Torturing terrorists is bad for your health

A patient of mine, in a fit of rage, cried out, "Two can play at this game. I'm going to torture my brother just like he has tortured me all these years. I've been terrified of him and if I don't fight back, he'll wipe me out. It's the only way to stop him!" There was a depressed silence and he then said, "The only thing that stops me is that I know if I did this, he would just hit back even harder. It wouldn't stop him – in fact, it's exactly what he wants me to do so the game will go on forever – we'll forever be locked in battle. It's like a terminal bond. And at the end of the day I would hate myself even more than I hate him. I'd be no different than him. He'd really win then."

What my patient said encapsulates much of the dynamics of the torturer and the tortured. My patient has for my many years been terrorised by a psychopathic brother who has been intent on destroying him. He has felt helpless, frightened and trapped. He has also felt murderous.

My patient's initial impulse to hit back echoes Dick Cheney's statement only two months ago: "These are evil people. And we're not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek... If it hadn't been for what we did with respect to the... enhanced interrogation techniques for high value detainees... then we would have been attacked again."

Whether or not there is evidence for this, the battle with the terrorist factions of Al-Qaeda in the West goes on with the threat of further reprisals and an escalation of violence.

It has now become clear by the findings of the Red Cross that torture was committed under the banner of "enhanced interrogation techniques". More and more gruelling evidence is emerging of the scarring and traumatic effects of torture on its victims.

In the US, the 2001 terror attacks have led to a severe paranoid response

Far less is said about its effects on the perpetrators and those in the line of command. What emerges in many of the trials of those responsible for torture, such as the current Khmer Rouge trial in Cambodia, is an extreme level of fear that is at the root of torture. In his recent testimony, Comrade Duch, who served under Pol Pot's regime, explained: "When I was forced to supervise (the prison), I became both an actor in criminal acts and a hostage of the regime." If he did not follow orders, his own life would have been at stake.

Within the US, the fear generated by the terrorist attacks of 2001 has been overwhelming and has led to an intense paranoid response, as expressed most dramatically in Bush's declaration of a War on Terror. The once invincible nation, never before invaded, has suddenly been made to feel vulnerable and helpless in the face of an enemy from without that attacks without warning and under cover.

This has given credence to the myth of the "ticking bomb" that has influenced so much of US policy in responding to terrorism. In this scenario, there is a bomb waiting to go off and a prisoner who knows – or whom we imagine knows – the whereabouts of the bomb. The damage caused by the bomb could be immense and terrifying. The torture of the prisoner is justified because it elicits the whereabouts of the bomb and allows it to be detonated harmlessly. The torturer – and those who order it – is affirmed in his role of saviour. Justice and revenge and cultural cleansing are served at the same time. Does this begin to sound like the ideology of the enemy?

Especially when the enemy is from without, it is very easy to personify them as "other". They embody everything that is bad and dangerous that we would like to deny in ourselves. The good guys and the bad guys are split into two clear camps. By projecting all the evil onto "these people", we not only remain pure but the tactics we use to exterminate evil are exonerated.

In our self-justifications we become virtually identical to the extremist religious terrorists who similarly believe they are ridding the world of evil. We are copying them and in doing so we become like them. Even the techniques of torture adopted by the US are based on techniques used by our "enemies", notably those used by the Chinese Communists in the Korean War and those used by the Soviet intelligence services.

Torture is justified along these lines and because it works. It has been used as a tool in combating terrorism/enemy action throughout the centuries. In the recent US incidents of torture it is also justified, ironically, as a means of protecting US citizens from being targeted by terrorists as objects of hatred. Terrorism is so frightening precisely because it treats the individual as an object.

The ultimate aim of terrorism is to destroy the "other" by stripping them of their humanity. And it is our humanity that must be protected – at all costs. What is increasingly apparent from the evidence coming out of Guantanamo Bay and other sites is the dehumanisation of the victims who are tortured. This is what is also at the heart of terrorism.

The torturer not only wants to force the enemy to disclose the whereabouts of the ticking bomb, but, like my patient, the torturer wants revenge for the anxiety and torture he (or his country) have been put through. In the act of torture, the torturer turns the tables. He becomes omnipotent in his fantasy and wants to make his victim feel helpless, trapped and terrified so that he can be rid of these feelings inside himself. He expels his terror into the terrorist, the "other", who is further dehumanised.

The torturer is condemned to a twilight of numbed and suppressed feelings

It is not possible to conduct torture of any kind without dehumanising the victim. However, this also requires the torturer to become dehumanised and here is the rub. In order to do his job, the torturer must cut off from his feelings of concern and empathy towards the other and turn the victim into an object, not a person. This also explains why the job of torturer at times attracts people who already suffer from such a split in their psyches.

However, for those who are more intact emotionally, the act of committing torture necessitates a perversion of their emotions. It becomes very difficult, if not impossible, for the torturer to allow himself to feel true compassion without opening the flood gates of guilt, remorse, and horror. The torturer is condemned to a twilight of numbed experience in which his feelings need to suppressed so that he can continue to function. There is a striking parallel with the massive denial that victims of torture need to put into place in order to survive their ordeals. Torturer and tortured become dehumanized images of one another.

The real dilemma about condoning torture – and now about whether the torturers should be pardoned or not – is perhaps less about human rights or issues of legality but more about the fact that what was an enemy from without becomes an enemy from within when the collective psyche becomes corrupted by this process of dehumanisation. This is perhaps the greatest danger of allowing torture to continue. It is simply bad psychology. ·