There’s a movement afoot within the American Psychological Association (APA) to actively oppose and condemn its members’ participation in any activities that lead to the psychological abuse of detainees.

Some APA psychologists have been identified as having designed programs for the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques, and even participated in training sessions for the military. Jane Mayer’s book, The Dark Side, provides details about psychologists’ roles in the CIA’s torture techniques. A former APA president, Martin Seligman, “although personally opposed to torture,” confirmed that he and two non-APA colleagues gave a three-hour lecture at the Navy SERE school (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), on torture techniques by invitation of the CIA.

Seligman developed the theory of “learned helplessness” where individuals are denied control over their world, lose their will, and become totally dependent upon their captors. Other psychologists suggested, designed, or refined the techniques of stress positions, prolonged nakedness, sexual humiliations, and the infamous and the ever-present waterboarding.

When reports of the abuses at Guantanamo Bay first leaked out, the APA looked to its leadership to condemn the actions of any of its members who had anything at all to do with torture, and to take measures to ensure that it would not recur. But the APA failed to take any real action.

A task force was appointed to look into the ethics violations of the APA – their code being: “Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm.” However, the task force’s unsigned report kept the participating members’ names secret from the general membership and the media. Stephen Soldz, a psychologist and professor at the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, in an op-ed carried by boston.com, reports that the task force heading up the investigation was a bit stacked: “It was revealed that a majority of members were from the military-intelligence establishment, with four having served in chains of commands implicated in detainee abuses. Three of the four nonmilitary members have since denounced the task force process and two have called for the report to be rescinded.”

Fortunately, the violation of human rights doesn’t sit well with the more conscientious members of the APA. At their annual convention in Boston this month a rally against APA policies that encourage participation in detainee interrogations is being planned. Dissident New York psychologist Steven Reisner, a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, is running for the APA presidency. He wants to ban psychologists from participating in interrogations at any U.S. military prison or detention center.

Certainly, even silence in the face of human atrocities is the same as condoning them — participation being the ultimate evil. Hopefully, with new leadership, the APA’s obligation to denounce abusive tactics that result in the torture of human beings will end, and the APA membership can once again be true to and honor its motto to “do no harm.”