Mental Health in the War on Terror: Culture, Science, and Statecraft

231 Pages·2015·2.98 MB·English

by  Neil K. Aggarwal

Mental Health in
the War on Terror
CULTURE, SCIENCE, AND STATECRAFT
Neil Krishan Aggarwal
MENTAL HEALTH IN THE WAR
ON TERROR

Mental Health
in the War
on Terror
CULTURE, SCIENCE, AND STATECRAFT
Neil Krishan Aggarwal
columbia university press(cid:18) new york
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2015 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Aggarwal, Neil Krishan, author.
Mental health in the war on terror : culture, science, and statecraft / Neil Krishan Aggarwal.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-16664-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53844-2 (e-book)
I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Mental Health—ethnology—United States. 2. Bioethical Issues—United States.
3. Prisoners of War—psychology—United States. 4. Terrorism—psychology—United States.
5. Veterans—psychology—United States. WA 305 AA1]
RC451.4.p7
616.890086'97—dc23
2014020991
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee
Cover image: © AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
The question or questions that have to be asked are: “What types of knowledge
are you trying to disqualify when you say that you are a science? What speaking
subject, what discursive subject, what subject of experience and knowledge
are you trying to minorize when you begin to say: ‘I speak this discourse, I am
speaking a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist.’ What theoretico-political
vanguard are you trying to put on the throne in order to detach it from all the
massive, circulating, and discontinuous forms that knowledge can take?”
—Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended

contents
preface(cid:18)IX
acknowledgments(cid:18)XI
chapter one
(cid:2)
Mental Health, Culture, and Power in the War on Terror(cid:18)1
chapter two
(cid:2)
Bioethics and the Conduct of Mental Health Professionals
in the War on Terror(cid:18)30
chapter three
(cid:2)
The Meanings of Symptoms and Services for Guantánamo Detainees(cid:18)53
chapter four
(cid:2)
Depictions of Arabs and Muslims in Psychodynamic Scholarship(cid:18)83
chapter five
(cid:2)
Depictions of Suicide Bombers in the Mental Health Scholarship(cid:18)107
chapter six
(cid:2)
Knowledge and Practice in War on Terror Deradicalization Programs(cid:18)133
epilogue(cid:18)157
notes(cid:18)163
references(cid:18)173
index(cid:18)205

preface
foucault’s penetrating insights into the connections between
knowledge and power, between science and politics, have gripped me since
the declaration of the War on Terror. I entered medical school in 2000 and
watched the 9/11 attacks unfold on live television. As I attended medical
conferences, I began perceiving the creeping influence of politics within
academic discussions: bioethicists debated the philosophical grounds for
torture, and psychiatrists conjectured about the irrational motivations
of suicide bombers. Medical scientists placed certain theoretico-political
vanguards related to national security on the throne of science at this ex-
ceptional moment of American history. What perspectives were becoming
“minorized” and “majorized” in the War on Terror, and how did these per-
spectives immortalize cultural values, beliefs, and orientations as scientific
knowledge? In a broad sense, how has the War on Terror changed medi-
cine, and how has medicine changed the War on Terror?
The goal of this book is to analyze the cultural meanings of mental
health knowledge and practice produced throughout the War on Ter-
ror. My frameworks for studying the interrelationships of mental health,
culture, and power come primarily from cultural psychiatry and medical
anthropology. Central to both disciplines is the tenet that medical sys-
tems are cultural systems with beliefs, behaviors, and meanings transacted
among individuals in social institutions. I aim to show through a wide
array of materials that we can study medical systems in the War on Ter-
ror as cultural systems. These source materials include government docu-
ments; reports and position papers from nongovernmental organizations;
legal files such as charge sheets, motions, rulings, and transcripts; direct and