I have a few questions about torture resistance training. There's rumors of government agencies putting their operatives through it, but is it actually a thing? What does it consist of? Is it traumatizing, even if it's not as much so as actual torture? I want one of my characters to go through it, but without actually being tortured if that's possible. Also he's quite young (19) for the setting he's in.
Oof, this one again OK. These are good questions Anon and I can see why you'll have had trouble finding the answer to them.
Yes ‘torture resistance training’ does happen. Various military organisations have used it over the years and there are scattered records about when and how it’s taken place.
Here’s the thing though: there’s no evidence that it helps soldiers to resist torture.
What it has been linked to is an increased number of torturers.
Our natural resistance to torture is already incredibly high. As an illustration something we know torture can do is force a confession. Analysis of historical data from France suggests the ‘success’ rate is about 10%.
Under torture about 90% of people will refuse to comply long enough to sign their name.
Our ability to deal with pain generally is also, naturally, very high.
There is no evidence to suggest that any type of ‘training’ improves on our natural resistance to torture.
But this sort of training does expose soldiers who might otherwise never have seen torture to real torture techniques. And a number of those soldiers will probably go on to use those techniques.
Because torture resistance ‘training’ essentially consists of taking a bunch of soldiers and subjecting them to torture.
It’s not that the techniques are different or even ‘toned down’. So far as I can tell from the accounts we have torture resistance ‘training’ has used the most common torture techniques in that particular country. Soldiers tend to be subjected to them for a little less time then prisoners would be but the only real difference is consent.
Soldiers go in to this training with a rough idea what it might involve and the assurance that they are not actually going to be injured or killed. They also know they can quit.
And that really is the difference. People are better at dealing with pain and suffering when they have some degree of control over it, when they can leave and when they know roughly what’s going to happen.
These ‘training’ programs do still risk traumatising and seriously injuring soldiers. But people are less likely to be traumatised when they’ve consented to what’s going on.
So to sum up- your character could go through this and not be traumatised but he would be going through more or less the same sort of abuse that’s used to torture (for an idea of what this might involve I have a Masterpost on ‘National Styles’ here). He would be in the same amount of physical pain. He would face the same risks of lasting physical injury.
But this ‘training’ wouldn’t actually make your character any ‘better’ at dealing with torture then he already was. It would not make him ‘tougher’. It would not stop him feeling pain if he was tortured. It would not prevent him from being traumatised and suffering lasting psychological damage if he was tortured.
What it would do is show him, quickly and simply, how people in his military organisation torture others.
And some of the people in his training program would probably go on to use that knowledge to abuse people.
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