What is it like to be tortured?

October 31, 2010 at 12:36 P.M. My computer's clock has been set back or was stopped for an hour. I will try to correct any "errors" inserted in writings -- including this essay -- during this time period that intruders had access to my computer.

August 5, 2010 at 11:43 A.M. My phones were disabled this morning during a call to my aged mother who was very distressed by this experience. All bills have been paid, despite financial hardships to me, caused by mysterious thefts, and only one "error" was discovered since my previous review of this work.

May 29, 2010 at 10:10 A.M. "Errors" inserted since my previous review have now been corrected once again, often inserted "errors" that had been previously corrected are restored to the text to maximize the emotional and nerve impact. Please see "What is it like to be censored in America?" and "More Cybercrime and Censorship." Noise fills the room where I type these words, right on cue. I will continue to write. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

February 10, 2010 at 2:39 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected.

December 7, 2009 at 9:45 A.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected.

October 26, 2009 at 10:14 A.M. My computer's clock was set back by hackers yesterday; my television signal has been obstructed; several other harassments are routine. "The Cover-Up Continues," (Editorial) in The New York Times, October 26, 2009, at p. A22.

September 24, 2009 at 10:43 A.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected. Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner? ("No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")

May 15, 2009 at 8:09 A.M. Access to my MSN group is still denied. No response has been received to my requests for information from New Jersey's disgraced Supreme Court. All images accompanying this essay at Critique have been blocked at blogger. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court.")

December 16, 2008 at 12:23 P.M. "errors" inserted, again, and corrected, also again. I realize that people may find this display of cruelty difficult to witness. I ask that they do so because such evil must be seen to be fully appreciated in order that it will never happen again.

January 16, 2008 at 9:33 A.M. new attacks against my computer require me to run scans. Maybe, I'll try to restart the computer. I never know whether I will be able to continue writing. I will struggle to find a way to do so. Hackers and viruses are obstructing further communication efforts at this time. I will do my best to continue posting writings, despite these frustrations.

January 5, 2008 at 1:19 P.M. items at my profile have been altered, other vandalism at this site is expected.

December 19, 2007 at 1:52 P.M. Calls received from 412-208-6000.

October 4, 2007 at 11:02 A.M. I am unable to access my MSN account to work on an essay dealing with the Jena 6 case. New allegations of organized crime's involvement in New Jersey's State Police and corruption in the Garden State's legal system have been followed by more criminal harassment directed against me. I am told that MSN has "closed." I am blocking:

http://view.atdmt.com/jaction/k0/msn_MSNBCHo... (NJ)
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N3016.msnbc/B229... (Appellate Division Judge, NJ?)
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N3016.msnbc/B229... (Appellate Division Judge, NJ?)

July 16, 2007 at 12:30 P.M. I have lost count of the number of times that I have made corrections of "errors" inserted by hackers into this text, I believe, as a form of "induced frustration." These "errors" are not found in a printed copy of this text dated October 18, 2007. I will correct all "errors" and repost the essay. (Again: "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court.")

August 5, 2007 at about 9:00 A.M. a new virus slowed down my computer. I am running a scan. I will do my best to continue writing.

September 23, 2007 at 4:50 P.M. new computer troubles make writing difficult. I will run scans all day. My discussion is based on the soures listed below.

December 20, 2008 at 3:37 P.M. new "errors" were inserted, again, in this essay.

January 15, 2009 at 7:01 P.M. More attacks on these writings are expected, made possible by the abuse of government power and technology in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Spacing has been affected in this essay. Harassment is ongoing and continuous.

February 2, 2009 at 12:22 P.M. "errors" inserted and corrected.

Richard Perez-Pena, "New Jersey Is Sued Over the Forced Medication of Patients at Psychiatric Hospitals," in The New York Times, August 5, 2010, at p. A15. (Involuntary chemical lobotomies used to render victims helpless or induce mental illness may have allowed for abuse or rape of victims.)
James Risen, "Study Cites Breaches of Medical Ethics in Interrogations of Terrorism Suspects," in The New York Times, June 7, 2010, at p. A6. (Dotors facilitating torture and rape.)
Seth Mydans, "Legal Strategy Fails to Hide Pride a Khmer Torturer Took in His Job," in The New York Times, June 21, 2009, at p. 12. ("Hannah Arendt and Adolf Eichmann on The Banality of Evil.")
John Schwartz, "Judge Allows Civil Lawsuit Over Claims of Torture," in The New York Times, June 14, 2009, p. 16. ("We don't know from nothing.")
Monica Scislowska, "Newfound Documents Shed Light on Lives of Notorious Death-Camp Doctors," in The Star Ledger, March 23, 2010, at p. 2. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

I.

The essence of torture is denial of humanity. A torturer wishes to shatter the will of another human being by depriving that person of his or her autonomy. Such a horrible crime amounts to an attempt to alter the metaphysics of the universe. Torture is evil. It is an act of "supreme hubris" comparable to psychological murder.

"Supreme hubris" is a quality often found among psychiatrists and other doctors, which is also not uncommon among lawyers, judges, and politicians. Terry Tuchin, one of New Jersey's torturers, is an example of what I mean by hubris. I have never (and would never) select a man like Tuchin or a person like Diana Lisa Riccioli as any kind of professional or even as a conversational partner in my life. Under hypnosis, through suggestion, a person can be told to trust or "like" anyone, even to commit infractions for which he or she may then be blamed. However, the effects of such a process do not last long, usually just long enough to elicit information from a victim. No one was able to make me a criminal. No one will ever do so. (See "Jaynee LaVecchia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

A torturer always hopes to become "the god of the torture chamber." Torture is a plunge into the demonic seductions of power. Whatever the status of victims, however much they may be injured -- especially psychologically -- the moral harm to torturers is always far greater than the pain experienced by their victims. My efforts to communicate are a daily war against criminal violations of civil rights made possible by corrupt officials in New Jersey. These same officials say that I am "unethical." I believe that they are much more "unethical" than I could ever be. You decide. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

What do I mean when I say that torturers want to redefine the metaphysics of the universe? I mean that in a philosophical terrain that includes only one type of being experienced and known as a "subject" -- that is, persons -- the denial of subjectivity to another human being is an absolute alteration of ontological and metaphysical realities. Subjectivity is denied with the attempt to supplant one person's will and capacity for choice with another's instructions. Torture is designed to leave only one free will in existence -- the torturer's. Torture is an attempt to transform the victim into an "unperson." Is this what we seek to do to Cuba? Do we intend to enslave or control the Cuban people in order for them to comply with our will regarding their government? (George Orwell)

The torturer rules the universe of the torture chamber as the only "free" being and power-wielder, swaggering through this "theater of cruelty" (Antonin Artaud), like God in the Garden of Eden. It is difficult for victims to realize the almost sexual thrill experienced by some twisted individuals -- like Tuchin and Riccioli -- a thrill associated with inflicting torments and frustrations on another human being. The goal is to "control" the victim. The pleasure derived by torturers is essentially sexual and is not really concerned with any social or other purpose for sadists.

