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Regression
Regression
There are a number of non-coercive techniques for inducing regression, All depend upon the interrogator's control of the environment and, as always, a proper matching of method to source. Some interrogatees can be repressed by
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persistent manipulation of time, by retarding and advancing clocks and serving meals at odd times -- ten minutes or ten hours after the last food was given. Day and night are jumbled. Interrogation sessions are similarly unpatterned the subject may be brought back for more questioning just a few minutes after being dismissed for the night. Half-hearted efforts to cooperate can be ignored, and conversely he can be rewarded for non-cooperation. (For example, a successfully resisting source may become distraught if given some reward for the "valuable contribution" that he has made.) The Alice in Wonderland technique can reinforce the effect.
Two or more interrogators, questioning as a team and in relays (and thoroughly jumbling the timing of both methods) can ask questions which make it impossible for the interrogatee to give sensible, significant answers. A subject who is cut off from the world he knows seeks to recreate it, in some measure, in the new and strange environment.
He may try to keep track of time, to live in the familiar past, to cling to old concepts of loyalty, to establish -- with one or more interrogators -- interpersonal relations resembling those that he has had earlier with other people, and to build other bridges back to the known. Thwarting his attempts to do so is likely to drive him deeper and deeper into himself, until he is no longer able to control his responses in adult fashion.
The placebo technique is also used to induce regression The interrogatee is given a placebo (a harmless sugar pill). Later he is told that he has imbibed a drug, a truth serum, which will make him want to talk and which will also prevent his lying. The subject's desire to find an excuse for the compliance that represents his sole avenue of escape from his distressing predicament may make him want to believe that he has been drugged and that no one could blame him for telling his story now. Gottschelk observes, "Individuals under increased stress are more likely to respond to placebos."(7)
Orne has discussed an extensions of the placebo concept in explaining what he terms the "magic room" technique. "An example... would be... the prisoner who is given a hypnotic suggestion that his hand is growing warm. However, in this instance, the prisoner's hand actually does become warm, a problem easily resolved by the use of a concealed diathermy machine. Or it might be suggested... that... a cigarette will taste bitter. Here again, he could be given a cigarette prepared to have a slight but noticeably bitter taste."
In discussing states of heightened suggestibility (which are not, however, states of trance) Orne says, "Both hypnosis and some of the drugs inducing hypnoidal states are popularly viewed as situations where the individual is no longer master of his own fate and therefore not responsible for his actions. It seems possible then that the hypnotic situation, as distinguished from hypnosis itself, might be used to relieve the individual of a feeling of responsibility for his own actions and thus lead him to reveal information."(7)
In other words, a psychologically immature source, or one who has been regressed, could adopt an implication or suggestion that he has been drugged, hypnotized, or otherwise rendered incapable of resistance, even if he recognizes at some level that the suggestion is untrue, because of his strong desire to escape the stress of the situation by capitulating. These techniques provide the source with the rationalization that he needs.
Whether regression occurs spontaneously under detention or interrogation, and whether it is induced by a coercive or non-coercive technique, it should not be allowed to continue past the point necessary to obtain compliance. Severe techniques of regression are best employed in the presence of a psychiatrist, to insure full reversal later. As soon as he can, the interrogator presents the subject with the way out, the face-saving reason for escaping from his painful dilemma by yielding. Now the interrogator becomes fatherly.
Whether the excuse is that others have already confessed ("all the other boys are doing it"), that the interrogatee had a chance to redeem himself ("you're really a good boy at heart"), or that he can't help himself ("they made you do it"), the effective rationalization, the one the source will jump at, is likely to be elementary. It is an adult's version of the excuses of childhood.
The following are the principal coercive techniques of interrogation: arrest, detention, deprivation of sensory stimuli through solitary confinement or similar methods, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, narcosis, and induced regression.
the circumstances of detention are arranged to enhance within the subject his feelings of being cut off from the known and the reassuring, and of being plunged into the strange. Usually his own clothes are immediately taken away, because familiar clothing reinforces identity and thus the capacity for resistance.
If the interrogatee is especially proud or neat, it may be useful to give him an outfit that is one or two sizes too large and to fail to provide a belt, so that he must hold his pants up.
The point is that man's sense of identity depends upon a continuity in his surroundings, habits, appearance, actions, relations with others, etc. Detention permits the interrogator to cut through these links and throw the interrogatee back upon his own unaided internal resources.
