Monday 29 June 2015

Sensory Deprivation, by Sean M. Brooks

This essay discusses how Poul Anderson used "sensory deprivation" as the means used by some of his characters in WE CLAIM THESE STARS and MURDER IN BLACK LETTER to obtain information.  I also want to examine the question of whether sensory deprivation can be used as a legitimate intelligence method or has to be rejected as torture, and thus unethical to use.

I also wish to stress the need to not assume that the ideas, beliefs, or actions of an author's fictional characters are what that author himself believes or that he approves of all that his characters do.  Sometimes, of course, he does--and at other times does not.

The first quote from the works of Poul Anderson showing how sensory deprivation was used to obtain information is from Chapter X of WE CLAIM THESE STARS, one of the stories he wrote for his Technic Civilization series, in the time of the Terran Empire, more than a thousand years in the future. Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, an officer in Terra's Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps, had, with guerilla assistance, captured Clanmaster Temulak, commander of the alien garrison occupying the human town of Garth, on the planet Vixen.  Temulak was an officer belonging to a race called the Ardazirho which had invaded and seized Vixen, a planet colonized by humans belonging to the Empire.  The Ardazirho captive was unwilling to answer questions, so Flandry took recourse to measures designed to break that resistance, using sensory deprivation.  To quote from Chapter X:
    He nodded to Dr. Reineke.  The physician wheeled forth the equipment he had abstracted from Garth General Hospital at Flandry's request.  A blindfolding hood went over Temulak's eyes, sound deadening wax filled his ears and plugged his nose, a machine supplied him with intravenous nourishment and another removed body wastes, they left him immobile and, except for the soft constant pressure of bonds and bed, sealed into a darkness like death.  No sense impressions could reach him from outside.  It was painless, it did no permanent harm, but the mind is not intended for such isolation.  When there is nothing by which it may orient itself, it rapidly loses all knowledge of time; an hour seems like a day, and later like a week or a year.  Space and material reality vanish.  Hallucinations come, and the will begins to crumble.  Most particularly is this true when the victim is among enemies, tensed to feel the whip or knife which his own ferocious culture would surely use.
Clanmaster Temulak, a moderately high ranking Ardazirho officer, would be CERTAIN to have information which would be extremely useful for the Terrans to know.  The story goes on to say Temulak finally cracked after "Three of Vixen's 22 hour rotation periods went by, and part of a fourth, before the message came that Temulak had broken" (WE CLAIM THESE STARS, Chapter XI).

In 1979, when I first read Poul Anderson's mystery MURDER IN BLACK LETTER (Macmillan: 1960), I was surprised to come across this text on page 133: "They're just now beginning to study the mental effects of eliminating sensory stimuli," said Kintyre.  "The mind goes out of whack amazingly fast.  My friend Levinson, in the physiology department, was telling me about some recent experiments.  Volunteers, intelligent self-controlled people who knew what it's all about and knew they could quit any time they wanted--none of which applies to O'Hearn--didn't last long.  Hallucinations set in."  Plainly, it was in the middle or late 1950's that Anderson first came across the idea of using sensory deprivation as a means of obtaining information from subjects unwilling to truthfully answer questions.

Here we see characters from two of Poul Anderson's novels using sensory deprivation to force prisoners they knew had valuable information to answer questions truthfully.  The issue to be examined is whether what Flandry and Kintyre did was torture and hence unethical or whether it was morally licit.  One reason why torture as such is not used by responsible intelligence officers is because of how unreliable it can be.  To again quote from one of Anderson's novels, about eight years later in the Technic History, in Chapter V of A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, he has Flandry saying: "Let me explain from the ground up.  Interrogation is an unavoidable part of police and military work.  You can do it on several levels of intensity.  First, simple questioning; if possible, questioning different subjects separately and comparing their stories. Next, browbeating of assorted kinds.  Then torture, which can be the crude inflicting of pain or something like prolonged sleep deprivation.  The trouble with these methods is, they aren't too dependable.  The subject may hold out.  He may lie.  If he's had psychosomatic training, he can fool a lie detector; or, if he's clever, he can tell only a misleading part of the truth.  At best, procedures are slow, especially when you have to crosscheck whatever you get against whatever other information you can find."   We see torture, defined as either the crude inflicting of pain or prolonged sleep deprivation, dismissed as slow and unreliable.