"Over the years physical torture has given way to increased psychological torture," Susmita Thukral writes, "out of a need to hide evidence of torture and also out of recognition that psychological torture can be more effective for the torturer and more debilitating, annihilating and silencing for the tortured. Furthermore, it seems that psychological torture predominantly secures its effectiveness through the use of humiliation. [It is important] to understand this very unique relation between torture and humiliation and the manner in which humiliation and shame are systematically used for purposes of torture. [Hence, the combination of rape and sexual violation with insults and threats.] In a way, the premise ... is that torture acquires its efficacy primarily because it deploys humiliation and sets in motion those psychological processes in the tortured that go far beyond the effects of physical abuse and that are longstanding in their impact on the psyche." (p. 2.)

May 29, 2010 at 10:13 A.M. I have just corrected the same error that I corrected yesterday. I may well have to correct it again tomorrow. One of the preferred tactics of New Jersey's hackers is to insert the identical "error," after each correction, in the same essay.

November 24, 2008 at 9:53 A.M. I am unable to update my security system. Efforts to back up files were frustrated and obstructed yesterday, several essays were altered and defaced, corrected, then vandalized again.

The goal of the torturers is to sustain this process of frustration in order to exhaust the victim who will collapse into depression and refrain from further expressions of protest. I do not believe that these tactics will work with me. However, they will be more successful with those lacking a strong sense of self, especially women who are victims of trauma early in life.

Nietzsche (later Sartre) insists that "every human being wishes to be God." This single insight serves as the foundation for Alfred Adler's psychoanalytic theory. Not surprisingly, Nietzsche is the philosopher of power. Hence, Nietzsche is the "patron saint" of all torturers. It is also not surprising, therefore, that Nietzsche's great French admirer, Michel Foucault, would be drawn to the study of psychoanalysis and therapeutic relations as revealing instances of power-relations. (I have just corrected another "error" not found in my printed version of this essay, dated October 18, 2007.)

For torturers, it is unforgivable that a victim chooses to think or feel, for himself, or to express a forbidden emotion -- probably an emotion that is unavailable to the torturer -- because such capacities are reminders of all that is still possible for victims and that is lost by those whose craving for domination has deprived them of their own humanity. (This paragraph has been altered several times by hackers, then corrected by me in each instance.)

A torturer is a man or woman who cannot bear an independent "Other." A torturer is unable to live not simply with another's opposition, but with any rival subjectivity. Tragically, the torturer's own free will is usually long gone well before he or she can commit this unforgivable act of denying humanity to another person. Torturers must destroy other subjects because they can only live in a universe of objects -- including themselves as "things" -- where no subjects are allowed. Torturers must struggle to escape their own moral condition as "non-persons" by making their victims even less human than they are. Alex Booth? Being trapped in an ontology of rigid divisions, torturers must force their victims into the cramped quarters of their desiccated amoral, or quasi-scientific ontology:

"This project," Michel Foucault writes of Ludwig Bingswanger's 1955 essay on Dreams, "situates [this work] in opposition to all forms of psychological positivism which think they can exhaust the meaningful content of man in the reductionist concept of homo natura and at the same time relocates it in the context of an ontological reflection which takes for its major theme presence-to-being, existence, Dasein." (Foucault, Mental Illness, p. xv.)

It is the agony of torturers -- often an unrecognized one -- to be reminded of their own imprisonment in hatred or stupidity by the freedom and capacity for love of their suffering victims. The torturer must not kill his victim. The torturer must persuade his victim, through the imposition of pain and humiliation, even better frustration, to relinquish (voluntarily) all humanity and freedom, to abandon his creative efforts, to give up on the desire to live. Torture victims are pressured to abandon all desire -- and most of all hope -- in favor of their tormentors: "Give up," says the torturer, "because I have."

The most effective response to this demand will always be: "I will never give up because you have given up and want me to do so." I will resist. I will struggle. I will never yield my autonomy. The torturer feels a desperate need to legitimate his or her criminality as well as insatiable delight in sadism. Hence, torturers seek approval and validation, acceptance from victims of what must remain unacceptable -- even at the cost of death -- dehumanization, control, deprivation of liberty, reduction of a suffering human being to the status of a slave.

You will be disappointed if you seek legitimation of New Jersey's tortures from me. Noise and obscene phone calls, cybercrime and censorship will strengthen my commitment to this effort, Mr. Menendez. ("Senator Bob Struggles to Find his Conscience" and "Is Senator Bob 'For' Human Rights?")

"We see men and women totally overwhelmed by the memories of what was done to them. I think of a man so traumatized that he would shake and sweat every time he came to see me. He cried out through his tears: 'Doctor, they turn you into a piece of meat!' Another client vomitted in my wastebasket after the memories of torture overwhelmed him. Many women sat with their heads buried in shame, sobbing uncontrollably. The physical wounds had healed, but the psychological trauma lived on."

Furthermore, "The techniques employed by the American torturers in Iraq and Guantanamo" -- and, secretly, in New Jersey -- "are among the most insidious and effective. Sexual abuse, whatever form it takes, is an extremely damaging form of torture. For tormentors to penetrate this most private realm produces deep feelings of despair and self-loathing; I have heard survivors say they would have preferred to be beaten. When they are forced into humiliating acts, they can feel responsible for participating in their own degradation. The shame they feel eats away at them forever."

Uwe Jacobs, "Struggling with Our Own Inhumanity: The Price of Torture," in SF Gate
http://www.SFGate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/02/EDGAMID291.DTL&type... March 2, 2005.

" ... 'When I said no, they shot me up instead, so pretty soon I gave up,' said Alice Hsia, 34, who has been in and out of hospitals [in New Jersey's "Gulag Archipelago"] for shizophrenia. [It is likely that Ms. Hsia was abused in an impaired condition.] 'The times I was sedated, I would sign anything they wanted.' ..." (N.Y. Times, August 5, 2010, at p. A15.)

The shame belongs to rapists and abusers of men and women, not to their victims. Failures to acknowledge harm done compounds the injury: "We'll pretend that nothing happened." In this tragic master/slave dialectic, the slave wins if he or she refuses to surrender human dignity in order to be defined by another, insisting on self-definition at all costs. The slave must insist on not being a slave. This insistence is the true subject of the novel and film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. See also Spartacus, Kubrick's exploration of slavery and the idea of struggle against fascism that was written by Dalton Trumbo, a victim of the McCarthy era's paranoia. Any recording of Leontyne Price's Aida will teach you that a slave can be a princess, and a princess can be a slave. Anne Milgram, Esq.? ("Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest!" and "Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'")

My freedom and identity -- my RIGHTS to self-determination and to choose the PERSONS who are allowed entry into my psyche or private life -- is not negotiable. I am not a "thing" to be conditioned or altered by anyone against my will. I am not a slave. I prefer death to conditioning aimed at passive "adjustment" to exploitation. I also prefer, even the horror of being tortured, to the possibility of hurting others -- deliberately, for money -- deriving a sadist's pleasure from the experience. (This last sentence has been corrected, once again, as I struggle against new computer viruses and -- I hope! -- class-based opposition to my use of capital letters.)

