In another
case, failed separation between mother and daughter, age 4 at the time of
the marital break up, was shown to contribute to an escalating pattern of
the girl rejecting her father. The onset of PAS in a given family was found
to occur before the parents separated, during the actual divorce proceedings,
or years after the divorce decree. Dunne and Hedrick describe a two-and-a-half
year-old girl whose parents were disputing custody where there had been a
long series of allegations by the mother since the early months of her
pregnancy. Some of the teens in this sample had enjoyed a lengthy and
positive post-divorce relationship with a parent prior to rejecting that
parent as part of a PAS scenario.
Lund
Psychologist Mary Lund examined factors in addition to parental programming
which can contribute to estrangement between the child and a rejected parent
(19).
She wrote that the methods Gardner advocates, such as court orders for
continued contact, fit many cases and may help prevent the child developing
the kind of phobic-like reaction to the rejected parent which can occur when
contact is discontinued during long, drawn out legal proceedings. Such legal
interventions often form the cornerstone for treatment. In treating these
families, Lund integrates Gardner's work with that of Janet Johnston. She
assesses the family in terms of developmental factors in the child which may
be contributing, such as normal separation problems among preschoolers and
oppositional behavior during preadolescence and adolescence. Deficits in the
noncustodial parent's parenting may also contribute to the problem. In her
experience, the hated parent, usually the father, often has a distant, rigid,
even authoritarian style which contrasts with the indulgent, clinging style
of the loved parent, who may also need help with appropriate parenting.
These are risky generalizations, however. In the experience of this author
and others, alienating and target parents exhibit a wide variety of
personality patterns which do not lend themselves to this type of
generalization. In addition, where the father is the alienating parent, it
is sometimes he who uses an overindulgent and materially lavish parenting
style to overwhelm and override the children's healthier psychological bond
with the mother.
According to
Lund, PAS may also develop when the stress for the child of ongoing high
conflict divorce becomes too much and the child seeks to "escape" being
caught in the middle by aligning with one parent. Therapists, especially
individual child therapists, can unwittingly become part of the system
maintaining the PAS, such that a court order is required to break up the
therapist's polarizing influence. Ultimately, a combination of strategic
legal and therapeutic interventions are required to mitigate the PAS and
keep the case manageable.
Cartwright
A Canadian psychologist,
Cartwright makes eight points about PAS:
1) PAS can be
provoked by conflicts other than custody matters, e.g., child support and
relatively trivial differences;
2) alienation
is a gradual and consistent process that is directly related to the time
spent alienating;
3) time is on
the side of the alienating parent, who may engage in a host of delay
tactics;
4) slow
judgments by courts exacerbate the problem;
5) alienating
parents sometimes use the hint of sexual abuse to discredit the other
parent, what Cartwright calls "virtual" allegations of sexual abuse;
6) judgments
by the court which are clear and forceful are required to counter the force
of alienation;
7) children
subject to excessive alienation may develop mental illness and
8) successful parental alienation has profound, long term consequences for
the child and other family members which are only beginning to be
appreciated (24).
As an
example of "virtual" allegations abuse, Cartwright describes a mother who
insinuated sexual abuse by the father by alleging that he had shown the
child a pornographic videotape which in fact was just a Hollywood comedy
rented from a family video store. Regarding risk to the child of developing
mental illness, Cartwright gives the example of disintegrating behavior by
an alienated son, presumably latency age, who tried to poison his father by
slipping air freshener into his stomach medicine. Later, the boy ran away
during a visit with the father and the police had to be called. The folie
a deux literature includes a report in 1977 of a 10-year-old boy who
allegedly attempted to burn down his father's house two years after his
parents divorced, apparently as a result of his folie a deux
relationship with his disturbed mother (25).
Such cases suggest that severe PAS can be indicative of significant
emotional disturbance in the alienating parent with a proportionately
disturbing effect on the child.
Cartwright poignantly describes the psychological effects on the child of
being involved in severe PAS. "The child...experiences a great loss, the
magnitude of which is akin to death of a parent, two grandparents, and all
the lost parent's relatives and friends...Moreover...the child is unable to
acknowledge the loss, much less mourn it" (24).
The child's good memories of the alienated parent are systematically
destroyed and the child misses out on the day-to-day interaction, learning,
support and love which, in an intact family, usually flows between the child
and both parents, as well as grandparents and other relatives on both sides.
