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American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychologists in the United States, and the largest psychological association in the world. It has over 157,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It has 54 divisions, which function as interest groups for different subspecialties of psychology or topical areas. The APA has an annual budget of around $125 million.

Profile
The APA has task forces that issue policy statements on various matters of social importance, including abortion, human rights, the welfare of detainees, human trafficking, the rights of the mentally ill, IQ testing, sexual orientation change efforts, and gender equality.

Governance
APA is a corporation chartered in Washington, D.C. APA's bylaws describe structural components that serve as a system of checks and balances to ensure democratic process. The organizational entities include:
 * APA President. The APA president is elected by the membership. The president chairs the Council of Representatives and the Board of Directors. During their term of office, the president performs such duties as are prescribed in the bylaws.
 * Board of Directors. The Board is composed of six members-at-large, president-elect, president, past-president, treasurer, recording secretary, the Chair and Chair-Elect of the Council Leadership Team, CEO, and the past chair of the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS). The board oversees the association's administrative affairs and determines the annual budget and makes decisions regarding APA's roughly $125 million annual income.
 * APA Council of Representatives. The Council has sole authority to set APA policy. It is composed of elected members from state/provincial/territorial psychological associations, APA divisions, and the APA Board of Directors. The Council Leadership Team (CLT) is elected from within by the members of Council and facilitates Council's workload on an annual basis. The Chair and Chair-Elect of the CLT are voting members of the Board of Directors.
 * APA Board/Committee Structure: Members of boards and committees conduct much of APA's work on a volunteer basis. They carry out a wide variety of tasks suggested by their names. Some have responsibility for monitoring major programs, such as the directorates, the journals, and international affairs.

Good Governance Project
The Good Governance Project (GGP) was initiated in January 2011 as part of the strategic plan to "[assure] APA's governance practices, processes, and structures are optimized and aligned with what is needed to thrive in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex environment." The charge included soliciting feedback and input stakeholders, learning about governance best practices, recommending whether the change was required, recommending needed changes based on data, and creating implementation plans. The June 2013 GGP update on the recommended changes can be found in the document "Good Governance Project Recommended Changes to Maximize Organizational Effectiveness of APA Governance". The suggested changes would change APA from a membership-based, representational structure to a corporate structure. These motions were discussed and voted upon by the council on July 31, 2013, and August 2, 2013.

Organizational structure
APA comprises an executive office, a publishing operation, offices that address administrative, business, information technology, and operational needs, and five substantive directorates:
 * the Education Directorate accredits doctoral psychology programs and addresses issues related to psychology education in secondary through graduate education;
 * the Practice Directorate engages on behalf of practicing psychologists and health care consumers;
 * the Public Interest Directorate advances psychology as a means of addressing the fundamental problems of human welfare and promoting the equitable and just treatment of all segments of society;
 * the Public and Member Communications Directorate is responsible for APA's outreach to its members and affiliates and to the general public;
 * the Science Directorate provides support and voice for psychological scientists.

Membership and title of "psychologist"
APA policy on the use of the title psychologist is contained in the Model Act for State Licensure of Psychologists: psychologists have earned a doctoral degree in psychology and may not use the title "psychologist" and/or deliver psychological services to the public, unless the psychologist is licensed or specifically exempted from licensure under the law. State licensing laws specify state specific requirements for the education and training of psychologists leading to licensure. Psychologists who are exempted from licensure could include researchers, educators, or general applied psychologists who provide services outside the health and mental health field.

Full membership with the APA in United States and Canada requires doctoral training whereas associate membership requires at least two years of postgraduate studies in psychology or approved related discipline. The minimal requirement of a doctoral dissertation related to psychology for full membership can be waived in certain circumstances where there is evidence that significant contribution or performance in the field of psychology has been made.

Affiliate organizations
American Psychological Association Services, Inc. (APASI) was formed in 2018 and is a 501(c)(6) entity, which engages in advocacy on behalf of psychologists from all areas of psychology. Its predecessor was the American Psychological Association Practice Organization (APAPO). APASI contains the Psychology Political Action Committee (PAC), which engages in lobbying on behalf of psychologists at the federal level.

Awards
Each year, the APA recognizes top psychologists with the "Distinguished Contributions" awards; these awards are the highest honors given by the APA.
 * APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology
 * APA Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology
 * Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest
 * Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology
 * APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research
 * Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Independent Practice.
 * Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Practice in the Public Sector
 * APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology
 * APA Award for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology (APA's highest award)
 * APA International Humanitarian Award

Publications
The American Psychologist is the association's flagship, peer-reviewed journal. APA also publishes over 70 other journals encompassing most specialty areas in the field; APA's Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF) is an imprint for publishing on behalf of other organizations. Its journals include:

 * Archives of Scientific Psychology
 * Behavioral Neuroscience
 * Developmental Psychology
 * Dreaming (published on behalf of the International Association for the Study of Dreams)
 * Emotion
 * Health Psychology
 * Journal of Applied Psychology
 * Journal of Comparative Psychology
 * Journal of Experimental Psychology
 * Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied
 * Journal of Family Psychology
 * Journal of Occupational Health Psychology
 * Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
 * Psychological Bulletin
 * Psychological Review
 * Psychology and Aging
 * Psychology of Addictive Behaviors
 * Psychology of Violence
 * Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
 * School Psychology Quarterly

The APA has published hundreds of books. Among these books are: the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (and a concise version titled Concise Rules of APA Style), which is the official guide to APA style; the APA Dictionary of Psychology; an eight-volume Encyclopedia of Psychology; and many scholarly books on specific subjects such as Varieties of Anomalous Experience. The APA has also published children's books under the Magination Press imprint, software for data analysis, videos demonstrating therapeutic techniques, reports, and brochures.

The Psychologically Healthy Workplace program
The Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program (PHWP) is a collaborative effort between the American Psychological Association and the APA Practice Organization designed to help employers optimize employee well-being and organizational performance. The PHWP includes APA's Psychologically Healthy Workplace Awards, a variety of APA Practice Organization resources, including PHWP Web content, e-newsletter, podcast and blog, and support of local programs currently implemented by 52 state, provincial and territorial psychological associations as a mechanism for driving grassroots change in local business communities. The awards are designed to recognize organizations for their efforts to foster employee health and well-being while enhancing organizational performance. The award program highlights a variety of workplaces, large and small, profit and non-profit, in diverse geographical settings. Applicants are evaluated on their efforts in the following five areas: employee involvement, work-life balance, employee growth and development, health and safety, and employee recognition. Awards are given at the local and national level.

APA style
American Psychological Association (APA) style is a set of rules developed to assist reading comprehension in the social and behavioral sciences. Used to ensure clarity of communication, the layout is designed to "move the idea forward with a minimum of distraction and a maximum of precision." The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association contains the rules for every aspect of writing, especially in the social sciences from determining authorship to constructing a table to avoiding plagiarism and constructing accurate reference citations. "The General Format of APA is most commonly used to cite sources within the social sciences. General guidelines for a paper in APA style includes: typed, double-spaced on standard-sized paper (8.5" x 11") with 1" margins on all sides. The font should be clear and highly readable. APA recommends using 12 pt. Times New Roman font." The seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was published in October 2019.

Databases
APA maintains a number of databases, including PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, PsycBOOKS, PsycEXTRA, PsycCRITIQUES, PsycTESTS, and PsycTHERAPY. APA also operates a comprehensive search platform, PsycNET, covering multiple databases.

PsycINFO is a bibliographic database that contains citations and summaries dating from the 19th century, including journal articles, book chapters, books, technical reports, and dissertations within the field of psychology. , PsycINFO has collected information from 2,457 journals.