Anything is better than being a state torturer -- including being one of their victims. If there is a single theme to the works of the Polish philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, then this is it:

"The phenomenon of hatred has three dimensions: moral, political, and religious. ... the moral and political sides of hatred do not contradict each other; that is, there is no circumstance under which hatred, although morally condemned, may be recommended as politically conducive to preparing the way for a world free of hatred: [Cuban-Americans?] the means justify the ends. However, religious tradition, at least in our cultural space, calls for more than simple abandonment of hatred: We ought to bestow good on our persecutors, and pray for our enemies. Must such a demand, which violates natural instincts, count as universally binding? Only the greatest banality can be given as an answer: It is certain that only very few are, or ever will be, equal to the task; but the fabric of our civilization rests on the shoulders of these few, and we owe them the little we are capable of doing."

Leszek Kolakowski, "Epilogue: Education to Hatred, Education to Dignity," in Modernity on Endless Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990), p. 261 (emphasis added).

This is Kolakowski's greatest work which expresses a lifetime's opposition to all forms of totalitarianism. The obituary by Tony Judt, "Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009)," in The New York Review of Books, September 24, 2009, at p. 6 did not discuss this highly apt "Epilogue." What are the effects of psychological tortures over prolonged periods of time? (An "error" previously corrected was restored to this sentence and has now been corrected again.)

II.

"... torture can destroy one's fundamental capacities such as the capacity to trust and form secure attachments. Interpersonal, social and occupational dysfunctions are also common outcomes in survivors of torture." -- You mean, affecting job performance for which the victim can then be blamed? -- "Furthermore, the experience of torture can lead to a strong sense of depersonalization and alienation and it has been found that survivors of torture tend to lead ... personally disconnected and disengaged lives." (Jacobs, pp. 5-6)

Ideally, victims can be blamed and insulted because of these synthetically-generated pathologies, or described as "unethical" perhaps. Financial pressures and threats to family members -- or their manipulation before the eyes of victims -- are always useful in psychological torture. Torturers always say: "everything is bullshit, nothing matters, there is no right and wrong." For torturers, victims must reach that same level of nihilism and lethargy, becoming only things, because a torturer already is a thing or "object," by choice. Torturers are dead and do not know it. Torturers are so miserable in their morally impoverished condition that some part of them must envy their victims because victims at least remain persons. Torturers evoke our anger. Yet they should also evoke our pity and disgust. For torturers are always in a kind of hell. Diana Lisa Riccioli? Howard Brownstein? Alex Booth?

Causing others pain allows torturers, finally, to feel something -- usually a kind of pleasure -- at the vicarious experience of emotions that are no longer available to them, emotions that may still be found in others. Torturers inhabit a self-chosen den of inhumanity. Hell? They communicate this self-chosen agony by demonstration, doing to others what has been done to them, what they have experienced at the hands of violators and oppressors. A torturer once said of a woman I love: "She's a filthy whore." Then of another of my loved-ones: "She's a fat pig." It has taken me more than a decade to understand that her subconscious was telling me how she sees herself and why she must hurt others. (See again: "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

Professor Michael E. Tigar says: "I am prejudiced against torture. I am also prejudiced against the posturing and tergiversation that has lately gone on about torture. ... The norm against torture has become peremptory" -- and this includes psychological torture -- "jus cogens, and non-derogable."

"Universal Rights and Wrongs: Roper v. Simmons, Torture and Judge Posner," in Monthly Review, May-June, 2006 and http://www.monthlyreview.org/0506tigar.htm Philippe Sands, Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (New York: McMillan, 2009), entirety. (Protocols for psychological tortures in interrogations.)

Robert Whitaker makes a shocking discovery, American physicians and psychiatrists "were giving the mentally ill" -- or just unhappy people wandering into medical facilities -- "chemical agents ... amphetamines, ketamine, and methylphenidate [which was expected and intended] to heighten [or cause] psychosis."

Much the same can be accomplished with abuse of forensic hypnosis techniques. American doctors CREATE suffering and illness in patients -- who are not informed that they are "guiny pigs" -- and call it research. What are you up to these days, Diana? Busy? How about you, Terry? Did you sign off on these torments, Debbie? ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Cruelty and Censorship in New Jersey.")

Persons were and are made unwilling and unknowing secret victims of experimentation designed to be harmful to them, sometimes destroying their lives and health, forever, also affecting innocent others around them -- including children -- so "therapists" can learn from them. Josef Mengele would fit right in with these American "therapists." Self-styled "physicians" violate the Hypocratic oath by causing mental suffering to persons, allegedly, to study their "symptoms." Victims are made to suffer "for their own good." Consent is not needed. ("Behaviorism is Evil.")

The rationale is that others -- even the "little people" -- will or may eventually benefit from what is learned through such hideous experiments. Maybe not. What the hell. It sure is fun for those conducting the experiments, not for victims however. The reality is that such methods of torment are about controlling others. Who would want to do that "controlling" of persons? Government? Organized crime? Both? In New Jersey, there's no difference between government and organized crime. How do you live with your guilt and hypocrisy, Debbie? Ethics? Do you speak to me of "ethics," Stuart Rabner? Anne Milgram? What did they do to you, Marilyn? ("The Experiments in Guatemala" and "American Doctors and Torture.")

It is a "real job" controlling unruly persons who insist on their freedom, for some reason, and who decline to give up their autonomy or privacy to anyone. American "therapists" claim the power to deprive persons of such autonomy in the interests of the state for "thirty pieces of silver" and a promotion. Nydia Hernandez? ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "American Unwilling Experimental Animals.")

Victims are not informed and need not approve of such torments -- I certainly never did -- torments which become their own reward for sadistic therapists, such as Ridgewood, New Jersey's own Terry A. Tuchin or Diana Lisa Riccioli, the "gay" pride of Clifton, New Jersey. Paramus? Besides, no one can consent to being a crime victim. Such therapist-torturers enjoy political protection in New Jersey, despite their racism -- or may be licensed to commit secret crimes -- by that state's disgraced high court. Maybe by other public officials in Trenton, who will deny everything if these crimes become public. Perhaps also by intelligence agencies making use of torturers' "findings." What is the result of this charming practice?