The child may
encounter insurmountable obstacles if, later in life, he or she seeks to
reestablish relations with the lost parent and his family. The lost parent
may be unable or unwilling to become reinvolved. The parent or
grandparents may have died. Some of these children eventually turn against
the alienating parent, and if the target parent is lost to them as well, the
child is left with an unfillable void.
PARENTS WHO INDUCE
ALIENATION
Gender
Gardner's observation
that mothers seem to engage in PAS behavior with significantly greater
frequency than fathers is born out by divorce research, as well as by the
clinical PAS literature. The California Children of Divorce Study found that
in a nonclinical sample, mothers were twice as likely as fathers to form PAS
type alignments with their children (2).
When false allegations of abuse arise, as in more severe manifestations of
PAS, mothers also seem to comprise the majority (3,
26-28).
Mothers constituted 67 percent of the accusers in the nationwide study which
revealed that allegations of abuse in divorce/custody disputes were found to
be invalid about 50 percent of the time (12).
Fathers were the accusers in 22 percent of cases while third parties such as
relatives and professionals were the adult initiators 11 percent of the time.
Where a third party was the initiator of the allegation, a parent might also
believe there was abuse. The numbers reverse when it comes to physically
abducting the child, with fathers the abductors from 60 percent to 70
percent of the time (18).
There may be gender differences in how men and women go about gaining
control of their children and taking revenge on an ex-spouse, with men more
inclined to physical kidnapping and women more inclined to social/psychological
abduction, which is how Clawar and Rivlin characterized severe PAS (7).
Never Married
Parents
may engage in PAS behavior even if they were never married. In Johnston's
study of children who refuse visitation, she found that from 6 percent to 15
percent of the high conflict parents she studied were not married (9).
In the author's experience, one of the contributing factors to PAS with some
of these couples is the mother's anger and resentment over the father's
refusal to marry her, an effect which is exacerbated if the father becomes
involved with a new partner. A mother in this position may have particularly
strong proprietary feelings, similar to what Clawar and Rivlin describe (7),
infuriated by the unfairness of joint custody laws which grant the father
rights to a relationship with his child without his having fulfilled his
obligations with respect to the mother.
New Partners
Johnston found that the new partner of either parent could be the primary
instigator of efforts to gain custody of the child (8).
Something similar happens when a divorcing parent joins a cult which
actively strives to get the child from the noncult member parent, with the
cult fulfilling the role of new partner in a sense, as shown in one of the
case vignettes to follow.
Narcissistic Vulnerability
Johnston found that to varying degrees, one or both of the parents in high
conflict divorce may be narcissistically vulnerable, lacking a well-established
self identify and relying on primitive defenses such as externalization,
denial and projection (8).
The need of one or both parents to protect and defend themselves against
narcissistic injury is at the root of many high conflict divorces.
This may be a motivating factor for PAS in some cases, a dynamic described
by Wilhelm Reich almost 50 years ago (29)
when he foretold how parents of certain character types would seek to defend
themselves against narcissistic injury in divorce by fighting for the child,
using the technique of defaming the partner in order to alienate the child
from that parent.
Need to Conceal Parental
Deficits
According to Clawar and Rivlin, the campaign to alienate the child from the
other parent is sometimes used to deflect unwanted scrutiny of the
programming parent's personal problems, for example alcohol, drugs,
neglectful parenting, physical and sexual abuse, criminal involvement, or
socially unaccepted life-style (7).
Sometimes parents engage in PAS behavior out of fear that they will be found
wanting when compared to the more loving and capable target. The literature
on false allegations in divorce/custody disputes often makes the point that
the accusation helps the accuser level the playing field, so to speak.
Vulnerability to
Separation and Loss
A
factor in some high conflict divorces is the presence in one or both parents
of specific underlying vulnerabilities to loss and conflicts around
attachment and separation (8).
A PAS scenario can develop when a troubled parent who was rejected in the
divorce copes with loss and loneliness by turning to the child to fullfill
emotional needs, resulting in what Wallerstein calls the "overburdened child
" , discussed in Part II. For some parents, the divorce reactivates
separation issues from earlier losses such as previous divorce, kidnapping
or death of a child, or the loss of other family members. Such a parent may
engage in PAS to defend against further "loss," that of having to share the
child with the other parent. Some parents have long standing personality
problems with separation and individuation. The ongoing conflicts over the
child engendered by PAS help ward off feelings of loss and abandonment by
maintaining the relationship with the ex-spouse. PAS can also be used by
keep the other parent hostilily engaged, as in Medea Syndrome (4,
5)
and Divorce Related Malicious Mother Syndrome (6,
30).