Founding
The APA was founded in July 1892 at Clark University by a small group of around 30 men; by 1916 there were over 300 members. The first president was G. Stanley Hall. During World War II, the APA merged with other psychological organizations, resulting in a new divisional structure. Nineteen divisions were approved in 1944; the divisions with the most members were the clinical and personnel (now counseling) divisions. From 1960 to 2007, the number of divisions expanded to 54. Today the APA is affiliated with 60 state, territorial, and Canadian provincial associations.

Dominance of clinical psychology
Due to the dominance of clinical psychology in APA, several research-focused groups have broken away from the organization. These include the Psychonomic Society in 1959 (with a primarily cognitive orientation), and the Association for Psychological Science (which changed its name from the American Psychological Society in early 2006) in 1988 (with a broad focus on the science and research of psychology). Theodore H. Blau was the first clinician in independent practice to be elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1977.

Notable people

 * Bart Rossi, psychologist and author

Divisions
The APA has 56 numbered divisions, 54 of which are currently active:

 * 1) Society for General Psychology – the first division formed by the APA, in 1945, concerned with issues across the subdisciplines of psychology
 * 2) Society for the Teaching of Psychology – provides free teaching material for students and teachers of psychology and bestows many awards
 * 3) Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science
 * 4) Currently vacant – initially reserved for the Psychometric Society, which decided against becoming an APA division after the establishment of the similarly defined Division 5
 * 5) Quantitative and Qualitative Methods – previously named Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics
 * 6) Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology
 * 7) Developmental Psychology
 * 8) Society for Personality and Social Psychology
 * 9) Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI)
 * 10) Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts
 * 11) Currently vacant – initially Abnormal Psychology and Psychotherapy, which joined Division 12 in 1946
 * 12) Society of Clinical Psychology – established in 1945 with 482 members. Became the Division of Clinical and Abnormal Psychology in 1946, and took its current name in 1998. In 1962 it created clinical child psychology as its first section.
 * 13) Society of Consulting Psychology - originally Division of Counseling and Guidance Psychologists
 * 14) Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
 * 15) Educational Psychology
 * 16) School Psychology – originally formed as the Division of School Psychologists in 1945, renamed in 1969
 * 17) Society of Counseling Psychology
 * 18) Psychologists in Public Service
 * 19) Society for Military Psychology
 * 20) Adult Development and Aging
 * 21) Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology
 * 22) Rehabilitation Psychology
 * 23) Society for Consumer Psychology
 * 24) Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology
 * 25) Behavior Analysis
 * 26) Society for the History of Psychology
 * 27) Society for Community Research and Action: Division of Community Psychology
 * 28) Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse
 * 29) Psychotherapy
 * 30) Society of Psychological Hypnosis
 * 31) State, Provincial and Territorial Psychological Association Affairs
 * 32) Society for Humanistic Psychology
 * 33) Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities / Autism Spectrum Disorder
 * 34) Society for Environmental, Population and Conservation Psychology
 * 35) Society for the Psychology of Women
 * 36) Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
 * 37) Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice
 * 38) Society for Health Psychology
 * 39) Psychoanalysis
 * 40) Society for Clinical Neuropsychology
 * 41) American Psychology-Law Society
 * 42) Psychologists in Independent Practice
 * 43) Society for Family Psychology
 * 44) Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity
 * 45) Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues
 * 46) Media Psychology
 * 47) Exercise and Sport Psychology
 * 48) Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Peace Psychology Division
 * 49) Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy
 * 50) Society of Addiction Psychology
 * 51) Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities
 * 52) International Psychology
 * 53) Society of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology
 * 54) Society of Pediatric Psychology
 * 55) Society for Prescribing Psychology
 * 56) Trauma Psychology – addresses issues of trauma with projects, working groups and via collaborations

Cause of sexual orientation
The APA states the following:"There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation."

In 1975, APA issued a supporting statement that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.

Conversion therapy
Conversion therapy (also referred to as reparative therapy) is the practice of attempting to change the patient's sexual orientation to heterosexual. Among the most prominent supporters of conversion therapy is the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), which continues to characterize homosexuality as a mental disorder, despite the declassification of homosexuality as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973. One of the most notable members of NARTH is founder and former president Joseph Nicolosi, who practiced conversion therapy and has published case studies of some of his clients.

The American Psychological Association (APA) task force report on appropriate therapeutic responses to sexual orientation concluded that conversion therapy was "unlikely to be successful" and involved "some risk of harm". Likewise, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a call to action in 2001, concluding that "there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed".

In the task force's report, the APA recommends that therapists adopt an affirmative, supportive approach for clients who present for therapy to change their sexual orientation rather than attempting to convert their sexual orientation.

There is a concern in the mental health community that the advancement of conversion therapy itself causes social harm by disseminating inaccurate views about sexual orientation and the ability of homosexual and bisexual people to lead happy, healthy lives. Most mainstream health organizations are critical of conversion therapy, and no mainstream medical organization endorses conversion therapy.

The APA adopted a resolution in August 2009 stating that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments. The approval, by APA's governing Council of Representatives, came at APA's annual convention, during which a task force presented a report that in part examined the efficacy of so-called "reparative therapy", or sexual orientation change efforts.

The "Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts" also advises that parents, guardians, young people, and their families avoid sexual orientation treatments that portray homosexuality as a mental illness or developmental disorder and instead seek psychotherapy, social support, and educational services "that provide accurate information on sexual orientation and sexuality, increase family and school support, and reduce rejection of sexual minority youth."

Same-sex marriage
The APA adopted a resolution stating that it is unfair and discriminatory to deny same-sex couples legal access to civil marriage and to all its attendant rights, benefits, and privileges. It also filed an amicus brief in the federal court case in which Judge Vaughn Walker struck down California's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The APA later praised the decision and denied the existence of any "scientific justification" for a ban on same-sex marriage.

In August 2011, the APA clarified their support of same-sex marriage in light of continued research suggesting that the same community benefits accepted as result of heterosexual marriage apply to same-sex couples as well. Clinton Anderson, then associate executive director of the APA and director of the Office on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns, said that, prior to this research, "We knew that marriage benefits heterosexual people in very significant ways, but we didn't know if that would be true for same-sex couples." Anderson also put forward the APA's view that merely allowing same-sex civil unions is an inadequate option: "Anything other than marriage is, in essence, a stigmatization of same-sex couples. Stigma does have negative impacts on people."

Sex assignment
In 2024, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and physicist Alan Sokal co-authored an op-ed in The Boston Globe criticizing the use of the terminology "sex assigned at birth" instead of "sex" by the APA, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dawkins and Sokal argued that sex is an "objective biological reality" that "is determined at conception and is then observed at birth," rather than assigned by a medical professional. Calling this "social constructionism gone amok," Dawkins and Sokal argued that "distort[ing] the scientific facts in the service of a social cause" risks undermining trust in medical institutions.

APA internship crisis for graduate students
The APA is the main accrediting body for U.S. clinical and counseling psychology doctoral training programs and internship sites. APA-accredited clinical psychology PhD and PsyD programs typically require students to complete a one-year full-time clinical internship in order to graduate (or a two-year part-time internship). However, there is currently an "internship crisis" as defined by the American Psychological Association, in that approximately 25% of clinical psychology doctoral students do not match for internship each year. This crisis has led many students (approximately 1,000 each year) to re-apply for internship, thus delaying graduation, or to complete an unaccredited internship, and often has many emotional and financial consequences. Students who do not complete an APA-accredited internship in the U.S. are barred from certain employment settings, including VA hospitals, the military, and cannot get licensed in some states, such as Utah and Mississippi. Additionally, some postdoctoral fellowships and other employment settings require or prefer an APA-accredited internship. The APA has been criticized for not addressing this crisis adequately and many psychologists and graduate students have petitioned for the APA to take action by regulating graduate training programs.

