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Offline Anonymous

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Psychology of torture
« on: December 30, 2006, 08:10:56 PM »
This is a long read, but I think it is a good description of what Straight did.

{{attention}}

'''Psychology of torture''' relies on [[psychological pain]] coupled
with physical [[Physical trauma|trauma]] to achieve the purposes of
the [[torture]]r.

Psychological pain is [[pain]] caused by [[psychological]] stress and
by emotional trauma, as distinct from that caused by
[[Nociception|physiological]] injuries and syndromes. The practice of
[[torture]] induces psychological pain through various acts that
often involve both [[physiological]] pain and psychological
manipulation to achieve a tactical goal or for the gratuitous
[[sadistic]] satisfaction of the torturer.

==Process==

The process of psychological torture is designed to invade and
destroy the presumptions of privacy, intimacy, and inviolability
assumed by the victim. Beyond merely invading the victim's mental and
physical independence on a one-to-one level, such acts are made
further damaging via public humiliation, incessant repetition, and
sadistic glee. As a result, the effects of psychological torture tend
to remain with the victim long after the actual activity is
discontinued.

Psychologically, torture often places the victim in a state where the
mind works against the best interests of the individual, due to the
inducement of such emotions as shame, worthlessness, dependency, and
a feeling of a lack of uniqueness. These and other mental stresses
can lead to a mutated, fragmented, or discredited personality and
belief structure. Even the victim's normal bodily needs and functions
(e.g. sleep, sustenance, excretion, etc.) can be construed as self-
degrading, and ironically, dehumanizing and animalistic.

==Social Implications==

A common factor of psychological torture, sometimes the only factor,
is to extend the activity to family, friends, and others for whom the
victim has a deep concern (the "social body"). This further disrupts
the individual's familiar expectations of their environment, their
control over their circumstances, and the strength and reliability of
their support network.

==Expert Opinions==

Beatrice Patsalides describes this transmogrification thus in "Ethics
of the unspeakable: Torture survivors in psychoanalytic treatment":

:"As the gap between the 'I' and the 'me' deepens, dissociation and
alienation increase. The subject that, under torture, was forced into
the position of pure object has lost his or her sense of interiority,
intimacy, and privacy. Time is experienced now, in the present only,
and perspective?that which allows for a sense of
relativity?is foreclosed. Thoughts and dreams attack the mind
and invade the body as if the protective skin that normally contains
our thoughts, gives us space to breathe in between the thought and
the thing being thought about, and separates between inside and
outside, past and present, me and you, was lost."

Torture robs the victim of the most basic modes of relating to
reality and, thus, is the equivalent of cognitive death. Space and
time are warped by [[sleep deprivation]]. The self ("I") is
shattered. The tortured have nothing familiar to hold on to: family,
home, personal belongings, loved ones, language, name. Gradually,
they lose their mental resilience and sense of freedom. They feel
alien?unable to communicate, relate, attach, or empathize with
others.

Torture splinters early childhood grandiose
[[Narcissism|narcissistic]] fantasies of uniqueness, omnipotence,
invulnerability, and impenetrability. But it enhances the fantasy of
merger with an idealized and omnipotent (though not benign)
other?the inflicter of agony. The twin processes of
individuation and separation are reversed.

==Interpersonal Relationships==

Torture is the ultimate act of perverted intimacy. The torturer
invades the victim's body, pervades his psyche, and possesses his
mind. Deprived of contact with others and starved for human
interactions, the prey bonds with the predator. "Traumatic bonding",
akin to the [[Stockholm syndrome]], is about hope and the search for
meaning in the brutal and indifferent and nightmarish universe of the
torture cell.

The abuser becomes the [[black hole]] at the center of the victim's
surrealistic galaxy, sucking in the sufferer's universal need for
solace. The victim tries to "control" his tormentor by becoming one
with him (introjecting him) and by appealing to the monster's
presumably dormant humanity and empathy.

This bonding is especially strong when the torturer and the tortured
form a dyad and "collaborate" in the rituals and acts of torture (for
instance, when the victim is coerced into selecting the torture
implements and the types of torment to be inflicted, or to choose
between two evils).

