In the continuing cacophony over what torture is and whether it "works," an important point has gone missing, say current and former counterterrorism operatives.

The CIA's reliance on repeated, and brutal, "enhanced" interrogation techniques shows how few spies the spy agency had before and after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

That made the agency's reliance on squeezing new information out of captured terrorist suspects all the more desperate, many say.

What makes a good spook tick?

For almost 20 years, Dr. David L. Charney, 66, has seen a parade of CIA personnel come to his Alexandria, Va., office, looking for help with their emotional problems.

Many of them come from the Directorate of Operations, recently renamed the National Clandestine Service (although most CIA people still call it the "D.O.").

These are the people who are commonly - and mistakenly - called "spies." But in reality they're the people who recruit foreigners to commit treason or turn on their terrorist buddies.

Despite such an exotic trade, their problems tend to be the same ones that bedevil ordinary people, Charney said: conflicts at work or at home.