Thursday, April 24, 2008
Sobre la Felicidad
Este es un artículo sobre las teorias que ponen la felicidad al alcance de nuetras manos.
Es buena informacion para una clase de historia de la psicología. Sé que le encontrarán su gracia.
NYRB. Volume 55, Number 5 · April 3, 2008
Are You Happy? By Sue M. Halpern
The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want
Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment
Stumbling on Happiness
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy
What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings
Chances are if someone were to ask you, right now, if you were happy, you'd say you were.[1] Claiming that you're happy—that is, to an interviewer who is asking you to rate your "life satisfaction" on a scale from zero to ten—appears to be nearly universal, as long as you're not living in a war zone, on the street, or in extreme emotional or physical pain. The Maasai of Kenya, soccer moms of Scarsdale, the Amish, the Inughuit of Greenland, European businessmen—all report that they are happy. When happiness researcher Ed Diener, the past president of the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, synthesized 916 surveys of over a million people in forty-five countries, he found that, on average, people placed themselves at seven on the zero-to-ten scale.[2]
No doubt the conditions in which these 916 surveys were taken, and their methodologies and measures, were inconsistent. In some cases, respondents were approached face-to-face, at home. In others, they were interviewed by phone. Some conversations were mediated by translators, others by village elders. In some surveys, people were asked, "Generally speaking would you say you are very happy, fairly happy, not too happy?" In others they were asked how they'd rank, on a one-to-seven scale, the conditions of their life. In yet another they were asked to locate themselves on a ladder of self-satisfaction, where the bottom rung, zero, was "the worst possible life" and the top rung, ten, was "the best possible life."
This ladder was constructed by demographers at the Gallup organization as part of its World Poll, begun in 2005, in which a representative sampling of adults in 132 countries were asked the same set of questions in an effort to serve up consistent cross-cultural data. Whether that kind of consistency is possible is questionable—but so is pinning down happiness and its various proxies like life satisfaction and well-being. As Steve Crabtree, one of the researchers involved in the development of the World Poll, wrote recently in the Gallup Management Journal, "If ever there was a concept that sounds 'fuzzy,' well-being is it."[3] (In the same survey, respondents were also asked if they smiled a lot the previous day and if they had been treated with respect that day.)
Nonetheless, Crabtree was confident that his colleagues had "cracked the code," and developed ways to get valid measures of happiness, both individ-ually and nationally, and across income groups and genders and age cohorts. Diener is too. In an essay called "Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and Life Satisfaction," he observes that self-reports of happiness mirror "expert" analyses, which he considers to be a good indication of their reliability. He also notes that people like being asked how they are feeling because calling on them to rate themselves is "democratic" and "grants respect."[4] Of course, this may lead some to wonder if there isn't a kind of Heisenberg effect in play here: if being asked how one feels enhances one's sense of well-being, one might be inclined just then to feel pretty good. I say this only partially in jest since, as Diener notes in the same essay, "estimates of happiness and reports of affect over time are likely to be influenced by a person's current mood."[5]
Still, since nearly all of us say we're happy (especially if we live in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, and Switzerland, which are among the happiest of happy places), it is somewhat disconcerting to observe the burgeoning library of "get happy" books. Individually and together, they suggest, first, that we may not be as happy as we say we are, and second, that if we're not, it may be our own fault. These books, many of which have similar, bright yellow aspects to their covers—yellow being the sign of warmth, enthusiasm, and, yes, happiness, according to color researchers—are, to a large extent, the popular expression of a decade-old subdiscipline of academic and clinical psychology that seeks practical wisdom through the study of healthy, rather than pathological, behaviors and adaptations. Called positive psychology, it was conceived of by Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, who wedded the postwar humanist approaches of Erich Fromm and Abraham Maslow to the seemingly more rigorous—which is to say ostensibly measurable—methodologies now allowed by high-speed computers and brain scanners.
More than anything, positive psychologists are keen to be seen as scientists, part of a broader movement in social science that, as Christopher Peterson explained in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science a few years ago, "assumes that human goodness and excellence are as authentic as disease, disorder, and distress...[and] relies on empirical research to understand people and their lives."[6] Working alongside Seligman, Peterson and a handful of other members of what they called the Positive Psychology Steering Committee created what he describes as an "aspirational classification" of human goodness called Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. At nearly eight hundred pages long, the CSV is a kind of good cop to the bad cop of the traditional Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is primarily a taxonomy of disease and despair.
Rather than a catalog of all that can go wrong in a life—alcoholism, anorexia, schizophrenia, kleptomania, to name a few—the CSV offers an inventory of traits, behaviors, and conditions that lead not only to mental health but also, according to its authors, to "the good life." These include such core characteristics as wisdom, courage, justice, transcendence, and temperance, and the numerous routes—what the authors call character strengths—that lead to these virtues: creativity, love of learning, and curiosity among them. The authors, who make no attempt to disguise their normative intentions, say they looked to the writings of historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, and contemporary figures such as Sir John Templeton (the mutual fund tycoon who bankrolled a good chunk of the endeavor), as well as the insights found in Hallmark cards, bumper stickers, and Harry Potter, to come up with their lists of virtues and strengths.
Positive psychology, which is founded on the belief that "good character can be cultivated,"[7] has, not surprisingly, spawned numerous, less hefty volumes than the CSV, each aimed at leading readers to the good life. This is not the good life of easy money and fast women (and men) but, rather, a life of self-reported contentment and fulfillment. In this it is not only reminiscent of the concerns of moral philosophy but heir, too, to the kind of popular evangelical individualism promoted by Norman Vincent Peale (author of The Power of Positive Thinking) in the last century and Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life) in this one.
Though Seligman and his peers are quick to point out that they are not championing a secular or any other kind of religion, and reiterate their allegiance to science to back up their claims,[8] and while their intercessions invoke no deity, their work is cut from the same uniquely American cloth of entitled self-actualization—the idea that you can be whoever you want to be, that the gold ring of happiness is yours for the taking. Consider Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside, for example. An acolyte of Seligman's who contributed to the formulation of the CSV, and the author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, she contends that "a full 40 percent of the capacity for happiness is within your power to change."
To arrive at this precise formulation Lyubomirsky conceives of a pie chart divided into three parts. Half of the pie is taken up by genetics, a sliver by circumstance, and the rest by you and your willpower. By genetics, Lyubomirsky means a shared, familial temperament rather than a known set of genes. Like Martin Seligman before her (in Authentic Happiness, his popular exegesis of positive psychology), Lyubomirsky's understanding of what she calls the "set point" for happiness—the inherent "baseline or potential for happiness to which we are bound to return, even after major setbacks or triumphs"—draws on a host of studies of identical and fraternal twins by the late David Lykken (who coined the set-point metaphor) and his colleagues at the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Studies.
Lykken had been surprised to learn from the work of Ed Diener and others[9] that the answer to the questions "Are those people who go to work in suits happier and more fulfilled than those who go to work in overalls? Do people higher on the socioeconomic ladder enjoy life more than those lower down? Can money buy happiness? Are black Americans less contented on average than white Americans? Are men happier than women?" was a resounding no. If socioeconomic status wasn't driving one's sense of happiness, what was? Beginning in the 1980s, Lykken and his colleagues surveyed 2,310 pairs of identical and fraternal twins, some reared together, others brought up apart, looking to see how closely mood, affect, temperament, and other traits tracked with shared genes and/or a shared environment.
What they found (from a smaller subset of the original group) was that the "reported well-being of one's identical twin, either now or 10 years earlier, is a far better predictor of one's self-rated happiness than one's own educational achievement, income, or status." This held not only for identical twins raised together but for those brought up apart, while for fraternal twins raised in the same household, the likelihood that one's sense of well-being matched one's twin's was, statistically speaking, not much greater than chance.
The second piece of Lybuomirsky's pie, the shard of circumstance, is the fallout from the questions about working in overalls or suits, about money buying happiness, about class and gender. As Diener's work, as well as Nobel Prize–winning economist Daniel Kahneman's pioneering research into what is now sometimes called hedonic psychology, showed, for most people one's circumstances in life are not the main determinants of one's sense of happiness. Bad turns of events, such as accidents, job loss, and divorce, cause unhappiness, just as good turns, like getting a promotion, winning the lottery, or moving into a new house, can cause joy. In both cases, however, once the initial emotional response fades—if it does—one's sense of well-being returns to where it had been before. More is only more for a while, then becomes the status quo. It is the same with loss. (Which is why, for instance, a year or so after an accident, people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries tend to be, on average, no more or less happy than anyone else.)
Putting aside the trickiness of making a single pie chart out of a mélange of studies, Lyubomirsky's central point is clear: a significant portion of what is called happiness—the 40 percent of what's left after birth and circumstance have had their say—is up for grabs. Taking some pages out of the positive psychology playbook, she coaches readers on how to snag it: find meaningful work, count your blessings, smile, do good. Curiously, this was not the conclusion reached by David Lykken and his collaborator Auke Tellegen, who found that over time the nonnegotiable biological aspects of temperament increased to the point where "it may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller and therefore is counterproductive." If that were true, the how of happiness would be a fait accompli, determined at birth. One could be led to drink from the cup half full by books like Lyubomirsky's and it wouldn't matter in the long run.
