Boundary Problems

Interesting controversy at the American Psychological Association (APA) about whether its members should participate in interrogation of military detainees.

Before launching into a vigorous defense or condemnation of the APA's August 20, resolution or its latest statement (August 16, 2008), persons interested in the issue would do well to read the background correspondence.

If nothing else, it shows that principled and reasonable people can be of two minds, and it highlights complex relationships such as those between law and psychiatry, and those between a nation's code of law and international law.

But to me, it comes down to this: It is not within a healer's ethical practice to monitor or refine or seek to ameliorate or participate in or plan or advise on interrogation techniques. As soon as the question is posed, the boundary safeguarding ethical healing practice has begun to be breached.

Let's make it clearer. It's not the job of a surgeon to monitor or refine or seek to ameliorate or participate in or plan or advise on interrogation techniques. Now we can see a key hidden assumption at work. It is that there exists some surgical operation that would fall within ethical medical practice if used in interrogation.

Clearly there isn't. Nor is there some operation in clinical psychiatry or psychology that would fall within ethical medical practice if used in interrogation. The concepts "interrogation" and "ethical medical practice" are mutually exclusive.

APA would be correct, IMHO, to ban any form of collaboration with interrogation on the part of its members.

This isn't a question of patriotism. Anyone who's mixed up about that needs to drill down and enquire whether there's any line he or she would draw if told to defend the country. If not, you're a sucker for manipulation who's standing on a banana peel at the top of the slope to Holocaust.

And that, in a word, is my problem with George Bush's notion of patriotism. Out of his notion of patriotism flow the unitary presidency floating above the Constitution and our Code of Law; illegal domestic spying; privatized detention camps unbound by any meaningful oversight; personal, private mercenary armies deliberately written out of the reach of military and civilian law; and, of course, the politics of swiftboating, to say nothing of torture, black holes, and renditions.

It's all of a piece. If there are no boundaries, there are no boundaries. It's straight downhill from here.