Parental alienation is an important phenomenon that mental health professionals should know about and thoroughly understand, especially those who work with children, adolescents, divorced adults, and adults whose parents divorced when they were children.
Parental alienation is a mental condition in which a child—usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict divorce—allies himself or herself strongly with one parent (the preferred parent) and rejects a relationship with the other parent (the alienated parent) without legitimate justification. The child and the alienated parent, who previously had a loving and mutually satisfying relationship, lose the nurture and joy of that relationship for many years and perhaps for their lifetimes.The child then refuses to see the alienated parent, based on the belief that he or she is dangerous, or defective in some unjustified way.
Recent estimates are that 1% of children and adolescents in the U.S. experience parental alienation. When the phenomenon is properly recognized, parental alienation can be prevented. When cases of parental alienation are identified, treatment can lead to improved relationships between a child and the alienated parent.
There is a difference between parental alienation, in which a child is placed in a loyalty conflict that produces anger, depression and loss, and estrangement from a parent, that is an understandable refusal by a child to see a parent who is abusive.
Eight Manifestations of Parental Alienation:
1. A campaign of denigration against a parent
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 animosity to friends and /or extended family of the alienated parent
Gardner (2003) noted that, “when true parental abuse and or neglect is present, the child’s animosity may be justified and so the parental alienation syndrome explanation syndrome explanation for the child’s hostility is not applicable.”
PAS is a form of emotional abuse.
A child could become alienated form a parent for a good reason–such as physical and sexual abuse. This is NOT parental alienation syndrome.
There are other times when alienation occurs that are more typical of adolescence, such as the teenager that does not want to spend as much time with mom or dad because their friends come first.
PAS remains controversial and probably will for some time. But it has been recognized in courts in Florida, Israel and Canada.
- PAS is real to the parent that loses contact with their child.
- PAS is real to the child who may lose their relationship with a parent, and who struggles as an adult with the guilt he or she may feel if they realize their parent did not deserve their anger and hatred.
Of the approximately one third of divorces, that do not evolve into effective co-parenting, a subset deteriorates into parental alienation.
In these instances, one of the parents persistently alienates his or her children from the other parent.
Alienated children react to their parents in an all or nothing way:
They regard the alienating parent as all good, and they despise the parent that they are alienated from.
Alienated children are well aware of the animosity with which the alienating parent reacts to the alienated parent, and they unquestioningly align themselves with the alienating parent.
Although there may be some kernel of truth to the child’s complains and allegations about the rejected parent, the child’s grossly negative views and feelings are significantly distorted and exaggerated reactions. Thus, this unusual development is a pathological response. It is a severe distortion on the child’s parent of the previous parent-child relationship. These youngsters go far beyond an alignment in the intensity, breadth, and ferocity of their behaviors toward the parent they are rejecting. (Johnston, 2001)