Psychoanalysing psychiatrists and psychologists who torture

Eighth, torturers have a delusional belief in the effectiveness and morality of violence; they have no capacity to perceive its dysfunctionality and immorality. Ninth, because they are terrified of identifying that they are the victim of the violence of their own parents (and/or other significant adults from their childhood) and that this violence terrified them, torturers unconsciously delude themselves about the identity of their own perpetrator. They will unconsciously identify their 'perpetrator' as one or more individuals of whom they are not actually afraid. And prisoners, including those suspected of 'terrorism', are 'legitimised victims' who are clearly not threatening (to them); moreover, they are also vulnerable.

Tenth, torturers unconsciously project their self-hatred, one outcome of their own victimhood, as hatred for their victim. This enables them to both self-justify their behaviour and to obscure from themselves their true but unconscious motivation: to remain unaware of their own terror, defencelessness, powerlessness, self-hatred, self-worthlessness, and all of the other unpleasant feelings that make them become individuals who torture.

Eleventh, torturers have an intense fear of knowing the truth: it is safer to believe that their carefully but unconsciously chosen victim, who is always much less powerful than the torturer, is 'the problem' (and thus gain the desired, but delusionary, sense of 'having control'). The truth would require them to stand up to the actual perpetrator and, of course, this is utterly terrifying.

It is partly because of this fear that torturers also have a twelfth

attribute: they will unconsciously seek a legitimised way to inflict their violence. Why? Because they are trapped between two further and competing fears. On the one hand, they have a compulsion to inflict violence (on someone they now delusionarily project is their perpetrator) in 'self-defense' but, on the other hand, they have been terrorised into obedience, including obedience of laws which proscribe the use of violence. By working in the institutional setting, these individuals will be able to inflict their violence 'legally' in the form of torture.

Thirteenth, torturers lack the courage to heal; that is, they delude themselves that their own fear and terror are not responsible for their violence because they are too terrified to take responsibility for feeling this fear and terror as the central component of any strategy for dealing truthfully and powerfully with their violence.

Torturers, including those who are psychiatrists or psychologists, need our understanding and support: they are people who are badly emotionally damaged as a result of the torture/violence inflicted on them when they were children. But their violence, inflicted on behalf of their political masters, needs to be nonviolently resisted as well.