On the other side of the coin, it was believed in the 19th century that all severe psychopathology must result from some kind of physical effect, including trauma. This led Freud, for instance, to initially believe that psychological problems arose from some early sexual trauma, usually parental seduction. When he later abandoned his “seduction theory” for a theory based on internal repression of fantasies and instinctual impulse, he tended to downplay the effects of trauma (though not totally, as his division of neuroses in his nosology into traumatic and psychoneuroses demonstrates).

Post-traumatic stress disorder did not become an official diagnosis until the 1970s. In my clinical experience, PTSD is one of the more undiagnosed conditions in clinics and hospital settings. The reason is partly political (it’s much harder to treat, and there’s no simply medication regimen), and partly social-psychological. The effects of trauma include distancing defenses, denial, and avoidance, which tends to make the origin of a person’s distress less accessible to the enquiring doctor or clinician. Additionally, the effects upon the treater of exposure to the feelings of helplessness and horror that accompany trauma are also experienced as something to be avoided (naturally so). As a result, unless you’re trained, the medical professional’s defenses collude with the patient’s defenses, and the trauma itself goes undiagnosed and untreated.

Bringing this back to your question, I’d have to say that the neglect of trauma has far greater or more complex origins than simply the use of trauma research and treatment for nefarious purposes. The latter has certainly impacted the field, but I don’t think it can be seen as a primary cause. Otherwise, how could we explain the neglect of the topic by medicine in other ways and in other times?

Are you of the same mindset as Colin Ross – that trauma as a cause for many psychological problems is deliberately ignored because the APA has been USING trauma so extensively for nefarious purposes?

A friend is working her way through his Trauma Model. Then it will be my turn. What I have heard from her is compelling.

Again, please return with more.

I thank you for pointing me to Rejali.

I hope we get a chance to continue tracking these crimes against humanity as well as finding ways to truly help trauma victims.

The history of psychologists close association with the military is also at the root of the tactics you are ascribing to the Nazis and to the CIA. Most of the psychological techniques have their origin in studies to find a cure for shell shock, what is now known as PTSD, because, starting with the wars of the 1850’s (which first developed mass death and casualties from new industrial revolution weapons), through the 1890’s and into the 20th century, governments realized that fully treating all the psych disabilities that ensued from such war would bankrupt them, and failure to do so would anger the population. The first was the discovery that a seizure caused by insulin shock seemed to alleviate some symptoms of PTSD, at least temporarily. That caused the search for ways to cause seizure or shock, and led to electroconvulsive shock therapy, the ‘water cure’ and other treatments. That’s why the ties to the military are so deep in the APA to this day.

The other thread running, which contributed immensely to the practices of SERE, came from law enforcement. Two tactics, the ‘third degree’ which evolved into sleep deprivation techniques, and the penitentiary, in which it was believed that solitude and meditation would rehabilitate criminals, which evolved into the extreme isolation/sensory deprivation techniques. For all the clean bill the FBI has had in the torture scandals with their persuasive interrogations, they still use third degree tactics extensively.

These techniques were well under way before the Nazis, and it was, as Rejali documents, the Milice, under the Vichy government, that actually excelled in torture, quite eclipsing the Gestapo.

To both ondelette @16 and boston1776 @15, the origins of the use of torture in a given society or by a particular agency are complex, and similar to the spread of other cultural practices, as Rejali so ably describes. The problem with narrating one specific part of that history is to neglect some other part. I give primary emphasis to the MKULTRA/CIA/KUBARK model of torture because, one, like the SERE techniques, even more so, it was designed by psychologists and psychiatrists. Two, it is the kind of torture that is going forth under the Obama administration under the auspices of the Army Field Manual, which uses CIA emphasis on isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and manipulation of fears (augmented by psychoactive drugs). This is most dangerous as it has been given the stamp of legitimacy by the bulk of the press, and even blogosphere.

The Cameron story is very dramatic, and represents a kind of apotheosis of the CIA MKULTRA program. Some of the victims of it did go public and even sued the government, ultimately settling out of court, as the process was so stressful, and government dirty tricks and threats were not absent. (I know the latter from talking personally to one of the primary individuals involved in the suit.)

Some of the confusion over the derivation of torture tactics can be seen in the ways in which FBI, CIA, and SERE interrogation tactics interacted over the past eight years. In addition, torture techniques have other derivations in the U.S., from the prison system, from jails, and psychiatric hospitals, as ondelette notes.

Electroconvulsion was extensively used in mental hospitals on post-partum innocents as well as on CIA-produced spies and sex slaves. Various traumas were performed on children and unsuspecting adults in the name of “therapy.”

If people do not understand the post-WWII origins of CIA trauma/MKULTRA programs affecting countless citizens,

If they do no understand that mind control programs have been perfected on loved ones in the military, prisons, universities and hospitals

If they do not connect the ramping up of homeland security with this recent history as well as connecting it to the rise of the third reich,

The APA, World Psychological Association and Canadian Psychological Association can continue aiding and abetting criminal activity.

[Modnote: thank you most kindly, corrections made]

Darius Rejali has documented that the work of Ewen Cameron (and Donald Hebb and others) on MKULTRA is not really the basis of most of the torture technique that was adopted and used by the CIA and military starting in 2001. His work really well documents that most techniques don’t flow from science as much as they are justified using recourse to scientific claims. The most damning allegation against psychologists by far is that made by Gerald Gray and others, that psychologists fully cognizant of the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiments implemented a program of deliberately creating ‘Lord of the Flies’ conditions among MP’s and intelligence personnel. Together with the advice of the BSCT teams, which is the main source of the psychologist participation, this is an allegation of both specific psychological torture and an allegation of mass torture (which ratchets up from a war crime to a crime against humanity).

Jeff Kaye @ 13. The interest in pressing the torture investigation is being drowned at the moment by the health care debate, but it hardly seems like it is worse than it was in, say, 2007. It was always going to be a long hard struggle, it involves getting a whole society to admit to something horrible, which is hard to do. And with the newest allegations about Blackwater/Xe, it seems that at least some of the fears people have that threats and violence might be used to fight back against exposing the truth of the agenda being carried out during the Bush years are justified. Nevertheless, unless and until the whole thing, from all the torture and abuse of international law in the prisons under U.S. control to the torture and abuse inherent in the current U.S. prison practices, and in the immigration holding prisons comes to light, its corrupting influence on all of our social institutions will continue and accelerate.

Thanks very much for keeping up the fight during the period of loud health care debate. Our society very much needs the health care reform for its financial and bodily well being, but it still needs the torture investigations for its soul.

He participated in torturing and brainwashing thousands of unwitting Americans and Canadians. He was given funds for these activities through channels set up by the CIA.

MKULTRA was set up after the CIA brought over to North America (and who knows where else) Nazis who had participated in torture of innocents during the Nazi regime. This is documented as Project Paperclip.

The fact that the APA continues to stonewall members who wish to disavow torture as acceptable activity for psychologists is evidence that the APA wishes to continue in these heinous crimes against humanity. This is about Americans.

I have a personal stake in this issue.
When people in Boston began to answer a small advertisement in local papers asking if they had been abused by priests in the area, the scene began to change for the Catholic church. I would suggest that a similar gathering of people who have lost family members to this horrendous “therapy” might have a similar chilling effect of the activities of the APA.

Thank you for bringing this subject to our attention. I will look for your continued work.