Differing Views on Human Rights 513Special meetings were arranged with senior psychologists
and journal editors.
The steering committee expressed the hope that the Young
Psychologists Program would establish a precedent and that
similar endeavors would be organized at future congresses
for promising younger psychologists not normally able to at-
tend an International Congress of Psychology on their own.
Happily, a Young Psychologists Program has been organized
at each subsequent congress and has also become a feature
of the quadrennial International Congress of Applied Psy-
chology, further fostering international cooperation, commu-
nication, and exchanges.
DIFFERING VIEWS ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Experience in Germany in the 1930s, during the Stalin period
in the Soviet Union, and during the Cultural Revolution in
China demonstrated that under conditions of impaired politi-
cal and intellectual freedom, psychologists are especially
vulnerable, both as scientists and as professional service
providers. When, in the mid-1960s and 1970s, alleged viola-
tions of human rights in the Soviet Union and Chile aroused
concern, many North American psychologists experienced a
sense of frustration. They felt that “something must be done
immediately” but were unable to move beyond the formal
resolution stage. At the time, some colleagues in other lands
were perplexed by what they perceived to be unsophisticated
U.S. reactions to complicated political issues having little to
do with psychology. Individual human rights were inter-
preted differently depending on national values and ideolog-
ical perspectives.
As reports confirmed the confinement of political dissi-
dents in Soviet mental hospitals, the American Psychological
Association (APA) Council of Representatives, in January
1976, “instructed” (rather than “requested”) its representa-
tives to the IUPsyS to take the steps necessary to place on the
agenda for the 1976 IUPsyS Assembly in Paris the council’s
resolution against the use of psychiatric diagnosis and hospi-
talization to suppress political dissent wherever it occurred.
The council took this action despite the precariousness of the
APA’s position, that is, the lack of evidence that psycholo-
gists were on the staffs of the “special” psychiatric facilities
to which dissidents were confined in the Soviet Union.
Several weeks before leaving for Paris, the APA represen-
tatives received copies of a resolution drafted by Amnesty
International and submitted to the IUPsyS by the Netherlands
Institute of Psychologists (NIP). The preamble of the NIP res-
olution began with a positive statement of ethical standards
for psychologists and ended by citing the United Nations
(UN) Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Declaration
on the Protection of All Persons from Being Subjected to
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Punish-
ment. This was followed by an appeal condemning “any form
of torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment
as a method employed during detention, imprisonment, con-
finement in psychiatric institutions, and under clinical cir-
cumstances generally” and any psychologists who condoned
or participated in such practices. Since the NIP resolution had
been submitted after the deadline date, an assembly vote was
required to place it on the IUPsyS agenda.
Shortly after the APA representatives arrived in Paris on
July 17, it became apparent that the APA resolution was
deemed antagonistic and inappropriate for a psychological
(rather than psychiatric) congress. It posed a threat of divid-
ing and politicizing the union. The NIP resolution was more
comprehensive and flexible, focused on the ethical responsi-
bilities of psychologists; it also represented the efforts of a
small member country while making observations similar to
the APA resolution. Thus, the APA representatives communi-
cated informally a willingness to withdraw the APA resolu-
tion if the NIP resolution could be placed on the assembly
agenda.
When the IUPsyS Assembly opened on July 19, the
secretary-general mentioned the NIP request to add an item to
the agenda and to place it before the APA agenda item. This
provoked statements that resolutions with a political content
should not be discussed at the IUPsyS Assembly, followed
by a comment from the president that the IUPsyS was not
concerned with politics but “with the correct exercise of our
profession, which is psychology.” It was decided to post-
pone a vote until July 22—thus providing more time for in-
formal discussion and the preparation of a draft statement by
the IUPsyS Executive Committee.
At the second assembly meeting on July 22, members
voted to place the NIP resolution on the agenda. At that point,
the APA representatives moved to withdraw the APA resolu-
tion in favor of discussing the NIP resolution. The IUPsyS
president then offered a substitute resolution, drafted by the
Executive Committee, covering the same points as the APA
and NIP resolutions. The IUPsyS Resolution on Human
Rights, condemning any collaboration by psychologists in
the abuse of professional practices, was adopted unani-
mously by the IUPsyS Assembly. It was subsequently pub-
lished in the American Psychologistand is reproduced in full
in Rosenzweig et al. (2000). UN declarations particularly
pertinent for psychology were previously summarized by
Rosenzweig (1988).