Torture psychologically damages the torturer even more than the victim

Evidence

In a civilised society, torture has no more counter-productive and insidious long-term effect than the way that it tends to demoralise the inflicter even more than his victim. Frantz Fanon, the militant Martiniquais psychiatrist, cites several examples of acute, lingering neurosis induced among the tortured; a kind of anorexia suffered by the innocent who had been put to la question wrongfully; pins-and-needles and a lasting fear of turning on a light switch, or touching a telephone, in those who had experienced the gégène. But just as psychically impaired were numerous cases like that of the European police inspector found guilty of torturing his own wife and children, which he explained as resulting from what he had been required to do to Algerian suspects — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 614

In passing, one should also note France’s painful discovery that, fifty years on, many former “torturers” in the armed services were having to resort to psychiatric “counselling.” The inflicters of torture as well as their victims remain grievously impaired. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 55

Categorization

• XREF: Fanon’s clinical documentation of torture’s psychological residue connects to the decolonization/psychiatry line from Black Skin, White Masks tradition. — connects to: Distant warfare shifts psychiatry from victims’ trauma to perpetrators’ guilt.; Suppressing conscience in soldiers led directly to military torture; Perpetrators of torture carried its moral damage home to France in person (+4 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 614; Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 55

Related

• Suppressing conscience in soldiers led directly to military torture (similarity 0.84)
• Conscripts forced to commit torture brought psychological scars back to metropolitan France (similarity 0.83)
• Distant warfare shifts psychiatry from victims’ trauma to perpetrators’ guilt. (similarity 0.83)
• Perpetrators of torture carried its moral damage home to France in person (similarity 0.82)
• Torture more than any single factor caused France’s Algerian defeat (similarity 0.82)
• Torture boomeranged against France in the Algerian war (similarity 0.79)
• Brutalizing war and fear of losing drove army torture institutionalization (similarity 0.79)
• Torture in Algeria threatened France with state self-destruction (similarity 0.78)