Intelligent Disobedience As Resource for Preventing Abuse in National Security Interrogation

When it was revealed that officials of the American Psychological Association may have cooperated with the Bush administration to justify harsh interrogation techniques (which the government now classifies as torture), the APA retained David Hoffman, an attorney in Austin, Texas, to conduct an independent review and determine the facts of the reported collusion. The results of the Hoffman report caused the APA’s Council of Representatives to vote overwhelmingly on August 7 to prohibit psychologists from participating in national security interrogations, and committed to an extensive review of its ethics policies.

My fellow author and frequent contributor to Psychology Today, John Schuster, has written a major blog post on how the ideas in my new book, Intelligent Disobedience, are relevant to preventing future abuses. The post was accepted by the Psychology Today’s online editors and appeared August 17. View the article here: “Exploring the Good Kind of Disobedience”