Abstract:
This article addresses the issue of the use of Psychology for the torture of political prisoners in the world and especially in Latin America. First, it examines the recent debate on psychologists involved in torture in the United States. Then it reminds the precedents of the use of Psychology to torture in Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, French colonial repression in Algeria and US military strategy during the Cold War. The consideration of such precedents and the recent debate in the United States allows arriving at a general representation of the way in which Psychology operates in torture understood as a form of suppression and disintegration of the psyche. This general representation guides an analysis of the cases of four mental health professionals who put their professions at the service of Latin American authoritarian regimes to torture political prisoners between the 1960s and 1970s: the Mexican psychiatrist Salvador Roquet, the Brazilian psychoanalyst Amílcar Lobo Moreira, the Uruguayan psychologist Dolcey Brito and the Chilean psychologist Hernán Tuane.
Keywords:
Dictatorship; Torture; Psychology; Psychoanalysis; Psychiatry