The psychologist Shirley Spitz offers this powerful overview of the
contradictory nature of torture in a seminar titled "The Psychology
of Torture" (1989):

:"Torture is an obscenity in that it joins what is most private with
what is most public. Torture entails all the isolation and extreme
solitude of privacy with none of the usual security embodied
therein ... Torture entails at the same time all the self exposure of
the utterly public with none of its possibilities for camaraderie or
shared experience. (The presence of an all powerful other with whom
to merge, without the security of the other's benign intentions.)

A further obscenity of torture is the inversion it makes of intimate
human relationships. The interrogation is a form of social encounter
in which the normal rules of communicating, of relating, of intimacy
are manipulated. Dependency needs are elicited by the interrogator,
but not so they may be met as in close relationships, but to weaken
and confuse. Independence that is offered in return for "betrayal" is
a lie. Silence is intentionally misinterpreted either as confirmation
of information or as guilt for 'complicity'.

Torture combines complete humiliating exposure with utter devastating
isolation. The final products and outcome of torture are a scarred
and often shattered victim and an empty display of the fiction of
power."

Obsessed by endless ruminations, demented by pain and a continuum of
sleeplessness?the victim regresses, shedding all but the most
primitive defense mechanisms: splitting, narcissism, dissociation,
projective identification, introjection, and cognitive dissonance.
The victim constructs an alternative world, often suffering from
depersonalization and derealization, hallucinations, ideas of
reference, delusions, and psychotic episodes.

Sometimes the victim comes to crave pain?very much as self-
mutilators do?because it is a proof and a reminder of his
individuated existence otherwise blurred by the incessant torture.
Pain shields the sufferer from disintegration and capitulation. It
preserves the veracity of his unthinkable and unspeakable experiences.

This dual process of the victim's alienation and addiction to anguish
complements the perpetrator's view of his quarry as "inhuman",
or "subhuman". The torturer assumes the position of the sole
authority, the exclusive fount of meaning and interpretation, the
source of both evil and good.

Torture is about reprogramming the victim to succumb to an
alternative exegesis of the world, proffered by the abuser. It is an
act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination. The abused also
swallows whole and assimilates the torturer's negative view of him
and often, as a result, is rendered suicidal, self-destructive, or
self-defeating.

Thus, torture has no cutoff date. The sounds, the voices, the smells,
the sensations reverberate long after the episode has
ended?both in nightmares and in waking moments. The victim's
ability to trust other people?i.e., to assume that their
motives are at least rational, if not necessarily benign?has
been irrevocably undermined. Social institutions are perceived as
precariously poised on the verge of an ominous, Kafkaesque mutation.
Nothing is either safe, or credible anymore.

Victims typically react by undulating between emotional numbing and
increased arousal: insomnia, irritability, restlessness, and
attention deficits. Recollections of the traumatic events intrude in
the form of dreams, night terrors, flashbacks, and distressing
associations.

The tortured develop compulsive rituals to fend off obsessive
thoughts. Other psychological sequelae reported include cognitive
impairment, reduced capacity to learn, [[memory disorder]]s, [[sexual
dysfunction]], [[social withdrawal]], inability to maintain long-term
relationships, or even mere intimacy, [[phobia]]s, ideas of reference
and [[superstition]]s, [[delusion]]s, [[hallucination]]s, [[psychotic
microepisode]]s, and [[emotional flatness]].

==Results of Torture==

[[clinical depression|Depression]] and [[anxiety]] are very common.
These are forms and manifestations of self-directed aggression. The
sufferer rages at his own victimhood and resulting multiple
dysfunction. He feels shamed by his new disabilities and responsible,
or even guilty, somehow, for his predicament and the dire
consequences borne by his nearest and dearest. His sense of self-
worth and self-esteem are crippled.

In summary, torture victims suffer from a [[post-traumatic stress
disorder]] (PTSD). Their strong feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame
are also typical of victims of childhood abuse, domestic violence,
and rape. They feel anxious because the perpetrator's behavior is
seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable?or mechanically and
inhumanly regular.

