NYTimes | The
dogs wouldn’t jump. All they had to do to avoid electric shocks was
leap over a small barrier, but there they sat in boxes in a lab at the
University of Pennsylvania, passive and whining.
They
had previously been given a series of mild shocks and learned they
could do nothing to stop them. Now, they had given up trying. In the
words of the scientists, they had “learned helplessness.”
The release of a Senate report on interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency
has revived interest in that study, one of the most classic experiments
in modern psychology. It and others like it, performed in the 1960s,
became the basis for an influential theory about depression and informed the development of effective talk therapies.
Nearly
a half-century later, a pair of military psychologists became convinced
that the theory provided a basis for brutal interrogation techniques,
including waterboarding, that were supposed to eliminate detainees’
“sense of control and predictability” and induce “a desired level of
helplessness,” the Senate report said. The architects of the C.I.A.'s
interrogation program have been identified as James Mitchell and Bruce
Jessen.
“My
impression is that they misread the theory,” said Dr. Charles A. Morgan
III, a psychiatrist at the University of New Haven who met Mr. Mitchell
and Mr. Jessen while studying the effects of stress on American troops.
“They’re not really scientists.”
One
of the researchers who conducted the initial studies on dogs, the
prominent psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman, said he was “grieved and
horrified” that his work was cited to justify the abusive
interrogations.
It
is not the first time that academic research has been used for brutal
interrogations, experts said. After the Second World War, the
intelligence community began to study methods of interrogation, often
financing outside psychiatrists and psychologists.
“A
lot of the early work came out of psychoanalysis,” or Freudian
thinking, said Steven Reisner, a psychologist in New York and co-founder
of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology,
which opposes the profession’s participation in coercive
interrogations. “Studies of sensory deprivation and sleep deprivation
induced a psychosis,
in which people lost control of what they said and what they thought.”
At that point they might begin to cooperate — or so the theory went, Mr.
Reisner said.
4 comments:
LOL, some of those who hate or hated us the most, like JEH, traveled, or were driven straight up the chocolate highway on the regular.
Ken, wtf kind of extreme not-see struggling are you attempting to perpetrate here? Now I realize it's vitally important to you to pretend that the administration you loved and unquestioningly supported wasn't a pack of filthy, nasty, sadistic prison rapists operating under color of authority, but that simply isn't the truth. Oh, and just because some penny-ante lawyers from Bob Jones "university" said that prison rape is "legal" doesn't make it so.
So stop before you power-wash away the very last little grain of credibility you might occasionally be acceded hereabouts.
I finally watched that silly snippet between Chris Matthews and David Axelrod, and I read the list of Bob Jones "university" lawyer approved prison rape methods you're desperately pretending that Pres. Obama reserved for himself, after, Pres. Obama ordered that all further Bush administration prison-rape methods be discontinued and disavowed.
After watching and reading, here's what I see from the pathetic fig-leaf you held up in defense of Dick Wrecked'em Cheney and Shrub. I quote Marcellus Wallace channeling Pres. Obama nah man, I'm pretty fucking far from okay
http://youtu.be/2RfQyR59oiM
Chris Mathews Has an inordinate love for a strong man. You can see it when he talks about Reagan or when Bush did his Mission Accomplished show.
What I need for somebody to come out and say and don't get me wrong brah, you been drawing a big red circle around it for weeks now is that there's a psychotic criminal gang embedded in the military/intelligence complex that's COMPLETELY exempt from any possibility of indictment, prosecution, or accountability under law.
That's what these ongoing protests out in the street are about, the cluster of fucks from wall street, to the pentagon, the police precincts and unions, who effectively control the law and constantly place themselves outside its application and use.
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