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PsychologistEthics.net
THE SITE THAT INFORMS YOU ABOUT
"POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY"
PsychologistEthics.net is designed to help inform the public about political psychology; that is, psychologists violating established codes of ethics to carry out the political agendas of others, especially employers. Political psychology is often used to facilitate workplace mobbing.
This site illustrates cases in which political psychology has been used by employers to target "undesirable" workers for workplace mobbing, and includes helpful links to other relevant sites.
This site also aims to assist various professionals: consulting and organizational psychologists and the employers and organizations that use their services; psychologist licensing boards; and, the American Psychological Association (APA). By exposing the dangers of political psychology, measures then may be taken to punish and prevent this dangerous and damaging practice.
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More about Political Psychology
MORE ABOUT POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY § ^
When one imagines using mental health professionals to target undesirable individuals, one almost always thinks of totalitarian governments such as the former USSR, China, and Cuba. There is a long and ugly precedent of using mental health professionals in those societies to target politically undesirable people and have them placed in mental institutions involuntarily. Human rights groups refer to this practice as "political psychiatry."
Victims of political psychiatry are usually people who have filed grievances or complaints against employers or officials, or are union organizers, people who have publicly criticized officials, members of minority religions, and whistle-blowers.
Because of reports of the former Soviet Union and China committing political dissidents to mental institutions, the World Psychiatric Association passed the Madrid Declaration in 1996 declaring that "all forms of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on the basis of the political needs of governments are forbidden." Unfortunately, no such declarations have been made for or by psychologists to condemn political psychology.
WORKPLACE MOBBING § ^
Westhues (2004) characterizes workplace mobbing as a conspiracy of employees who "humiliate, degrade, and get rid of a fellow employee, when rules prevent the achievement of these ends through violence" (p.42).
MORE LINKS TO WORKPLACE MOBBING
Workplace Bullying & Trauma Institute, U.S. and Canada
Workplace Mobbing Australia
Mobbing - U.S.A.
Workplace Mobbing in Academe
At the Mercy of the Mob by Kenneth Westhues
BadBossology.com - Workplace Mobbing and Bullying
Downward Workplace Mobbing: A Sign of the Times? by W. Vandekerckhove, R. Commers
CASES OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY § ^
Southern Illinois University and the American Psychological Association (APA)
A Canadian Police Department and the Canadian College of Psychologists
Lisa Blakemore-Brown and the British Psychological Society (BPS);
The Shame of the British Psychological Society
Southern Illinois University and the American Psychological Association (APA)
§ ^ next case >>
In this case, an SIUC faculty member was mobbed by the university administration with the help of some of her departmental colleagues because they disliked her opinions, which were expressed through grievances, guest columns and letters to the editor, speeches, union activism, and by joining in a suit with other faculty members against the board of trustees to protest the firing of a popular chancellor. As a result, her office was moved out of the department and her mail was stolen. Frequent whispering campaigns were held in the hallways by colleagues who quickly scattered behind slammed doors when she was sighted. She was unjustly blamed for negative tenure votes and missing department materials. The nameplate on her door was vandalized and she learned that she was referred to as "the little twerp" by some.
The university administration then hired a licensed psychologist who, the faculty member was told, would conduct counseling and conflict resolution for her deeply divided department, but who instead wrote a report for the administration indicating that the faculty member was destructive and in need of discipline and professional help. The administration disseminated the psychologist's report to over 20 people on the campus.
In this case, the psychologist made an unsubstantiated assessment of the faculty member based solely on what the faculty member's "enemies" had said about her. The psychologist made no effort to verify any of the rumors she had heard and instead wrote them as fact in her reports and made recommendations based on them. As part of the counseling and conflict resolution process, the psychologist also carried on e-mail communication with the faculty member but forwarded this communication to the university's administration without the faculty member's knowledge or permission. The psychologist never told the faculty member that there would be any limits to confidentiality nor did she tell her what process she would be following or that she would be writing reports to the administration. Obviously, if there had been any legitimacy to the psychologist's conclusions and report, the matter would have been handled privately and compassionately by the university's human resources staff.
After complaining about the psychologist, the faculty member was horrified to discover one day that someone was following her car and later saw correspondence between the administration and the psychologist's lawyer-husband suggesting that private investigators be used to seek a way to fire her. Indeed, notes associated with a meeting among university administrators and its chief counsel show that a detailed plan for her termination seemed to be in place.
