| There is one place in which one's privacy, intimacy, | | | | anguish complements the perpetrator's view of his |
| integrity and inviolability are guaranteed - one's body, a | | | | quarry as "inhuman", or "subhuman". The torturer |
| unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and | | | | assumes the position of the sole authority, the |
| personal history. The torturer invades, defiles and | | | | exclusive fount of meaning and interpretation, the |
| desecrates this shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, | | | | source of both evil and good.Torture is about |
| repeatedly and, often, sadistically and sexually, with | | | | reprogramming the victim to succumb to an alternative |
| undisguised pleasure. Hence the all-pervasive, | | | | exegesis of the world, proffered by the abuser. It is an |
| long-lasting, and, frequently, irreversible effects and | | | | act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination. The |
| outcomes of torture.In a way, the torture victim's own | | | | abused also swallows whole and assimilates the |
| body is rendered his worse enemy. It is corporeal | | | | torturer's negative view of him and often, as a result, is |
| agony that compels the sufferer to mutate, his identity | | | | rendered suicidal, self-destructive, or |
| to fragment, his ideals and principles to crumble. The | | | | self-defeating.Thus, torture has no cut-off date. The |
| body becomes an accomplice of the tormentor, an | | | | sounds, the voices, the smells, the sensations |
| uninterruptible channel of communication, a treasonous, | | | | reverberate long after the episode has ended - both in |
| poisoned territory.It fosters a humiliating dependency of | | | | nightmares and in waking moments. The victim's ability |
| the abused on the perpetrator. Bodily needs denied - | | | | to trust other people - i.e., to assume that their motives |
| sleep, toilet, food, water - are wrongly perceived by | | | | are at least rational, if not necessarily benign - has |
| the victim as the direct causes of his degradation and | | | | been irrevocably undermined. Social institutions are |
| dehumanization. As he sees it, he is rendered bestial | | | | perceived as precariously poised on the verge of an |
| not by the sadistic bullies around him but by his own | | | | ominous, Kafkaesque mutation. Nothing is either safe, |
| flesh.The concept of "body" can easily be extended to | | | | or credible anymore.Victims typically react by |
| "family", or "home". Torture is often applied to kin and | | | | undulating between emotional numbing and increased |
| kith, compatriots, or colleagues. This intends to disrupt | | | | arousal: insomnia, irritability, restlessness, and attention |
| the continuity of "surroundings, habits, appearance, | | | | deficits. Recollections of the traumatic events intrude in |
| relations with others", as the CIA put it in one of its | | | | the form of dreams, night terrors, flashbacks, and |
| manuals. A sense of cohesive self-identity depends | | | | distressing associations.The tortured develop |
| crucially on the familiar and the continuous. By attacking | | | | compulsive rituals to fend off obsessive thoughts. |
| both one's biological body and one's "social body", the | | | | Other psychological sequelae reported include |
| victim's psyche is strained to the point of | | | | cognitive impairment, reduced capacity to learn, |
| dissociation.Beatrice Patsalides describes this | | | | memory disorders, sexual dysfunction, social |
| transmogrification thus in "Ethics of the unspeakable: | | | | withdrawal, inability to maintain long-term relationships, |
| Torture survivors in psychoanalytic treatment":"As the | | | | or even mere intimacy, phobias, ideas of reference |
| gap between the 'I' and the 'me' deepens, dissociation | | | | and superstitions, delusions, hallucinations, psychotic |
| and alienation increase. The subject that, under torture, | | | | microepisodes, and emotional flatness.Depression and |
| was forced into the position of pure object has lost his | | | | anxiety are very common. These are forms and |
| or her sense of interiority, intimacy, and privacy. Time is | | | | manifestations of self-directed aggression. The |
| experienced now, in the present only, and perspective | | | | sufferer rages at his own victimhood and resulting |
| - that which allows for a sense of relativity - is | | | | multiple dysfunction. He feels shamed by his new |
| foreclosed. Thoughts and dreams attack the mind and | | | | disabilities and responsible, or even guilty, somehow, for |
| invade the body as if the protective skin that normally | | | | his predicament and the dire consequences borne by |
| contains our thoughts, gives us space to breathe in | | | | his nearest and dearest. His sense of self-worth and |
| between the thought and the thing being thought about, | | | | self-esteem are crippled.In a nutshell, torture victims |
| and separates between inside and outside, past and | | | | suffer from a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). |
| present, me and you, was lost."Torture robs the victim | | | | Their strong feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame are |
| of the most basic modes of relating to reality and, thus, | | | | also typical of victims of childhood abuse, domestic |
| is the equivalent of cognitive death. Space and time | | | | violence, and rape. They feel anxious because the |
| are warped by sleep deprivation. The self ("I") is | | | | perpetrator's behavior is seemingly arbitrary and |
| shattered. The tortured have nothing familiar to hold on | | | | unpredictable - or mechanically and inhumanly |
| to: family, home, personal belongings, loved ones, | | | | regular.They feel guilty and disgraced because, to |
| language, name. Gradually, they lose their mental | | | | restore a semblance of order to their shattered world |
| resilience and sense of freedom. They feel alien - | | | | and a modicum of dominion over their chaotic life, they |
| unable to communicate, relate, attach, or empathize | | | | need to transform themselves into the cause of their |
| with others.Torture splinters early childhood grandiose | | | | own degradation and the accomplices of their |
| narcissistic fantasies of uniqueness, omnipotence, | | | | tormentors.The CIA, in its "Human Resource |
| invulnerability, and impenetrability. But it enhances the | | | | Exploitation Training Manual - 1983" (reprinted in the |
| fantasy of merger with an idealized and omnipotent | | | | April 1997 issue of Harper's Magazine), summed up the |
| (though not benign) other - the inflicter of agony. The | | | | theory of coercion thus:"The purpose of all coercive |
| twin processes of individuation and separation are | | | | techniques is to induce psychological regression in the |
| reversed.Torture is the ultimate act of perverted | | | | subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on |
