Doing Harm: How the World’s Largest Psychological Association Lost Its Way in the War on Terror

by Roy J. Eidelson

Doing Harm pries open the black box on a critical chapter in the recent history of the field’s enmeshment in the so-called war on terror and the ensuing reckoning over do-no-harm ethics during times of threat. Focusing on developments within the American Psychological Association (APA) over two tumultuous decades, Roy Eidelson exposes the challenges that professional organizations face whenever powerful government agencies turn to them for contributions to ethically fraught endeavours. In the months after 9/11 it became clear that the White House, the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency were prepared to ignore well-established international law and human rights standards in prosecuting the war on terror. It was less clear, however, that some of Eidelson’s fellow psychologists would become part of the abusive and torturous operations at overseas CIA black sites and Guantanamo Bay. Nor was it initially clear that this ruthless enterprise would garner acquiescence and support from the APA’s leadership. Doing Harm examines how and why the APA failed to join human rights groups in efforts to constrain the US government’s unbridled pursuit of security and retribution. It recounts an ongoing struggle – one that has pitted APA leaders set on preserving strong ties to the military-intelligence establishment against dissident voices committed to prioritizing do-no-harm principles.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology

272 pages, Hardcover

Published September 5, 2023

Reviews

[Caro Cárdenas Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desde temprano en mis estudios de psicología reconocí y fuí alertada por mis docentes sobre cómo lo que estudiábamos podía ser usado para dañar a otros. Lejos estaba de imaginar que la APA había hecho parte de programas de tortura en la cárcel de Guantanamo afectando a personas implicadas (incluso falsamente) en los ataques a las Torres Gemelas en el 9/11. Este libro es una recopilación extensa de la información disponible sobre la implicación de la APA como asociación y de algunos de sus miembros en acciones militares en contra del cuidado de seres humanos detenidos y sus captores.
Recomendado.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for all psychologists. This book is a powerfully and cohesively written and sourced account of one of the darker episodes in my field’s history. As a very early career psychologist when The Hoffman Report was released, I was horrified by what the report revealed about the lack of advocacy for human rights that took place in the early 2000s and onward. I resonated with the hopeful feelings for meaningful reparations and reform after APA Toronto and have been equally dismayed by the backlash and obfuscating that followed. This book captures these experiences so well and also provides excellent recommendations for ways that we can continue to move ourselves back closer to the path of justice and human rights.

[TheCalloftheLibrary · Rating 3 out of 5]

very repetitive and, by sequestering "bad" operational psych into a coherent box i think eidelson and others fail to interrogate the harms psychologists have enabled past and present as a result of the occupation and field itself which allowed for such an orginizational failure but nonetheless interesting as a documentation of dissent, as well as a catalogue of the institutional complicity in torture which categorized the war on terror

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a pleasant read, but an important one for psychologists and psychologists-in-training.