Still, it's in the shorter run that we live, driven by assumptions of free will, which may be why positive psychology, which is inherently optimistic, is so appealing. Tal Ben-Shahar's Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment is a nearly ecstatic ambassador of this point of view. The book is pitched as "the backbone of the most popular course at Harvard," Psychology 1504, "Positive Psychology," a claim made on the basis of the number of students who fill Sanders Theatre to listen to Ben-Shahar's lectures and go off to write
papers in which they grapple with their fears and reflect on their strengths, set ambitious goals for the week and for the coming decade [and are] encouraged to take risks and find their stretch zone.
It is full of exercises like "creating a hap-piness map" and thought experiments that he calls "time-ins"—meant no doubt to suggest the popular parenting technique of giving misbehaving children "time-outs"—that are intended to bring people closer to fulfillment. (But probably not, Ben-Shahar points out, those who are suffering from depression, acute anxiety, exceeding poverty, or political oppression.)
"Do you, at times, feel part of the rat race?" one time-in asks. "Looking at your life from the outside, what advice would you give yourself?" While time-ins and happiness maps may sound hokey, depending on your set point for bunkum, Ben-Shahar is simply repackaging what the happiness researchers now know—that the people who say they are happy are those who are part of a community, have purpose-driven lives, and don't sweat the small stuff. (The researchers also know from their surveys that the happiest of happy Americans are Republicans, social butterflies, and bigots.)
We are living a happy life when we derive pleasure and meaning while spending time with our loved ones, or learning something new, or engaging in a project at work. The more our days are filled with these experiences, the happier we become. This is all there is to it.
Sonja Lyubomirsky would not disagree. Unhappy people, she says, can become happier by "learning the habits of happy people." "Deciding to become happier entails making a choice about which perspective you take and acknowledging that the choice is in your hands." Like Ben-Shahar, Lyu-bomirsky sees people as autonomous creatures operating with unfettered free will: "The focus of this book is on the individual, on you," she reminds readers about halfway through. This is true, she says, even for those endowed with the so-called "depression" gene (the short allele of 5-HTTLPR), which predisposes bearers to despair when they're under duress because stress triggers the expression of the gene, which interferes with the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin (the same neurotransmitter that popular anti-depressants like Zoloft and Prozac are said to enhance). But, she argues, since individuals can avoid stressful situations by choosing instead to put themselves into constructive environments, "this means that no matter what your genetic predisposition, whether or not that predisposition is expressed is in your hands."
Well, maybe, up to a point. But one doesn't choose to be in car accidents, or even to witness them, or know that one's wonderful spouse will develop Alzheimer's thirty years down the line or choke on a chicken bone. One of the great frustrations and paradoxes of this you-have-the-power approach is that while it looks to community to relieve anomie, it often fails to place individual lives in a believable setting. It's not that it assumes a kind of emotional or even economically level playing field where everyone is basically the same; it's that it takes for granted that because particular circumstances—that smallest piece of Lyubomirsky's pie—do not significantly make people more or less happy over time, they do not matter to us as individuals at any time.
But it cannot be true that we can always choose to turn on the switch for happiness any more than we can choose, in advance, that our lives will be untouched by the events of the day. Certainly, those events and often their consequences fade—this has been one of the most robust findings of the happiness researchers. But when they occur, and in their immediate aftermath, they are very real, and sometimes they are lasting, or followed the next day by other distressing events, and the antidotes of "activities like practicing daily gratitude, focusing on the best person you can possibly be, being generous, and spending quality time with loved ones" not only may be unavailable, their unavailability may be the very cause of unhappiness.
In one of his book's first "time-ins," Tal Ben-Shahar poses this query to his readers: "How would you define happiness?" It's a reasonable question, and one that would seem central to the whole happy-making enterprise. It would be impossible to know if you were happy, or happier, until you knew what happiness was. By posing it this way—by asking you to define happiness for yourself, and me to define it for myself—he's suggesting that happiness is unique and individual and means different things to different people. It's not like asking people to define "thermometer" or "radio" or some other tangible phenomenon that exists or has existed in the physical world and whose properties are commonly known and agreed upon.
Happiness, which has no physical attributes (even if some neuroscientists claim they can see it in the brain), is a feeling, not a thing. This may account for the fuzziness and disagreement that occur when definitions are proposed. Philosophers, psychologists, and econ-omists all come at it from their particular ideological perspectives (how it relates to the common good, for example, or to the function of markets), while regular folks come at it as it relates to them. As Charlie Brown and his pals well knew, happiness is two kinds of ice cream, finding a pencil, having a sister, anything and anyone that's loved by you.
Of course, we all know people who are not made happy by having a sister, finding a pencil, or any kind of ice cream. As Daniel Gilbert points out in his charming best-seller Stumbling on Happiness, "all claims of happiness are claims from someone's point of view." While this may not matter when we talk to each other, it may matter when researchers ask respondents to rate how happy they are on a scale of one to ten, since not only is happiness itself subjective, so are the numbers intended to "measure" its intensity. My five may be your three. Your three may be his seven. The variability of human experience is why social science can be so ungainly. Gilbert thinks the way around this is to ask a lot of people the same question, which is what he calls "the law of large numbers," but others (among them certain "hard" scientists), unconvinced that the same fuzzy question asked of lots of folks will yield more clarity than the same fuzzy question asked of fewer of them, might call it the law of diminishing returns.
Daniel Gilbert, however, is a psychologist—a Harvard psychologist, though not, it should be noted, a positive psychologist—and aggregate data are what he has to work with. As imperfect as they are, they still offer insights into the human condition, and it's the human condition with which he's most concerned. Individuals matter—most of the book is spoken directly and jocularly to you, as in "You've had an awful day—the cat peed on the rug, the dog peed on the cat, the washing machine is busted, World Wrestling has been preempted by Masterpiece Theatre—and you naturally feel out of sorts"—but only, really, to the extent that what can be said about one person's experience can pretty much be applied to someone else's. Unlike the positive psychologists, and despite the title of his book, the part of the human condition that intrigues Gilbert the most is not how we get happy, but why happiness eludes us when it does. For Gilbert, it has to do with time.
Gilbert's issue with time is not the same as, say Ben-Shahar's. It's not because of supply and demand (too little supply, too much demand) but, rather, of epistemology: we don't really understand it. Living in the present as we do, we're constantly required to project ourselves into the future with decisions small and large: should I study math, should I have a Snickers bar, should I have another one? We make these calculations all the time, hurling ourselves headlong from now to then, over and over again, most of the time failing to recognize we're doing something so automatic.
Even when it's not, though, and we agonize over a decision, we go about assessing the choices in the same, and according to Gilbert, faulty, way. For one thing, we tend to believe that how we feel now is how we felt before as well as how we'll feel next month. And then next month comes, and our feelings are different, and we can't understand why we're not happy. (Gilbert calls this misstep "presentism," and our self-propulsion into the future, "nexting.") For him, imagination, the conduit of both presentism and nexting, is a weak link, as is memory, which tends to be a spotty catalog of unusual events, experiences, and feelings, rather than a complete and unbiased record.
If we take account of the inadequacies of memory and imagination, happiness, when it comes, would seem to be the product of either false consciousness or dumb luck. Even so, like the positive psychologists, Gilbert believes that it's within our power to make ourselves happier, or at least make better and more accurate and ultimately more satisfying choices (which will therefore make us happier, at least with our choices), and in a similar way—by copying. But while his colleague Ben-Shahar and other positive psychologists propose emulating the habits of successfully happy people, Gilbert suggests something much more modest: find your dopple-gänger, a person who has done the thing you're considering doing, and ask if he or she is happy. "If you believe (as I do)," he writes,
that people can generally say how they are feeling at the moment they are asked, then one way to make predictions about our own emotional futures is to find someone who is having the experience we are contemplating and ask them how they feel.
Thinking of moving from Manhattan to Sun City? Then ask someone who did. Wondering if you should take up yodeling? Talk to a yodeler.
Of course, relying on a sample of one is probably not going to tell you too much, especially when the sample is intrinsically biased. (Instead of talking to a yodeler, why not talk to someone who dropped out of yodeling class?) But this is not the objection Gilbert anticipates. He supposes that we'll reject the idea of surrogacy on the grounds that "other people are not me" and so our experiences can't be comparable. According to him,
...we spend so much time searching for, attending to, thinking about, and remembering [individual] differences, we tend to overestimate their magnitude and frequency, and thus end up thinking of people as more varied than they actually are.
In fact, the growth and popularity of the Internet can be attributed in large measure to its promotion of surrogacy, with sites like Trip Advisor, Amazon, and the Internet Movie Database that let us see what others have to say about the Red Roof Inn at LAX and a Sharp 1.4 cubic foot silver microwave and It Happened One Night. If in the past we relied on critics, whose judgment we may have trusted because we considered it to be expert, now we go to the opinions and experiences of everyday folk—people like us—and it's nearly obligatory these days to consult them.