They feel guilty and disgraced because, to restore a semblance of
order to their shattered world and a modicum of dominion over their
chaotic life, they need to transform themselves into the cause of
their own degradation and the accomplices of their tormentors.

The CIA, in its "[[Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual -
1983|Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual ? 1983]]"
(reprinted in the April 1997 issue of Harper's Magazine), summed up
the theory of coercion thus:

:"The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological
regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to
bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of
autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject
regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse
chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the
highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to
cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated
frustrations."

Inevitably, in the aftermath of torture, its victims feel helpless
and powerless. This loss of control over one's life and body is
manifested physically in impotence, attention deficits, and insomnia.
This is often exacerbated by the disbelief many torture victims
encounter, especially if they are unable to produce scars, or
other "objective" proof of their ordeal. Language cannot communicate
such an intensely private experience as pain.

Spitz makes the following observation:

:"Pain is also unsharable in that it is resistant to language ... All
our interior states of consciousness: emotional, perceptual,
cognitive and somatic can be described as having an object in the
external world ... This affirms our capacity to move beyond the
boundaries of our body into the external, sharable world. This is the
space in which we interact and communicate with our environment. But
when we explore the interior state of physical pain we find that
there is no object "out there"?no external, referential
content. Pain is not of, or for, anything. Pain is. And it draws us
away from the space of interaction, the sharable world, inwards. It
draws us into the boundaries of our body."

[[Bystander]]s resent the tortured because they make them feel guilty
and ashamed for having done nothing to prevent the atrocity. The
victims threaten their sense of security and their much-needed belief
in predictability, justice, and rule of law. The victims, on their
part, do not believe that it is possible to effectively communicate
to "outsiders" what they have been through. The torture chambers
are "another galaxy". This is how [[Auschwitz]] was described by the
author [[Yehiel Dinur|K. Zetnik]] in his testimony in the [[Eichmann
trial]] in [[Jerusalem]] in 1961.

Kenneth Pope in "Torture", a chapter he wrote for the "Encyclopedia
of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the Impact
of Society on Gender", quotes Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman:

:"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the
perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the
universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the
contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim
demands action, engagement, and remembering."

But, more often, continued attempts to repress fearful memories
result in psychosomatic illnesses (conversion). The victim wishes to
forget the torture, to avoid re-experiencing the often life
threatening abuse and to shield his human environment from the
horrors. In conjunction with the victim's pervasive distrust, this is
frequently interpreted as hypervigilance, or even paranoia. It seems
that the victims can't win. Torture is forever.

== References ==
* CIA, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, July 1963
* CIA, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983

* [ The
Psychology of Torture]

[[Category:Psychology]]
[[Category:Torture]]
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

dragonfly

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #1 on: December 30, 2006, 08:59:41 PM »
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #2 on: December 30, 2006, 10:35:59 PM »
To the OP, would you post the link to this article? Thanks.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2006, 01:09:25 AM »
Quote from: ""Guest""
To the OP, would you post the link to this article? Thanks.

I'm not the op, but some googling of random snippets from the article revealed this link:
http://samvak.tripod.com/torturepsychology.html
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2006, 09:06:37 AM »
cool...thanks.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #5 on: January 03, 2007, 07:46:40 PM »
To those of us who were subject to Straight, Inc., the original post could easily be mistaken for a staff training manual.  Most, if not all, of the methods and techniques described in the article were inflicted on the detainees at Straight  in a continuous, ongoing fashion.

Anyone who thinks that Straight wasn't abusive,  that it was merely a very strict, intense, and highly discipline-oriented therapeutic program needs to read the article with the understanding that these tortute techniques were standard operating procedure at Straight, Inc.

The staff that performed these actions, ordered and oversaw the physical and psychological torture that went on constantly, day-in, day-out, and the parents that placed their kids in these situations, paid for the abusive methods to be inflicted on their own children, and, if foster parents,  were direct participants in the abuse and torture of their own and other people's children,  are all guilty of heinous crimes against us.  That's right, your Mom and Dad are child abusers.  Not just the staff,  but the parents as well must share the guilt due to the fact that they not only permitted, but encouraged and participated in child abyse and the torture of teenagers, some of whom were mentally ill and in need of serious psychiatric assistance.  

