You’d think that psychologists, of all people, would know torture when they see it. But the leaders of the American Psychological Association, the profession’s governing body, have been trying for more than two years to quell a faction of vocal dissidents who say the group tacitly condones U.S. military and intelligence use of coercive tactics.

The latest blow-up came last month at the association’s annual meeting in San Francisco. The dissidents, calling themselves Psychologists for an Ethical APA, pushed for a moratorium on psychologist participation in military interrogations. The association’s governing council eventually rebuffed that crusade, winning adoption instead of a new policy barring psychologists from participating in more than 20 kinds of torture techniques — including “mock executions, water-boarding or any other form of simulated drowning or suffocation, sexual humiliation, rape,” or “cultural or religious humiliation.”

But the dissident psychologists aren’t satisfied, by a long shot. They’re angry that the association “avoided saying outright that all aversive interrogation techniques are prohibited,” says Steven Reisner, a leader of the disaffected group who’s a New York University psychoanalyst. What’s more, he says, the APA’s vote means psychologists may still participate in aversive methods as long as they aren’t employed in a formal interrogation — effectively condoning controlled use of methods such as sleep deprivation, which other groups have condemned as torture. It’s the dissidents’ belief that the APA is striving to protect the professional standing of members who work for the Pentagon or CIA — and to keep the association’s own relationship with those agencies in good repair.

Reisner’s group is fighting on two fronts. It’s asking APA members to withhold their dues until the association produces a more forceful denunciation of torture and aversive interrogation techniques. And Reisner says he and his colleagues also plan to lobby state psychological associations to adopt stricter rules. They have also provided information about the APA’s internal debate on the issue to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The dissidents have been waging this battle for two years now, ever since a 2005 APA task force on “psychological ethics and national security” endorsed the participation of psychologists in military interrogation provided that they followed applicable U.S. laws.

“My view was that once they have the right to be there, then anything bad that happens can be passed off as a mistake,” says Jean Maria Arrigo, a California psychologist who served on the task force but dissents from its conclusions.

Now the dispute has widened — and turned nasty. Last month, a former APA president, Gerald Koocher, who is dean of the School for Health Studies at Simmons College in Boston, circulated an open letter attacking Arrigo for her dissent. Koocher charged that her criticism of APA members and staff serving on that task force amounted to “slanderous innuendo” fueled by her own “personal biases and troubled past.” Koocher said Arrigo had announced her bias from the start by telling others on the panel that her life mission was to oppose torture because her father, Joseph Arrigo, tortured people while serving as an Army officer in Korea and later committed suicide. Arrigo maintains that Koocher’s account is a fabrication, and that her father is still alive.

Those fireworks aside, most defenders of the APA’s position on torture say they have a legitimate professional and philosophical disagreement with the dissidents: They abhor torture but believe psychologists can play a productive role in interrogation. Some say a resolution compelling association members to avoid participating in anything close to torture could have a perverse effect: preventing psychologists from halting interrogations that get out of hand. “We’re in a better position to know where the lines should be drawn than others,” says Michael Gelles, a former Navy psychologist who served on the group’s task force.

But Reisner says that’s giving his colleagues too much credit. “It presumes that psychologists have some special training and ability to police other people’s ethical behavior,” he says. “And it presumes that psychologists are immune from the pressures of their superiors.”