Leaving aside whether a night at an airport motel or a new microwave will contribute to our immediate, long-term, or overall happiness, the real problem with surrogacy is that when it really matters it's often unavailable. If the question is "should I marry Joe?" who is my surrogate if no one has been married to Joe before? Is it all married women, half of whom are destined to be ex-wives at some point in their lives? And what if there is a former Mrs. Joe? Do I ask her? Or consider dog ownership. I'm thinking about getting a mutt from the pound. Do I simply talk to others who have gotten dogs that way, or do I need to find someone whose profile is similar to mine (travels a lot, no near neighbors) or a dog whose profile is similar to my prospective pet's (part pit bull, part chow, part who knows what) or both? It may be that the reason people don't use surrogates for much besides shopping or dining out is because dependent variables matter, but no one has yet developed the kind of analyses that would clue us in on which ones matter most.
Still, there are some situations that are so universal that they'd seem ideal for surrogacy. If I'm thinking of having a child, I can ask friends, or siblings, or even my parents if they think it's a good idea. Chances are, most of them will tell me to "go for it" because motherhood is one of the great joys of life. Survey data, however, does not bear this out. As Gilbert reports,
careful studies of how women feel as they go about their daily activities show that they are less happy when taking care of their chil-dren than when eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television.
If Gilbert is correct that the only time a person can accurately say how he or she is feeling is right now, then this fact about the moment-to-moment unhappiness of mothers may suggest that another reason we don't rely on surrogates is that evolution doesn't want us to be happy all the time.
Neither, for that matter, does Eric Wilson. His short and gleefully peevish volume, Against Happiness, is an inventory of complaints about people who pursue happiness as a vocation, a birthright, or both. They're deluded, he says, unrealistic, inauthentic. They fail to acknowledge the misery in the world, and live in emotionally gated communities. Their intentional obtuseness is the cause of cultural vapidity, environmental destruction, blandness, cupidity. Better to be "born to the blues," as he is, he declares, and experience the world in all its dimensions.
Though Wilson calls himself "melancholic," a reader, encountering Against Happiness, might sense, in addition, his anger, and sometimes his rage. Anger and rage describe certain emotional states, ones that are related to each other, but are not the same thing. Similarly, there is happiness, and also joy and glee and delight and contentment and exhilaration—a whole thesaurus page of words that are similar but not irreducible. For writers, this diversity of language is often a good thing, but for social scientists it can be tricky. As Jerome Kagan observes in his blessedly nuanced, provocative study, What Is Emotion?:
The rational numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 have an aesthetic quality that is shared with the purity of the terms sad, angry, fearful, and happy, tempting us to assume that each word names only one phenomenon.
That they don't results in all sorts of messiness, including disagreements about what constitutes the basic human emotions and even what emotion is. Kagan, a professor emeritus of psychology at Harvard, would like to table those discussions for the time being; simply acknowledging the wiliness of words and concepts, he suggests, would bring some coherence to a field that is being further muddled by the introduction of brain scans as evidence of specific feelings. As he puts it:
A colored photograph of a brain state created with the help of a brain scanner is no more equivalent to an emotion than a picture of an apple represents the texture and taste of the fruit.
Kagan, who is a graceful and incisive writer, is doing something unusual here: he's writing a kind of valedictory letter to younger psychologists, neurobiologists, and social scientists, cautioning them not to get ahead of themselves: to find a common language, to not be seduced by the pretty pictures coming out of the brain scanner. For those of us lucky enough to eavesdrop, it's instructive as well—part caveat emptor, part intellectual high bar. Emotions like happiness and sadness, which we all assume we understand because we've personally experienced them, may be less intuitively obvious than we think. In addition to the insufficiencies of language, there are cultural, gender, and social variations that are not always taken into account, so that meanings are not universal. This is what Ed Diener and his colleagues were getting at when they attempted to determine precisely what the Maasai, the Amish, and the Inuit of Greenland meant when they said they were happy. The Amish, for example, reported relatively low "self-satisfaction," which could be accepted on its face, or seen as the manifestation of a culture that considers pride and self-promotion sinful.
Even cultures that are more accessible and seemingly well known are not necessarily transparent. Consider an upwardly mobile American who works hard throughout school and college and then continues to work hard in his profession, even after making more than enough money to cut back or retire. Conventional wisdom says that this poor soul is engaged in the joyless pursuit of joy because he believes that more money and more stuff will make him more happy. Kagan, however, suggests that his motivation may be something else altogether—that having established a pattern of hard work and reward early on that has been historically associated with pleasant feelings, he may feel some sort of psychological distress if he does otherwise. Working hard may be its own reward, but not for the obvious reason.
Sensitive to all kinds of glibness, Kagan is especially wary of the use of animal models to describe or mirror human emotions. Rats exposed to electric shocks when a light turns on learn to fear the light, but it is another thing altogether to suppose that a conditioned fear response in a rat is comparable to anxiety in a human, or that a drug that neutralizes the rat's fear will have the same effect on people—though those are both common assumptions. "It is worth noting that rats can be conditioned to avoid eating a particular food," Kagan writes,
but no one has argued that this fact provides a useful model for understanding women who avoid eating fats and carbohydrates because they want to be physically more attractive.
That dogs with separation anxiety are given Prozac may have less to do with the similarities between human and canine anxiety and more to do with a general tendency to treat symptoms, not causes.
And so it comes back to the problem of relying on overly broad, categorical, static words like fear and happiness to describe, diagnose, predict, and expound, words that don't get us very far, as patients, as subjects, as readers. This problem with language may explain why, though we all say we're happy, the library of how-to-get-happy books and why-we're-not-happy books is expanding. Anyone who spends time in that section of the stacks is likely to cheer Jerome Kagan's transcendent (hopeful, gracious) and courageous (brave, valiant, courteous) request:
Let us agree to a moratorium on the use of single words, such as fear, anger, joy, and sad, and write about emotional processes with full sentences rather than ambiguous, naked concepts that burden readers with the task of deciding who, whom, why, and especially what.
Notes
[1] "Are We Happy Yet?," a report by the Pew Research Center, February 13, 2006; cited in Eric G. Wilson, Against Happiness, p. 5.
[2] Robert Biswas-Diener, Joar Vittersø, and Ed Diener, "Most People are Pretty Happy, But There Is Cultural Variation: The Inughuit, the Amish, and the Maasai," Journal of Happiness Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (September 2005).
[3] "The Well-Being Revolution," Gallup Management Journal (gmj.gallup.com), December 13, 2007.
[4] Ed Diener, Richard E. Lucas, and Shigehiro Oishi, "Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and Life Satisfaction," in Handbook of Positive Psychology, edited by C.R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 64–65.
[5] Diener et al., "Subjective Well-Being," p. 65.
[6] Christopher Peterson, "Positive Social Science," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 591, No. 1 (January 2004), pp. 187–188.
[7] CSV, p. 3.
[8] Martin E.P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness (Free Press, 2002), p. 288, note 96.
[9] David G. Myers and Ed Diener, "Who Is Happy?" Psychological Science, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1995).
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Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Monday, August 14, 2006
Psicólogos, Guantánamo y la tortura
Psicólogos, Guantánamo y la tortura
Una profesión pugna por salvar su alma
Una profesión pugna por salvar su alma
By: Stephen Soldz,
Published: CounterPunch
Traducido del inglés para Rebelión y Tlaxcala por Germán Leyens,8 de agosto 2006.
Traducido del inglés para Rebelión y Tlaxcala por Germán Leyens,8 de agosto 2006.
Durante años, las diversas profesiones relacionadas con la salud mental en EE.UU. se han estado librando luchas territoriales. Los psiquíatras tratan de impedir que los psicólogos puedan realizar terapias o, más recientemente, que receten medicamentos psicotrópicos. Los psicólogos lucharon por derechos para realizar esos tratamientos. Los psicólogos, por su parte, se batieron contra los intentos de sus colegas a nivel de maestría por lograr el reconocimiento profesional. Los asistentes sociales, asesores de salud mental, y psicoanalistas bregan todos por lograr reconocimiento contra la oposición de los demás.
Estas batallas son libradas mediante el cabildeo y la presión legislativos tradicionales. Sin embargo, también tienen lugar mostrando el valor de un grupo en particular en la promoción de los intereses de los poderosos y mediante representantes organizados de cada profesión que mantienen acceso a los pasillos no-legislativos del poder. Así, ser bien recibidos por los poderosos sin enajenarlos, puede ser un aspecto central de la estrategia de avance de una profesión.
En esta lucha, que ha durado décadas, la profesión de la psicología ha tratado de distinguirse de diferentes maneras. Una de estas es subrayar su carácter científico. De este modo, representantes de la psicología organizada tratan por todos los medios de demostrar el valor de la “ciencia de la psicología” a los poderosos en la industria y en el gobierno, incluyendo a los militares y a los dirigentes de la seguridad nacional. Además, se ha puesto énfasis en el valor de la psicología para los dirigentes de la educación, así como su valor en las relaciones industriales y en la mercadotecnia. La Segunda Guerra Mundial presentó muchas oportunidades para que la psicología demostrara su valor en el esfuerzo bélico incluyendo la selección de soldados, el desarrollo de técnicas de propaganda para motivar al frente interno y para debilitar la moral del enemigo, el uso de factores humanos en el diseño de mejoras de aviones, y el tratamiento de victimas psicológicas de la guerra.