The faculty member sued the provost, department chair, and psychologist in federal court for conspiring to chill her first amendment rights. She also sued the psychologist for malpractice and filed complaints against the psychologist with the American Psychological Association (APA). The three defendants in the federal lawsuit received legal defense services by the university. The federal lawsuit was settled out of court, with the faculty member receiving a public apology from the university, a year off with pay, and substantial monetary compensation. The malpractice lawsuit against the psychologist is still being prosecuted after five years. The psychologist's position in the claims against her is that consulting psychologists function as management consultants and do not have to follow the APA code of Ethics. Despite having a current state license to practice psychology, serving as head of a university's counseling center at the time, and holding offices in the American Psychological Association, this psychologist essentially didn't consider herself to be a psychologist and seemed to believe that only therapists need to follow ethical codes.
One of the most troubling aspects of this case is the scandalous lack of action by the APA. When the faculty member first filed a complaint with the APA Ethics Office, the Ethics Office opened an investigation and then dismissed it for lack of sufficient evidence. The faculty member then deposed the psychologist and sent the deposition testimony to the most renowned psychologist ethics expert in the U.S. who found numerous serious ethics violations by the psychologist. The faculty member sent the deposition transcript and the expert's report back to the APA and requested that the case be re-opened. This time the evidence was solid. Although the APA technically re-opened the case, it stayed the investigation when the psychologist was elected President of the Consulting Psychology Division of the APA. The APA claimed it was staying the investigation because there was pending litigation; however, it did not stay the investigation the first time, with pending litigation, when there was less evidence available and when the psychologist did not hold a high office. It has been 5 years since the faculty member first filed a complaint with the APA, and to this day, no known disciplinary action has been taken.
A Canadian Police Department and the Canadian College of Psychologists
§ ^ << previous case next case >>
Kenneth Westhues, Professor of Sociology at the University of Waterloo, studied a case of a police officer targeted for elimination after reporting corruption to provincial authorities. The Police Department had enlisted the services of both a psychologist and a psychiatrist in support of its aim to get rid of the whistleblower. The latter, however, withstood the campaign against him and successfully held onto his job. Subsequently, he sought sanctions against the psychologist and the psychiatrist, and asked Westhues to set down in writing his reflections on the actions against him. Here is Westhues’s account, with names and other identifying information removed.
You have asked that I give you my reflections on the actions of the Police Department against you from the mid-1990s until 2000. I write on the basis of the documentation you have provided to me in connection with my research on workplace mobbing, an uncommon but severe organizational pathology that can have unwarranted, devastating effects on the mobbing target’s career and life. I understand that the reason you have requested this letter is so that you might include it with your request to the Ontario Health Professions Appeal and Review Board, that it review the decision of the Complaints Committee of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the separate decision of the Complaints Committee of the Ontario College of Psychologists.
In the mid-1990s, you reported in good faith to the appropriate provincial authorities what you saw as corruption in the Police Department. The appropriate body investigated, and found your allegations to have merit. In the wake of this conflict, your Police Department engaged psychologist Dr. X and psychiatrist Dr. Y to give their opinions on your mental health. Without speaking with you, both Dr. X and Dr. Y signed their names to reports that strongly suggested you were mentally ill. Dr. X wrote in December 1998, that your “thinking appears delusional to the extreme,” and he wrote in his own hand, “I essentially agree,” on a police investigator’s memo summarizing his meeting with them. The memo included these assertions:
• The issue is that the man’s thinking is disordered.
• You need to find a way to get him to a psychiatric assessment by compulsion, because he’s probably not going to accept that he has a problem.
• If you have enough information to arrest him and take him to a psychiatric facility - do it.
• It is easier to contain an explosion than an implosion - you shouldn’t blame yourself if he commits suicide.
Dr. Y wrote in January, 1999, that it was “in the realm of possibility” that you had a “Paranoid Personality Disorder,” and that “a psychiatric assessment would be required to rule this out.”