Warfare and the use of torture
A year after the establishment of the Human Resources Research Organization by the U.S. military in 1951, the CIA began funding numerous psychologists (and other scientists) in the development of psychological warfare methods under the supervision of APA treasurer Meredith Crawford. Donald O. Hebb, the APA president in 1960 who was awarded the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1961, defended the torture of research subjects, arguing that what was being studied was other nations' methods of brainwashing. Former APA president Martin Seligman spoke upon the invitation of the CIA on his animal experimentation where he shocked a dog unpredictably and repeatedly into total, helpless passivity. Former APA president Ronald F. Levant, upon visiting Guantanamo Bay, affirmed that psychologists were present during the torture of prisoners, arguing that their presence was to "add value and safeguards" to interrogations. Former APA president Gerald Koocher argued, referring to allegations of continuing systemic abuse by psychologists, that such allegations were originating from "opportunistic commentators masquerading as scholars."

During the Iraq War, Amnesty International released a series of reports, calling attention to violations of the human rights of prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison and American detention camps, and the role of the United States and the United Kingdom in enacting these abuses. The reports called on the occupying powers to protect the human rights of any detained civilians by giving them a fair and timely trial, not detaining civilians arbitrarily, and treating all people ethically while in detention. Amnesty International also called for justice, by trying individual perpetrators of abuse for their crimes.

Despite these reports, the Bush administration instituted "enhanced" interrogation techniques, stating publicly that reported abuses were isolated incidents, and not standard practice. Internal memos from the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that an executive order by George W. Bush had sanctioned certain interrogation techniques, such as playing loud music, depriving prisoners of sleep, and stripping prisoners of their clothing.

The CIA reportedly required involvement from health professionals to continue its practice of "enhanced" interrogations on detainees, to maintain the lawfulness of their practices. Psychiatrists and medical doctors were reluctant to participate in interrogations, however some psychologists participated. A report by a group of psychologists alleges the same, implicating a number of APA officials as well.

When it emerged that psychologists, as part of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, were advising interrogators in Guantánamo and other U.S. facilities on improving the effectiveness of the "enhanced interrogation techniques", the APA called on the U.S. government to prohibit the use of unethical interrogation techniques and labeled specific techniques as torture. Critics pointed out that the APA declined to advise its members not to participate in such interrogations. In September 2008, the APA's members passed a resolution stating that psychologists may not work in settings where "persons are held outside, or in violation of, either international law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the U.S. Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights." The resolution became official APA policy in February 2009. However, the APA has refused to sanction those members known to have participated in and, in some cases, designed abusive interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan interrogation centers.

The APA directive was in contrast to the American Psychiatric Association ban in May 2006 of all direct participation in interrogations by psychiatrists, and the American Medical Association ban in June 2006 of the direct participation in interrogations by physicians. An independent panel of medical, military, ethics, education, public health, and legal professionals issued a comprehensive report in November 2013 that "charged that U.S. military and intelligence agencies directed doctors and psychologists working in U.S. military detention centers to violate standard ethical principles and medical standards to avoid infliction of harm." One group of psychologists in particular, the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, has been very harsh in its criticism of the APA stance on its refusal to categorically prohibit members from participating in any phase of military interrogations. They stated their continuing disagreement with APA leadership in an open letter posted on their website on October 31, 2012, in which they reiterated their condemnation of torture and enhanced interrogation techniques, and called for the APA to require its members to refuse participation in military conducted interrogations of any kind.

After the abuses were made public, the APA created a task force called Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) and released a report stating that the APA Code of Ethics applies to psychologists working in any setting, and that psychologists do not facilitate or participate in any degrading or cruel behavior, referring back to the APA's 1986 Resolution Against Torture. The report also called on psychologists to report any suspected or observed inhumane treatment to the appropriate authorities and obey federal law.

Amending the Ethics Code
In February 2010, the APA's Council of Representatives voted to amend the association's Ethics Code to make clear that its standards can never be interpreted to justify or defend violating human rights. There is a history of similar issues with the Canadian Psychological Association. Following are the two relevant ethical standards from the APA Ethics Code, with the amended language shown in bold:"1.02, Conflicts Between Ethics and Law, Regulations, or Other Governing Legal Authority""If psychologists' ethical responsibilities conflict with law, regulations, or other governing legal authority, psychologists clarify the nature of the conflict, make known their commitment to the Ethics Code and take reasonable steps to resolve the conflict consistent with the General Principles and Ethical Standards of the Ethics Code. Under no circumstances may this standard be used to justify or defend violating human rights.""1.03, Conflicts Between Ethics and Organizational Demands""If the demands of an organization with which psychologists are affiliated or for whom they are working are in conflict with this Ethics Code, psychologists clarify the nature of the conflict, make known their commitment to the Ethics Code, and take reasonable steps to resolve the conflict consistent with the General Principles and Ethical Standards of the Ethics Code. Under no circumstances may this standard be used to justify or defend violating human rights."

In its 2013 "Policy Related to Psychologists' Work in National Security Settings and Reaffirmation of the APA Position Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the APA condemns the use of any of the following practices by military interrogators trying to elicit anti-terrorism information from detainees, on the ground that "there are no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether induced by a state of war or threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, that may be invoked as a justification."

Hoffman report
In November 2014, the APA ordered an independent review into whether it cooperated with the government's use of torture of prisoners during the George W. Bush administration, naming Chicago attorney David H. Hoffman to conduct the review. On July 2, 2015, a 542-page report was issued to the special committee of the board of directors of the APA relating to ethics guidelines, national security interrogations, and torture. The report concluded that the APA secretly collaborated with the Bush administration to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners. Furthermore, the report stated that the association's ethics director Stephen Behnke and others had "colluded with important Department of Defense officials to have the APA issue loose, high-level ethical guidelines that did not constrain" the interrogation of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay. The association's "principal motive in doing so was to align APA and curry favor with DOD." An APA official said that ethics director Stephen Behnke had been "removed from his position as a result of the report" and indicated that other firings or sanctions might follow.

Ultimately, the findings of the Hoffman Report revealed that the APA had an unfair bias towards prisoners due to the organization's relationship with the federal government. This resulted in a tidal wave of consequences for the APA. On July 14, 2015, the APA announced the retirement of its CEO, Norman B. Anderson, effective the end of 2015, and of Deputy Chief Executive Officer Michael Honaker, effective August 15, 2015, and the resignation of Rhea K. Farberman, APA's executive director for public and member communication. Anderson had been CEO since 2003.

Ban on involvement
For at least a decade, dissident psychologists within and outside the APA, including the group WithholdAPAdues, had protested the involvement of psychologists "in interrogations at CIA black sites and Guantánamo." Prior to the release of the Hoffman report, which undermined the APA's repeated denials and showed that some APA leaders were complicit in torture, the dissidents were ignored or ridiculed.

On August 7, 2015, just weeks following the release of the Hoffman report, the APA council of representatives met at the association's 123rd annual convention in Toronto, Ontario. At that meeting, the APA council passed Resolution 23B, which implemented the 2008 membership vote to remove psychologists from settings that operate outside international law, and banning the participation of psychologists in unlawful interrogations. With 156 votes in favor and only one vote against, the resolution passed with the near unanimous approval of council members. The adoption of Resolution 23B aligned the APA's policy with that of the American Psychiatric Association and that of the American Medical Association by prohibiting psychologists from participating in interrogations deemed illegal by the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention against Torture. "Implementation of the 2008 Membership Vote to Remove Psychologists from All Settings That Operate Outside of International Law (NBI #23B)""Council is asked to approve the substitute main motion below that includes a revised resolution with a new title, Resolution to Amend the 2006 and 2013 Council Resolutions to Clarify the Roles of Psychologists Related to Interrogation and Detainee Welfare in National Security Settings, to Further Implement the 2008 Petition Resolution, and to Safeguard Against Acts of Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in All Settings. This resolution further aligns the APA policy definition for 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment' (in the 2006 and 2013 Council resolutions) with the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Torture and ensures that the definition applies broadly to all individuals and settings; offers APA as a supportive resource for ethical practice for psychologists, including those in military and national security roles; prohibits psychologists from participating in national security interrogations; clarifies the intended application of the 2008 petition resolution... and calls for APA letters to be sent to federal officials to inform them of these policy changes and clarifications of existing APA policy." The ban will not "prohibit psychologists from working with the police or prisons in criminal law enforcement interrogations".