El desarrollo posterior a la Segunda Guerra Mundial de un Estado militarizado de seguridad nacional ofreció muchas oportunidades nuevas para que la psicología obtuviera atención para sus contribuciones al arte de la propaganda y al desarrollo de armas utilizables de alta tecnología a través del diseño basado en factores humanos, entre muchos otros.
Un área particularmente inquietante en la que los psicólogos trataron de demostrar su valor fue el desarrollo de técnicas avanzadas de interrogación que permiten obtener información de cautivos reacios mediante la aplicación de técnicas de modificación de la conducta basadas en la ciencia psicológicas. El historiador Alfred W. McCoy ha arrojado luz sobre esta área en su reciente libro: “A Question of Torture” y en numerosos artículos y entrevistas. Documenta el esfuerzo de la CIA durante decenios por utilizar la pericia psicológica para desarrollar formas de tortura que quebranten la personalidad de los detenidos, incapacitándolos, se esperaba, para negarse a proporcionar información deseada. En el conflicto de Vietnam se utilizaron numerosas técnicas de este tipo, así como en las brutales campañas de contrainsurgencia patrocinadas por EE.UU. en Latinoamérica en los años setenta y ochenta del siglo pasado.
Semejantes aplicaciones del conocimiento psicológico planteaban problemas peliagudos para la psicología organizada, que siempre busca nuevos caminos para demostrar su valor para los poderosos. Mientras su cualidad censurable desde el punto de vista moral imposibilitaba un aval directo, una condena directa de esas aplicaciones correría el riesgo de enajenar precisamente a los responsables de la toma de decisiones que podrían ser impresionados por las contribuciones potenciales de la psicología como ciencia y como profesión. Por lo tanto, lo que se esperaría de la Asociación Psicológica de EE.UU., la principal representante de la psicología organizada del país, es que guardara silencio ante tales abusos de la psicología, y lo que se observó fue precisamente su silencio.
La Guerra Global contra el Terror lanzada después del 11-S. presentó otra oportunidad para experimentar con esas técnicas de tortura basadas en la ciencia de la conducta. El establecimiento de un centro de detención en Guantánamo para los detenidos durante la guerra de Afganistán y otras batallas en la “Guerra Global contra el Terrorismo” aseguró un ambiente particularmente favorable. Se creó una institución total en la que los reclusos, los detenidos, no tienen, por lo menos según la opinión del gobierno, ningún derecho en absoluto y donde todos los aspectos de su vida diaria pueden ser supervisados y controlados. La doctrina legal del gobierno subrayó que en lo esencial todo, con la excepción del asesinato directo, es legalmente aceptable.
Incorporaron a varios “científicos de la conducta” de la psicología y de la psiquiatría para que ayudaran a desarrollar esta institución total dedicada a la destrucción completa de la personalidad. En 2005 se reveló en el New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) y en el New York Times que profesionales de la salud mental estaban sirviendo de consultores en Equipos de Asesoría en la Ciencia de la Conducta [BSCT, por sus siglas en inglés] (a los que se refieren coloquialmente como equipos “galleta”) en Guantánamo, a fin de asesorar a los interrogadores. Asesoran en todos los aspectos de los interrogatorios. Como Jane Mayer de New Yorker declaró a Democracy Now!, un psiquiatra determinó que a un recluso en particular se le permitirían siete trozos de papel higiénico por día, mientras que a otro recluso que temía a la oscuridad se le mantuvo deliberadamente en una oscuridad casi total. Otro consultor en ciencia de la conducta, el psicólogo James Mitchell, recomendó que los interrogadores trataran a un detenido de una manera que produjera una forma de indefensión conocida como “indefensión aprendida.”·
Los autores M. Gregg Bloche y Jonathan H. Marks señalaron en su artículo de 2005 en New England Journal of Medicine [NEIM] que los interrogatorios en Guantánamo son organizados a menudo de forma que aumenten el estrés utilizando medios que están al borde de la, o incluso constituyen, tortura.
“Los interrogadores militares en la Bahía de Guantánamo han utilizado medidas agresivas de contra-resistencia de modo sistemático a fin de presionar a los detenidos para que cooperen. Estas medidas han incluido, según se informa, privación del sueño, reclusión en solitario, posiciones corporales dolorosas, sofocación ficticia, y palizas. Otras tácticas de inducción de estrés han incluido presuntamente provocación sexual y manifestaciones de desprecio hacia símbolos islámicos.”
Señalan a continuación que:
“Desde fines de 2002, psiquiatras y psicólogos han formado parte de una estrategia que emplea extremo estrés, combinado con recompensas para modificar la conducta, para extraer información justiciable de cautivos que oponen resistencia.”
Recientemente, el Comité de Naciones Unidas contra la Tortura fue más lejos y declaró que “la detención indefinida de personas sin acusación, constituye per se una violación de la “Convención” contra la Tortura. Por lo tanto, según este organismo oficial, la existencia de Guantánamo en su forma actual es de por sí ilegal. A continuación, se sumó a numerosas organizaciones e instituciones, incluyendo recientemente, el Parlamento Europeo, para pedir la clausura de Guantánamo.
[Se puede encontrar más información sobre las técnicas de interrogación utilizadas por las fuerzas estadounidenses en Guantánamo y otros sitios, así como sus efectos en el bienestar psicológico de los que han sido sometidos a ellas, en el informe de Médicos por los Derechos Humanos: “Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces. (Quebrántalos: El uso sistemático de la tortura psicológica por las fuerzas de EE.UU.)]
Incluso si se deja de lado el aspecto general de si los interrogatorios del tipo realizado en Guantánamo pueden ser considerados de alguna manera como moralmente aceptables, la participación de profesionales de la salud mental en ellos está potencialmente en conflicto con los códigos éticos que rigen las profesiones psiquiátrica y psicológica, los de la Asociación Psiquiátrica de EE.UU. y de la Asociación Psicológica de EE.UU. El escándalo de Abu Ghraib con su evidencia fotográfica centró dramáticamente la atención en los abusos que ocurrieron en las instalaciones de detención estadounidenses en esta Guerra Global, y después de que se informó ampliamente sobre los horrores que ocurren en Guantánamo y el papel de profesionales de la salud mental en ellos, se hizo más difícil mantener el silencio de la asociación psicológica. La presión aumentó sobre las asociaciones Psicológica y Psiquiátrica para que hicieran algo respecto a la ayuda de psicólogos y psiquiatras en los interrogatorios que utilizan la tortura en Guantánamo.
Después de un amplio período de discusión y debate, el 22 de mayo de 2006, la Asociación Psiquiátrica de EE.UU. apoyó una declaración de política que estipuló sin ambigüedades que bajo ninguna circunstancia psiquiatras deben participar en interrogatorios en Guantánamo o en otros sitios. La sección crucial señala:
“Ningún psiquiatra debe participar directamente en el interrogatorio de personas bajo custodia de autoridades investigadoras o de mantenimiento del orden militares o civiles, sea en EE.UU. o en otros sitios. La participación directa incluye la presencia en las salas de interrogatorio, la formulación o sugerencia de preguntas, o el asesoramiento de las autoridades respecto al uso de técnicas específicas de interrogatorios de detenidos en particular.”
Al contrario, la Asociación Psicológica de EE.UU. [APA, por sus siglas en inglés], se ha negado rotundamente a aprobar una declaración semejante, diciendo sólo que los psicólogos deben conducirse éticamente. Inicialmente, la organización hizo lo que las organizaciones hacen a menudo cuando se ven mezcladas en alguna controversia indeseada: nombraron un Grupo de Tareas. El Grupo de Tareas recibió un mandato amplio para considerar qué posición debería tomar la Asociación ante la participación de psicólogos en interrogatorios de seguridad nacional en general. Ese mandato puede haber surtido el efecto de diluir el enfoque del Grupo de Tareas sobre los abusos en Guantánamo y la participación de psicólogos en ellos.
Ese Grupo de Tareas Presidencial sobre la Ética Psicológica y la Seguridad Nacional incluyó a miembros de la división de Psicología de la Paz de la Asociación, pero también incluyó a psicólogos involucrados en actividades relacionadas con la seguridad nacional y las fuerzas armadas. (Una fuente afirma que cuatro miembros, de unos ocho, están relacionados con los militares. Otra fuente cree que menos miembros tenían conexiones militares o de seguridad nacional. Una tercera fuente, un artículo publicado por un Presidente de División de la Asociación, indica que 6 de 10 miembros “tienen vínculos con el Departamento de Defensa.”
Sorprendentemente, la composición del Grupo de Tareas fue mantenida en secreto, “debido a preocupaciones expresadas por su seguridad personal,” como explicara un antiguo miembro que se negó a dar más detalles. Sin embargo, se ha establecido que el Grupo de Tareas incluía al coronel Louie (Morgan) Banks, identificado por Jane Mayer en el New Yorker del 7 de julio de 2005 como psicólogo involucrado en el programa de Supervivencia, Evasión, Resistencia y Escape del Pentágono (SERE) que capacita a personal militar que podría estar en peligro ser capturado, para que resista abusos extremos de sus aprehensores. Extrañamente, para ser alguien que participa en un organismo que recomienda políticas, el coronel Banks ni siquiera es miembro de la Asociación. Frank Summers, activista que intenta cambiar la política de la Asociación, describió de modo sucinto el problema de que Banks esté en el Grupo de Tareas, cuando escribió recientemente en un correo electrónico: “¿no es lo mismo que él haya sido incluido en el Grupo de Tareas que si pusieran a Cheney a cargo de la política energética?” Aparte de Banks, algunos informes señalan que por lo menos otro miembro del Grupo de Tareas tuvo conexiones con Guantánamo, pero no he podido conseguir una confirmación inequívoca de este hecho.
