Special Hearings — Mental Health Workshop — 1997-11-20

PROF NICHOLAS: Thank you Mr Chair, for the opportunity of speaking here today.  My presentation will comprise four parts.  I have made a previous presentation to the TRC and I will like to just continue from there in my first part.  I will try and find out particular questions of psychological involvement in torture or  promoting torture, and I got some replies from the main people who employed psychologists in (indistinct).
 Also I would give you a brief overview of what those replies entail.  Then I want to particularly focus on psychological and psychiatric testimony within the TRC and I will focus on six cases specifically which I see is an abuse of psychological testimony.
 Thirdly, I will offer a pet theory of mine that can elucidate the relationship between the torture and tortured.
 And fourthly I will spend some time looking at the implications for the future, and I am planning to do all that in about ten to fifteen minutes.
 Firstly the people that I wrote to on behalf of the TRC, to find out very specific questions which I will read to you as well, was the South African Medical Services who employ psychologists in their arena of psychological services, the South African Police Services, who have a psychology section and the Human Sciences Research Council and they are kind of the main (indistinct) of employers of psychologists.
 I was quite taken aback that all of them replied extremely confidently that not a single psychologist or a single effort that they could trace, had ever even remotely contributed to a violation of gross human rights' or in any particular way.
 What I also found interesting is that two of them had very similar (indistinct).  Basically that in the military and the police, they are only speaking of people who are psychologists and registered within their service.  There may be psychologists in other services who are not working as psychologists, who are employed in other categories, and it was not their brief to provide any information on these others who may be out there.  They are sceptical that this may happen, so in effect the official record from these services are that there was just never any focus on these, there were never any role of psychologists in this.
 But they do concede that possibly people may have heard that psychologists did X or Y, it was just never within their particular service.  The only rebuttal to that that I could find, was in Breton Breytenbach's book, The Confession of a Terrorist, where he talks about his personal interactions with psychologists, who didn't seem to be very humane.
 But to give you a flavour of the kind of responses that we got from the services, I will look at the Police Service report that I have here.  I wanted to know obviously the numbers of psychologists and the assistants in the rehabilitation of torture victims and the nature thereof, and they were very clear that no psychologist were involved in the assistance and the rehabilitation of victims.
 The main focus of psychologists in the Police Service, is the police members or their families and not anybody else at all.  That is the main focus initially.
 Whether psychologists were involved in interrogations of prisoners and the nature thereof?  Nothing of the kind happened.  They only mentioned one psychologist who was involved in (indistinct) of interrogation techniques, but was only applying this to serial killers and to nothing else, so that is the only psychologist that gets mentioned.
 Whether psychologists were involved in research or experiments or on intelligence, industrial, military or prison setting that could have violated human rights' and the nature thereof? No psychologist was involved in this.
 It is the policy of the Police Service to register all the research projects and after they checked all of it, they found not one research project that link to this.
 And all research is done on the basic principal that the respondent's privacy and rights are maintained and respected.
 The duties and obligations of psychologists assigned to work with political prisoners and detainees.  Again they indicated that the focus point of the service was always only the police officer, not the community or the detainees or prisoners.
 Any research that would shed any light on the violation of human rights'?  They also then indicated that no research was done in this regard.  And they would go on to comment that they can't talk about anybody who is not officially working for them, and that is very similar to the mortuary response.  Wendy even arranged a private setting for us where we could try, because there was some things that were secret, but the secret things we found were really of no consequence.
 It had to do with research into a subliminal technology, some issues around hostage taking, but nothing that anybody couldn't know about.  They were very careful to indicate that this was very secret and then again, they also said that none of their psychologists were involved in anything.
 If there were psychologists, they weren't under the ambit of the people responsible and who were reporting at that time.  The HSRC just sent me a letter saying that they had never done anything at all that is related to any of this, and they unfortunately cannot help me.
 So that is the first section on official culpability of psychologists which came subsequent to my previous submission.
 My second part, which is really the part which I am most interested in because I am also most concerned about, which is psychological and psychiatric testimony.
 The specific testimony that I am going to focus on is the testimony of Brigadier Cronje, Captain Hechter, Captain Mentz, Van Vuuren and Venter and Captain Benzien.
 What I have done, was to with the help of the TRC get hold of the psychologists' reports on these people and how psychological testimony was then used in mitigation and my main worry is that all of these reports have been - the main issue under mitigation is that all of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
 I don't know, I don't think judgement has been levelled on the value of this particular testimony, but the main thing about post-traumatic stress disorder is that internationally people will be very surprised to hear that it is even being thought of that it could be applied to perpetrators.