Revenge
Clawar and Rivlin found that revenge was one of the most common and powerful
reasons for parents to engage in alienating behavior (7).
The personality makeup of some parents is such that revenge seems like their
only viable option in response to feeling wounded by the divorce. The desire
for revenge can be further kindled if infidelity is discovered, the
alienating parent is left for someone else, or finds themselves immediately
replaced by a new love object in the life of the parent who left.
Need for Control and
Domination
Some
alienating parents are driven by overriding needs for power, influence,
domination and control (7).
Engaging in PAS may provide the dual gratification of maintaining power,
influence and control over the child and vicariously over the ex-spouse
whose visitation and relationship with the child is frustrated by the
alienating parent's control maneuvers. Needs for domination and control are
sometimes acted out by abducting the child and using it to taunt and torment
the frantic target parent. In addition to mothers and fathers, a new partner
can be the one with inordinate needs for power, domination and control. For
example, a mother may become involved with a new partner who first seduces
her away from her relatively weak husband and then acts as a sort of
one-on-one cult leader to mother and child, who are both programmed and
brainwashed into compliance and submission.
Medea Syndrome
The
need for revenge is taken to an extreme in Media Syndrome (4,
5).
"Modern Medeas do not want to kill their children, but they do want revenge
on their former wives or husbands-and they exact it by destroying the
relationship between the other parent and the child...The Medea syndrome has
its beginnings in the failing marriage and separation, when parents
sometimes lose sight of the fact that their children have separate needs
[and] begin to think of the child as being an extension of the self...A
child may be used as an agent of revenge against the other parent...or the
anger can lead to child stealing" (5).
The "embittered- chaotic" parents described earlier by Wallerstein and Kelly
may also fall in the revenge category (2).
These parents act out their intense anger in a disorganized but chronically
disruptive way which bombards the children, rather than protecting them,
with the raw bitterness and chaos of the angry parent's feelings about the
ex-spouse and the divorce.
Divorce Related Malicious
Mother Syndrome
Turkat
would have done better to call this disorder "Malicious Parent Syndrome,"
but be that as it may, this disorder describes a special class of alienating
parents who engage in a relentless and multifaceted campaign of aggression
and deception against the ex-spouse, who is being punished for the divorce (6,
30).
Contrary to Turkat, the author has encountered several cases in which the
father was the malicious parent, as illustrated in the case vignette at the
end of this section. Discussing PAS by name, Turkat classified PAS as a
moderate form of visitation interference as compared with Divorce Related
Malicious Mother Syndrome. The parent with the latter disorder uses an array
of tactics including excessive litigation, alienating the child from the
target parent, and involving the child and third parties in malicious
actions against the ex-spouse. Lying and deception are routinely used. A
malicious parent might arrange to have the ex-spouse investigated for use of
illegal drugs at work or file a complaint with authorities against the
ex-spouse's new partner. Malicious parents are often successful in using the
law to punish and harass the ex-spouse, sometimes violating the law
themselves but often getting away with it. Their efforts to interfere with
the target parent's visitation are persistent and pervasive, including
attempts to block the target parent from having regular, uninterrupted
visitation with the child and from having telephone contact, as well as
trying to block the target parent from participating in the child's school
life and activities.
Mr. C's
suspiciousness and verbal attacks on his wife finally drove her to file for
divorce. As on previous occasions, Mr. C. threatened that if she would not
reconcile he would win custody of their four-year-old daughter and make sure
the mother never saw her again. In the past, Mrs. C. had relented, fearful
that Mr. C. would fulfill his threats, but this time she stood firm. Mr. C.
filed for sole custody based on false allegations that the mother was unfit.