Igual que en el caso de la participación en el Grupo de Tareas y su proceso de nombramiento, la información sobre las deliberaciones del Grupo de Tareas fue también mantenida en secreto: los miembros acordaron que el informe del Grupo de Tareas sería autosuficiente y que no se discutirían las deliberaciones. El informe indica que no se llegó a acuerdo sobre varios aspectos. Otros informes indican que un débil borrador original fue reforzado por la presión de miembros descontentos de la Asociación.
El Grupo de Tareas publicó su informe final en junio de 2005. Utilizando un procedimiento muy poco habitual, el Consejo de Directores de la Asociación adoptó formalmente de inmediato el informe sin la discusión y la aprobación usuales por parte del Consejo de Representantes, de base más amplia. Este informe declaró explícitamente que es ético que los psicólogos participen en interrogatorios de seguridad nacional.
“Es consistente con el Código de Ética de la APA que psicólogos sirvan en roles consultivos para procesos de interrogación y de recolección de informaciones para propósitos relacionados con la seguridad nacional.”
Aunque el informe reiteró que los psicólogos no deberían estar involucrados de ninguna manera en “torturas u otro tratamiento cruel, inhumano o degradante,” el Grupo de Tareas declaró que no se le encargó la realización de ningún tipo de investigación, y por lo tanto no se formó una opinión sobre si había ocurrido alguna conducta poco ética.
El Grupo de Tareas concluyó además que no se necesitaban modificaciones del Código de Ética de la Asociación para encarar los temas relacionados con el servicio de psicólogos en varios papeles en la seguridad nacional. Extrañamente, considerando los orígenes del grupo de tareas en la controversia sobre abusos (alias tortura) en Guantánamo, el informe no menciona ésa ni ninguna otra instalación específica.
Al parecer los miembros no-militares, bienintencionados, del Grupo de Tareas fueron menos hábiles que los funcionarios de la APA que le dieron una tarea tan amplia, involucrando todos los tipos de papeles de seguridad nacional, que los miembros no se atrevieron a decir que los psicólogos deben abstenerse por completo de participar en actividades relacionadas con la seguridad nacional. Una vez colocados en esta posición, los miembros terminaron por declarar perogrulladas comparables con las palabras tranquilizadoras del gobierno de EE.UU. de que éste jamás realizaría torturas. Como el gobierno Bush, la dirección de la APA se negó a definir “la tortura u otro tratamiento cruel, inhumano o degradante,” privando a los edictos del Grupo de Tareas de toda fuerza para conformar realmente la política.
En una etapa tardía de la existencia del Grupo de Tareas, después de la publicación de su informe, mientras debían clarificar algunos detalles en una anotación en un Registro de Ética, renunció Mike Wessells, uno de los miembros no-militares, y declaró:
“la continuación del trabajo con el Grupo de Tareas legitima por omisión el silencio y la inacción más amplios de la APA respecto a los problemas cruciales existentes. A los niveles superiores, la APA no ha formulado una reacción fuerte, concertada, exhaustiva, pública e interna del tipo exigido por las severas violaciones de los derechos humanos en Abu Ghraib y en la Bahía de Guantánamo."
Wessells explicó que no se quejaba directamente sobre el Grupo de Tareas, que:
“tenía un mandato muy limitado y que no estaba estructurado de un modo que aseguraría el tipo de reacción exhaustiva o de proceso representativo requeridos.”
Se requería, más bien:
“Una reacción fuerte, preventiva, exhaustiva, que reafirmara nuestro compromiso profesional con el bienestar humano y que hiciera resonar una potente condena de la participación de psicólogos no sólo en la tortura sino en todas las formas de tratamiento cruel, inhumano y degradante de detenidos, incluyendo el uso de tácticas como la privación del sueño.”
Por supuesto, la Asociación nunca ha publicado una semejante “reacción fuerte, preventiva, exhaustiva”.
Una indicación más de que el informe del Grupo de Tareas no significó que la Asociación se interesara por hacer algo real respecto a la participación de psicólogos en la tortura, y como signo de apoyo para el Estado de Seguridad Nacional de George Bush, el entonces presidente de la APA, Ronald F. Levant, viajó a Guantánamo en octubre de 2005. El comunicado de prensa anunciando el viaje indicó hasta dónde la Asociación iría en su apoyo al campo que Amnistía Internacional califica de “el Gulag de nuestros días.” Dejó en claro que la dirección de la Asociación nunca se propuso detener la participación de psicólogos en Guantánamo. Al contrario, citaron al presidente Levant diciendo:
“Acepté esta oferta de visitar Guantánamo porque consideré la invitación como una importante oportunidad para seguir suministrando nuestra experiencia y orientación sobre cómo los psicólogos pueden jugar un papel apropiado y ético en investigaciones de la seguridad nacional. Nuestros objetivos son asegurar que los psicólogos agreguen valor y salvaguardias a tales investigaciones y que sean realizadas de modo ético y efectivo que proteja la seguridad de todos los participantes.”
Dieciocho meses después de que el escándalo de Abu Ghraib atrajera la atención del mundo a los horrores que ocurren en las instalaciones estadounidenses de detención, incluso después de que la prensa dominante publicara numerosos artículos sobre cómo el general Miller de Guantánamo contribuyó su propio tipo de brutalidad a Iraq con recomendaciones de “guantanamizar” Abu Ghraib, el comunicado de Associated Press no incluyó mención alguna de que en Guantánamo ocurriera algo fuera de lo normal. Como propagara el presidente Levant:
“’Este viaje me dio la oportunidad de formular preguntas y observar de primera mano una breve instantánea de la instalación de Guantánamo.’ ‘Como continúa la labor de APA en el estudio de los temas presentados por las necesidades de la seguridad nacional de nuestro país, este viaje fue otra oportunidad para que la Asociación informe y asesore el proceso.’”
La campaña de la Asociación para defender Guantánamo y la participación de psicólogos en ese lugar continuó bajo el siguiente presidente de la Asociación, Gerald Koocher. Un mes después de hacerse cargo del puesto, el presidente Koocher dedicó su columna presidencial del mes en el APA Monitor de la Asociación a defender a la organización y su negativa de hacer algo en respuesta a los bien documentados horrores que ocurren en Guantánamo. Con lenguaje orwelliano, intituló su defensa de la falta de acción ante la barbarie: “Hablando contra la tortura.” En su columna atacó a críticos de la Asociación al mismo tiempo que trataba de cambiar de tema:
“Una serie de comentaristas oportunistas que se presentan como eruditos siguieron informando sobre presuntos abusos por parte de profesionales de la salud mental. Sin embargo, cuando se les solicitó personalmente que suministren a la APA nombres y circunstancias en apoyo de semejantes afirmaciones, esos mismos críticos no presentaron ningunos datos y ningún miembro de APA ha sido vinculado a conductas contrarias a la ética profesional. La máxima periodística tradicional de informar quién, qué, dónde y cuando parece estar notablemente ausente.”
Por lo tanto, el tema político de la ética de la participación de psicólogos en las actividades ilegales en Guantánamo fue alterado para ser uno de culpabilidad personal. ¿Podía probarse que un cierto psicólogo identificado participaba en una conducta proscrita en particular? Mediante este truco la Asociación trató de negar todas las críticas de la prensa, de Naciones Unidas y de ONG. Ante la ausencia de una queja ética explícita contra un individuo, la Asociación no haría nada. Como lo sabía perfectamente la Asociación, los nombres de la mayoría de los psicólogos que ofrecieron sus “servicios” en Guantánamo, así como los detalles sobre lo que constituyen esos servicios, constituyen un secreto estrictamente protegido.
En el mismo artículo, el presidente Koocher utilizó una técnica común de dirigentes en dificultades ya que trató implícitamente a unir a la comunidad psicológica contra el odiado otro, los psiquiatras:
“Muchos de nuestros colegas psiquiátricos han presentado una crítica interpretativa, aunque su asociación profesional aún no ha aprobado una posición oficial. Un borrador propuesto a la asociación psiquiátrica incluye una lista detallada de tácticas específicas prohibidas que consideran torturas. Un análisis cuidadoso de su borrador muestra que tiene un parecido extraordinario con nuestra posición, aunque ningún periodista ha comentado todavía sobre este punto. Del mismo modo, ningún periodista – incluyendo a los que critican el informe de PENS – ha comentado sobre una interesante ironía: A pesar de la oposición de los psiquiatras a privilegios de extensión de recetas para los psicólogos, la lista de técnicas coercitivas prohibidas de la asociación psiquiátrica omite toda mención del uso de drogas, permitiendo implícitamente semejantes prácticas.”