Class action lawsuit by members claiming deceptive dues assessments
In 2013 a class action lawsuit was brought against APA on behalf of approximately 60,000 of its 122,000 members who were licensed clinicians. Those members paid an additional $140 practice assessment fee as part of their membership dues every year beginning in 2001 to fund the lobbying arm of APA, the APA Practice Organization (APAPO). The lawsuit accused APA of using deceptive means by representing that the assessment was mandatory for APA membership even though payment of the assessment was only required for membership in the APAPO. In 2015 APA settled the case by establishing a $9.02 million settlement fund to be used to pay claims made by members of APA who paid the practice assessment, as well as attorneys' fees and certain other costs. APA agreed to change its policies to make clear that the APAPO membership dues are not required for membership in APA.

Animal research
Currently, the APA enforces ethical standards to protect nonhuman animal subjects from unnecessary harm during the research process. Some of the requirements for using nonhuman animals in research include: proper justification of the research, maintenance and inspection of appropriate housing for the animals, minimizing discomfort and stress whenever possible, and preference of noninvasive measures.

Despite these guidelines, however, many advocacy groups exist to either reduce or eliminate animal research, arguing that it is unethical to capture animals and subject them to research procedures.

Evidence-based practice
A current controversy among mental health professionals involves the use of the terms evidence based practice or evidence based treatment. Proponents of the evidence-based treatments movement argue that it is unethical to administer a therapeutic intervention with questionable research support when another treatment's effectiveness has been demonstrated for the client's condition, particularly when the intervention in question is potentially harmful (such as conversion therapy). Proponents argue that administration of an empirically questionable treatment violates the general Principle A of the ethical principles of psychologist: Beneficence and nonmaleficence (or "do no harm").

Critics of the evidence-based practice movement note ethical concerns regarding the research and practice of evidenced-based treatments themselves. Despite the demonstrated effectiveness of a range of treatments, including psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies, evidence-based practice is a term now associated only with short-term, manualized treatments which have been evaluated in randomized control trials. Among the problems associated with an exclusive focus on randomized control trials to determine treatment effectiveness is that the relevance of these trials (conducted on highly selected patient populations) is unclear for psychologists working with real-world patients. Furthermore, while the public may assume evidence-based is synonymous for "likely to help", research studies indicate that most patients do not show meaningful improvement in so-called evidence-based treatments.

title: American Psychological Association


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MKUltra

Project MKUltra was an illegal human experiments program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken people and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. It began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects' consent, electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.

MKUltra was preceded by Project Artichoke. It was organized through the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. The program engaged in illegal activities, including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as unwitting test subjects. MKUltra's scope was broad, with activities carried out under the guise of research at more than 80 institutions aside from the military, including colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA operated using front organizations, although some top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement.

MKUltra was revealed to the public in 1975 by the Church Committee of the United States Congress and Gerald Ford's United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States (the Rockefeller Commission). Investigative efforts were hampered by CIA Director Richard Helms's order that all MKUltra files be destroyed in 1973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the small number of documents that survived Helms's order. In 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to MKUltra, which led to Senate hearings. Some surviving information about MKUltra was declassified in 2001.

Origin of the project
During the early 1940s, Nazi scientists working in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau conducted interrogation experiments on human subjects. Substances such as barbiturates, morphine derivatives, and hallucinogens such as mescaline were employed in experiments conducted on Polish, Czech, Jewish, Soviet and other nationalities' prisoners of war which aimed to develop a truth serum which would, in the words of one laboratory assistant to Dachau scientist Kurt Plötner, "eliminate the will of the person examined". American historian Stephen Kinzer argues that the CIA project was a "continuation" of these earlier Nazi experiments, citing the numerous German scientists who were hired to work for the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip.

American interest in drug-related interrogation experiments began in 1943, when the Office of Strategic Services began developing a "truth drug" that would produce "uninhibited truthfulness" in an interrogated person. In 1947, the United States Navy initiated Project CHATTER, an interrogation program which saw the first testing of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on human subjects.

In 1950, the Central Intelligence Agency under the direction of general Walter Bedell Smith initiated a series of interrogation projects involving human subjects, beginning with the launch of Project Bluebird, officially renamed Project Artichoke on August 20, 1951. Directed and overseen by brigadier general Paul F. Gaynor, the objective of Artichoke was to determine whether an individual could be made to involuntarily perform an act of attempted assassination. Morphine, mescaline and LSD were all administered on unknowing CIA agents in an attempt to produce amnesia in the subjects. In addition, Project Artichoke aimed to employ certain viruses such as dengue fever as potential incapacitating agents.

Aims and leadership
The project was headed by Sidney Gottlieb but began on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953. Its aim was to develop mind-controlling drugs for use against the Soviet bloc in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war during the Korean War. The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives, and was interested in manipulating foreign leaders with such techniques, devising several schemes to drug Fidel Castro. It often conducted experiments without the subjects' knowledge and/or consent. In some cases, academic researchers were funded through grants from CIA front organizations but were unaware that the CIA was using their work for these purposes.

The project attempted to produce a perfect truth drug for interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War and to explore other possibilities of mind control. Subproject 54 was the Navy's top-secret "Perfect Concussion" program, which was supposed to use sub-aural frequency blasts to erase memory; the program was never carried out.

Most MKUltra records were destroyed in 1973 by order of CIA director Richard Helms, so it has been difficult for investigators to gain a complete understanding of the more than 150 funded research subprojects sponsored by MKUltra and related CIA programs.

The project began during a period of what English journalist Rupert Cornwell described as "paranoia" at the CIA, when the U.S. had lost its nuclear monopoly and fear of communism was at its height. CIA counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton believed that a mole had penetrated the organization at the highest levels. The agency poured millions of dollars into studies examining ways to influence and control the mind and enhance its ability to extract information from resistant subjects during interrogation. Some historians assert that one goal of MKUltra and related CIA projects was to create a Manchurian Candidate-style subject. American historian Alfred W. McCoy has claimed that the CIA attempted to focus media attention on these sorts of "ridiculous" programs so that the public would not look at the research's primary goal, which was effective methods of interrogation.

Applications
The 1976 Church Committee report found that, in the MKDELTA program, "Drugs were used primarily as an aid to interrogations, but MKULTRA/MKDELTA materials were also used for harassment, discrediting or disabling purposes."

Other related projects
In 1964, MKSEARCH was the name given to the continuation of the MKULTRA program. The MKSEARCH program was divided into two projects dubbed MKOFTEN and MKCHICKWIT. Funding for MKSEARCH commenced in 1965, and ended in 1971. The project was a joint project between the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and the CIA's Office of Research and Development to find new offensive-use agents, with a focus on incapacitating agents. Its purpose was to develop, test, and evaluate capabilities in the covert use of biological, chemical, and radioactive material systems and techniques of producing predictable human behavioral and/or physiological changes in support of highly sensitive operational requirements.

By March 1971, over 26,000 potential agents had been acquired for future screening. The CIA was interested in bird migration patterns for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) research; subproject 139 designated "Bird Disease Studies" at Pennsylvania State University. MKOFTEN was to deal with testing and toxicological transmissivity and behavioral effects of drugs in animals and, ultimately, humans. MKCHICKWIT was concerned with acquiring information on new drug developments in Europe and Asia, and with acquiring samples.