I hate your mother and father for the role they played in abusing me and other kids when we were held against our will in Straight, Inc.

I think a few lawsuits against parents who permitted their homes to be used as off-campus torture chambers and false imprisonment facilities would hopefully discourage other parents from subjecting their kids to one of the Straight spin-offs, if only out of fear of financial loss and the notoriety a lawsuit would generate.  Of course, abusive, neglectful failures as parents such as ones who place their kids in places like Straight (in other words, parents like yours and mine) would most likely just ship the kids off to a program that does not use the foster home system.  Still, it would be nice to see some of thefoster parents have to account for their role in the systematic abuse of children in theirhome, and to suffer monetarily as a result of their crimes.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

dragonfly

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #6 on: January 04, 2007, 09:54:53 AM »
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline starry-eyed pirate

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2007, 12:48:01 PM »
I can relate.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
If you would have justice in this world, then begin to see that a human being is not a means to some end.  People are not commodities.  When human beings are just to one another government becomes obsolete and real freedom is born; SPIRITUAL ANARCHY.

Offline seamus

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2007, 02:14:50 PM »
Yeah I had a staff member at a detox i was in around 84 or so ask me about straight & I said I needed "rehabilitation from my rehabilitation " Point is ya gotta come to terms with getting high or not,or just a little or whatever,on your own terms of your own will.Kinda like its what you give yourself permission to do. Straight was not the rest of the planet,nor my personal end all and be all.If I let that time rule my life then I lose,not them, me.Its my life and no thanks to those fucks its surprisingly good.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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Offline MammaBird

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2007, 04:38:26 PM »
Straight was my "planet" or whatever for a while,  now I'm learning not to let it define me.  Because I have a choice, even if it's hard.  Really fucking hard.

  The fact  that we were all complicit, that all but a very few of us participated in  each others' abuse, is part of what's so hard about this.  I've found forgiving others has helped me to forgive myself*, and that for that reason it's worth it.  I don't want to walk around  hurt, angry and empty anymore, even as I accept that sometimes I will always feel that.  It'll always be part of me, I just don't want it to be the biggest part.



*This excludes you, Karla Schupp...I'm holding out for a fucking apology from you.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline starry-eyed pirate

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #10 on: January 05, 2007, 09:18:04 PM »
Quote from: ""MammaBird""

  The fact  that we were all complicit, that all but a very few of us participated in  each others' abuse, is part of what's so hard about this.  I've found forgiving others has helped me to forgive myself*, and that for that reason it's worth it.  I don't want to walk around  hurt, angry and empty anymore, even as I accept that sometimes I will always feel that.  It'll always be part of me, I just don't want it to be the biggest part.





I know what you mean...
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
If you would have justice in this world, then begin to see that a human being is not a means to some end.  People are not commodities.  When human beings are just to one another government becomes obsolete and real freedom is born; SPIRITUAL ANARCHY.

Offline Antigen

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2007, 12:41:58 AM »
I was rockin and suckin my thumb by the end of that. No words to describe it.

Quote from: ""starry-eyed pirate""
I can relate.

If you're gonna use that kind of language ....  :o
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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Offline starry-eyed pirate

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Psychology of torture
« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2007, 11:02:24 AM »
I thought it was particularly appropriate, considering the opening post.

Anyway, I'm not hung up like that.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
If you would have justice in this world, then begin to see that a human being is not a means to some end.  People are not commodities.  When human beings are just to one another government becomes obsolete and real freedom is born; SPIRITUAL ANARCHY.

Offline Anne Bonney

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Re: Psychology of torture
« Reply #13 on: March 25, 2010, 11:23:56 AM »
Quote from: "Guest"
This is a long read, but I think it is a good description of what Straight did.

{{attention}}

'''Psychology of torture''' relies on [[psychological pain]] coupled
with physical [[Physical trauma|trauma]] to achieve the purposes of
the [[torture]]r.