En un reciente debate con críticos, Koocher utilizó una defensa más que parece destinada a un uso más amplio actual al aumentar la presión para que la Asociación actúe. Hizo una distinción entre los psicólogos que proveen servicios sanitarios a los detenidos, a los que, afirmó, les está prohibido utilizar la información obtenida por ese medio para ayudar a los interrogadores, y los asesores científicos conductuales que no están allí para atender a los detenidos y que por lo tanto pueden ayudar en los interrogatorios. Sin embargo, incluso Koocher tuvo que admitir que todos los psicólogos están obligados por el principio de “no hacer daño.” Él, por supuesto, no explicó como la participación en el funcionamiento de una institución hecha para destruir las personalidades de los encarcelados en ella puede llegar a corresponder al principio de “no hacer daño.”
La campaña de la Asociación Psicológica de EE.UU. por desviar toda crítica de la participación de psicólogos en Guantánamo ha sido constante. Miembros preocupados presionaron para que se realizara una investigación independiente para aclarar lo que los psicólogos realmente hicieron en Guantánamo, pero la Asociación se negó. Los miembros presionaron por un cambio del código ético declarando que los psicólogos no siguen leyes u órdenes cuando el hacerlo viola derechos humanos básicos, pero tropezaron con el argumento de que una tal declaración podría ser utilizada contra profesionales psicólogos en causas judiciales. Los críticos que trataron de lograr que la Asociación declarara explícitamente que debería consultarse el derecho internacional aparte de la ley estadounidense sobre temas tales como la definición de los derechos humanos y de su violación o la definición de la tortura y de la conducta inhumana, fracasaron. La dirección de la Asociación anunció que desarrollaría un artículo en el registro de ética aclarando la conducta aceptable e inaceptable en interrogatorios con apoyo de psicólogos, pero hasta ahora no ha cumplido.
Ésa era la situación cuando el New York Times del 7 de junio de 2006 reveló que el Pentágono tomó nota cuidadosamente de la posición de la Asociación y que, desde ahora, los militares preferirían a psicólogos a los psiquiatras.
“El doctor William Winkenwerder Jr., secretario adjunto de defensa para asuntos de salud, declaró a periodistas que la nueva política que favorece el uso de psicólogos en lugar de psiquiatras constituía un reconocimiento de posiciones divergentes adoptadas por sus respectivos grupos profesionales.”
Los militares habían estado utilizando por igual a psiquiatras y psicólogos en equipos de asesoría de ciencia conductual, para asesorar a interrogadores sobre cómo mejor obtener información de prisioneros.
Pero el doctor Steven S. Sharfstein, reciente presidente de la Asociación Psiquiátrica de EE.UU., señaló en una entrevista que el grupo adoptó en mayo una política que especificó inequívocamente que sus miembros no formarían parte de los equipos.
El grupo equivalente de los psicólogos, la Asociación Psicológica de EE.UU., ha adoptado una política diferente. Dijo en julio pasado que sus miembros que sirven como consultores en los interrogatorios que tienen que ver con la seguridad nacional deben “tener en cuenta factores específicos de esos roles y contextos que requieren una consideración ética especial.”
Para muchos psicólogos activistas en la Asociación que habían participado pacientemente en el juego del Grupo de Tareas de la Asociación, la discusión del Consejo, nota aquí, nota allá, sin que ocurra un cambio sustantivo en la política de la Asociación, esta noticia fue la paja proverbial que quebró la espalda del camello. Miembros que habían estado durante meses pidiendo cuidado y una actitud de ir paso a paso procedieron repentinamente a instar a que no se paguen las cuotas a la Asociación. En pocos días, se lanzó una campaña de correos electrónicos al presidente Koocher de la Asociación y en 48 horas se enviaron 300 correos. Koocher respondió con desdén y con un aire de condescendencia, mientras aprobaba explícitamente el deber de los psicólogos de ayudar al Estado de Seguridad Nacional. Una versión de la carta que envió es la siguiente:
“Usted está totalmente equivocado.
La APA no ha guardado silencio.
El Consejo de Directores de la APA comprende y aprecia que sus miembros tengan opiniones de peso sobre la participación de psicólogos en interrogatorios, y que sus opiniones no sean uniformes. Le ruego que reconozca que un interrogatorio no es el equivalente de una tortura y que existen muchos contextos civiles y militares en los que psicólogos participan éticamente en la recolección de información en función del interés público sin dañar a nadie y sin violar nuestro código ético. Le ruego que también examine los informes de prensa con un escepticismo saludable y que busque hechos, en lugar de dedicarse de forma reflexiva a campañas de escritura de cartas basadas en un acceso inadecuado a los datos.
El Consejo ha adoptado como política de la APA un Informe del Grupo de Tareas, que prohíbe inequívocamente que psicólogos participen en o aprueben la tortura u otro tratamiento cruel, inhumano, o degradante. Como base para esta posición, el Grupo de Tareas consideró primero el Principio A en los Principios Éticos de los Psicólogos y el Código de Conducta, “No hagas daño,” y luego el Principio B, que refleja las responsabilidades de los psicólogos hacia la sociedad. Ambas responsabilidades éticas juegan un rol central en la profesión de la psicología. En virtud del Principio A, los psicólogos no causan daño. En virtud del Principio B, los psicólogos utilizan su experiencia en, y su entendimiento de, la conducta humana para ayudar a impedir el daño.
En contextos relacionados con la seguridad interior y nacional, estos principios éticos convergen cuando se da mandato a psicólogos para que adopten pasos afirmativos para impedir el daño a individuos que son interrogados, y al mismo tiempo, ayuden a obtener información fiable que pueda impedir el daño a otros.
Es crítico señalar que al encarar estos temas mediante un informe del Grupo de Tareas, la Asociación Psicológica de EE.UU. respondió a psicólogos en entornos de la seguridad nacional que habían contactado a la APA buscando orientación sobre el camino más ético a seguir. El Consejo considera su responsabilidad el apoyo a nuestros colegas y miembros que se esfuerzan por comportarse correctamente. El Consejo alienta a sus miembros que tienen diferentes puntos de vista sobre éste o cualquier tema a que hagan conocer sus posiciones, y saluda la oportunidad de más discusión sobre este tema en la reunión del Consejo en agosto.”
Dejando de lado el “Usted está totalmente equivocado,” una introducción que mostró aún peor gusto al ser utilizada sólo unos pocos días después del suicidio de tres detenidos desesperanzados en el antro horrible de Guantánamo, la nota dejó en claro para los miembros titubeantes que la dirección de la Asociación se propone continuar haciendo lo mismo, que no es de esperar que ocurra acción alguna respecto al desafío moral de nuestros tiempos, a menos que los miembros la impongan.
En este momento, la dirección de la oposición fue tomada por la sección de Justicia Social (Sección 9) de la División de Psicoanálisis (División 9: verdad en las advertencias en embalajes: Soy miembro de esta Sección). Horas después de la recepción del mensaje de Koocher, miembros de la sección que se habían mostrado dispuestos a trabajar dentro de la estructura de la Asociación decidieron, como lo describió un miembro en un correo a la lista de direcciones de la Sección: “Es hora de que aceptemos el punto de vista de que la dirección de la APA participa totalmente en el problema de la utilización de la ofuscación y de la propaganda para justificar los actuales objetivos y métodos militares.”
Miembros de la Sección actuaron rápidamente para lanzar una campaña de petición exigiendo un cambio en la política de la Asociación. Se escribió rápidamente una Petición y fue enviada el 15 de junio [en http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/483607021] y comenzaron los intentos de hacerla conocer a los miembros en todos los diversos sectores de la Asociación. [Otra verdad en la advertencia del embalaje: Soy uno de los autores de la petición y aparezco como su patrocinador.]
En las semanas transcurridas desde entonces una serie de organizaciones, incluyendo las Divisiones de Justicia Social de varias divisiones de la Asociación y otras fuera de la Asociación, incluyendo a Médicos por los Derechos Humanos y el Fondo Ignacio Martín-Baró han iniciado discusiones sobre una estrategia coordinada para cambiar la política de la Asociación. Se obtuvo un acuerdo inicial para apoyar los intentos para que la Asociación, en su convención de agosto, reitere sus declaraciones de que los miembros no deben participar en la tortura o en interrogatorios abusivos. Parecería que no hay nada en esa declaración a lo que se oponga la dirección de la Asociación, que probablemente afirmará que ya forma parte de la política de la Asociación. Sigue abierta la pregunta de si este grupo irá más lejos y tratará de lograr que la Asociación declare que sus miembros no pueden participar en interrogatorios de detenidos de la Guerra Global contra el Terrorismo en capacidad alguna y bajo ninguna circunstancia. Parece poco probable que este grupo emprenda el paso adicional de exigir que la Asociación llame a cerrar Guantánamo e instituciones similares.