Little is gained if confinement merely replaces one routine with another. Prisoners who lead monotonously unvaried lives "... cease to care about their utterances, dress, and cleanliness. They become dulled, apathetic, and depressed."(7) And apathy can be a very effective defense against interrogation. Control of the source's environment permits the interrogator to determine his diet, sleep pattern, and other fundamentals.
Manipulating these into irregularities, so that the subject becomes disorientated, is very likely to create feelings of fear and helplessness.
In short, the prisoner should not be provided a routine to which he can adapt and from which he can draw some comfort -- or at least a sense of his own identity.
The deprivation of stimuli induces regression by depriving the subject's mind of contact with an outer world and thus forcing it in upon itself. At the same time, the calculated provision of stimuli during interrogation tends to make the regressed subject view the interrogator as a father-figure. The result, normally, is a strengthening of the subject's tendencies toward compliance.
When the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods, an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself.
The New Yorker Article
I would have posted the whole article-but it's pretty long-but very interesting! Look it up on The New Yorker website-or I can email it to those who would like to read it!
THE EXPERIMENT
The military trains people to withstand interrogation. Are those methods being misused at Guantánamo?
Issue of 2005-07-11 and 18
Posted 2005-07-04
Posted 2005-07-04
The Playwright's Research
Here are some great websites for y'all to check out!
Hi Josh,
I'm glad you asked. I was starting to gather up information with a view to doing a website for the play when the time comes.
Here are some websites you can look at that discuss the continuing problem of torture under Obama.
2009 Torture Continues. In Bagram. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8116046.stm
Why it should be prosecuted (lots of internal links) http://www.truthout.org/what-torture-is-and-why-its-illegal-and-not-poor-judgment57622
US uses electric shocks, stress positions, etc. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/aug/11/world.humanrights
http://static.michaelmoore.com Feb 24 2010 68 lawmakers fully briefed by CIA
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/30/747973/-Torture-Autopsy-Reveals-Death-by-Enhanced-Interrogation&usg
Books that I have relied on a are Torture and Truth, by Mark Danner; Jane Meyer's The Dark Side; and A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror, by Alfred W. McCoy (I was in contact with him by email early on to ask him specific questions, like whether a psychologist might pose as a lawyer). Other books that were really helpful are Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror, by Steven H. Miles; Fixing Hell, by Larry C. James (an awful book, but he was a psychologist and army colonel who admits, in one tiny sentence buried in the middle of the book, that he was involved in torture. His attitude toward the Iraqis is also really telling); and the Lucifer Effect, by Zimbardo. There's also a book by a former interrogator, Matthew Alexander, that I read. He champions himself as a big proponent of interrogations that don't involve torture but unapologetically describes his use of psychological torture.
I'll send you more links that specifically relate to issues in my play as I gather them up (and hunt them down again).
Here's a website that describes the debate within the APA over psychologists' involvement in torture:
Here are two websites that will explain why the new Army Field Manual is still flawed (Robert's comment when Susan invokes it--"Read the fine print." Under Appendix M, it allows abusive tactics on certain detainees. From the last page you can see it allows solitary confinement past 30 days, with permission, sleep deprivation, and manipulation of environment (the frequent flyer program, where detainees were moved every few hours.) It is recommended for use with fultility and fear up approaches.
Just to explain what some of these attachments are, Appendix H was an appendix to a Pentagon torture manual used throughout Latin America in the 80s (classes were taught at the School of the Americas using this manual). The basic approaches it describes are still relied on.
The Kubark Manual is an old Cold-War era manual that formed the basis of the more recent techniques. The Regression attachment is either from the Kubark Manual or the 80s Pentagon Manual.
More on the use of psychological torture is here:
My play would have to be set in the year 2007. As an aside, there is a group that has broken off from the APA in protest of the APA's weak stance on psychologists' involvement in torture. I'll send you more on that later. They're based in New York.
I hope this is enough to get you started. Any questions, please ask. I've done a lot of research and I've been immersed in issues related to torture for years through human rights work. I wrote a book with torture survivor Dianna Ortiz--The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. It describes in detail what torture is like from the perspective of the victim/survivor. Not light reading, but it was the impetus for writing this play.
Let me know if you have questions.
Pat
Thursday, April 1, 2010
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