Psychological pain is [[pain]] caused by [[psychological]] stress and
by emotional trauma, as distinct from that caused by
[[Nociception|physiological]] injuries and syndromes. The practice of
[[torture]] induces psychological pain through various acts that
often involve both [[physiological]] pain and psychological
manipulation to achieve a tactical goal or for the gratuitous
[[sadistic]] satisfaction of the torturer.

==Process==

The process of psychological torture is designed to invade and
destroy the presumptions of privacy, intimacy, and inviolability
assumed by the victim. Beyond merely invading the victim's mental and
physical independence on a one-to-one level, such acts are made
further damaging via public humiliation, incessant repetition, and
sadistic glee. As a result, the effects of psychological torture tend
to remain with the victim long after the actual activity is
discontinued.

Psychologically, torture often places the victim in a state where the
mind works against the best interests of the individual, due to the
inducement of such emotions as shame, worthlessness, dependency, and
a feeling of a lack of uniqueness. These and other mental stresses
can lead to a mutated, fragmented, or discredited personality and
belief structure. Even the victim's normal bodily needs and functions
(e.g. sleep, sustenance, excretion, etc.) can be construed as self-
degrading, and ironically, dehumanizing and animalistic.

==Social Implications==

A common factor of psychological torture, sometimes the only factor,
is to extend the activity to family, friends, and others for whom the
victim has a deep concern (the "social body"). This further disrupts
the individual's familiar expectations of their environment, their
control over their circumstances, and the strength and reliability of
their support network.

==Expert Opinions==

Beatrice Patsalides describes this transmogrification thus in "Ethics
of the unspeakable: Torture survivors in psychoanalytic treatment":

:"As the gap between the 'I' and the 'me' deepens, dissociation and
alienation increase. The subject that, under torture, was forced into
the position of pure object has lost his or her sense of interiority,
intimacy, and privacy. Time is experienced now, in the present only,
and perspective?that which allows for a sense of
relativity?is foreclosed. Thoughts and dreams attack the mind
and invade the body as if the protective skin that normally contains
our thoughts, gives us space to breathe in between the thought and
the thing being thought about, and separates between inside and
outside, past and present, me and you, was lost."

Torture robs the victim of the most basic modes of relating to
reality and, thus, is the equivalent of cognitive death. Space and
time are warped by [[sleep deprivation]]. The self ("I") is
shattered. The tortured have nothing familiar to hold on to: family,
home, personal belongings, loved ones, language, name. Gradually,
they lose their mental resilience and sense of freedom. They feel
alien?unable to communicate, relate, attach, or empathize with
others.

Torture splinters early childhood grandiose
[[Narcissism|narcissistic]] fantasies of uniqueness, omnipotence,
invulnerability, and impenetrability. But it enhances the fantasy of
merger with an idealized and omnipotent (though not benign)
other?the inflicter of agony. The twin processes of
individuation and separation are reversed.

==Interpersonal Relationships==

Torture is the ultimate act of perverted intimacy. The torturer
invades the victim's body, pervades his psyche, and possesses his
mind. Deprived of contact with others and starved for human
interactions, the prey bonds with the predator. "Traumatic bonding",
akin to the [[Stockholm syndrome]], is about hope and the search for
meaning in the brutal and indifferent and nightmarish universe of the
torture cell.

The abuser becomes the [[black hole]] at the center of the victim's
surrealistic galaxy, sucking in the sufferer's universal need for
solace. The victim tries to "control" his tormentor by becoming one
with him (introjecting him) and by appealing to the monster's
presumably dormant humanity and empathy.

This bonding is especially strong when the torturer and the tortured
form a dyad and "collaborate" in the rituals and acts of torture (for
instance, when the victim is coerced into selecting the torture
implements and the types of torment to be inflicted, or to choose
between two evils).

The psychologist Shirley Spitz offers this powerful overview of the
contradictory nature of torture in a seminar titled "The Psychology
of Torture" (1989):

:"Torture is an obscenity in that it joins what is most private with
what is most public. Torture entails all the isolation and extreme
solitude of privacy with none of the usual security embodied
therein ... Torture entails at the same time all the self exposure of
the utterly public with none of its possibilities for camaraderie or
shared experience. (The presence of an all powerful other with whom
to merge, without the security of the other's benign intentions.)

