, at least for now, that the APA (and yes, I still think we ought 
to use an article in front of saying or writing "APA") is not a club I care 
to belong to, not because any majority of it, or even some of its obnoxious 
leadership, would actively push the use of torture but because its essential 
character as a careerist, corporate structure does not seem to promote 
telling the truth and carrying forward an upright posture. I have never 
shared the belief of some members that APA leaders had a primary interest in 
promulgating either torture or lesser forms of prisoner oppression. Being 
blissfully ignorant of how many APA functionaries are involved with the CIA 
and how many psychologists actively implement and support a regime of 
sensory deprivation and other forms of cruelty, I have felt that the primary 
motivation has been to appear as stalwart supporters of the military 
apparatus, as long as it would curry favor with the regime that might or 
might not trade a good horse for it. I am allowing for the possibility that 
it may be worse than that but I simply do not know.

Be that as it may, the APA's alignment with Washington politics is quite 
likely preparing for the end of the Bush era and getting ready to become 
more pleasing to its liberal wing before long. The many excellent people I 
had the privilege of working with during this time certainly deserve that 
and I salute them all, as it were, for staying on and keeping the faith. I 
am not excluding the possibility of re-joining them if things change more 
than I expect they will. I could withhold my APA dues, along with others, 
but I do not honestly see the precise conditions under which I would 
subsequently release them. I simply will not let the APA have any more of my 
money. In the interest of full disclosure, I might not even care quite that 
much if the dues weren't so high and if top APA employees weren't being paid 
corporate-style salaries. Given that fact, however, I am past due in firing 
them for their performance. For this year, I will donate the amount of my 
APA dues to PHR, an organization I have been proudly associated with for 
long time (but, unlike SI, does not issue my paycheck), and I will do that 
with pleasure, rather than regrets.

Uwe Jacobs, Ph.D.
San Francisco, December 4, 2007

Uwe, whom I consider both a friend and a colleague, will go on, I know, 
continuing to do his important work, and fighting against the attitudes and 
institutions that support or try to minimize the use of torture and inhumane 
treatment. That he will do so from the outside of an organization like APA 
is no loss to him, but only to APA, and a reflection on its moral and 
political bankruptcy.

Posted by Valtin at 12:26 PM
Labels: American Psychological Association, Stephen Behnke, Survivors 
International, Torture, Uwe Jacobs