When these allegations were not upheld, the father made up new ones. Within
a year of filing, Mrs. C. became engaged to another man. Mr. C. succeeded in
breaking up the engagement by accusing the fiance of sexually abusing the
child. He had the police arrest the fiance at the mother's home. When child
protective services informed the mother that they would take her daughter
away for failure to protect, the mother canceled her engagement, terrified
that Mr. C. would make good on his threat to take her daughter away. When
police and child protection investigation of the sex abuse allegations
resulted in a finding that no abuse occurred, Mrs. C. proceeded with her
wedding plans. Father raised allegations of sex abuse against Mrs. C.'s new
husband in family court and succeeded at one point in gaining temporary
custody. Primary custody was returned to the mother after the court ordered
evaluation found the allegations to be without merit and the father to be
emotionally disturbed and pressuring the child to report abuse. During his
visitation time, the father and a male friend continued to interrogate the
girl about abuse by the stepfather and as time went by she felt increasingly
pressured to meet their expectations. Away from the father's influence,
however, the girl enjoyed her family with her mother and stepfather. She
stated to several different therapists that she had only accused her
stepfather of molesting her to please her father and his friend.
In the
meantime, Mr. C. and friend continued to make abuse reports against the
stepfather, creating significant distress for Mrs. C., her new husband and
the child. Eventually, when the girl was 10, the father succeeded in getting
the juvenile court to take jurisdiction and give him custody, although
medical examination of the child did not support the increasingly serious
accusations. Mrs. C. was not allowed to see her daughter. When she tried to
contact the therapist who was now seeing the girl for sex abuse by Mrs. C.'s
new husband, the therapist was rude and a refused to speak with her. The
mother was tortured by reports from a series of child protection workers
which indicated that her daughter was acting out in bizarre and often
self-destructive ways. At the age of twelve, she was picked up by the police
for prostitution and had to be psychiatrically hospitalized. Several
professionals who were involved when the mother had custody wondered if Mr.
C. was deliberately destroying his daughter so as to get revenge against the
mother. Mr. C. was able to retain custody, however, by focusing the
attention of authorities on allegations of sex abuse against the stepfather.
Long
before Divorce Related Malicious Mother Syndrome was identified by Turkat, a
male psychologist, whose ex-wife undoubtedly exhibited the disorder, wrote a
book about his ordeal (31).
Accusing him of sexually abusing their young daughter, the mother arranged
for the police to arrest him at his office in front of his clients and
staff. She also arranged for newspaper reporters to be present so that
pictures of the shocked psychologist being handcuffed and hauled off to jail
were widely broadcast. The father fought back and eventually obtained joint
custody after the court found that mother's extreme efforts to sever the
father's relationship with his child were detrimental and stripped her of
sole custody.
Personality
Characteristics of Parents Making False Accusations of Sexual Abuse in
Disputes
Wakefield and Underwager undertook a systematic review of divorce/custody
case files to examine and compare the characteristics of 72 false accusers,
103 falsely accused parents and a control group of 67 parents disputing
custody but without allegations of abuse (28).
Criteria for determining whether a parent had falsely accused included a
finding by the justice system that there had been no abuse. Of the three
groups, the falsely accusing parents were much more likely to have been
diagnosed by a professional as exhibiting a personality disorder including
mixed, unspecified, histrionic, borderline, passive-aggressive or paranoid.
Approximately one-fourth of the false accusers did not exhibit significant
pathology, while most of the parents who were disputing custody without
abuse allegations were assessed as normal. Some of the false accusers were
so obsessed with anger toward their estranged spouses that this became a
major focus of their lives. They continued to be obsessed with abuse despite
negative findings by mental health professionals and the courts, similar to
what is found in cases of delusional disorder and Munchausen Syndrome by
Proxy. The relationship of falsely accusing parents with their children was
often characterized in the record as extremely controlling and symbiotic.
Two were Qiven a formal diagnosis of folie a deux between parent and
child. Several exhibited extremely serious dysfunction, such as
unpredictable bizarre behavior, belief that they possessed supernatural
powers and delusions of grandeur. These authors found more similarities than
differences between mothers and fathers who falsely accused, with mothers
very much in the majority.
SAID Syndome
Blush
and Ross have come up with three psychological profiles for mother false
accusers and a typical profile of father accusers (3,
26,
27).