A further obscenity of torture is the inversion it makes of intimate
human relationships. The interrogation is a form of social encounter
in which the normal rules of communicating, of relating, of intimacy
are manipulated. Dependency needs are elicited by the interrogator,
but not so they may be met as in close relationships, but to weaken
and confuse. Independence that is offered in return for "betrayal" is
a lie. Silence is intentionally misinterpreted either as confirmation
of information or as guilt for 'complicity'.

Torture combines complete humiliating exposure with utter devastating
isolation. The final products and outcome of torture are a scarred
and often shattered victim and an empty display of the fiction of
power."

Obsessed by endless ruminations, demented by pain and a continuum of
sleeplessness?the victim regresses, shedding all but the most
primitive defense mechanisms: splitting, narcissism, dissociation,
projective identification, introjection, and cognitive dissonance.
The victim constructs an alternative world, often suffering from
depersonalization and derealization, hallucinations, ideas of
reference, delusions, and psychotic episodes.

Sometimes the victim comes to crave pain?very much as self-
mutilators do?because it is a proof and a reminder of his
individuated existence otherwise blurred by the incessant torture.
Pain shields the sufferer from disintegration and capitulation. It
preserves the veracity of his unthinkable and unspeakable experiences.

This dual process of the victim's alienation and addiction to anguish
complements the perpetrator's view of his quarry as "inhuman",
or "subhuman". The torturer assumes the position of the sole
authority, the exclusive fount of meaning and interpretation, the
source of both evil and good.

Torture is about reprogramming the victim to succumb to an
alternative exegesis of the world, proffered by the abuser. It is an
act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination. The abused also
swallows whole and assimilates the torturer's negative view of him
and often, as a result, is rendered suicidal, self-destructive, or
self-defeating.

Thus, torture has no cutoff date. The sounds, the voices, the smells,
the sensations reverberate long after the episode has
ended?both in nightmares and in waking moments. The victim's
ability to trust other people?i.e., to assume that their
motives are at least rational, if not necessarily benign?has
been irrevocably undermined. Social institutions are perceived as
precariously poised on the verge of an ominous, Kafkaesque mutation.
Nothing is either safe, or credible anymore.

Victims typically react by undulating between emotional numbing and
increased arousal: insomnia, irritability, restlessness, and
attention deficits. Recollections of the traumatic events intrude in
the form of dreams, night terrors, flashbacks, and distressing
associations.

The tortured develop compulsive rituals to fend off obsessive
thoughts. Other psychological sequelae reported include cognitive
impairment, reduced capacity to learn, [[memory disorder]]s, [[sexual
dysfunction]], [[social withdrawal]], inability to maintain long-term
relationships, or even mere intimacy, [[phobia]]s, ideas of reference
and [[superstition]]s, [[delusion]]s, [[hallucination]]s, [[psychotic
microepisode]]s, and [[emotional flatness]].

==Results of Torture==

[[clinical depression|Depression]] and [[anxiety]] are very common.
These are forms and manifestations of self-directed aggression. The
sufferer rages at his own victimhood and resulting multiple
dysfunction. He feels shamed by his new disabilities and responsible,
or even guilty, somehow, for his predicament and the dire
consequences borne by his nearest and dearest. His sense of self-
worth and self-esteem are crippled.

In summary, torture victims suffer from a [[post-traumatic stress
disorder]] (PTSD). Their strong feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame
are also typical of victims of childhood abuse, domestic violence,
and rape. They feel anxious because the perpetrator's behavior is
seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable?or mechanically and
inhumanly regular.

They feel guilty and disgraced because, to restore a semblance of
order to their shattered world and a modicum of dominion over their
chaotic life, they need to transform themselves into the cause of
their own degradation and the accomplices of their tormentors.

The CIA, in its "[[Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual -
1983|Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual ? 1983]]"
(reprinted in the April 1997 issue of Harper's Magazine), summed up
the theory of coercion thus:

:"The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological
regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to
bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of
autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject
regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse
chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the
highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to
cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated
frustrations."

