Biderman's Chart of Coercion
{{Short description|Table illustrating torture on American prisoners of the Korean War}}
File:Bill Funchess in POW camp 160921-A-ZU930-008.jpg's study of Chinese psychological torture of American prisoners of war during the Korean War.]]
Biderman's Chart of Coercion, also called Biderman's Principles, is a table developed by sociologist Albert Biderman in 1957 to illustrate the methods of Chinese and Korean torture on American prisoners of war from the Korean War. The chart lists eight methods of torture that will psychologically break an individual.
In spite of the chart's original Cold War application, Amnesty International has stated that the Chart of Coercion contains the "universal tools of torture and coercion". In the early 2000s, the chart was used by American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. It has also been applied to the psychological abuse used by perpetrators of domestic violence.
Origin
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Biderman, a social scientist with the US Air Force, was assigned to research why many American prisoners of war (POW) captured by Communist forces during the Korean War were cooperating. After extensive interviews with returned POWs, Biderman concluded that there were three major elements behind the Communist interrogators' coercive control: "dependency, debility and dread".{{cite news|last=Hill|first=Jess|date=June 23, 2019|title='It's like you go to abuse school': how domestic violence always follows the same script|url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/24/its-like-you-go-to-abuse-school-how-domestic-violence-always-follows-the-same-script|work=The Guardian|access-date=June 1, 2021|archive-date=May 5, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210505081344/https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/24/its-like-you-go-to-abuse-school-how-domestic-violence-always-follows-the-same-script|url-status=live}} Biderman summarized his findings in a chart first published in the paper Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War in a 1957 issue of The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. The paper was an analysis of the psychological, rather than physical, methods used to coerce information and false confessions.{{cite web|url=https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/torture/document-day-old-torture-made-new|title=Document a Day: Old Torture Made New|last=Siems|first=Larry|date=June 14, 2010|website=American Civil Liberties Union|access-date=June 1, 2021|archive-date=March 28, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210328071017/https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/torture/document-day-old-torture-made-new|url-status=live}}
Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton conducted similar research into the same Chinese methods; coining the term "thought reform" (now known as brainwashing) to describe them in the same issue of The Bulletin.
Coercion methods
- Isolation
- Monopolization of perception
- Induced debilitation and exhaustion
- Threats
- Occasional indulgences
- Demonstrating "omnipotence" and "omniscience"
- Degradation
- Enforcing trivial demands
Later applications
File:Camp x-ray detainees.jpg in the early 2000s.]]
In a 1973 report on torture, Amnesty International stated that Biderman’s Chart of Coercion contained the "universal tools of torture and coercion".
In 2002, US military trainers offered an entire training class to Guantanamo Bay detention camp interrogators based on Biderman's Chart. Documents revealed to Congressional investigators in 2008 revealed interrogation methods at the camp; The New York Times was the first to recognize that the methods were nearly verbatim those contained in Biderman's Chart.{{cite news|last=Shane|first=Scott|date=July 2, 2008|title=China inspired interrogations at Guantánamo|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/world/americas/02iht-02detain.14154569.html|work=The New York Times|access-date=June 1, 2021|archive-date=November 17, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201117213259/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/world/americas/02iht-02detain.14154569.html|url-status=live}}
Biderman's Chart of Coercion has also been applied to domestic violence, with many noting that the psychological methods used by abusive partners are nearly identical to those of the chart.
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1806204/pdf/bullnyacadmed00378-0046.pdf Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War]
- [http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/testimonies-of-the-defense-department/sere-training-report Report on Physical Pressures Training, January 15, 2002]
Category:Guantanamo Bay detention camp