1 Overview

What is Parental Alienation

The phenomenon has been described for centuries. 1 The term “Parental Alienation” was first used by child psychiatrist Richard GARDNER in an article he wrote in 1985 (“Recent Trends in Divorce and Custody Litigation”). 2

Parental Alienation is a problem that sometimes arises when people get divorced or separated or sometimes actually when moms and dads are still together. But what happens is there’s conflict between the parents and the child is caught in the middle. And after a while one parent may start bad mouthing, denigrating or criticizing the second parent. And if that happens sufficiently, the child doesn’t want to be caught in the middle, the child moves to one side. The child adopts the same side as the parent who’s doing the criticizing and rejects a relationship with the second parent. And so basically the child is rejecting a relationship without a good reason because the second parent is a normal, concerned, good parent. And the child rejects that parent simply because the first parent has been bad-mouthing the second parent incessantly. 1

So in Parental Alienation a child is rejecting a parent for a non-protective reason. In other words, that parent is safe. The child is protected and safe with that parent and there was an unreasonable rejection due to an alienating influence. These children are going along with their alienating parent to reject a loving parent. 3

The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) described it as caretaker abusive behaviour known as terrorizing the child to put the child unnecessarily in a situation to have to choose to have a relationship with one parent over the other. 3

The hard part is getting the court to realize that their rejection is counterintuitive, meaning that the children really don’t mean it when they say they don’t want to ever see a parent again. 3

Classification

Established through research, Parental Alienation is a form of psychological maltreatment. And severe parental alienation therefore would be severe psychological maltreatment. 4

To be able to use Parental Alienation in a record as a diagnosis, ICD

it is a symptom, behaviour, not codified in ICD, legal term, not accepted by social security anymore, but pasg fights to get it back

What is the Root Cause

multigeneration trauma, 4 class b disorders

pain etc. from divorce

gender prejustice

Those parents wanted those kids to stay, dependent on them. 4

Who is involved

dd Alienator, Target, Child

3rd party

How to identify

Not all children who reject a parent are alienated. It is essential for proper management and treatment of cases of child alignment that alienated children be identified and differentiated from estranged children. According to the Four-Factor Model for identifying parental alienation from estrangement, children should be considered alienated only when all factors are present. 4

With an explicit factor “Contact Refusal”, the model is called the “Five Factor Model” 5

  1. Contact refusal
  2. Positive relationship prior to contact refusal
  3. Absence of abuse or neglect on the part of the alienated parent
  4. Alienating behaviours of the preferred parent
  5. Child manifesting symptoms of Parental Alienation

In the fourth factor, the favored parent has engaged in many of the 17 Primary Parental Alienation Strategies 4 6

  1. Badmouthing
  2. Limiting Contact
  3. Interfering with Communication
  4. Interfering with Symbolic Communication
  5. Withdrawal of Love
  6. Telling Child Targeted Parent Does Not Love Him or Her
  7. Forcing Child to Choose
  8. Creating the Impression that the Targeted Parent is Dangerous
  9. Confiding in Child
  10. Forcing Child to Reject Targeted Parent
  11. Asking Child to Spy on Targeted Parent
  12. Asking Child to Keep Secrets from Targeted Parent
  13. Referring to Targeted Parent by First Name
  14. Referring to a Stepparent as “Mom” or “Dad” and Encouraging Child to Do the Same
  15. Withholding Medical, Academic and Other Important Information from Targeted Parent / Keeping Targeted Parent’s Name off of Medical, Academic, and Other Relevant Documents
  16. Changing Child’s Name to Remove Association with Targeted Parent
  17. Cultivating Dependency

In the fifth factor children exhibit the Eight Behavioral Manifestations of Parental Alienation. 4

  1. A campaign of denigration
  2. Weak, absurd, or frivolous rationalizations for the deprecation
  3. Lack of ambivalence
  4. The “independent-thinker” phenomenon
  5. Reflexive support of the alienating parent in the parental conflict
  6. Absence of guilt over cruelty to and/or exploitation of the alienated parent
  7. The presence of borrowed scenarios
  8. Spread of the animosity to the friends and/or extended family of the alienated parent

Dr. Richard GARDNER (who first used the term Parental Alienation) identified Three distinct Levels of Parental Alienation based on how any of these 8 behaviors are present: 7

  • mild (1-3 behaviors)
  • moderate (3-5 behaviors)
  • extreme (6-8 behaviors)

Read more

What is the Impact

on different people and over different time

Alienating Parent

Alienated Parent

Child

Phases of Parental Alienation

How can it be solved

mid and moderate – Mediation

severe – hard court intervention

  1. William BERNET, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjyvc2zVc6c ↩ ↩
  2. Richard GARDNER, Recent Trends in Divorce and Custody Litigation, http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/pas/gardnr85.htm ↩
  3. Linda GOTTLIEB, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuqahNnZAU ↩ ↩ ↩
  4. Amy BAKER, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2zNV1Jvc5I ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  5. William BERNET, https://parentalalienation.eu/the-five-factor-model ↩
  6. https://parentalalienation.eu/awareness/17-alienating-strategies ↩
  7. Parental Alienation Documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYV8GBrJv9k ↩