"Fundamentally, perpetrators of torture are terrified and they are particularly terrified of those individuals who perpetrated violence against them when they were a child although this terror remains unconscious to them."

Well, that's convenient, isn't it? It explains why we don't actually find any evidence of this terror when we examine the psychological records of torturers -- why it is, in fact, they look so much like you and me.

State torturers are government officials, recruited from perfectly ordinary people; they do their jobs for the same variety of reasons that other officials do theirs. If we are to stop torture, it will be with a demonstration that it simply doesn't work. Demonising the responsible officials with a hand-waving display of pop psychology is going to achieve nothing.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia concerning Franz Schmidt, a German executioner and torturer in the 1500s. He left an extensive diary which gives some genuine insights into his career.

"The prince said: You hang them or I am going to string you up instead, as well as the two men standing next to you. So Heinrich [Franz's father] did it. And once he did it there was no other job. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. He and his children were condemned to the occupation."

Not much evidence of childhood trauma there.

"Torturers, including those who are psychiatrists or psychologists, need our understanding and support:..." surely that should be reserved until after they have been stopped? You know, for ex-torturers (and ex-psychiatrists whilst we are at it).

"But their violence, inflicted on behalf of their political masters, needs to be nonviolently resisted as well."

It is difficult to be violent when you're completely shackled and suffering in agonising pain... what do you suggest? Tell your torturers to "Rack off!"

"It takes someone with a particular psychological profile to torture another human being: Most of us cannot do it."

Robert, this belief was debunked long ago! Please note the following:

'All humans are capable of committing torture and other "acts of great evil". That is the unhappy conclusion drawn from an analysis of psychological studies.

Over 25,000 psychological studies involving eight million participants support this finding, say Susan Fiske and colleagues at Princeton University in New Jersey, US.

The researchers considered the circumstances surrounding how individuals committed seemingly inexplicable acts of abuse in the midst of the US military's torture of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004.

"Could any average 18-year-old have tortured these prisoners? I would have to answer: 'Yes, just about anyone could have.'", Fiske says.

Many forms of behaviour, including acts of cruelty, are influenced as much by authority figures, peer pressure and other social interactions as by the psychology of the individual, she says.

"If we don't understand the importance of social context and accept that almost anybody could commit acts of torture under certain circumstances, then we are setting ourselves up for situations where Abu Ghraib [atrocities] will occur again," Fiske warns.'

Robert, the link is: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6727-everyone-is-a-potential-torturer.html#.Ui0SVX-wmFM

The Irish have an expression which goes, anyone who believes they need a psychiatrist, ought to have their head examined!
As a child growing up in the main, in foster homes and orphanages.
One can report that it is the abysmally ignorant, holier than thou, sanctimonious, pulpit pounding hypocrites, that do most of the damage to innocent children, or continue to mindlessly persecute people, because they dare to be born different!
Aversion therapy, which apparently included the physical torture, of repeated shock therapy, (electrocution of the brain,) was tried for many years, as so-called aversion therapy.
Failed therapy, which through quite abysmal ignorance, concentrated on the wrong part of the brain, (memory) rather than the actual sex control centres at the lower back of the primitive brain?
The denial of normal human warmth and physical affection to a select few, simply because they as a minority, but nonetheless, normal part of the complete range of human aberration, is the very worst lifelong torture of all.
Often not ended until the tortured totter off this mortal coil.
Rhrosty.

Struth can be stranger than fiction, Houellebecq...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/monkey-tears-tots-testicle-eats-2255959
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415455/107-year-old-man-killed-fight-SWAT-team-threatening-people-home.html