 This was a category developed within the diagnostic and statistic manual, version 4, and this is a manual that virtual all psychologists and psychiatrists use particularly for official diagnosis where there are any official repercussions within the legal system and generally used in the mental health system.
 The main issue that I found troubling was that even though it is fairly clear that this was not the original intention through this kind of diagnostic category, it was just accepted that even though the perpetrators didn't conform to the major criteria of this diagnosis, that the testimony still went on.  
 I just spent, I got the stuff pretty late, and I spent quite a while reading though 800 pages of testimony on the one case, that I want to discuss in a little more detail.
 It does seem a little bit funny at times, but I mean I anticipate that should this be successful, you would get hoards of applications saying you know this is great, and this is why I really wanted to place a bit of focus on it.
 Now, when the lawyer for the survivors of torture questioned, he did in fact also use - this is a photostat from that manual - he did ask the psychologist in the Benzien case that in his criteria it states quite clearly that the person's response to the event, must involve intense fear, helplessness or horror.  Now, if you are a psychologist, you know that this manual rarely says must.
 It is really saying this is an absolute requirement.  It always says these are the main features, there may be deviations here or there, you should consider X, Y and Z, that is how, that is the terminology in which this manual describes.
 Right at the start on the 7th line, this is what is said.  The way that the testimony then continued was that the psychologist who testified in the (indistinct) said well, obviously it doesn't conform completely to this, but there are all these other indicators.
 The other indicators that were within this diagnostic category could be a result of a range of other problems as well, and if you go through that manual you find that these problems are there as well.
 I was thinking there were 50 pages of testimony and the testimony should have really stopped at that point.  When you testify in a professional capacity as a psychologist, and you use a particular diagnostic category, you have to conform and say okay, this is it.  Otherwise you have to use another category.
 You have got ... (tape ends) ...  in fact take place without the psychologist either from the TRC side or from the survivors' side, be present, and that would be a strong recommendation from me for the future.
 The other part of this was that in the end, the psychologist did in fact then say no, she believes that Benzien did experience helplessness or horror and my next question will then be, she doesn't talk about the intense fear, is what are the mechanisms underlying somebody who repeatedly exposes himself to the same phenomena and then repeatedly said that he experiences this phenomena.  It just doesn't make sense.
 This unfortunately didn't come up in the questioning.  You know we can still stretch the argument to say regarding to a situation, he can have his experiences, but you can't say that five, ten, fifteen times over a period of 15 years, this person then subjected himself to these kinds of things.  I also think there may be a case for this kind of testimony  to also be referred to the professional bodies, not just for (indistinct) and saying this is the kind of testimony that is being presented and the TRC might consider doing that as well.
 The other interesting aspect about this kind of testimony which is given in the other five cases, now in the other five cases, the psychiatrist I don't see his name on this reports, who presented the testimony in the Cape, that according to the scale that he applied,  a scale that is developed for survivors for these traumatic events, that none of them experienced intense fear, helplessness or horror.
 So, that already will exclude them in terms of using this diagnostic category, even though this is then offered.  Then another interesting secondary argument is made in Benzien and in the other cases, which is if you participate in gross human rights' violations, if you torture people, you obviously as a human being, if you are not totally blunt, you will have reactions to it, you might not sleep too well, you may lay awake and so on, because you do this and you may do it on a regular basis, but then you make the argument that because you are experiencing this, you must be excused for actually doing it in the first place.
 This is also an argument that comes out of it.  So your current state for example, which is the result of it is then given as an excuse for why you are doing it as well, and that doesn't make much sense either to me.
 But that kind of testimony was also allowed in this kind of professional psychiatric and psychological testimony.  The other thing is this PTSD seems to be such an attractive category for people evaluating them, that even if it clear that you don't suffer from it, for example, in two of the cases, two of the ones presented here, the person presenting the report, is so convinced that you must that the  first case an explanation was offered that you are so blunted that you don't realise that you suffer from it.
 Which is a bit if you are a psychologist, you know how strange that must sound.  And the second category given in one of the reports is a group report written for the five people, is that there is some question that the person might be suffering from border line personality disorder, and the one personality block the other one out, so according to this report, everyone in this group  is suffering from it - some may not know, others know, some aren't helpless, but you know, PTSD is the flavour of the month.
 I just hope - I am presenting it here hoping that something can still be done in the period to try and at least get a psychologist or psychiatrist to offer some rebuttal testimony when testimony like this is presented.
