Stanley Fish – why psychologists participated at Abu Ghraib

Stanley Fish has an thought-provoking column noting that many psychologists have a “hired gun” attitude, part of how he contrasts them with psychiatrists:

Psychology, on the other hand (vs. psychiatry), is not exclusively a healing profession. To be sure, there are psychologists who provide counseling, therapy and other services to patients; but there are many psychologists who think of themselves as behavioral scientists. ... Are psychologists experts for hire, or is it understood, as a matter of professional self-definition, that their expertise is to be deployed only for benign purposes?

As a matter of fact, psychological skills are purchased and deployed as commodities all the time. ... Large corporations employ psychological profilers to help make them make personnel decisions. Sports teams hire “coaches” whose job it is to motivate players and make them more aggressive. Hospitals use the results of psychological examinations to decide whether or not a patient should be released. And of course the military employs psychologists in an effort to identify techniques that lead prisoners to spill what they know.

Thought that was interesting? THIS is the nut graf:

In fact, the moment psychological knowledge of causes and effects is put into strategic action is the moment when psychology ceases to be a science and becomes an extension of someone’s agenda. Employing psychological skills in the course of any verbal interaction – be it a domestic conversation, classroom teaching, a performance in a law court, or an interrogation – will always have the effect of subordinating the facts and the truth of the matter to the desire for an outcome.

And, that’s exactly what happened at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

But, psychiatrists could have done the same things.

But, per some of the commentors to his column-length blog post, I think he has a point about the “persuasive professions” in general without drawing a largely artificial distinction between psychology and psychiatry. After all, psychiatrists have, in the past, used drugs in the service of the CIA and other organizations.

And, the whole premise of “Brave New World” was based on chemicals, not talk.

In fact, it wasn’t psychologists shooting up people at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, or Bagram, with pentothal or other drugs, now, was it.

Rather, it probably was a difference in politics between the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association that led psychiatrists to proscribe participating in interrogations more than two years ago.

Then, Fish goes Socratic on us.

As a linguist and philosopher, Fish then ties this to the ancient Greek skill of rhetoric. Shades of the Protagoras! He argues that psychology, like rhetoric, risks being a content-free tool.

I’m just scratching the surface of an stimulating, if flawed, column; read it all for yourself.