"Over the past twenty-five years, outcomes for people in the United States with schizophrenia" -- and other emotional troubles, including ordinary unhappiness -- "have worsened. They are now no better than they were in the first decades of the twentieth century, when the therapy of the day was to wrap the insane in wet sheets. Even more perplexing, schizophrenia outcomes in the United States and in other developed countries today are much worse than in the poor countries of the world." (Whitaker, pp. xiii-xiv.) ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

Persons in poor countries do far better by receiving the loving care and attention of sympathetic friends and loving family members than sufferers in the "advanced countries" who receive dozens of medications and isolation, together with horrifying behaviorist tortures and rapes at the hands of the Tuchins and Ricciolis of this world. Chemical lobotomy and sexual slavery are not ways of dealing with mentally ill persons. Loss of civil rights produces therapeutic disasters as well as unconstitutional and criminal state actions. Mental illness -- or even emotional unease -- is criminalized in America as more persons are thrown into prisons for "abnormality." ("Jaynee La Vecchia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Compare Mark Danner, "The Secret Red Cross Report on US Torture at Black Sites," in The New York Review of Books, April 9, 2009, at p. 69 and Mark Danner, "The Red Cross Report on Torture and What it Means for the U.S.," in The New York Review of Books, at p. 48 with Philip Gourevitch, "Torture on Trial," in The New Yorker, May 11, 2009, at p. 33 and Atul Gawande, "Ordinary Torture," in The New Yorker, March 30, 2009, at p. 36. (Social isolation through slanders and destruction of familial and other relationships can help in the effort to disconfirm identity in order to induce a collapse into severe depression or paranoia, maybe suicide.)

On a visit to an American mental institution, R.D. Laing was told of a female patient who removed all of her clothing, sat all day rocking back and forth in a dark room, refusing to speak to anyone. All efforts to reach her had failed. Laing asked to be taken to her, removed his own clothes, sat next to her and rocked as she did. After forty-five minutes or so, the patient began to speak. When Laing left the institution that day, he asked his hosts: "Did none of you think of trying this before?" ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")

Every great actor -- all artists -- must be persons who enter that dark room, remove their clothes, and rock back-and-forth with that victim. One of the bravest performances by any artist (or anyone) that I have ever seen is Kate Winslet's performance in, I think, Holy Smoke. See it. Any artist -- especially any actor -- incapable of such identification with the extreme states of suffering humanity will never achieve ultimate success in his or her work. ("'The Reader': A Movie Review.")

January 4, 2007, 1:35 P.M. "errors" were inserted into the foregoing paragraph for the sixth or seventh time. They have now been corrected. (See "Jay Romano and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Mafia and Street Gang Alliance Disrupted in New Jersey.")

Suppose a woman is raped and hurt by a trusted family member -- a parent -- early in her life, before she was in a position to articulate her pain or bewilderment, or even to understand what was done to her or why. Some part of this woman will remain a wounded child forever. She hurts others -- especially one man that she cares about -- not because she enjoys it, like torturers and criminals do, but for him to know what she feels because she cannot express her pain in any other way. She needs him to understand that pain. Therefore, she "enacts" or dramatizes her suffering. Any other person that she hurts in her life will be a substitute for that one man, whose understanding and care she needs. With this man's presence in her life, it will be unnecessary for her to injure anyone, ever again, because it will mean that her effort at communication in order to find loving acceptance and forgiveness -- from him -- is successful as well as complete. No one else will ever do. ("'Diamonds Are Forever': A Movie Review.")

She cannot articulate her pain or experience in words because when the incident occurred, she was not old enough to comprehend or verbalize what happened or why it happened. Some part of her will remain at that level of comprehension until a person she loves destroys the barrier to these emotions by sharing them with her. This sharing allows the princess to escape the tower in which she is locked with her pain. Two can bear the darkness better than one.

These are dangerous observations because my insights do not depend on psychobabble or P.C. bullshit. As a result, they must be ignored and (if possible) the person expressing them should be destroyed. This man's forgiveness and love, acceptance and embrace of her pain is a balancing of the cosmic scales. His willing sharing in her suffering provides her with meaning and understanding of what defies rational comprehension, the violation of a young girl by her father, together with all of the evils following that event, by an example of the opposite -- unconditional love and the healing which love brings. His love must be such that he will sacrifice anything and everything to make it clear to her that she matters so much that nothing can ever matter more. (Again: "What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Diamonds Are Forever': A Movie Review.")

By this example of commitment, it may be possible to explain to her -- this wounded woman -- that every human being matters exactly that much, so that hurting others, violence, cruelty become unacceptable to her, forever. The symbolic representation of this wisdom on a universal scale is found in every crucifix, Star of David, call to prayer. This is the lesson of the Haj, the pilgrim's journey to Mecca (which symbolizes the hero's journey). It is the Buddha's serenity and peace. It is cessation of all struggle and eternal calm in Hinduism. It is humanity's centuries-old idea of psychic healing. Love and compassion, suffering for/with others, communal acceptance of shared pain. ("America's Holocaust" and "Shakespeare's Black Prince.")

Healing through dialogical connection and/or the experience of art is what real therapy -- something I have never experienced, as opposed to torture -- can be. Such a connection is only possible among or between equals, which is something for powerful nations to remember. Adam Phillips, "The Soul of Man Under Psychoanalysis," in Equals (New York: Perseus, 2002), p. 89. (There can be no such thing as secret "therapy by adhesion.") I do not believe that rape or theft are "therapeutic." ("Pieta.")

Something similar -- a willing taking upon ourselves, as a people, of the mystery and pain of evil -- may be the only real possibility of resolving America's racial odyssey. Reparations for African-Americans would not be about compensating for slavery, which can't be done, but it could be an attempt to deal with today's injuries resulting from slavery and its aftermath by a national effort to ensure access to higher education for all young African-Americans, material compensation, respect, leading to enhancement of aesthetic and spiritual opportunities. Respect for a tortured people through recognition of their pain and the wrong that has been done to them, really to all of us. This is not too much to ask on behalf of our African-American brothers and sisters still coping with the legacy of slavery. ("Havana Nights and C.I.A. Tapes.")

The election of Barack Obama is the next step in our journey to full racial equality. Mr. Obama's presidency is not the end of the problem for millions of African-Americans, especially children who are at greater risk of early death, inadequate education, malnutrition, poverty, crime and drug use. ("Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison" and "America's Holocaust.")

May 18, 2009 at 9:17 A.M. an "error" inserted in this essay overnight was just corrected.