Mothers tend to present as "fearful victim," "justified vindicator," or to
some degree psychotic. The "fearful victim" presentation involves
manipulation of social image around a specific theme to which others respond
with sympathy and support, such as child abuse or spousal abuse. The
"justified vindicators" initially present as intellectually organized with a
knowledgeable, even pseudo-scientific sounding agenda, similar to what
Clawar and Rivlin report regarding self righteousness as an important
motivation of some programming parents. Women in the third group present
with a combination of borderline and histrionic features, which interact
with the stress of the divorce to impair the mother's reality testing and
significantly interfere with her functioning, sometimes to the point of a
psychotic or quasi-psychotic presentation. Similar to Wakefield and
Underwager's findings (28),
mothers in all three categories tend to be histrionic in presentation, so
emotionally convinced of the "facts" that no amount of input, including from
neutral professionals, can dissuade them from their perceptions. According
to Blush and Ross, the typical profile for father accusers is one of
intellectual rigidity and a high need to be "correct," possibly male
counterparts of the "justified vindicator" presentation among mothers. By
history, these men were hypercritical of their wives while the marriage was
still intact, quick to suspect them of negligence and to accuse their wives
of being unfit mothers. Gardner's work is referenced in the second and third
SAID syndrome articles by these authors (26,
27).
Accuser and Accused Dyads
Important information about a programming parent using false allegations of
abuse is to be found in the particular choice of accused. The study reported
by Thoennes and Tjaden showed that the battle goes beyond simply mothers
against fathers and vice versa (12).
Parents were found to accuse not only each other but the other's new
partner, or relatives such as grandparents or the new partner's teenage son.
A parent who accuses the ex-spouse's new partner may fulfill a number of
goals simultaneously, expressing feelings of jealousy, revenge, and trying
to keep the child from forming a positive attachment with the new parent
figure. Accusations against the target parent's relatives may provide a
combination of revenge, allegations that are difficult for the ex-spouse to
defend since they are not directly against him or her, and a means to
exclude the relatives from post-divorce involvement in the child's life. The
accuser can set up a devastating conflict for the target parent by accusing
his teenage son from a previous marriage or the new partner's teenage
offspring from a previous union. This has the effect of forcing the target
parent to "choose" between his child involved in making the allegation and
another child whom he loves and is responsible for. This enhances the
alienating parent's ability to convince the child that daddy does not care.
The Delusional Parent
Rogers
refers to PAS in her report on five divorce/custody cases in which the
falsely accusing parent, all mothers in this sample, suffered from
delusional disorder (32).
The children were subjected to undue influence to get them to accept the
accusing parent's psychotic belief and concomitant rejection of the other
parent in a severe PAS scenario. Where the child succumbed, a diagnosis of
shared paranoid disorder, otherwise known as folie a deux might also
be made. According to Rogers, the first stages of the mother's delusional
disorder were present to some degree during the marriage and exacerbated
parental conflicts prior to the separation. However, these subtle signs were
not immediately discernible as a psychiatric illness and were only
recognized in retrospect, as the mother's symptoms became worse in the
course of the divorce and its attendant disputes. One of the severe PAS
cases reported by Dunne and Hedrick appears to be an example of the mother
developing delusional disorder. The "subtle signs" were expressed as
suspicions during her pregnancy that the father would molest the child,
similar to a case encountered by the present author in which suspicions
harbored by the mother even before the child was born prompted her to abduct
the child a few months later. According to Rogers, the mothers who became
delusional were usually the main caretakers for the children. In two cases
they were awarded custody during the first round of custody litigation,
before more noticeable deterioration in their parenting capabilities had
occurred. With continued custody litigation, the intractable nature of their
mental illness became apparent and the court gave custody to the father in
four of the five cases.
Munchausen Syndrome by
Proxy
Some
cases of PAS, especially those with false allegations of abuse, may have
important features in common with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP) in
which parents fulfill their needs vicariously by presenting their child as
ill (23).
In cases of "classical" MSP, parents repeatedly take their children to
doctors for unnecessary, often painful tests and treatments which the
physician is induced to provide based on the parent's misrepresentations.
"Contemporary-type" MSP occurs when a parent fabricates an abuse scenario
for the child and welcomes or actively seeks out repeated abuse interviews
of the child by police, social workers and therapists (23).
The concept of contemporary-type MSP elaborates on the idea put forth by
Sinanan and Houghton that new types of MSP behavior will evolve in parallel
with the evolution of new medical and social services, e.g., the child
protection system (33).
MSP parents may change or come up with new "symptoms" for the child so as to
better elicit the desired response from a particular care provider or an
institution offering specialized services. Thus, the same child may be
receiving attention simultaneously for fabricated physical symptoms from
several medical providers and for fabricated sex abuse from therapists and
public agencies who specialize in abuse. Careful evaluation and thorough
investigation of sex abuse allegations which turn out to be questionable or
false will sometimes bring a parent to the attention of authorities for
practicing "classical" as well as "contemporary- type" MSP (34).