For a look at how torture should be regarded ethically, I will quote what the CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (Image Books, 1995), an official and authoritative summarizing of Catholic doctrinal and moral teaching, says about it in Nos. 2297-2298: "2297 ....*Torture* which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary for respect for the person and for human dignity.  Except when performed for strictly therapeutic, medical reasons, directly intended *amputations, mutilations,  *and *sterilizations *performed on innocent persons are against the moral law."  And 2298 says: "In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture.  Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy.  She forbade clerics to shed blood.  In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person.  On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading.  It is necessary to work for their abolition.  We must pray for the victims and their tormentors."

Given all that has been previously written, the question to be answered is whether or not the use of sensory deprivation is or is not torture.  If it is not torture, or not always thus, its use as a means of extracting information from those unwilling to answer questions truthfully is ethically permissible.  Those who would defend the use of sensory deprivation will point out that Temulak was not tortured in the senses given above: pain was not inflicted on him nor was he even deprived of, or prevented from sleeping.  All that happened to him was being made temporarily unable to see, hear, smell, or move.  And this was done only as long as it took for persuading Temulak to cooperate in being interrogated. However, those who would argue against the use of sensory deprivation as a means of obtaining information would say that having one's senses deprived of outside stimuli is torture because prolonged lack of stimulation for the senses becomes unendurable.  I believe both sides would agree that to deliberately prolong sensory deprivation beyond the point of inducing the subject to cooperate in being interrogated does becomes torture, and thus immoral to use.

What conclusions can be reached to resolve this question?  Sensory deprivation, when strictly limited and used solely for persuading persons being interrogated to cooperate in being questioned, can be legitimately used.  Two preconditions are necessary: first, the cause or reason for using sensory deprivation on an unwilling person must be so strong that this unwillingness can be rightfully overruled.  Second, interrogators must also be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the person they are trying to question DOES have information they need to discover (because to use sensory deprivation on a prisoner reasonably likely not to know the information being sought is indisputably torture).  For example, a private will know far less information of military value than a colonel or general.  That was certainly the case with Clanmaster Temulak, the captured enemy officer we see in WE CLAIM THESE STARS.  Recall, Temulak was captured by Flandry and his guerrilla assistants on a planet seized and occupied by enemies, in circumstances where discovery and seizure by those enemies was a very high possibility.  Flandry did not have the TIME or means for lengthy, weeks long interrogation of an unwilling prisoner.

I am, of course, open to being corrected in my view that sensory deprivation can be a legitimate interrogation method by REASONED and logical arguments.  I would also be interested in finding out what professional, law abiding, and ethical interrogators and intelligence officers think of this question.  I have tried to find out how sensory deprivation was used in actual cases.  However, I have found none where this method was described as used with the care ordered by Flandry for the treatment of Temulak.  Merely emotional or ad hominem arguments for or against sensory deprivation are rejected out of hand.

During the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1960's and 1970's, British security forces came to use five "sensory deprivation" methods which eventually caused the Republic of Ireland to sue the United Kingdom in the European Court of Human Rights for alleged torture of terrorists or guerrillas (see European Court of Human Rights, "Ireland v. the United Kingdom," January 18, 1978).  The disputed methods were: wall standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, and deprivation of food and drink.  In the final judgment handed down by the European Court in the above mentioned case, it examined the United Nations definition of torture and ruled that these five methods did not meet the intensity of pain and suffering laid down by that definition.  However, the Court ruled these methods amounted to "inhuman and degrading treatment," violating Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (another treaty binding on signatory nations).