Suppose this wounded man chooses to walk towards this suffering woman, whom he loves, every day, knowing that he will be hurt by loving her. After she plunges a dagger into his flesh, he kisses her hand and wonders whether she has hurt herself in hurting him. He hates his pain. He does not want to experience more pain. However, he hates her pain even more than his own. He chooses to receive that world of pain from her -- as a precious gift of herself -- in order to understand her pain with her, so that she can let her agony go and be free of it at last. The giving of her pain is a way of explaining to him why he must hold on to her goodness, so that she will not lose it, but may recover it from him when she is able to do so. (See "The Soldier and the Ballerina" and, again, '''The Reader': A Movie Review.")

There is nothing so personal or precious to a woman as her deepest pain. If she gives that pain to a man -- allowing him to share it with her -- then you may be sure that she loves him. Such a gift is true intimacy. ("Beauty and the Beast.") What he gives back to her is her own goodness, release from suffering, redemption and peace through his love and the magic of imagination. The only way to illustrate or communicate fully the power of these truths, again, is through art or religious devotion.

I am about to say goodbye to a child heading off to a great university. This farewell is both a gift of her childhood for us (as a going away present to her parents) and of her adulthood for this woman who is no longer a child and yet still our baby (as our going away present to her). Something of her essence stays with us forever; something of what we have taught her goes with her forever. The joy for each of us is mixed with sorrow. Love is delight and suffering, loving is a sweet pain. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

Americans must be willing to accept the gift of a tortured people's pain. We must stop denying what we all know is true. We must stop torturing the tortured. Placing African-Americans out of sight, in prisons, will not make the problem of racial injustice go away. It will only make things worse. Imprisonment of African-Americans, in my opinion, is more about white America's guilt than criminality by African-Americans -- who are no worse than others in American society, but who are punished much more severely for their infractions and (often) for no infraction. ("Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty" and "Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

Now suppose that these two afflicted (but still struggling human beings), man and woman, are separated by persons who wish to "study" their pain, then to inflict even more pain on both of them. Perhaps because their suffering is deemed "interesting." Suffering is increased for both victims by these monsters, over a period of many years, as their lives are destroyed. Is it likely that either of these wounded persons will benefit from such separation and INDUCED additional suffering through frustration, loss, destruction of support networks? I doubt it. Is it likely that anyone -- other than torturers -- will benefit from such hideous and unchosen tortures imposed on victims? No. (See "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and, again, "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

"Symptom-exarcebation experiments -- funded by taxpayers and conducted [often secretly on unsuspecting victims] by psychiatrists at some of the leading medical schools in the country -- were almost exclusively an American affair. European investigators in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s did not publish similar accounts in professional journals." (Whitaker, p. 242.)

Most medical professionals in other countries find such continuing practices barbaric, especially when victims are overwhelmingly minority group members uninformed about what has been done to them or by whom it was done. This is especially true after the Holocaust. Think of that N-word: "These types of experiments," Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav says, "could only be done on the powerless." (Whitaker, p. 242.)

Studies of "intelligence" in minority children in Washington Heights, New York city, were initiated by researchers (reportedly from Columbia University) offering poor students "gift certificates" to Toys-R-Us. For these and other such "studies" by American "scientific researchers," interested in "intelligence" among the so-called "lower orders," see Phil Gasper, "IQ, Genetics, and Racism," in International Socialist Review, January-February, 2008, at p. 17, then compare Robert Jay Lifton, "The Nazi Doctors," in Donald L. Niewyck, ed., The Holocaust (Boston & New York: Houghton & Mifflin, 2003), pp. 60-75. Terry? Diana? "Dodi?"

Dr. Josef Mengle's anounced goal was to "learn from patients in order to advance scientific knowledge." Sound familiar, Terry? Do you, Terry Tuchin, see all non-Jews as potential experimental subjects? "We can learn from you." You will not make these well-researched essays untrue by inserting typographical "errors" in my text. This may be a good time to show the world what you are in New Jersey's corridors of power by inserting additional "errors" in this essay in order to prove my point. ("America's Unethical Medical Torturers" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")

III.

How does a Jew become Mengele? How does a Jew assist in subjecting other human beings to such tortures less than a hundred years after the experiments on Jewish children in the death camps, while continuing to attend services, perhaps, and seeing himself as a moral person who is merely "doing his job"? Who do you think will be next to suffer from such experiments? Do you have any doubt that groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda are perfecting parallel techniques of psychological torture to be used, specifically, against all Jews and Americans? Do you have any doubt that American service men will be tortured and photographed in agony by terrorist organizations in response to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? ("American Tortured on Video by Taliban.")

I urge you to examine the sometimes heated exchanges between then Senator Joseph Biden and a spokesperson for the Bush administration defending "harsh interrogation techniques" that amount to torture. Mr. Biden asked whether this Bush official -- Mr. Haynes? -- considered that American service men and women would be targeted by terrorist groups using similar methods. I am sure that recent news stories documenting the realization of Mr. Biden's prediction will not bring the current Vice President any pleasure. ("The Torture of Persons" and "Behaviorism is Evil.")

"Victims of the Bush administration's 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' including Mr. Mohammed, have already spoken in harrowing detail about their mistreatment. The objective is to avoid official confirmation of wrongdoing that might be used in lawsuits against government officials and contractors, and might help [to] create a public clamor for prosecuting those responsible. President Obama calls that a distracting exercise in 'looking back.' What it really [would be] is justice."

"The Cover-Up Continues," (Editorial) in The New York Times, October 26, 2009, at p. A22.

Mr. Obama must not be remembered as the first African-American President of the United States of America who, nevertheless, remained indifferent to SLAVERY and torture. To suggest to victims of horrible tortures that "happiness comes from within" does not seem like a relevant or particularly helpful observation. ("A Report Card for Barack Obama.")

Members of American minority groups and the poor are often seen as subhuman and suitably "powerless." Therefore, they are fitting subjects for such gruesome torments. Who cares about them? No one. The anticipated pathological responses of persons brutalized and damaged for life can serve to rationalize the tortures. "You are not cooperating." Predictable hostile responses to hostile treatment may be used by so-called "therapists" to further punish or injure victims. "You are unethical." Ideally, tortured persons may be forced into violence or other antisocial behavior, justifying additional atrocities committed against them. How much did they steal from you, Marilyn?

Victims' agonies may be secretly witnessed, photographed, written about, then exploited even more by being turned into lucrative sources of professional success by these same "therapists," like Terry Tuchin. "Guilty bystanders" (N.J.'s Supreme Court) will witness such crimes and do nothing. (Thomas Merton, Martin Buber) Where are you Stuart Rabner? Demurring? Mr. Christie, this is not a situation which you can continue to ignore. Paula Dow, please turn over the files revealing the tortures used against me. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?")

