Psychology’s service to U.S. national security has produced a variant of what the psychiatrist Robert Lifton has called, in his study of Nazi doctors, a “Faustian bargain.” In this case, the price paid has been the American Psychological Association’s collective silence, ethical “numbing,” and, over time, historical amnesia. 3 Indeed, Lifton emphasizes that “the Nazis were not the only ones to involve doctors in evil”; in defense of this argument, he cites the Cold War “role of …American physicians and psychologists employed by the Central Intelligence Agency…for unethical medical and psychological experiments involving drugs and mind manipulation.” 4
Alfred W. McCoy, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation
amnesia, cia, cold-war, collective-silence, conspiracy-of-silence, ethical-violations, evil, faustian-bargain, human-rights-abuse, human-rights-violations, mind-control, nazi-doctors, psychological-manipulation, selective-amnesia, torture, traumatic-amnesia, unethical-treatment