Except for the hooding of Temulak, none of this applies to the case we see in WE CLAIM THESE STARS.  The prisoner was not subjected to wall standing, loud noises, depriving of sleep, or depriving of nourishment.  So, I am not satisfied the British case gives us a clear example in actual history of the use of sensory deprivation as seen in WE CLAIM THESE STARS.  Nor have I found any US cases using "sensory deprivation" as seen in those of Poul Anderson's works I have quoted in this article.  Rather, the cases I read of were roughly similar, in some of the methods used, to those seen in the British case.

And, speaking personally, I have wondered what it might be like to experience sensory deprivation.  I have actually thought of being tied down, having my ears plugged, eyes blindfolded, etc., for one hour.  What would it be like to endure sensory deprivation for even so short a time? I know there are persons who have found the limited use of sensory deprivation to be restful or useful.

15 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Many thanks to you and Ketlan for publishing on your blog my latest Poul Anderson article. I hope it interested you and that it interests other readers as well. It's my wish that some of these readers will leave their own comments, pro or con, about my article here.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
If sensory deprivation forces prisoners to talk against their will because they find it unbearable/intolerable, then I think that it constitutes mental torture. European civilization and organized religion have used torture in the past and should now lead the world in saying, "Never again."
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Many thanks for your comments! I'm very glad to get some feedback.

I wish I could unequivocally and always agree with you, but I'm not sure I can, in this matter. In the case from WE CLAIM THESE STARS, recall the increasingly dire straits the Empire was in from both the Syrax crisis, directly confronting an implacably hostile Merseia, and then a totally unexpected attack from another quarter by hitherto unknown enemies, the Ardazirho. Was it unethical of Flandry to induce Temulak to talk about what he knew via sensory deprivation, given both these crisises and the fact that he had no time, in enemy occupied territory, to interrogate the prisoner by simple questioning? Nor was the Clanmaster KEPT under sensory deprivation beyond the point where he finally agreed to talk.

I argue that, at least in urgent cases of the kind seen in WE CLAIM THESE STARS, plus certain preconditions I wrote of in my essay, sensory deprivation of the kind seen here MAY be ethically permissible. I am, of course, open to being convinced I (and Flandry) were wrong.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
We have probably said most or all of what we are going to say about it. I agree that the situation was urgent but urgency could be used to rationalize physical torture and I certainly would not go along with that. I would want any prisoner to know that, whatever else happened, he was safe as a prisoner.
The Catechism you quoted did refer to both physical and mental torture, not just physical.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Thanks, again, for your comments!

You are correct, urgency and a sense of intolerably high stress and danger can induce even other wise ethical men to use methods of interrogation which has to be called torture. I absolutely agree that torture, as such, is never moral to use. And that prisoners, even if illegal combatants, should be assured of their safety.

And, as a Catholic, it was natural of me to consult what the teaching of the Church is on torture. The question here being, was Flandry's treatment of Clanmaster Temulak mental torture, and thus unethical treatment of a prisoner? I still lean to the view that Temulak's case at least possibly fell into a grey and debatable zone, and that Flandry could argue his use of sensory deprivation was licit.

Again, I appreciate your comments and hope others will add their own thoughts!

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

I forgot to add to any of my comments in the combox how I regret never thinking of asking Poul Anderson for what HE personally thought of sensory deprivation and whether it could be legitimately used as an interrogation method. After all, I used to correspond personally by snail mail with Mr. Anderson and discussed many things with him--but not sensory deprivation. Drat!

I THINK, from the "neutral tone" with which Poul Anderson discussed sensory deprivation in WE CLAIM THESE STARS and MURDER IN BLACK LETTER, that he was possibly open to sensory deprivation being SOMETIMES licit to use. At least when used in the strictly limited ways we see Flandry using sensory deprivation.