"They cured his squint with glasses," Jean Paul Sartre writes, "his lips with a metal brace, his stammer with mechanical exercises, and he spoke perfectly, but in such a low and rapid voice that, 'What's that you're saying?' his mother would say, 'Speak up. What are you mumbling about now?' and they nicknamed him the Mumbler." (Sartre, "Of Rats and Men," in Situations, p. 227.) ("'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")

American therapists are good at turning ordinary people into "mumblers." A torturer might cause repeated frustrations to someone seeking to express his pain and opinions by altering, defacing, destroying and inserting "errors" in his writings. For example, by affecting the spacing of paragraphs posted in this blog or obstructing all images. I have just been obstructed in efforts to post writings at my group, again. Two essays written and posted last week have now been vandalized about a dozen times. No images can be posted by me. I think this is because they are good, not bad essays. Writing well is much more infuriating to torturers than writing not so well. This wounding and criminal censorship may be accompanied by the message that this man's writing is worthless, so that he should "give up." A prospective publisher that does not exist will reject his manuscript. Publish America? Lulu? ("How Censorship Works in America.")

An "anonymous" author will be hired to publish an insulting invective. His name will be posted in a discussion group, along with insults, also anonymous. His writings will be plagiarized and his ideas will be stolen without acknowledgement. Thinly hidden insults of him will be made available to any prospective publishers. Efforts to disseminate his writings on-line will be frustrated and obstructed. He will be denied the use of images, permanently, and access to his e-mails on a regular basis. He will be insulted (secretly) to friends, family members, and colleagues. He will receive the message that no one is reading his writings, which are deemed "worthless" by the same persons who will then claim credit for his ideas. I wonder why the number of hits at these blogs does not change as often as it should? What is it now -- 50,000-100,000 hits? ("The Long Goodbye.")

Please note that the measure of readers of these blogs is deliberately broken, either readers are not counted or there are increments of a hundred when each "hit" should be counted individually.

December 16, 2008 at 12:06 P.M. The foregoing paragraph was vandalized, a word was removed from a sentence. I have now corrected that inserted "error." This "error" is not found in my print version of this essay from October, 2007. When combined with other mutilations of my writings, denials of publication, suppressions of books, harassing phone calls, threats and insults -- suicide is the intended outcome. I doubt that these tactics will succeed with me. Have they been successful with others? Have persons developed severe forms of mental illness as a result of being subjected to such "interrogation and monitoring" over long periods of time?

If I am right that there can be no therapeutic rape or theft, then there also cannot be any "therapeutic censorship" in a free society. (Again: "How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey," then "Free Speech and Torture.")

My review of "The Reader" has been defaced several times. The essay examining Fidel Castro's "History Will Absolve Me" has been attacked with the assistance of government resources, I believe, multiple times in a society that criminalizes government censorship.

More threats and insults, frustrations and suppressions of a victim's creative works will be a daily feature of his (our hypothetical author's) life. He will be slandered, anonymously, leading to the destruction of potentially life-saving relationships for many persons and pain for generations of others, including children. He will be forced to witness the destruction of his creative expressions and all other attempts to communicate his pain and justifiable anger. Consider the following anecdote from the writings of R.D. Laing, which will serve as a counter-example to the empathy that I described earlier. Not all "therapists" are as humane as R.D. Laing:

"Here is Kraepelin's (1905) account to a lecture-room of his students of a patient showing signs of catatonic excitement: '... The patient sits with his eyes shut and pays no attention to his surroundings. He does not look up even when he is spoken to, but answers beginning in a low voice, and gradually screaming louder and louder.' When asked where he is, he says, 'You want to know that too? I'll tell you who is being measured and is measured and shall be measured.' ..." (The Divided Self, p. 29.)

A person in an impaired condition -- under hypnosis perhaps -- is brought into a room against his will. He is questioned by persons who treat him like an animal in a zoo, who fail to identify themselves, whose presence is unsought by the victim of this assault; a victim is turned into an object, a display, a rock from the moon, who is poked, prodded, judged, ridiculed, laughed at, sexually violated, stolen from and beaten or assaulted. In America, all of this may be done secretly to persons in their own home without their consent. No due process is ever provided. No warrants are needed. Persons not suffering from any officially diagnosed illness may be subjected to secret rapes and other horrors by public officials or so-called "therapists." I fail to see why stealing money from a victim is a healing process. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")

New York streets are populated by former mental patients and victims of the nation's irresponsible banking policies as well as the imploding economy. Most of these causalties of society's pathologies are African-Americans, many are women and children, or tortured men. They say something disturbing about America's healing profession and medicine as "big business." There is no money to be made by American doctors and hospitals from healthy people. The goal of medical care under capitalism is not to cure the patient, but ensure a need for long term expensive care and the creation of chronic diseases. ("Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison.")

Of course, these events can always be denied publicly by powerful officials who lie about what has been done to victims. Sometimes they lie through their silence. All records of what transpires will be hidden from the victim. Where are those reports, tapes and videos, Terry? No explanations or comments will be provided to him or her by anyone because, the victim is told, that he is "unethical." ("America's Unwilling Experimental Animals.")

"We'll just pretend that nothing happened." Right, Terry? Tell me something, Terry, once again: How does a Jew become Mengele? "We can learn from you," Terry said. Ethics charges against victims generated by way of these same hypnosis techniques should provide "ass cover" for coopted psychologists. Right, Terry? ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

What would it do to a woman raped early in her life by a trusted adult, for example, to be raped again by a so-called "therapist" occupying a comparable position of trust? "Did you say, 'Chic'?" How could you do such a thing, Diana? Why didn't you listen, Terry? How can New Jersey condone and seek to cover-up such horror, every day? How many of you raped Marilyn? Do you not understand that a woman damaged, as she was, could not have consented to sexual acts performed on her body by a so-called therapist without credentials? Do you wish to compare my "ethics" with your own? I have no problems with doing so. 1988-today. "Errors" continue to be inserted in these essays in 2010. No response has been received to my requests for all documents concerning me in the possession of New Jersey or Tuchin/Riccioli. Ms. Dow, as Attorney General in New Jersey, you now have control over these documents and tapes. I am sure that New Jersey law entitles me to these materials and you, Ms. Dow, are well aware of this fact. Why not respond to my requests by providing me with the truth about my life?

On September 23, 2007 at 5:07 P.M. I am blocking, once again: http://view.atdmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90... (Senator Bob? Cruising the net?)

"Foucault cites with approval Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense and seeks to turn it against her father's theory of psychosexual development; he suggests that one could and should treat styles of defenses as they show up in the present, not regard them as clues to internal, unconscious developments, as if these unconscious states were the real causes of the pathology." (Dreyfus, Mental Illness and Pathology, p. xiv.)