Inevitably, in the aftermath of torture, its victims feel helpless
and powerless. This loss of control over one's life and body is
manifested physically in impotence, attention deficits, and insomnia.
This is often exacerbated by the disbelief many torture victims
encounter, especially if they are unable to produce scars, or
other "objective" proof of their ordeal. Language cannot communicate
such an intensely private experience as pain.

Spitz makes the following observation:

:"Pain is also unsharable in that it is resistant to language ... All
our interior states of consciousness: emotional, perceptual,
cognitive and somatic can be described as having an object in the
external world ... This affirms our capacity to move beyond the
boundaries of our body into the external, sharable world. This is the
space in which we interact and communicate with our environment. But
when we explore the interior state of physical pain we find that
there is no object "out there"?no external, referential
content. Pain is not of, or for, anything. Pain is. And it draws us
away from the space of interaction, the sharable world, inwards. It
draws us into the boundaries of our body."

[[Bystander]]s resent the tortured because they make them feel guilty
and ashamed for having done nothing to prevent the atrocity. The
victims threaten their sense of security and their much-needed belief
in predictability, justice, and rule of law. The victims, on their
part, do not believe that it is possible to effectively communicate
to "outsiders" what they have been through. The torture chambers
are "another galaxy". This is how [[Auschwitz]] was described by the
author [[Yehiel Dinur|K. Zetnik]] in his testimony in the [[Eichmann
trial]] in [[Jerusalem]] in 1961.

Kenneth Pope in "Torture", a chapter he wrote for the "Encyclopedia
of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the Impact
of Society on Gender", quotes Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman:

:"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the
perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the
universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the
contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim
demands action, engagement, and remembering."

But, more often, continued attempts to repress fearful memories
result in psychosomatic illnesses (conversion). The victim wishes to
forget the torture, to avoid re-experiencing the often life
threatening abuse and to shield his human environment from the
horrors. In conjunction with the victim's pervasive distrust, this is
frequently interpreted as hypervigilance, or even paranoia. It seems
that the victims can't win. Torture is forever.

== References ==
* CIA, KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation, July 1963
* CIA, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983

* [ The
Psychology of Torture]

[[Category:Psychology]]
[[Category:Torture]]


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« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
traight, St. Pete, early 80s
AA is a cult http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult.html

The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents-- because they have a tame child-creature in their house.  ~~  Frank Zappa

Offline Anne Bonney

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Re: Psychology of torture
« Reply #14 on: March 25, 2010, 02:53:07 PM »
Quote from: "dragonfly"
I myself embodied Straight while I was in there...

And when I got out and tried to adjust to society I bumbled around realizing that some of my programed behavior was not going to gain me much popularity...

I started to realize that I needed to be deprogrammed about 18 months after I graduated...

But I thought I was merely brainwashed...

I didn't realize that I had been inducted into the world of abuse...

I did not recognise the way I continued to perpetrate the forms of abuse that I had adopted.  Some of these ways are still present in me when the shit hits the fan.  There are very subtle ways of being that hurt those around me.  I know I learned them in Straight...

If we as a community of Survivors ever did come together and go to Congress or the Supreme Court or the Wizard of OZ himself, here is what I would want..

I would want some free help in identifying and letting go of my own torturous techniques and abusive tendencies.  Seeing myself compulsively throw my emotions at people, manipulate, claim absolute knowledge, and interrogate those I love is a tragedy. Seeing myself sabotage my life these last twenty years and knowing that there are thousands of kids out there shooting themselves down over and over, that is what I want to stop and why I want Straight programs shut down...

This probably just sounds like a standard sick confession of a wussy broke down phaser, but it's not really, or it's not only that.  I'm trying to make a point too. The witch hunt also comes from Straight, it's not going to help us stop the cycle we were initiated into...

 :bump:
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
traight, St. Pete, early 80s
AA is a cult http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult.html

The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents-- because they have a tame child-creature in their house.  ~~  Frank Zappa