Methods
and devices
The contrast shown between Guy
Fawkes' signatures: the one above (a faint, shaky 'Guido') was done immediately
after torture; the one below eight days later.
Physical torture uses non-physical
methods that cause psychological suffering. Its effects are not immediately
apparent unless they alter the behavior of the tortured person. Since there is
no international political consensus on what constitutes psychological torture,
it is often overlooked, denied, and referred to by different names.
Psychological torture is less well
known than physical torture and tends to be subtle and much easier to conceal.
In practice the distinctions between physical and psychological torture are
often blurred. Physical torture is the
inflicting of severe pain or suffering on a person. In contrast, psychological
torture is directed at the psyche with calculated violations of psychological
needs, along with deep damage to psychological structures and the breakage of
beliefs underpinning normal sanity. Torturers often inflict both types of
torture in combination to compound the associated effects.
Psychological torture also includes
deliberate use of extreme stressors and situations such as mock execution,
shunning, violation of deep-seated social or sexual norms and taboos, or
extended solitary confinement. Because psychological torture needs no physical
violence to be effective, it is possible to induce severe psychological pain,
suffering, and trauma with no externally visible effects.
Rape and other forms of sexual abuse
are often used as methods of torture for interrogative or punitive purposes.
In medical torture, medical
practitioners use torture to judge what victims can endure, to apply treatments
that enhance torture, or act as torturers in their own right. Josef Mengee and Shiro
Ishii were infamous during and after World War II for their involvement in
medical torture and murder. In recent years, however, there has been a push to
end medical complicity in torture through both international and state-based
legal strategies, as well as litigations against individual physicians.
Pharmacological torture is the use
of drugs to produce psychological or physical pain or discomfort. Tickle torture is an unusual form of torture
which nevertheless has been documented, and can be both physically and
psychologically painful.
Murder
Torture murder involves torture to
the point of murder. Murderers might also torture their victims to death for
sadistic reasons. Some terrorists groups torture—typically commencing with the
forcible extraction of all ten fingernails, all ten toenails, and all
thirty-two teeth—before executing the victim by such barbaric techniques as
slow decapitation via butcher knife. Ancient
conceptual forerunners of torture murder include drawing and quartering and
flaying.
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