Discover surprising answers from early marriage and parenting. During 40 years of being a child and adult psychiatrist, and 20 years as a forensic child psychiatrist, I discovered one of the unsavory ways automatic living plays out. This occurs in parental alienation (PA). Parental alienation begins long before divorce occurs. In this blog post, I will talk about why PA is …
Parental Alienation: How and When Does It Start? Read More »
Dr. Richard A. Gardner (1985) coined the term “Parental Alienation Syndrome”. To describe, “a psychological disturbance in children who are obsessed with depreciation and criticism of a parent without legitimate cause such as abuse”. While controversy surrounds whether this disorder is technically a syndrome – there is clearly a phenomenon whereby a custodial parent may …
What kind of parent lies to turn their kids against the other parent? Recently, in my clinical practice, I’ve seen a huge uptick in cases of parental alienation. Instead of talking cooperatively in the manner, I teach in my book The Power of Two, these spouses and ex-spouses are interacting as adversaries. Worse, they’ve developed an exaggeratedly negative view, …
Parental Alienation Syndrome: What Is It, and Who Does It? Read More »
Abstract 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. We define parental alienation as a mental condition in which a child—usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict …
A qualitative retrospective study was conducted on 38 adults who experienced parental alienation as a child. Individuals participated in one-hour semi-structured interviews. Audiotapes were transcribed verbatim, and submitted to a content analysis for primary themes and patterns. Findings pertaining to the long-term effects of parental alienation were analyzed for this article. Results revealed seven major …
The parental alienation syndrome is commonly seen in highly contested child-custody disputes. The author has dcscribed three types: mild, moderate, and severe-each of which requires special approaches by both legal and mental health professionals. The purpose of this article is to correct some misinterpretations of the author’s recommendations as well as to add some recently …
Because parental alienation syndrome (PAS) is newly recognized and described, it must be redefined and refined as new cases are observed and the phenomenon becomes better understood. New evidence suggests that alienation may be provoked by other than custodial matters, that cases of alleged sexual abuse may be hinted, that slow judgments by courts exacerbate …
Expanding the parameters of parental alienation syndrome Read More »
Children who have been programmed by one parent to be alienated from the other parent are commonly seen in the context of child-custody disputes. Such programming is designed to strengthen the position of the programming parent in a court of law. Many evaluators use the term parental alienation syndrome (PAS) to refer to the disorder …