Shortly after Dr. X’s and Dr. Y’s reports, neither of which was provided to you, you were suspended from your position and charged under the Police Services Act. This was in January of 1999. It took almost two years, until November of 2000, for you to clear your name and get free of the stress and stigma of administrative sanction. In the end, you were found guilty of no offense. You have continued as before, to fulfill capably and with honour your responsibilities as a police officer.
In your complaints to their respective colleges, you fault Dr. X and Dr. Y for failing to live up to the ethical codes of their professions. The Complaints Committee of the College of Psychologists dismissed almost all of your complaint; the Complaints Committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons dismissed your complaint entirely.
The decision of the Complaints Committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons contains obviously false statements about the most basic facts of the case:
• The Committee says you were “later dismissed from the police force.” You were not and have never been dismissed. You were and remain an officer with an unblemished record.
• The Committee accepted the word of Dr. Y that your Police Department required you to undergo an assessment by Dr. X, the psychologist. Further, according to the Committee, Dr. Y reported that Dr. X had concluded from his assessment that you posed a possible risk of harm to others, that you are the type of personality that could “go postal,” that your thinking was disordered, that you were at high risk for suicide, and that you should be examined by a psychiatrist.
In fact, your Police Department never required, and you did not at any time undergo, such an assessment. The decision of the Complaints Committee of the College of Psychology admits that Dr. X made his comments about you without having assessed you.
An organization’s employment of mental-health practitioners to stigmatize, discredit, and harm a targeted worker is a common mobbing technique. The harm is exacerbated when the professional bodies to which the worker may appeal, fail to investigate thoroughly and to hold the practitioners responsible for their part in the mobbing process.
I would not presume to say what corrective action the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board should take. Public safety requires, however, that regulatory bodies not be allowed to gloss over any complicity of mental-health professionals in efforts by employers to discredit sane, responsible employees who have blown the whistle on administrative misconduct.
I hope that you and the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board may find these reflections on the actions against you helpful toward a fair and truthful resolution of your complaints. Best wishes.
Postscript. The body to which the police officer appealed, and to which he submitted Westhues’s letter, dismissed the appeal. One member of the hearing committee told the police officer at the hearing that when you stick your finger in a hornets’ nest, you can expect to get stung.
Lisa Blakemore-Brown and the British Psychological Society (BPS) § ^ <<previous case
CODES OF ETHICS § ^
Codes of ethics are written systems of standards for ethical conduct. Many codes of conduct such as those of the American Psychological Association and the American Bar Association are more than just guidelines for conduct and are actually legally binding and enforceable.
MORE LINKS TO CODES OF ETHICS
APA - Ethical Principals of Psychologists and Code of Conduct
Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists
The British Psychological Society - Ethics, Rules, Charter, Code of Conduct
Articles, Research, & Resources in Psychology
National Association of Social Workers (NASW)
BIBLIOGRAPHY § ^
American Psychological Association Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 1992, Washington, DC: author.
Bezlova, Antoaneta, 2002. "China faces music for psychiatric abuse." Inter Press Service.
Brown, Charles, and Lago, Armando, 1992, Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba, Sommerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Davenport, Noa; Schwartz, Ruth; & Elliott, Gail, 1999. Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace. Ames, IA: Civil Society Publishing.
Gosden, Richard, 1997. "Shrinking the Freedom of Thought: How Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Violates Basic Human Rights Monitors: Journal of Human Rights and Technology, Vol. 1, February 1997.
Hornstein, Harvey, 1996. Brutal Bosses and their Prey: How to Identify and Overcome Abuse in
the Workplace, NY: Riverhead Books.
Human Rights Watch & the Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry (GIP), 2002. Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and its Origins in the Mao Era.
Lowman, Rodeney, 1998. The Ethical Practice of Psychology in Organizations. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Namie,Gary and Namie, Ruth, 2003. The Bully at Work. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Pan, Philip, 2002. "The Silent Treatment from Beijing: Mental Hospitals Allegedly Used to Quiet Dissidents, Falun Gong." Washington Post, 8/26/02.
Westhues, Kenneth, 2004. Administrative Mobbing at the University of Toronto: The Trial,Degradation, and Dismissal of a Professor During the Presidency of J. Robert S. Pritchard. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Westhues, Kenneth, 1998. Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process. Lewiston, NY: Kempner Collegium Publications, The Edwin Mellen Press.
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PsychologistEthics.net last updated Wed., March 12, 2008