 There were a couple of things that I wanted to just read out.  I know my time is going on, I won't spend too much time on double bind theory, it is in my submission and it is a little complex, so what I am interested in is that when you present this kind of testimony, you should also not be allowed to get away with generalisations and with professional opinions about general (indistinct) that has nothing to do with your particular discipline, and I find the report should plead with that kind of, for example a psychologist who would say no, she thinks this person is a victim of the system.  She has no basis for saying why from a professional opinion, this could be so or making comments about how good a policeman somebody was.  All that is really not permissible in terms of the status in which a professional has at a particular hearing of that nature.
 In looking at some of the testimonies from survivors, what I was surprised at is that a lot of the memory loss had to do with identifying co-conspirators and people who were with at the time.
 There seems to be no credence given to the fact that it is possible through some psychological conditions, for memory to be blocked, for memory to become vague and just for natural conditions, but there are also well-know methods of jogging your memory, of exposing you to material that will allow you to regain certain memories, that it doesn't seem to factor in that somebody can get a week to go and sit with old trial records and say okay, would you remember of these people, that is a possibility.
 And the other thing is that once somebody seems to come to the Commission and say well, they are sorry and so on, it is almost as if suddenly they are elevated in a very high moral ground, much higher than anybody else there and they are allowed to get away with that as well.
 For example, in Ashley Forbes' questioning Benzien about it, and trying to get Benzien to indicate exactly what he has done, some for which his memory is vague and some for example where his memory is very clear.  Now, when you have memory problems, it usually affects a range of your certainties about what you remember.
 You don't like have a memory problem about one particular area and you know everything else about all the other areas, and that was striking about the testimony as well.  That somebody would say no, he knows everything about what has happened in the range of circumstances and he is very clear for the last 20 years, he can remember it, but he gets very vague and so on in other areas.
 And this is Mr Benzien's response to one of it which links up to my other theory.  He says Your Honour, it shocks me and causes me to be sad to presume or that I had presumed that this meeting is truth and reconciliation, and that Mr Forbes now puts it to this forum that I tried to put a bag over him while he was in hospital and he was detained in Grootte Schuur hospital at that stage.  I think it is - I don't know what to think Your Honour, I am acceptionally disappointed.
 This is somebody who has tortured somebody and who is apparently you know, sorry that he has done so.  I leave it to you to assess the flavour of that kind of response.
 I don't have much time to go through some of the other bits that I think stands out in the actual testimony that I have gone through, but those kinds of inconsistencies are repeated within that testimony and I would hope that a professional able to evaluate that would be present in future submissions of this kind.
 Let me skip over the double bind theory and it is in that submission, so you can read it should you be interested in it and go on to implications for the future.  I am a bit hesitant to do this part of it because it almost seems to me as if this Reparations Committee is kind of the stepchild of the TRC.  You know, I don't have much faith that you are going to harness to many resources or that - I mean I appreciate it, but it was a struggle just to get me up here to be able to speak on this, and I know that the people here are making valiant efforts.
 But nevertheless, in terms of implications for dealing with this particular part of my submission, which partly also has to do with what is the knowledge base that underpins what one would evaluate and understand under the psychology or psychiatry of torture and oppression.
 I know that in really most of our institutions, more than 90 percent of our institutions, the study of these kinds of phenomena in a range of disciplines, not only psychiatry and psychology, anthropology, sociology has really not had a high profile.  I think that from this Commission that especially State linked institutions should have a period, a focus period where they adopt the issues that have arisen from this Commission, as a high profile nodule point of investigation, practise, training to redress not only the (indistinct) in knowledge, but also that there aren't enough people being trained in this country to deal with the issues that are coming up, even if we do set up Reparatory structures, but secondly internationally the field of torture studies and rehabilitation is extremely weak theoretically.
 I mean if you attend the conferences and read the journals as I do, you can see that there is a general multi-disciplinary approach, there is a general approach towards providing testimony that allow some kind of (indistinct), but theoretically it is very underdeveloped.
 The other thing that stands out for me is that there have been huge resources harnessed in the process of the TRC period.  I don't know what the plans are, it doesn't seem as if it is that explicit to in fact maintain those resources so they can provide the research base in some form, so that they can provide access to the public to still continue to see video archival material and continue to consult transcripts of testimony and to continue to see to what extent this process can remain as open and as public as it has been in the past.
 I am going to stop here, I am a little over enthusiastic on this topic, so I will leave it for questions.