Stress Positions are Torture

Some days, my whole body hurts. Sometimes it’s just my legs that hurt. They hurt at the thighs most intensely, but also along the arches of my feet. I’ve described the sensation to my doctors as a burning sensation, the kind of pain you feel from muscular exhaustion.

There is no medical explanation for my pain. And yet there is.

Growing up, I was placed in what are euphemistically referred to as “stress positions”–positions in which a disproportionate amount of stress is place on a small number of muscles, at first causing discomfort and eventually leading to intense pain.

At Guantanamo, detainees are frequently subjected to stress positions during interrogation–“short-chaining” so that they are restrained in uncomfortable positions throughout the course of the interrogation. Seated detainees cannot sit up straight. Standing detainees cannot stand up. Enough of this, and you start finding yourself wanting to tell the interrogator whatever he wants to hear, just to get out of the short-chaining.

It is referred to as an “enhanced interrogation technique,” and justified as necessary for reasons of safety and security. But stress positions are a form of torture. And it is well-documented that torture is neither humane nor effective: the desire to end the torture motivates the victim to please the perpetrator, rather than to tell the truth.

Detainees are also placed in other stress positions as well, including what is sometimes referred to as strappado which places terrible stress on the shoulders, causing unbearable pain, dislocation, and sometimes nerve and ligament damage.

The most effective stress positions in torture are those that provide the prisoner with a choice of death or pain, or a choice of two kinds of pain. This causes the prisoner to falsely feel he is in control of the pain, and he will often unwittingly blame himself.

In my case, my father suspended me by the neck from the ceiling of the garage with my feet barely touching the ground, so that as long as I stood on tip-toes I could continue to breathe. If I relaxed my legs, I would asphyxiate.

This is why my legs continue to hurt. My automatic response to stress is to create tension in my legs, as I unconsciously associate danger with a need to stand on tip-toe and to maintain tension in my legs.

There are two take-aways from this in my mind. One, the use of stress positions in American detention facilities needs to end completely. And, two, rehabilitation of torture victims must include the collaboration of medical professionals on mental health and physical issues, as they are inter-related. The torture survivor who feels physical pain is not merely reliving the pain in his own mind. He is sometimes feeling the affects of ongoing damage to nerves, joints, and tissues. At other times, he is unwittingly recreating it, by returning to positions that kept him alive.

Further reading:

Amnesty International. Torture and Accountability. http://www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/counter-terror-with-justice/issues/torture-and-accountability

The Green Light. (2008, May) Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/guantanamo200805

Reydt, P. (2004, 25 August). Former Detainees Detail Abuses at Guantanamo Bay. World Socialist Website. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/08/tipt-a25.html

The psychology of money

An important contribution that Jung made to understanding the personality was its tendency to dissociate, or split into parts.  He called these parts complexes, or splinter personalities.  On occasion, a person ‘falls into’ a complex and it takes over the personality for a time.  The inferiority complex is, by now, familiar in our cultural landscape and when in the grip of this, a person feels inadequate, incompetent, weak and lowly.  Even people who have objectively achieved excellence can still be prey to feeling inferior at times.

 

At the centre of a complex are some strong feelings, which are described as archetypal due to their intensity.  They are usually out of proportion to the event that has triggered them and can carry us away, into acting in ways that we might, in a different state of mind, not countenance.  Some familiar expressions capture this well: ‘I was beside myself with rage’; ‘I don’t know what came over me’; ‘it is not like me at all to…’  The ‘cure’ for complexes is for the heart of them to find expression and understanding in a safe place, which can be psychotherapy for some people.  They take quite a bit of unravelling which is why they are called complex.  If we think of small children and how intense their feelings are, it is easier for us to think of how normal it is to behave in unacceptable ways and to understand how we socialise children into our culture.  When these strong feelings are lived and accepted, they become humanised – no longer the province of the archetypal – and then they can become more integrated into the personality and put to good use.  If, however, the feelings are repressed (rather than understood and accepted)  because they are socially unacceptable, then they move into unconscious territory where they will erupt via a complex at a later stage.  Rage is not often helpful but in its attenuated state of assertiveness or healthy anger, then it is an important part of the psychic economy that can protect and stand up for us, giving us energy to do what needs to be done.

 

Anna was born into a poor family where money was tight, but just as importantly, where there was also psychic impoverishment.  Her father spent too much of the family budget on nights down the pub and was not only emotionally unavailable to his family but when he was present, he would be rough, both verbally and physically.  Anna learnt to keep out of his way and to ‘swallow’ much of her resentment, trying her best to keep the peace and to help her mother.  When she found the capacity to come to therapy in her thirties, she would fall into her ‘money complex’.  She would become profoundly anxious that she was spending the entire family budget on herself (as her father had) and terrified that she would become dependent on the therapist (as father was dependent on alcohol) and at risk of falling apart if money ran out (which was mother’s fear for herself and the family).  The parallels between the family poverty and the current deprivation were played out with money as the currency for emotional expression.  A lot of attention was given to money transactions, including the payment of fees in the therapy, as they carried a great deal of feeling.  As links were made between the past and the present and Anna’s needs were attended to, slowly there was a shift and Anna became less anxious generally and less anxious about money in particular.  Whereas some people may need to learn to rein in their spending and become more prudent, for Anna it was the opposite and she learnt to let go a little, waste a little and to enjoy herself more.  She had plenty of resources as she was intelligent, capable, and in a good and emotionally nurturing relationship.  We began to use the symbolism of money to understand that she was rich in many ways and that her financial and emotional poverty were literally a ‘small’ part of her, that is belonging to her child self.