Naturally, tortures may be "justified" or rationalized on the basis of the victim's non-criminal actions that are deemed (for some reason) "unethical." Victims will be told that they are not "cooperating" in their own torture. This lack of cooperation is itself an offense, punishable by the further criminal denial of legal and moral rights, together with more torture. The poor man in Laing's anecdote simply reflected back to his tormentors exactly the behavior exhibited by them towards him. Some behaviorist therapists suggest, ludicrously, walking towards afflicted persons grimacing or yawning in a grotesque way, or other such absurd "treatment" methods. Cross-dressing, perhaps. Maybe attempts at physical intimidation will work. Perhaps, again, publishing his name in an Internet group, like "The Philosophy Cafe" -- which is a crime -- after further insults and denigration, or destruction of creative efforts or censorship. My second book, still, will not be sent to on-line booksellers. (Again: "How Censorship Works in America.")

Gee, I wonder why Iraquis are killing Americans? You think it has something to do with what Americans are doing to them? 60% of the people to whom we are bringing "Democracy" in Baghdad say it is o.k. to kill Americans in bombing attacks. See Ashley Smith, "Progress in Iraq?," in International Socialist Review, January-February, 2008, at p. 2, then Ashley Smith, "Beyond the Surge in Iraq: Where is the U.S. Occupation Headed?," in International Socialist Review, November-December, 2008, at pp. 18-22. Carlotta Gall & Taimoor Shah, "Afghans Recall Airstrike Horror, and Fault U.S.," in The New York Times, May 15, 2009, at p. A1. (American strikes on village of Granai, along with dozens of "robot bomb" strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have killed many civilians AFTER Taliban's departure.) Stephen Lee Myers, "Suicide Truck Bombing in Northern Iraq Leaves at Least 68 Dead," in The New York Times, June 21, 2009, at p. 6. New bombings in Iraq and Pakistan this week (July, 2009) will increase the death toll. Naturally, Taliban leaders will claim that they have been killed so that the U.S. need not hunt for them any longer, as the Taliban and Al Qaeda spread to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The situation is worse in September of 2009. No change in October, 2010.

In February, 2010 censorship and alterations of copyright- and Constitutionally-protected writings continues due to the abuse of government power in New Jersey. More bombings as hostilities spread to Pakistan, northern India, and elsewhere in the Middle East in May, 2010.("New Jersey's Mafia Culture in Politics and Law.")

In October, 2009 there are new offensives in Afghanistan and a more perilous situation in Pakistan. Timothy Williams, "Deadliest Bombs Since '07 Shatter Iraqui Complexes," in The New York Times, October 26, 2009, at p. A1. Collateral damage seems to be increasing: Ian Urbina, "Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways," in The New York Times, October 26, 2009, at p. A1. As August 5, 2010 the collapse in Afghanistan and Pakistan is obvious: Anthony Shadid, "As Obama Talks Peace, Many Iraquis Are Unsure," in The New York Times, August 4, 2010, at p. A4 and Slaman Masood, "Assassination Sets Off Wave of Killings in Pakistan City," in The New York Times, August 4, 2010, at p. A4, then Charlie Savage, "Lawyers Seeking to Take Up Terror Suspect's Legal Case Sue U.S., for Access," in The New York Times, August 4, 2010, at p. A4. (Defense counsel will have to be licensed by prosecutors.) Finally, as India's rebellion may target Americans, Pakistan is spelling things out for us: John F. Burns, "Afghan War is Being Lost," in The New York Times, August 4, 2010, at p. A8.

Laing comments: "Surely, [the patient] is carrying on a dialogue between his own parodied version of Kraepelin, and his own defiant, rebelling self." (The Divided Self, p. 30.) Future terrorist strikes by survivors of America's current policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and neglect of the peace process in Israel, will be the response by victimized people hoping to communicate with us. There is still time to establish a different kind of dialogue with those victims. We cannot "beat up" or "torture" people in order to produce the kind of world that we believe should exist. This may even be true in Miami and New Jersey. A better world will emerge only through a rational consensus and peaceful negotiation. Cuba is one good place to try diplomacy and termination of hostilities leading to reasoned dialogue. I expect more "errors" to be inserted in this essay on a regular basis. It will not "work" to pretend that "nothing happened." America must "work" for peace. (Again: "Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

Even in a situation of powerlessness -- in a concentration camp -- a dehumanized person responds by enacting what is done to him in this lecture-room/torture-chamber, as a desperate final form of communication and struggle for freedom. A person will, literally, commit suicide (if necessary) to affirm his or her autonomy and insistence on dignity. Others will drive persons to such actions because they enjoy, probably sexually, wielding power over victims and causing pain. (A new "error" was corrected in this previous sentence.) See the film "Amistad."

Images of Buddhist monks setting fire to themselves, as their only form of protest against the madness and killings in Vietnam, linger in the memory. Where are America's protesters today opposing this war in Iraq or the tortures of detainees? Enjoying "Grey's Anatomy"? (A new "error" was just inserted and corrected in July, 2009.) On the day when the U.S. anounced departures and peace in Iraq, several police officers were assassinated in Baghdad. People are sending us a message. I can only hope that we will heed that message.

An extreme experience of evil may turn an ordinary person into an artist, intent upon indirect communication. Slaves who ran away from their masters were often classified as mentally ill. After all, why would anyone run away from "security" and "control"? Why would a person risk his or her life (or career?) in order to be free rather than "adjust" to mandated conditions? Why, indeed. The loss of freedom is loss of humanity. For some people, even death is preferable to such a loss of humanity through conditioning. I am one of those persons whose freedom is not negotiable. I will not accept the status of a slave. Neither will Marilyn nor any person that I love.

Cubanazos complaining about the lack of freedom in Cuba have decided to deny freedom to those who disagree with them in the United States of America. This makes it abundantly clear to me that, if such persons come to power anywhere, they will be (and are) far worse than the Cuban Revolutionary government is today. Professor Daniel Burston comments:

"Those who lose their way in this world of shadows, who get a dim inkling of deeper realities that the rest of us routinely repress, who get shattered in the process -- these unfortunates are put away, ostensibly for their benefit."

Especially if they are women who refuse the normalizing and adjustive bromides of a society drifting towards fascism. Such women are uncomfortable reminders of the daily cruelties of a viciously unjust and sexist society. We don't want to see them, lest we be forced to see ourselves. The one "sin" that a woman still will not be forgiven is her freedom. I know the feeling. (See "Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism.")

I know and love at least one such woman. She is owed an apology by life. Being tortured for saying such things only confirms the truth of what I am saying. A woman forced into prostitution, beaten, exploited, abused, made to endure sex with ten or more men per night under slave-like conditions, contracting AIDS, said to an interviewer:

"What I really feel now is that I should have died with my family in the genocide. I don't know any longer what to hope for. But if they come to get me I will cut my throat." (NYRB, 10-11-07, at p. 17.) ("Not One More Victim" and "Abuse and Exploitation of Women in New Jersey.")