| intimacy. The torturer invades the victim's body, | | | | his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of |
| pervades his psyche, and possesses his mind. | | | | autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As |
| Deprived of contact with others and starved for | | | | the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall |
| human interactions, the prey bonds with the predator. | | | | away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose |
| "Traumatic bonding", akin to the Stockholm syndrome, | | | | the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, |
| is about hope and the search for meaning in the brutal | | | | to deal with complex situations, or to cope with |
| and indifferent and nightmarish universe of the torture | | | | stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated |
| cell.The abuser becomes the black hole at the center | | | | frustrations."Inevitably, in the aftermath of torture, its |
| of the victim's surrealistic galaxy, sucking in the | | | | victims feel helpless and powerless. This loss of control |
| sufferer's universal need for solace. The victim tries to | | | | over one's life and body is manifested physically in |
| "control" his tormentor by becoming one with him | | | | impotence, attention deficits, and insomnia. This is often |
| (introjecting him) and by appealing to the monster's | | | | exacerbated by the disbelief many torture victims |
| presumably dormant humanity and empathy.This | | | | encounter, especially if they are unable to produce |
| bonding is especially strong when the torturer and the | | | | scars, or other "objective" proof of their ordeal. |
| tortured form a dyad and "collaborate" in the rituals | | | | Language cannot communicate such an intensely |
| and acts of torture (for instance, when the victim is | | | | private experience as pain.Spitz makes the following |
| coerced into selecting the torture implements and the | | | | observation:"Pain is also unsharable in that it is resistant |
| types of torment to be inflicted, or to choose between | | | | to language ... All our interior states of consciousness: |
| two evils).The psychologist Shirley Spitz offers this | | | | emotional, perceptual, cognitive and somatic can be |
| powerful overview of the contradictory nature of | | | | described as having an object in the external world ... |
| torture in a seminar titled "The Psychology of Torture" | | | | This affirms our capacity to move beyond the |
| (1989):"Torture is an obscenity in that it joins what is | | | | boundaries of our body into the external, sharable |
| most private with what is most public. Torture entails all | | | | world. This is the space in which we interact and |
| the isolation and extreme solitude of privacy with none | | | | communicate with our environment. But when we |
| of the usual security embodied therein ... Torture entails | | | | explore the interior state of physical pain we find that |
| at the same time all the self exposure of the utterly | | | | there is no object 'out there' - no external, referential |
| public with none of its possibilities for camaraderie or | | | | content. Pain is not of, or for, anything. Pain is. And it |
| shared experience. (The presence of an all powerful | | | | draws us away from the space of interaction, the |
| other with whom to merge, without the security of the | | | | sharable world, inwards. It draws us into the boundaries |
| other's benign intentions.)A further obscenity of torture | | | | of our body."Bystanders resent the tortured because |
| is the inversion it makes of intimate human relationships. | | | | they make them feel guilty and ashamed for having |
| The interrogation is a form of social encounter in which | | | | done nothing to prevent the atrocity. The victims |
| the normal rules of communicating, of relating, of | | | | threaten their sense of security and their much-needed |
| intimacy are manipulated. Dependency needs are | | | | belief in predictability, justice, and rule of law. The |
| elicited by the interrogator, but not so they may be met | | | | victims, on their part, do not believe that it is possible to |
| as in close relationships, but to weaken and confuse. | | | | effectively communicate to "outsiders" what they |
| Independence that is offered in return for 'betrayal' is a | | | | have been through. The torture chambers are "another |
| lie. Silence is intentionally misinterpreted either as | | | | galaxy". This is how Auschwitz was described by the |
| confirmation of information or as guilt for | | | | author K. Zetnik in his testimony in the Eichmann trial in |
| 'complicity'.Torture combines complete humiliating | | | | Jerusalem in 1961.Kenneth Pope in "Torture", a chapter |
| exposure with utter devastating isolation. The final | | | | he wrote for the "Encyclopedia of Women and |
| products and outcome of torture are a scarred and | | | | Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the |
| often shattered victim and an empty display of the | | | | Impact of Society on Gender", quotes Harvard |
| fiction of power."Obsessed by endless ruminations, | | | | psychiatrist Judith Herman:"It is very tempting to take |
| demented by pain and a continuum of sleeplessness - | | | | the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is |
| the victim regresses, shedding all but the most primitive | | | | that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the |
| defense mechanisms: splitting, narcissism, dissociation, | | | | universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The |
| projective identification, introjection, and cognitive | | | | victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share |
| dissonance. The victim constructs an alternative world, | | | | the burden of pain. The victim demands action, |
| often suffering from depersonalization and | | | | engagement, and remembering."But, more often, |
| derealization, hallucinations, ideas of reference, | | | | continued attempts to repress fearful memories result |
| delusions, and psychotic episodes.Sometimes the | | | | in psychosomatic illnesses (conversion). The victim |
| victim comes to crave pain - very much as | | | | wishes to forget the torture, to avoid re-experiencing |
| self-mutilators do - because it is a proof and a | | | | the often life threatening abuse and to shield his human |
| reminder of his individuated existence otherwise blurred | | | | environment from the horrors. In conjunction with the |
| by the incessant torture. Pain shields the sufferer from | | | | victim's pervasive distrust, this is frequently interpreted |
| disintegration and capitulation. It preserves the veracity | | | | as hypervigilance, or even paranoia. It seems that the |
| of his unthinkable and unspeakable experiences.This | | | | victims can't win. Torture is forever. |
| dual process of the victim's alienation and addiction to | | | | |