In January 1957, the CIA started a subproject of MKUltra in effort to broaden their scientific research. "Subproject 68", conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal under the direction of psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, represents one of the most infamous and ethically controversial endeavors within the MKUltra program. This subproject aimed to explore innovative techniques for manipulating and controlling human behavior, particularly through the methods of "psychic driving" and "depatterning". Psychic driving involved subjecting patients to continuous playback of recorded messages, often with themes of self-improvement or identity reinforcement, while they were under the influence of powerful psychoactive substances such as LSD or barbiturates.

Experiments on Americans
CIA documents suggest that they investigated "chemical, biological, and radiological" methods of mind control as part of MKUltra. They spent an estimated $10 million or more, roughly $87.5 million adjusted for inflation.

During a hearing by the Senate Health Subcommittee, a testimony by the Deputy Director of the CIA stated that over 30 institutions and universities were involved in the experimentation program of testing drugs on unknowing citizens "at all social levels, high and low, Native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the issuing of LSD to unaware subjects in social situations.

The Army was subject to the testing of LSD which occurred in three phases. The first phase included over 1,000 American soldiers who willingly volunteered for testing of chemical warfare experiments. Phase two had 96 volunteers who were induced with LSD in evaluation of the possibility of intelligence uses of the drug. The third phase included Projects THIRD CHANCE and DERBY HAT which conducted experiments on 16 unwitting nonvolunteer subjects that after receiving LSD were interrogated as a part of operation field tests.

LSD
In 1943, LSD was created by Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. The early directors of MKUltra became aware of the existence of LSD and sought to use it for "mind-control". In the early 1950s, MKUltra director Sidney Gottlieb arranged for the CIA to buy the entire supply of LSD for $240,000, which in 2024, would be $4,227,079. This LSD supply gave Gottlieb the ability to now fulfill his experiment by spreading LSD to prisons, hospitals, institutions, clinics, and foundations in order to see how citizens would react to the drug without knowing exactly what is happening to themselves.

Early CIA efforts focused on LSD-25, which later came to dominate many of MKUltra's programs. The CIA wanted to know if they could make Soviet spies defect against their will and whether the Soviets could do the same to the CIA's own operatives.

Documents obtained from the CIA by John D. Marks under Freedom of Information in 1976 showed that, in 1953, the CIA considered purchasing 10 kilograms of LSD, enough for 100 million doses. The proposed purchase aimed to stop other countries from controlling the supply. The documents showed that the CIA purchased some quantities of LSD from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland.

Once Project MKUltra started, in April 1953, experiments included administering LSD to mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and prostitutes – "people who could not fight back", as one agency officer put it. In one case, they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days. They also administered LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, and members of the general public to study their reactions. The aim was to find drugs that would bring out deep confessions or wipe a subject's mind clean and program them as "a robot agent". Military personnel who received the mind-altering drugs were also threatened with court-martials if they told anyone about the experiments. LSD and other drugs were often administered without the subject's knowledge or informed consent, a violation of the Nuremberg Code the U.S. had agreed to follow after World War II. Many veterans who were subjected to experimentation are now seeking legal and monetary reparations.

In Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels within agency safehouses in San Francisco to obtain a selection of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events. The men were dosed with LSD, the brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors, and the sessions were filmed for later viewing and study. In other experiments where people were given LSD without their knowledge, they were interrogated under bright lights with doctors in the background taking notes. They told subjects they would extend their "trips" if they refused to reveal their secrets. The people under this interrogation were CIA employees, U.S. military personnel, and agents suspected of working for the other side in the Cold War. Long-term debilitation and several deaths resulted from this. Heroin addicts were bribed into taking LSD with offers of more heroin.

At the invitation of Stanford psychology graduate student Vik Lovell, an acquaintance of Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey volunteered to take part in what turned out to be a CIA-financed study under the aegis of MKUltra, at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital where he worked as a night aide. The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT and DMT on people.

The Office of Security used LSD in interrogations, but Sidney Gottlieb, the chemist who directed MKUltra, had other ideas: he thought it could be used in covert operations. Since its effects were temporary, he believed it could be given to high-ranking officials and in this way affect the course of important meetings, speeches, etc. Since he realized there was a difference in testing the drug in a laboratory and using it in clandestine operations, he initiated a series of experiments where LSD was given to people in "normal" settings without warning. At first, everyone in Technical Services tried it; a typical experiment involved two people in a room where they observed each other for hours and took notes. As the experimentation progressed, a point arrived where outsiders were drugged with no explanation whatsoever and surprise acid trips became something of an occupational hazard among CIA operatives. Adverse reactions often occurred, such as an operative who received the drug in his morning coffee, became psychotic and ran across Washington, D.C., seeing a monster in every car passing him. The experiments continued even after Frank Olson, an army chemist who had never taken LSD, was covertly dosed by his CIA supervisor and nine days later plunged to his death from the window of a 13th-story New York City hotel room, supposedly as a result of deep depression induced by the drug. According to Stephen Kinzer, Olson had approached his superiors some time earlier, doubting the morality of the project, and asked to resign from the CIA.

Some subjects' participation was consensual, and in these cases they appeared to be singled out for even more extreme experiments. In one case, seven drug-addicted African-American volunteers at the National Institute of Mental Health Addiction Research Center in Kentucky were given LSD for 77 consecutive days.

MKUltra's researchers later dismissed LSD as too unpredictable in its results. They gave up on the notion that LSD was "the secret that was going to unlock the universe", but it still had a place in the cloak-and-dagger arsenal. However, by 1962, the CIA and the army developed a series of super-hallucinogens such as the highly touted BZ, which was thought to hold greater promise as a mind control weapon. This resulted in the withdrawal of support by many academics and private researchers, and LSD research became less of a priority altogether.

Other drugs
Another technique investigated was the intravenous administration of a barbiturate into one arm and an amphetamine into the other. The barbiturates were released into the person first, and as soon as the person began to fall asleep, the amphetamines were released. Other experiments involved heroin, morphine, temazepam (used under code name MKSEARCH), mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, alcohol and sodium pentothal.

Hypnosis
Declassified MKUltra documents indicate they studied hypnosis in the early 1950s. Experimental goals included creating "hypnotically induced anxieties", "hypnotically increasing ability to learn and recall complex written matter", studying hypnosis and polygraph examinations, "hypnotically increasing ability to observe and recall complex arrangements of physical objects", and studying "relationship of personality to susceptibility to hypnosis". They conducted experiments with drug-induced hypnosis and with anterograde and retrograde amnesia while under the influence of such drugs.

Experiments on Canadians
The CIA exported experiments to Canada when they recruited Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, creator of the "psychic driving" concept, which the CIA found interesting. Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by erasing existing memories and reprogramming the psyche. He commuted from Albany, New York to Montreal every week to work at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University, and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 (US$766,936 in 2024, adjusted for inflation) to carry out MKUltra experiments there. The Montreal experiments research funds were sent to Cameron by a CIA front organization, the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, and as shown in internal CIA documents, Cameron did not know the money came from the CIA.

In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic drugs as well as electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced comas for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were often carried out on patients who entered the institute for common problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression, many of whom suffered permanent effects from his actions. His treatments resulted in victims' urinary incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents and thinking their interrogators were their parents.

During this era, Cameron became known worldwide as the first chairman of the World Psychiatric Association as well as president of both the American Psychiatric Association and the Canadian Psychiatric Association. Cameron was also a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal in 1946–1947.

Motivation and assessments
His work was inspired and paralleled by the British psychiatrist William Sargant at St Thomas' Hospital, London, and Belmont Hospital, Sutton, who was also involved in the Secret Intelligence Service and who experimented on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage.

In the 1980s, several of Cameron's former patients sued the CIA for damages, which the Canadian news program The Fifth Estate documented. Their experiences and lawsuit were adapted in the 1998 television miniseries The Sleep Room.