Sospecho que el cambio de la política de la Asociación necesitará una modificación de las tácticas utilizadas hasta ahora por los críticos. Hasta la fecha, la mayor parte de las objeciones desde el interior de la Asociación han sido formuladas de modo bastante limitado en términos de los detalles del código de ética y lo que dice, o debería decir, sobre la participación de psicólogos en interrogatorios coercitivos. Este enfoque lo coloca a uno en el campo del razonamiento legal y de la interpretación detallada de textos. Como demostraron siglos de argumento legal, un razonamiento semejante puede llevar a numerosas conclusiones diferentes, dependientes del objetivo del que razona. Y los funcionarios de la Asociación han dado pruebas de su habilidad, incluso de su genio, para torcer el razonamiento moral a fin de apoyar su posición de que los psicólogos tienen el derecho, tal vez incluso el deber, de servir en Guantánamo y en instalaciones similares. [Véanse por ejemplo, los argumentos decididamente diferentes, pero ambos bien presentados, del presidente Koocher en una entrevista de Democracy Now! el 16 de junio, y por el director de ética de la Asociación, Stephen Behnke, publicada aproximadamente al mismo tiempo: http://www.apa.org/releases/PENSfinal_061606.pdf] Aunque los críticos tienen que refutar en detalle esos argumentos, la batalla no tendrá éxito a ese nivel, tal como los cambios sociales importantes son logrados raramente en tribunales sin que cambios sociales simultáneos ocurran fuera de la corte.
Los miembros de la Asociación que critican la actual política han opuesto una resistencia extrema a denunciar abiertamente a Guantánamo por ser el campo de concentración que es. En general no se han unido de algún modo organizado a aquellos, como el Comité de la ONU contra la Tortura, que declaran claramente que una institución total que encarcela a gente “indefinidamente sin acusación, en la que los reclusos no tienen derechos, ni protección, virtualmente ninguna posibilidad de controlar algún aspecto de su entorno, constituye en sí una tortura. Los psicólogos, y todo ser humano moral, simplemente no tienen nada que buscar en una institución semejante. Estar allí en cualquier capacidad es hacer daño. Hasta ahora los argumentos han sido similares a los de una sociedad médica de la era nazi que hubiera objetado sólo a que doctores sirvieran en los campos de la muerte, y no a la existencia de los propios campos de la muerte. Creo que es un error.
La participación de psicólogos en Guantánamo no es simplemente un problema profesional. Es un importante desafío moral para el concepto mismo de utilizar el conocimiento para el bien y no para el mal. Si esta participación continúa, la psicología habrá perdido su alma, igual como todo nuestro país está en peligro de perder su alma, si apartamos la mirada de esos males que son cometidos en nuestro nombre.
A medida que miembros, y no-miembros, de la Asociación, desarrollan un enfoque más agresivo por un cambio de la política de ésta, deberían recordar esta historia. Deja en claro que la dedicación de los dirigentes de la Asociación a la demostración del valor de la psicología en el impulso de algunos de los aspectos más sórdidos del estado de seguridad nacional es profunda y que viene de largo. Los últimos días han producido más evidencia de los estrechos vínculos entre la Asociación y los militares; los críticos han sido informados que sólo una persona fue invitada a hablar ante la convención de la Asociación en agosto sobre el tema de Guantánamo, el general Kiley, jefe del servicio federal de salud del ejército que redactó el informe que recomienda que se utilice sólo a psicólogos para los interrogatorios. El general Kiley responderá solamente a preguntas sometidas por anticipado. Considerando los estrechos vínculos entre la Asociación Psicológica y los militares es evidente que la Asociación no será cambiada fácilmente. El cambio exigirá una amplia presión, utilizando una amplia gama de instrumentos, a fin de hacer impacto en una política tan profundamente establecida. Queda por ver si los miembros activistas estarán en medida de mantener la energía y la pasión provocadas por las recientes noticias y acontecimientos, o si de nuevo recaerán en ese estado de “impotencia docta” que al parecer es inducida intencionalmente por la conducta de la Asociación.
Stephen Soldz, investigador y psicoanalista, es director del Centro de Investigación, Evaluación, y Desarrollo de Programas en la Escuela de Posgrado de Psicoanálisis de Boston. Es miembro de Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice y fundador de Psicoanalistas por la Paz y la Justicia. Mantiene la página en la red de Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report. Para contactos escriba a: ssoldz@bgsp.edu.
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz08012006.html
Germán Leyens es miembro de los colectivos de Rebelión y Tlaxcala (www.tlaxcala.es), la red de traductores por la diversidad lingüística. Esta traducción es copyleft."
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Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Thomas McGlashan: A Career That Has Mirrored Psychiatry's Twisting Path
Scientist at Work Thomas McGlashan
A Career That Has Mirrored Psychiatry's Twisting Path
A Career That Has Mirrored Psychiatry's Twisting Path
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: The New York Times, May 23, 2006
The patient, Keith, was a deeply religious young man, disabled by paranoia, who had secluded himself for weeks in one of the hospital's isolation rooms. In daily therapy sessions he said little but was always civil, seemingly pleased to have company and grateful for a cigarette and a light.
Until one spring morning, when he wrestled the lighter from his therapist's hand and held it to his own head — igniting his hair.
"I grabbed him and was slapping at the flames, and he immediately became passive," said Dr. Thomas H. McGlashan, the man's therapist. "He went limp and pulled a blanket over his head."
He added, "That patient, that experience, changed everything for me."
In a career that has spanned four decades, Dr. McGlashan, now 64 and a professor of psychiatry at Yale, has with grim delight extinguished some of psychiatry's grandest notions, none more ruthlessly than his own. He strived for years to master psychoanalysis, only to reject it outright after demonstrating, in a landmark 1984 study, that the treatment did not help much at all in people, like Keith, with schizophrenia. Once placed on antipsychotic medication, Keith became less paranoid and more expressive. Without it, he quickly deteriorated.
Dr. McGlashan turned to medication and biology for answers and in the 1990's embarked on a highly controversial study of antipsychotic medication to prevent psychosis in high-risk adolescents. But doctors' hopes for that experiment, too, withered under the cold eye of its lead author.
Early this month, Dr. McGlashan reported that the drugs were more likely to induce weight gain than to produce a significant, measurable benefit.
Through it all, he has remained optimistic, restless, hopeful that he is close to understanding some of schizophrenia's secrets. In a way, his work mirrors the history of psychiatry itself, its conflicts and limits, its shift away from talk therapy to drugs and biological explanations for illness.
And for those who want a sense of what direction the field will take next — and how — Dr. McGlashan may serve as a kind of bellwether.
"Basically, you're talking about a person who can walk into an extremely hostile environment and deliver bad news; I don't know how to describe him better than that," said Dr. Wayne Fenton of the National Institute of Mental Health. He is a former colleague of Dr. McGlashan's at Chestnut Lodge, a psychiatric hospital in Rockville, Md., closed in 2001.
"At the lodge, he stood up and, in essence, told all these giants of psychotherapy that there was not a shred of evidence that what they were doing with schizophrenia patients was helping, much less curing the disorder," Dr. Fenton said. "And the therapies were being advertised as cures."
Dr. McGlashan is recognizable from a distance, a lean figure striding across the grounds of the medical school as if against a strong wind, chin forward beneath a mop of white-gray hair. On a typical day, he visits with adult patients at a state mental hospital in the morning and with adolescents in a private institute in the afternoon. He is a deliberate presence, solemn for long periods; but then he will remark on something absurd and tip backward with laughter.
This unsettling combination — gravity punctuated by sudden levity — may help explain his comfort with the world of psychosis.
"I thought he was the Antichrist when I first met him; I thought all the therapists were," said Keith, the patient at Chestnut Lodge who changed Dr. McGlashan's thinking in 1982. "But in the end I liked his sense of humor, and he liked mine, and I keep in touch with him."
Keith, who is now 47 and spoke by telephone only on the condition that his last name not be used, said he set his hair on fire that day because he was terrified that a great tribulation was at hand, during which he would be dragged by his hair before the devil.
"I really believed it was coming, any moment, and there was no way to escape," he said. "I still believe it's coming, but not right now; I'm not afraid of it." Dr. McGlashan joined the staff of Chestnut Lodge at a time when psychoanalysis was in ascendance in psychiatry, nowhere more so than at the lodge, which became known for its commitment to treat severe mental illness without antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs or electroshock therapy. It was thrilling just to be there, Dr. McGlashan recalled, hearing so many accomplished therapists offer seemingly powerful ideas about what troubled patients and why.
At the time he was treating Keith, Dr. McGlashan was pursuing a study for the hospital's owner, Dr. Dexter Bullard, to track patients years after treatment. Their records were revealing artifacts, detailing thousands of interactions in which therapists, steeped in psychoanalytic theory, tried to interpret patients' every word and gesture.
In one account, a psychiatrist described an outing when he bought a patient an ice cream cone. The patient refused it vehemently. "This was very exasperating to me," the therapist wrote. "She never did accept the cone, and I had to throw it away. I thought of it at the time as having represented a kind of rape situation to her."
Yet in his analysis of 446 cases, Dr. McGlashan found that about two-thirds of the former patients with schizophrenia who had been treated with psychoanalysis were functioning poorly and struggling in their relationships and in their jobs, if they had them. Their lives were no better than those of similar patient groups who had received little psychotherapy or none at all.
"I felt like people at the lodge had become lost in the process," he said. "We would have all these erudite conversations, talking about interpretations, and meanwhile the patient is crumpled in the corner of his or her room."
