From: Andrew Phelps <math_anxiety@yahoo.com>

Subject: Re: [withholdapadues] Physicians for Human Rights: Doctors' Role ..

To: withholdapadues@yahoogroups.com

Date: Monday, September 7, 2009, 7:58 PM

 

Hi

On Fri, 9/4/09, Fff wrote:

I had given the diapering quite a bit of thought, since it was a technique that seemed to sprout from the unconscious of the torturers and not from SERE. I think Freud would call it anal sadism.

Obviously this comment has taken my attention.

In the 70s I found that clinical psychology was generally on a "torture denial" track and that their ideation as to what I was about tended to sprout from their "unconscious" as you put it.  More recently Bryant Welch has fingered the "gaslighting" phenomenology of behavior management as how that impacted me socially.  "Do you gaslight properly?"

Now with this "reverse SERE" Gitmo type torture being plainly sanctioned by the APA leadership, this phenomenon of "torture denial" is going public, & thank you Ethical APA for that!  Habitual unconscious "targets" (like myself) are now starting to be able to come forward.  [I've been afraid to speak up in this sort of forum, until quite recently.]

It's been a lifelong struggle.  I was attacked because of meeting that "unconscious criterion" at U.C. Berkeley and prevented from becoming a social psychologist.  However 1/2 the Dept. disagreed with the choice.  See my Senior Thesis which personality psychologist Gerry Mendelsohn (who had ALREADY left the APA!) guided; I went by default into "cognitive" and in the end had to finish up in mathematics where I'd started.

Some of the veteran "client/survivor" activists who haven't yet expired (many that I knew have) have been stymied by the prevailing "torture denial" of clinical psychology and by a parallel "failure to challenge the 'medical model'" (because we will torture each other if we do) in our own movement, are now working with PsySR to create a project of renetworking and engagement.  Several psychologists here have already ventured to network with us.  [!] 

Anyway my hope is that this "unconscious" agenda will be progressively exposed with the help of "client/survivor" activism.  It has been brutal: I've lost the opportunity for a career, and .. I'm a survivor, at that.

Thank you for opening up this discussion.  I really did appreciate your talk with Amy Goodman.

 

Andrew Phelps