Naomi Klein argues in her book The Shock Doctrine that Cameron's research and his contribution to the MKUltra project was not about mind control and brainwashing, but about designing "a scientifically based system for extracting information from 'resistant sources'. In other words, torture."

Alfred W. McCoy writes, "Stripped of its bizarre excesses, Dr. Cameron's experiments, building upon Donald O. Hebb's earlier breakthrough, laid the scientific foundation for the CIA's two-stage psychological torture method", referring to first creating a state of disorientation in the subject, and then creating a situation of "self-inflicted" discomfort in which the disoriented subject can alleviate pain by capitulating.

Secret detention camps
In areas under American control in the early 1950s in Europe and East Asia, mostly Japan, West Germany and the Philippines, the CIA created secret detention centers so that the U.S. could avoid criminal prosecution. The CIA captured people suspected of being enemy agents and other people it deemed "expendable" to undertake various types of torture and human experimentation on them. The prisoners were interrogated while being administered psychoactive drugs, electroshocked and subjected to extremes of temperature, sensory isolation and the like to develop a better understanding of how to destroy and to control human minds.

Revelation

In 1973, amid a government-wide panic caused by Watergate, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed. Pursuant to this order, most CIA documents regarding the project were destroyed, making a full investigation of MKUltra impossible. A cache of some 20,000 documents survived Helms's purge, as they had been incorrectly stored in a financial records building and were discovered following a FOIA request in 1977. These documents were fully investigated during the Senate Hearings of 1977.

In December 1974, The New York Times alleged that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on U.S. citizens, during the 1960s. That report prompted investigations by the United States Congress, in the form of the Church Committee, and by a commission known as the Rockefeller Commission that looked into the illegal domestic activities of the CIA, the FBI and intelligence-related agencies of the military.

In the summer of 1975, congressional Church Committee reports and the presidential Rockefeller Commission report revealed to the public for the first time that the CIA and the Department of Defense had conducted experiments on both unwitting and cognizant human subjects as part of an extensive program to find out how to influence and control human behavior through the use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD and mescaline and other chemical, biological, and psychological means. They also revealed that at least one subject, Frank Olson, had died after administration of LSD. Much of what the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission learned about MKUltra was contained in a report, prepared by the Inspector General's office in 1963, that had survived the destruction of records ordered in 1973. However, it contained little detail. Sidney Gottlieb, who had retired from the CIA two years previously and had headed MKUltra, was interviewed by the committee but claimed to have very little recollection of the activities of MKUltra.

The congressional committee investigating the CIA research, chaired by Senator Frank Church, concluded that "prior consent was obviously not obtained from any of the subjects." The committee noted that the "experiments sponsored by these researchers[...] call into question the decision by the agencies not to fix guidelines for experiments."

Following the recommendations of the Church Committee, President Gerald Ford in 1976 issued the first Executive Order on Intelligence Activities which, among other things, prohibited "experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with the informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each such human subject" and in accordance with the guidelines issued by the National Commission. Subsequent orders by Presidents Carter and Reagan expanded the directive to apply to any human experimentation.

In 1977, during a hearing held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to look further into MKUltra, Admiral Stansfield Turner, then Director of Central Intelligence, revealed that the CIA had found a set of records, consisting of about 20,000 pages, that had survived the 1973 destruction orders because they had been incorrectly stored at a records center not usually used for such documents. These files dealt with the financing of MKUltra projects and contained few project details, but much more was learned from them than from the Inspector General's 1963 report.

On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said:

"The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an 'extensive testing and experimentation' program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens 'at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.' Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to 'unwitting subjects in social situations.'"

At least one death, the result of the alleged defenestration of Frank Olson, was attributed to Olson's being subjected, without his knowledge, to such experimentation nine days before his death. The CIA itself subsequently acknowledged that these tests had little scientific rationale. The officers conducting the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers.

In Canada, the issue took much longer to surface, becoming widely known in 1984 on a CBC news show, The Fifth Estate. It was learned that not only had the CIA funded Cameron's efforts, but also that the Canadian government was fully aware of this, and had later provided another $500,000 in funding to continue the experiments. This revelation largely derailed efforts by the victims to sue the CIA as their U.S. counterparts had, and the Canadian government eventually settled out of court for $100,000 to each of the 127 victims. Cameron died on September 8, 1967, after suffering a heart attack while he and his son were mountain climbing. None of Cameron's personal records of his involvement with MKUltra survived because his family destroyed them after his death.

1994 U.S. General Accounting Office report
The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on September 28, 1994, which stated that between 1940 and 1974, the Department of Defense and other national security agencies studied thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances.

The quote from the study:

"Working with the CIA, the Department of Defense gave hallucinogenic drugs to thousands of 'volunteer' soldiers in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to LSD, the Army also tested quinuclidinyl benzilate, a hallucinogen code-named BZ. (Note 37) Many of these tests were conducted under the so-called MKULTRA program, established to counter perceived Soviet and Chinese advances in brainwashing techniques. Between 1953 and 1964, the program consisted of 149 projects involving drug testing and other studies on unwitting human subjects"

Deaths
Given the CIA's purposeful destruction of most records, its failure to follow informed consent protocols with thousands of participants, the uncontrolled nature of the experiments, and the lack of follow-up data, the full impact of MKUltra experiments, including deaths, may never be known. Several known deaths have been associated with Project MKUltra, most notably that of Frank Olson. Olson, a United States Army biochemist and biological weapons researcher, was given LSD without his knowledge or consent in November 1953, as part of a CIA experiment, and died after falling from a 13th-story window a week later. A CIA doctor assigned to monitor Olson claimed to have been asleep in another bed in a New York City hotel room when Olson fell to his death. In 1953, Olson's death was described as a suicide that had occurred during a severe psychotic episode. The CIA's own internal investigation concluded that the head of MKUltra, CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb, had conducted the LSD experiment with Olson's prior knowledge, although neither Olson nor the other men taking part in the experiment were informed as to the exact nature of the drug until some 20 minutes after its ingestion. The report further suggested that Gottlieb was nonetheless due a reprimand, as he had failed to take into account Olson's already-diagnosed suicidal tendencies, which might have been exacerbated by the LSD.

The Olson family disputes the official version of events. They maintain that Frank Olson was murdered because, especially in the aftermath of his LSD experience, he had become a security risk who might divulge state secrets associated with highly classified CIA programs, about many of which he had direct personal knowledge. A few days before his death, Frank Olson quit his position as acting chief of the Special Operations Division at Detrick, Maryland (later Fort Detrick) because of a severe moral crisis concerning the nature of his biological weapons research. Among Olson's concerns were the development of assassination materials used by the CIA, the CIA's use of biological warfare materials in covert operations, experimentation with biological weapons in populated areas, collaboration with former Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip, LSD mind control research, and the use of psychoactive drugs during "terminal" interrogations under a program code-named Project Artichoke.

Later forensic evidence conflicted with the official version of events; when Olson's body was exhumed in 1994, cranial injuries indicated that Olson had been knocked unconscious before he exited the window. The medical examiner termed Olson's death a "homicide". In 1975, Olson's family received a $750,000 settlement from the U.S. government and formal apologies from President Gerald Ford and CIA Director William Colby, though their apologies were limited to informed consent issues concerning Olson's ingestion of LSD. On November 28, 2012, the Olson family filed suit against the U.S. federal government for the wrongful death of Frank Olson. The case was dismissed in July 2013, due in part to the 1976 settlement between the family and government. In the decision dismissing the suit, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote, "While the court must limit its analysis to the four corners of the complaint, the skeptical reader may wish to know that the public record supports many of the allegations [in the family's suit], farfetched as they may sound." A 2010 book alleged that the 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning was part of MKDELTA, that Olson was involved in that event, and that he was eventually murdered by the CIA. Earlier academic sources had attributed the incident to ergot poisoning through a local bakery.