Suppose the one hope for such a woman is a person who loves her and this one hope is taken from her for no rationally defensible reason. Do you believe that apathy to such inhuman cruelty -- even if you call it "therapy" -- is anything other than despicable? What have you become Stuart Rabner? http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/images/rabner.jpg Anne Milgram? Debbie Poritz? Is there any mystery about the collapse that will follow upon such a final deprivation for a tortured woman? If she survives, then it is only by a miracle that she will do so.

What I would say to such a woman is that, on your worst day, you are a better human being than the monsters who torture you, especially the hypocrites and frauds in robes of office. I have been lucky to meet some great people in my life, but I have never met anyone greater than you: "In a troubling, insisting way, Laing urges us to question whether it is really their interests we are defending by labeling and treating them [such despairing and suffering women] as schizophrenic ..." (Burston, p. 97.)

I am afraid that the sort of man who is willing to risk his life and everything he has for a woman he loves -- a woman who is suffering unnecessarily -- is unlikely to "cooperate" with those causing her suffering and his. The same persons depriving such a woman of the only real chance for healing and recovery (or happiness) in her broken life, while further harming him and innocent others, will no doubt be mystified by this behavior or by any complex human behavior for that matter. Adjust? In New Jersey, such baffled and evil persons are called "therapists" -- like Diana Lisa Riccioli -- or judges, like the "Honorable" Stuart Rabner. (Irony intended.)

Do you have any university degree, Diana, in any subject? No? Did you have a sexual relationship with Deborah T. Poritz, Diana? Did you provide "introductions" to young women for Ms. Poritz or other judges and politicians, Diana? Did you collect a fee for such "introductions," Diana? ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

In such dismal settings -- places like New Jersey -- there is a nakedness of power visible in the torments imposed, usually with sadistic glee, upon the noblest and most fragile human beings among us. Those wounded souls suffering from violation and abuse will have their pains enhanced, for purposes that are not their own, by exploiters profiting from such torments. "We can learn from you." Are you learning from me, Terry?

The experience of torture over decades is a final attempt at disempowerment and a plunging of victims into abject helplessness or surrender to an unfathomably cruel universe which, from infancy, has deprived victims -- they are almost always African-Americans or powerless women in America -- of any chance for a dignified, decent, satisfying and fulfilling human life with love and creative achievement. We must resist torture on behalf of those not capable of resisting or who have been made into casualties of such evil.

How many more victims does Terry have? Diana? The denial of love (as opposed to sex) to millions of women is an indignity and torment imposed upon devastated victims, usually accompanied by a shallow slogan in the distancing jargon of psychobabble and many trinkets, together with the promise of more capitalist consumption, if she behaves herself. New shoes, handbags, make-up, gadgets and gizmos, jewelry, plenty of sex -- all are meant to distract women from their despair and the many ways in which they are used and thrown away. Emotional death now comes in a plastic cover with gift wrapping optional and fortune cookie wisdom from psychobabblers.

"It is likely that the survival of capitalism is no longer possible," Norman Mailer said in 1959, "without the creation in the consumer of a series of psychically disruptive needs which circle about such wants and emotions as the desire for excessive security, the alleviation of guilt, the lust for comfort and new commodity, and the consequent allegiance to the vast lie about the essential health of the State and the economy, an elaborated fiction whose bewildering interplay of real and false detail must devil the mass into a progressively more imperfect apperception of reality and thus drive them closer to apathy, psychosis, and violence. Nineteenth-century capitalism exhausted the life of millions of workers; twentieth-century capitalism can well end by destroying the mind of civilized man [and woman]." (Mailer, p. 437.)

Supplemental Sources, Not in Alphabetical Order:

Robert Whitaker, Mad in America (Cambridge: Perseus, 2002) pp. 233-250 ("The Nuremberg Code Doesn't Apply Here").
Stephen E. Eisenman, The Abu Ghraib Effect (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), entirety.
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (New York: Vintage, 1973) pp. 159-198 ("Doctors and Patients").
Michel Foucault, Mental Illness and Psychology (Los Angeles: University of California, 1987), translation of Maladie Mentale et Psychologie, published in 1962, with excellent "Foreword" by Hubert Dreyfus.
Daniel Burston, The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of R.D. Laing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), entirety.
Daniel Burston, The Crucible of Madness: The Life and Work of R.D. Laing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), entirety.
Andrew Collier, R.D. Laing: The Philosophy & Politics of Psychotherapy (New York: Pantheon, 1977) chapter 6.
R.D. Laing, The Divided Self (New York: Pantheon, 1962), entirety.
R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Pantheon, 1967), entirety.
Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), entirety.
Philippe Sands, Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (New York: MacMillan, 2009), entirety.
Philippe Sands, "Torture -- The Complicit General," in The New York Review of Books, September 24, 2009, at p. 20. (Anne Milgram, Esq.?)
Andrew Sullivan, "Dear Mr. Bush, You Approved Torture -- Only you Can Fix the Damage," in The Atlantic, October 2009, at p. 78.
Jean Paul Sartre, "Of Rats and Men," in Situations (Conn: Fawcett, 1965), p. 217.
Jane Mayer, "The Black Sites," in The New Yorker, August 13, 2007, at p. 46.
Susmita Thukral, "Understanding Shame and Humiliation in Torture," Unpublished Paper, Submitted at Teacher's College, Columbia University, Dr. Evelin Lindner, Instructor.
Caroline Moorehead, "Women and Children for Sale," in The New York Review of Books, October 11, 2007, at p. 15. (Women as international sexual "objects" available for purchase on-line, like pizzas.) ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")
Richard John Neuhaus, "The Politics of Bioethics," in First Things, November, 2007, No. 177, at p. 23. (The means justify the ends.)
Mark Danner, "The Secret Red Cross Report on U.S. Torture at Black Sites," in The New York Review of Books, April 9, 2009, at p. 69.
Mark Danner, "The Red Cross Report on Torture and What it Means for the U.S.," in The New York Review of Books, April 30, 2009, at p. 48.
Atul Gawande, "Ordinary Torture," in The New Yorker, March 30, 2009, at p. 36.
Philip Gourevich, "Torture on Trial," in The New Yorker, May 11, 2009, at p. 33.
John Schwartz, "Judge Allows Civil Lawsuit Over Claims of Torture," in The New York Times, June 11, 2009, at p. A16.
"6 Guantanamo Detainees Freed," in The New York Times, June 12, 2009, at p. 6. (Mistakes made themselves.)
"Vice President Cheney Backs Detentions Without Trial if Needed," in The New York Times, May 22, 2009, at p. 1. (No trials for detainees, no hesitation about criminality by C.I.A. interrogators, surveillance without warrants, secret monitoring, censorship to "protect our freedoms.")
"Medical Identity Theft Grows," in The New York Times, June 13, 2009, p. 1. (Persons in psychiatric facilities may be excellent targets for identity theft and other forms of exploitation, like rape.)