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

I have sent the link to this article of mine to several of my online friends, one of whom is a retired RAF officer. With his permission and consent, I'll quote some of what he said about sensory deprivation. This former RAF officer does not think sensory deprivation is torture, at least not when used with the care shown by Dominic Flandry.

This gentleman, who has also worked in intelligence, said, after I asked if sensory deprivation could be licit, at least when used with the care shown by Dominic Flandry with Clanmaster Temulak: "Yes! Of course it can! And it has a very positive side: while it is NOT NICE to experience, it leaves no marks. It works and courts have little or nothing to swoon over. Civilians want to be protected, but they don't want anything nasty to look at. Sensory deprivation does that!"

And, after I had asked for permission to quote what I copied above, this ex RAF officer added: "Of course! IMHO Sensory Deprivation is far more humane than the physical torture used by the Gestapo! And it works! If I can save the lives of some of OUR men by a means which does no physical injury I think that it is fully justified."

I quoted these comments from a private email thread largely to give here another POV regarding the use of sensory deprivation.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Sensory deprivation is so unpleasant that it forces prisoners to talk against their will and yet is not torture? I still find this position contradictory. It does not have any physical effects so it must be classed as mental torture which is equally condemned by the religious authority quoted. The argument being deployed seems to be that sensory deprivation is not physical torture, therefore is not torture?
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Thanks for your comments! But I fear I have to at least partly disagree. E.g., IS sensory deprivation mental torture? Considering how carefully Flandry treated Temulak (no physical pain inflicted on him, nor was he deprived of sleep and nourishment), and the fact that the sensory depriving of Temulak was stopped once he finally gave in and agreed to talk, I still have doubts that sensory deprivation, at least as Flandry used it, was mental torture.

If I'm ever convinced that you are right to criticize sensory deprivation as being at least mental torture, I will say so!

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Before this article of mine disappears from the "front page" of Dr. Shackley's admirable blog devoted to discussion of the works of Poul Anderson I thought it right to offer some more comments about the ethics of using sensory deprivation as an intelligence method. The comments I copied below (with his permission) came from the same former Royal Air Force officer I quoted above.

This gentleman wrote: "One point to some of your commentators: If you have just cause to believe that a prisoner has information about a weapon or a planned action that will seriously harm your forces and your country, then you have an absolute necessity to obtain that information from the prisoner. Allowing him to be quiet can bring terrible outcomes to your military and/or your civilian population." This ex RAF officer added: "So you have two moral questions to answer, allow the prisoner to remain quiet while knowing the potential for death and destruction affecting your people or get that information by hook or by crook."

I drew two conclusions: admiration for the RESTRAINT shown by Dominic Flandry in his treatment of Clanmaster Temulak in using the gentlest possible means to induce him to cooperate with being questioned. The second conclusion sprang from what this former RAF officer said after I asked permission to quote what I copied above: "Of course: though I have no doubt people will disagree with me! After all, innocence is a positive virtue, but when you have been faced with some awful realities you come to see that life is full of ambiguous circumstances where "you are damned if you do and damned if you don't." Sometimes men entrusted with the defence of their people HAVE to do morally questionable things in urgent cases. Their duty is to do as little harm as possible while still obtaining the needed information.

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

I'm exasperated with myself! I forgot to add another quote mark after "you are damned if you do and damned if you don't." The text beginning with "Sometimes" is mine, not the former RAF officer I was quoting.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
I was going to add the missing quote mark but it seems to be in there now? Maybe Ketlan added it.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Many thanks! But, actually, the my RAF friend was quoting the saying about "damned if your do and damned if you don't" at the end of his comments that I was copying. He used double quotation marks to show he was citing a a proverb, and I forgot to add another quote mark to separate it from my own, final comments.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Of course, I can edit the post but not the comments!
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I simply need to be more careful in how I write stuff in the comboxes. I have an unfortunate tendency to be careless about quick, off the cuff comments I make in them. Most times, however, I think it's trivial.

Sean