Legal issues involving informed consent
The revelations about the CIA and the Army prompted a number of subjects or their survivors to file lawsuits against the federal government for conducting experiments without informed consent. Although the government aggressively, and sometimes successfully, sought to avoid legal liability, several plaintiffs did receive compensation through court order, out-of-court settlement, or acts of Congress. Frank Olson's family received $750,000 by a special act of Congress, and both President Ford and CIA director William Colby met with Olson's family to apologize publicly.

Previously, the CIA and the Army had actively and successfully sought to withhold incriminating information, even as they secretly provided compensation to the families. One subject of army drug experimentation, James Stanley, an army sergeant, brought an important, albeit unsuccessful, suit. The government argued that Stanley was barred from suing under the Feres doctrine.

In 1987, the Supreme Court affirmed this defense in a 5–4 decision that dismissed Stanley's case: United States v. Stanley. The majority argued that "a test for liability that depends on the extent to which particular suits would call into question military discipline and decision making would itself require judicial inquiry into, and hence intrusion upon, military matters." In dissent, Justice William Brennan argued that the need to preserve military discipline should not protect the government from liability and punishment for serious violations of constitutional rights:

"The medical trials at Nuremberg in 1947 deeply impressed upon the world that experimentation with unknowing human subjects is morally and legally unacceptable. The United States Military Tribunal established the Nuremberg Code as a standard against which to judge German scientists who experimented with human subjects... [I]n defiance of this principle, military intelligence officials[...] began surreptitiously testing chemical and biological materials, including LSD."

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing a separate dissent, stated:

"No judicially crafted rule should insulate from liability the involuntary and unknowing human experimentation alleged to have occurred in this case. Indeed, as Justice Brennan observes, the United States played an instrumental role in the criminal prosecution of Nazi officials who experimented with human subjects during the Second World War, and the standards that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals developed to judge the behavior of the defendants stated that the 'voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential[...] to satisfy moral, ethical, and legal concepts.' If this principle is violated, the very least that society can do is to see that the victims are compensated, as best they can be, by the perpetrators."

In another lawsuit, Wayne Ritchie, a former United States Marshal, after hearing about the project's existence in 1990, alleged the CIA laced his food or drink with LSD at a 1957 Christmas party which resulted in his attempting to commit a robbery at a bar and his subsequent arrest. While the government admitted it was, at that time, drugging people without their consent and that Ritchie's behavior was typical of someone on LSD, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel found Ritchie could not prove he was one of MKUltra's victims or that LSD caused his robbery attempt, and dismissed the case in 2005.

Documented experimenters
Confirmed: Alleged:
 * Harold Alexander Abramson
 * Donald Ewen Cameron
 * Sidney Gottlieb
 * Harris Isbell
 * Martin Theodore Orne
 * Louis Jolyon West
 * George Hunter White
 * Jim Jones
 * Charlie Siragusa

Documented subjects
Confirmed: Alleged:
 * American poet Allen Ginsberg first took LSD in an experiment on Stanford University's campus where he could listen to records of his choice (he chose a Gertrude Stein reading, a Tibetan mandala, and Richard Wagner). He said the experience resulted in "a slight paranoia that hung on all my acid experiences through the mid-1960s until I learned from meditation how to disperse that." He became an outspoken advocate for psychedelics in the 1960s and, after hearing suspicions that the experiment was CIA-funded, wrote, "Am I, Allen Ginsberg, the product of one of the CIA's lamentable, ill-advised, or triumphantly successful experiments in mind control?"
 * Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is said to have volunteered for MKUltra experiments involving LSD and other psychedelic drugs at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Menlo Park while he was a student at nearby Stanford University. Kesey's experiences while under the influence of LSD inspired him to promote the drug outside the context of the MKUltra experiments, which influenced the early development of hippie culture.
 * Robert Hunter was an American lyricist, singer-songwriter, translator, and poet, best known for his association with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Along with Ken Kesey, Hunter was said to be an early volunteer MKUltra test subject at Stanford University. Stanford test subjects were paid to take LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, then report on their experiences. These experiences were creatively formative for Hunter:"Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist[...] and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell-like (must I take you by the hand, ever so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resounding bells[...] By my faith if this be insanity, then for the love of God permit me to remain insane."
 * Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger alleged he had been subjected to weekly injections of LSD and subsequent testing while in prison in Atlanta in 1957.
 * Ted Kaczynski, an American domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber, was said to be a subject of a voluntary psychological study alleged by some sources to have been a part of MKUltra.  As a sophomore at Harvard, Kaczynski participated in a study described by author Alston Chase as a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment", led by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. In total, Kaczynski spent 200 hours as part of the study.
 * Lawrence Teeter, the attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, believed that Sirhan was "operating under MK-ULTRA mind control techniques" when he assassinated Robert F. Kennedy.
 * Charles Manson has been tied to MKULTRA by author Tom O'Neil, beginning with his time in prison, when Manson took part in drug-induced psychological experiments run by the federal government. This continued through his ongoing connection to the CIA's Free Medical Clinic in San Francisco once out of prison in 1967.

Aftermath
After retiring in 1972, Gottlieb dismissed his entire effort for the CIA's MKUltra program as useless. Files discovered in 1977 containing 700 pages of new information showed that experiments had continued until Gottlieb ordered the program halted on July 10, 1972.

In popular culture
MKUltra plays a part in many conspiracy theories due to its nature and the destruction of most records.

Television

 * The 1998 CBC miniseries The Sleep Room dramatizes brainwashing experiments funded by MKUltra that were performed on Canadian mental patients in the 1950s and 60s, and their subsequent efforts to sue the CIA.
 * In season 2, episode 5 of Fringe, "Dream Logic", Walter Bishop mentions his participation in MK-Ultra experiments, using LSD and suggestion.
 * In season 2, episode 19 of Bones, "Spaceman in a Crater", Jack Hodgins mentions that Frank Olson was an unwitting participant and committed suicide, but that an exhumation 45 years later proved he was murdered.
 * Wormwood is a 2017 American six-part docudrama miniseries directed by Errol Morris and released on Netflix. The series is based on the life of the scientist Frank Olson and his involvement in Project MKUltra.
 * The popular series Stranger Things, a Netflix original, is largely based on the MKUltra experiments and the subsequent US government cover-ups. The main character, Eleven, is a child of an MKUltra test subject.

Film

 * The 2009 film, The Killing Room is a thriller based on the real life MK-ULTRA top secret government psychological program in which various volunteer test subjects are put in a tense situation.

Music

 * English band Muse's 2009 album The Resistance features a song titled "MK Ultra", which references brainwashing techniques utilised by the CIA in the eponymous project.
 * Will Wood's 2020 album The Normal Album features the song "BlackBoxWarrior - OKULTRA" which is theorized to describe the experience of an MKUltra victim.
 * Glasgow band, the "Mickey 9s", have a song called "MK Ultra ", from their 2021 album "Modern Kunst".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: MKUltra


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Talk:MKUltra

Current Reverberations of MK Ultra in popular culture via extremist organizations and conspiracy theories
I would suggest adding or linking to some recent references to MKUltra in recent social media and propaganda materials. For instance, in this twitter image of a chat re children being removed from homes of adherents of Queen Didula Romana in Canada, children who reject the parents' beliefs are referred to as having fallen prey to MKUltra: https://twitter.com/MintTea778165/status/1742944212750901584/photo/3

It is apparently also being used as proof that the "Deep State" exists and is broadly manipulating people's behaviors and beliefs. The ramifications of both of these uses make MKUltra more than a historical footnote in current North American culture. Closcholar (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

 * The right way to do this is to find reliable secondary sources that specifically discuss this phenomenon. It's not appropriate to make broad claims by pointing at individual tweets or similar material, and even if we had a million similar tweets, we'd still need secondary sources to support any claims in this article to avoid original research. Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 01:57, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Is there any actual evidence that these secret programs have been stopped other then the very same people involved in them saying that they have ended them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.154.183.90 (talk) 10:53, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Cold War Science
— Assignment last updated by CarsonKlingman (talk) 17:57, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Pop culture
Mk Ultra is also present in tv series “Project Bluebook” during 2nd season. 2001:8A0:682A:7B01:895A:EFC9:CC8F:34E0 (talk) 15:16, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

 * There is also a recent film of the same name.
 * MK Ultra (film) - Wikipedia 2A0A:EF40:12F0:C01:60E7:D633:4B57:EA3C (talk) 00:11, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Status on possible subject
Randall Turner has made multiple claims about being a MKUltra slave but with no proof. Is this true or not? 2601:8B:8401:6A80:4890:10EE:F7B0:2581 (talk) 00:13, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:MKUltra


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Margaret Singer

Margaret Thaler Singer (July 29, 1921 – November 23, 2003) was an American clinical psychologist and researcher with her colleague Lyman Wynne on family communication. She was a prominent figure in the study of undue influence in social and religious contexts, and a proponent of the brainwashing theory of new religious movements.