Chestnut Lodge changed some of its policies as a result of the study, allowing more drug treatment, job training and other programs.
Dr. McGlashan's intensity, and willingness to reverse course, was evident even in childhood. An ardently religious boy, he grew up with two sisters near Rochester, where his father worked at Kodak. In middle school, the youngster pored through the Bible, to the dismay of his father and the bemusement of his mother.
The devotion was isolating, Dr. McGlashan remembers, creating a mostly private world of mystery and awe. Then in his first year of high school, he met other Christian students, who belonged to a group devoted to proselytizing.
He was reluctant to join, and his father sensed it. "He saved me," Dr. McGlashan said. "He picked me up after a meeting and said it was O.K. to pull back" from the group.
"He was giving me permission."
He graduated second in his high school class and studied chemistry at Yale. He then entered the University of Pennsylvania's medical school, where, during a psychiatry rotation, he met his future. He interviewed a middle-aged Philadelphia businesswoman, who described to him a tortuous plot being hatched against her, involving family members and the F.B.I. "I thought, 'She can't possible believe this,' " Dr. McGlashan said.
He was hooked. Psychosis was isolating, too, and deeply mysterious even to scientists who spent their lives thinking about it. By the 1990's, most psychiatrists believed schizophrenia to be a genetically based brain disorder involving developmental changes that occurred well before the first full-blown psychosis. No one knew precisely what those changes were, but studies strongly suggested that they were real.
Moreover, psychiatric clinics periodically saw adolescents who seemed to be experiencing mild, prepsychosis symptoms. They were "prodromal," in the medical jargon, perhaps destined to develop a full-blown psychotic episode, perhaps not.
Dr. McGlashan and several others saw in these converging threads a possibility: maybe treating young people with drugs before they became psychotic would prevent the illness, and perhaps even help illuminate its cause.
Dr. McGlashan recalled patients at Chestnut Lodge who had spent decades receiving daily psychotherapy, to no avail, before receiving antipsychotic drugs and reclaiming some portion of normal life. One woman spent 18 years at the lodge, barefoot, unkempt, closeted in her room. One day, he said, he looked out a window and saw her going for a morning walk, smartly dressed, wearing shoes; she had recently been given medication and began taking daily walks.
"What right did we have denying her that?" he asked. "Small changes in a person's life, which I think is what we can expect, can make a big difference."
The risks of using drugs to try to prevent psychosis seemed to him moderate. New antipsychotics were becoming available, and, though they could have serious side effects, they appeared to be more tolerable than the older generation of drugs, and to reduce the risk of debilitating, Parkinson's disease-like side effects. So Dr. McGlashan began a study, financed in part by Eli Lilly, giving medication to adolescents considered at high risk for developing psychosis. But almost immediately, there were difficulties.
The test that Dr. McGlashan developed to identify those at high risk proved less reliable than he had hoped, meaning many adolescents would be exposed to drugs needlessly. Participants for the trial were hard to recruit. Mild psychosislike symptoms are rare in adolescents; and some who came in chose to continue seeing Dr. McGlashan or another psychiatrist but did not enter the study.
An ethical debate over the wisdom of early treatment ensued, and not everyone thought the potential benefit was worth the risk.
"Given the likelihood that psychosis is delayed and not prevented by the drugs, and given the severe side effects of the drugs, this is an idea that needs to be taken with great caution," said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard and a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
And in 2000, Vera Sharav, a prominent patient-protection advocate, wrote to government officials calling the experiment unethical, because "healthy children — who are not capable of voluntary, informed consent — are being put at high risk of harm for experimental purposes."
Officials from the federal Office for Human Research Protection began an investigation. About a year later, the agency concluded that the researchers needed to strengthen their informed consent documents to emphasize the side effects of the medication.
The researchers made the required changes, and the trial continued. But in a paper published this month, the authors reported that more than two-thirds of the participants had dropped out, rendering the trial inconclusive. Moreover, those on medication gained an average of about 20 pounds.
The entire process, almost 10 years in the making, has altered Dr. McGlashan's thinking again.
"I'm more pessimistic about all this now," he said. "I don't think the drugs can prevent full-blown psychosis, only delay it." He added, "I think more than ever we need to follow a group of prodromal adolescents who get no drug treatment to see more clearly what happens and refine our understanding of what the prodrome is."
Sitting in his office on a recent Tuesday morning, after having seen three patients taking a total of 10 drugs, Dr. McGlashan sighed. "I've never written so many prescriptions in my life," he said.
He said he had recently gotten a call from someone in England organizing a debate over whether high-risk adolescentsshould be treated with drugs. "He wanted to sign me up for the pro side, and I said absolutely not," he said.
Now colleagues are watching the progression of his thinking, wondering where his drive for answers will ultimately take him. "It's funny, he seems to be coming full circle," said Dr. Barbara Cornblatt, the director of the Recognition and Prevention Program at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., and an early critic of preventive drug treatment. "I may be more optimistic about early treatment than he is at this point."
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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Sobre la Evolución del Lenguaje
From Squeak to Syntax: Language's Incremental Evolution
By GARY MARCUS
Published: New York Times, April 11, 2006
The origin of human language has always been a puzzle. No animal communication system comes close to human language in its power, and by most accounts language has been on the planet less than half a million years, a mere blink of the eye in geological time.
How could this be, if language evolved like any other biological trait? Where is the trail of natural selection? Until recently, there was little direct evidence of language's evolution. Languages don't leave fossils, and while there has never been any dearth of theories explaining why language might have evolved (be it for grooming, gossip or seduction), empirical evidence has been hard to come by.
All that is finally starting to change. The booming science of comparative genomics is allowing researchers to investigate the origins of language in an entirely new way: by asking how the genes that underwrite human language relate to genes found in other species. And these new data provide a fresh example of the power of natural selection.
If language had been built on a completely unprecedented set of genes, Darwin (and his successors) would have a lot of explaining to do. With no more than a few hundred thousand years to play with, a linguistic system that depended on thousands of evolutionarily unprecedented genes would seem impossible. But evolution is about random processes that tinker with old parts, not about engineering new ones.
Most of the genes involved in language have some sort of close and ancient counterpart in other species. As a case in point, consider the first gene to be unambiguously tied to language, known as FOXP2, discovered by Simon Fisher and Anthony Monaco, Oxford geneticists.
Rather than emerging from scratch in the course of human evolution, FOXP2 has been evolving for several hundred million years — in a way that placed it perfectly for evolving a critical role in language acquisition.
Like individual people, genes have family histories, which comparative genomicists are finally in a position to reconstruct. FOXP2's lineage stems from a family of "forkhead" genes (named for a piece of the protein they produce). Forkhead genes have long been in the trade of managing the actions of other genes. (In the parlance of biology, they are "regulatory" genes.)
In the forkhead lineage, many related genes emerged, each with a different function. FOXP2 evolved from a particular set of descendant genes that early in the history of vertebrates began to specialize for controlling muscles.
Participation in motor control in turn placed FOXP2 in a prime position for evolving a role in vocal learning, as it did both in songbirds and in humans. FOXP2 is thus not a gene that was invented purely for the purpose of language, but rather, just as Darwin might have anticipated, a gene that has evolved over time — millions of years — adding new functions in successive generations.
Using the tools of molecular biology, a team of German and British scientists led by Svante Paabo probed further, discovering that the variants of FOXP2 found in other animals are remarkably similar to our own: the difference between the human and mouse version is just three amino acids; between human and chimpanzees, it is only two.
When tiny genetic differences are important — when they correlate with survival — they spread rapidly through the population, and that is exactly what has happened in the case of human FOXP2. Those tiny but critical changes have been inherited by essentially every member of our species, a sure sign of their evolutionary importance. In humans, mutations to the gene lead to a congenital disorder that impairs speech and the control of mouth and facial muscles.
If the case of FOXP2 is typical, what we are left with is a story in which language is a product not of some wholly new set of genes, but a long series of small but powerful evolutionary advances.
This is what Darwin called "descent with modification." An intelligent engineer faced with a brand new problem might start from scratch, but evolution instead rejiggers old parts for new functions.
From the perspective of function, human language is without evolutionary precedent. But from the perspective of biology, human language appears simply to be one more remarkable variation on an ancient set of ancestral themes.
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Saturday, April 01, 2006
Book Review / Reseña de Libros: The Secret History of Domesticity
The Secret History of Domesticity, by Michael McKeon(Johns Hopkins, 2006)
Published: The New Yorker, March 2006
This colossal study, nearly nine hundred pages long, by the author of the influential “The Origins of the English Novel,” attempts to show how, in English culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the relationship of public and private, once a tacit distinction, became an explicit and acknowledged separation. McKeon’s division between “distinction” and “separation” may seem arbitrary, but the strength of the book lies in the wealth of historical, literary, and pictorial examples that evoke the texture of domesticity, from bedchambers to bigamy. McKeon’s vigorous command of detail, evinced in passages on subjects like the dangers of hoopskirts and the origin of the cookbook, is sometimes obscured by a love of abstraction. The book is most successful when least general, and its final third—an engaging and briskly paced analysis of “secret histories,” romans à clef, and the domestic novel—could perhaps have been published as a separate volume.
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