Singer's main areas of research included schizophrenia, family therapy, brainwashing and coercive persuasion. In the 1960s, she began to study the nature of social and religious group influence and mind control, and sat as a board member of the American Family Foundation and as an advisory board member of the Cult Awareness Network. She was the co-author of the book Cults in Our Midst.

Education
Singer was born in Denver, Colorado, to Margaret McDonough Thaler and Raymond Willard Thaler. Her mother was a secretary to a federal judge and her father was chief operating engineer at the US Mint. While attending the University of Denver, she played cello in the Denver Civic Symphony. She received her Bachelor of Arts in speech and a Master of Science in speech pathology and special education from the University of Denver. Singer received her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in clinical psychology from the University of Denver in 1943.

Career
After obtaining her PhD in clinical psychology, Singer worked at the University of Colorado's School of Medicine's department of psychiatry for eight years. In 1953, she started working at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where she specialized in studying the returned prisoners of war who had been brainwashed by their captors into denouncing the United States and supporting North Korea and China.

In the scientific community, Singer was best known and respected for her studies in schizophrenia and family therapy. She conducted research with the National Institute of Mental Health, the United States Air Force, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Singer was a guest lecturer of psychology at University of California, Berkeley, from 1964 to 1991, and she served as a faculty member and lecturer at other University of California campuses as well as the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the University of Rochester, and other institutions.

Singer's work on family communication won her a place as one of the pioneers in the developing field of family therapy. As noted in one obituary, her collaboration with Lyman Wynne was particularly important.

Singer began to study brainwashing in the 1950s at Walter Reed in Washington, DC, where she interviewed United States soldiers who had been taken prisoner during the Korean War. Beginning in the late 1960s, she expanded her studies in the field of cults and published a number of articles on mind control ("psychological coercion") and similar areas. She developed theories about how cults recruit and retain members (such as her Theory of Systematic Manipulation of Social and Psychological Influence) and was on the board of many of the major anti-cult groups and organizations in the United States. At one point, Singer interviewed Charles Manson.

By the 1970s, Singer was a leading researcher in the field of psychosomatic medicine, and became the first female and first psychologist President of the American Psychosomatic Society in 1974. She also served as a member of the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute review board and the American Family Foundation board.

Singer testified as a brainwashing expert at the trial of Patty Hearst, presenting her conclusions that Hearst had been brainwashed, but outside the jury's presence. Singer described Hearst as "a low-IQ, low-affect zombie" and testified that by using speech patterns, she determined that Hearst was reading statements prepared by her captors. Prosecutors argued that Singer's testimony should not be presented to the jury because brainwashing had never before been accepted as a field of expertise upon which expert testimony could be presented. The judge decided in favor of the prosecution, and Hearst was convicted. Singer's testimony was widely reported, which increased her reputation as a brainwashing expert.

Singer played a role in the "Hillside Strangler" trial of Kenneth Bianchi. Singer concluded that Bianchi had faked symptoms of multiple personality disorder, in order to escape responsibility for the murders of several women in Los Angeles. Later, she spoke about the trial on PBS Frontline in a special show entitled: "The Mind of a Murderer." Singer asserted that Bianchi was a psychopath, and stated: "He may simply be evil."

Her expert testimony was no longer accepted after the report of the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control, of which she was chair, was rejected by the Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) of the American Psychological Association. Melton has written that afterward, courts began to shift toward accepting the position held by the great majority of scholars studying new religious movements, moving away from the minority perspective of Singer and others sympathetic to her brainwashing claims. According to Melton, this had significant consequences later on, since it meant that brainwashing could no longer be used as a defense for the practice of deprogramming.

DIMPAC task force controversy and aftermath
In the early 1980s, some American mental health professionals became well-known figures due to their involvement as expert witnesses in court cases against groups they considered to be cults. In their testimonies they presented theories of brainwashing, mind control, or coercive persuasion to support the legal positions of former group members against their former groups.

The American Psychological Association (APA) in 1983 asked Singer, who was one of the leading proponents of coercive persuasion theories, to chair a taskforce to investigate whether brainwashing or "coercive persuasion" did indeed play a role in recruitment by such groups. The task force was called the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC). The task force completed its final report in November 1986. In May 1987 the APA Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) rejected the DIMPAC final report, stating that the report "lack[ed] the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur," and also stating that the BSERP did "not believe that we have sufficient information available to guide us in taking a position on this issue."

Singer and her associate, sociologist Richard Ofshe, subsequently sued the APA, and a group of scholars and lawyers, in 1992 for "defamation, frauds, aiding and abetting and conspiracy," and lost in 1994. In a further ruling, James R. Lambden ordered Ofshe and Singer to pay 80,000 USD in attorneys' fees under California's SLAPP-suit law. At that time, Singer and Ofshe declared their intention to sue Michael Flomenhaft, the lawyer that represented them in the case, for malpractice.

Singer was subsequently not accepted by judges as an expert witness in four cases alleging brainwashing and mind control.

After the report was rejected, Singer reworked much of the rejected material into the book Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives, which she co-authored with Janja Lalich.

Landmark Education legal dispute (1996)
In 1996, Landmark Education sued Singer for defamation. Singer mentioned Landmark Education in Cults in our Midst; it was unclear whether she labeled Landmark Education as a cult or not. Singer issued a statement stating that she did not intend to call Landmark a cult, nor did she consider it a cult.

Amanda Scioscia reported in the Phoenix New Times that Singer never called Landmark a cult, but that she described it as a "controversial new age training course". She also stated that she would not recommend the group to anyone, and would not comment on whether Landmark used coercive persuasion for fear of legal recrimination from Landmark.

Harassment and death threat complaints
Singer faced harassment, including death threats and dead animals placed on her doorstep, from groups that disagreed with her views on cults. According to Richard Behar's article in Time magazine, Singer was an outspoken critic of Scientology and was known to travel under an assumed name to avoid harassment.

Her criticism of cults and their brainwashing tactics resulted in harassment of Singer's family and students as well, including breaking into Singer's office, stealing students' term papers and sending notes to Singer's students. According to the Los Angeles Times, other examples included cult "operatives" going through Singer's trash and mail, picketing her lectures, hacking into her computer, and releasing live rats in her house.

Honors and awards

 * Hofheimer Prize, American College of Psychiatrists, 1966
 * Stanley R. Dean Award, American College of Psychiatrists, Research in Schizophrenia, 1976
 * Achievement Awards, Mental Health Association of the United States

Personal life
Singer was married to Jerome R. Singer, a physicist and professor at University of California, Berkeley. The couple had two children.

Death
Margaret Singer died of pneumonia on November 23, 2003, in Berkeley, California, at the Alta Bates Medical Center at the age of 82. Singer was survived by her husband, two children, and five grandchildren.

title: Margaret Singer