As with
PAS, MSP is most often practiced by mothers, although fathers and other
caretakers are sometimes found to engage in the behavior. MSP parents
maintain their psychic equilibrium through control and manipulation of
external sources of social gratification, including the child and care
providers who serve children. Medical and other care providers are sometimes
referred to as the "third party participants" in the MSP, because of their
importance in carrying out the parent's agenda, including false allegations
of abuse. There are at least four different presentations where MSP and PAS
overlap: 1) an MSP mother may, during the marriage, add false allegations of
abuse to the child's fabricated physical symptoms, thus precipitating the
divorce; 2) where the MSP parent feels angry or rejected in divorce,
manipulating the child's medical care and involving the child in false
allegations of abuse may serve multiple functions including revenge,
maintaining the symbiotic bond with the child and preserving the freedom to
continue the MSP behavior; 3) a parent dealing with the losses and stress of
divorce may respond with MSP type behavior to obtain social support from the
child and care providers; 4) an alienating parent may exhibit MSP type
behavior by manipulating the child's medical care for the primary purpose of
furthering the alienation agenda (35).
In PAS
with features of MSP, the alienating parent may gain legal authority to
control and determine whom the child sees and what treatment is given. The
child may be taken to the doctor after visits with the target parent for
fabricated or induced symptoms which are attributed to abuse and neglect by
the other parent. The child is likely present while the alienating parent
makes this negative presentation about the other parent to the doctor, who
inadvertently lends support to the denigrating account by listening to it,
asking questions and examining the child. The target parent may be rendered
ineffective to stop this cycle because providers retained by the alienating
parent, and who take her assertions at face value, often refuse to talk to
the target parent or allow the target parent access to child's medical
records. The result for the child is what Rand calls MSP type abuse.
Rand expands Meadow's formulation of MSP as a complex form of emotional
abuse by applying Garbarino's five types of psychological maltreatment.
Research on MSP shows that it sometimes overlaps with other forms of abuse
and neglect (36).
Parental Child Abductors
According to Huntington, post-divorce parental child stealing has been on
the increase since the mid-1970s, paralleling the rising divorce rate and
the explosion of litigation over child custody (18).
An abducting parent views the child's needs as secondary to the parental
agenda which is to provoke, agitate, control, attack or psychologically
torture the other parent. It should come as no surprise, then, that
post-divorce parental abduction is considered a serious form of child abuse.
Psychological maltreatment may predominate or be accompanied by physical
abuse and neglect. Abducting parents take the idea that the child would be
better off without the other parent to an extreme. Clawar and Rivlin found
that would-be abductors often felt frustrated in their efforts to gain
access to their child through the legal system and felt "forced" to abduct
the child (7).
Sometimes, they became so convinced of the terrible scenario they were
broadcasting about the target parent that they felt no "choice" but to flee
with the child and go into hiding. In order to win the child's cooperation
in maintaining concealment, the abductor must continue to brainwash the
child with fear of the target parent and what would happen if the target
parent should find the abducting parent and child.
CONCLUSION TO PART I
Review of
this first portion of relevant literature and research indicates that
Gardner's concept of PAS has been increasingly discussed and referred to
since he introduced the term in 1985. Research on divorce since the early
1980s has been progressively converging with Gardner's work. Johnston's
studies of high conflict divorce in particular suggest that it is not
sufficient to lump PAS with high conflict divorce in general. In its more
severe forms, PAS is clearly distinctive. It is also more destructive for
children and families and can be irreversible in its effects. As the section
on alienating parents indicates, the divorce population includes a
significant proportion of parents who have' psychological problems and
disorders. The degree to which such problems are expressed in efforts to
alienate the child from the other parent has to be evaluated in the total
divorce context, including psychological factors of the child and character
and conduct of the target parent. Severe PAS is destructive irrespective of
the gender of the alienating parent.
Part I
attempts to integrate Gardner's work on PAS with the relevant literature and
research under the following topic headings: The Child in PAS; The
Target/Alienated Parent in PAS; PAS and its Third Party Participants;
Attorneys on PAS; Forensic Evaluation and PAS; and Interventions for PAS,
including strategic combinations of court orders and therapeutic
interventions, appointment of a Special Master, appointment of a Guardian ad
Litem, changing custody, use of hospitalization and other transitional sites
to facilitate custody changes, and the appropriate application of sanctions
to help certain programming parents to better act in their children's best
interests.
Whether or
not one chooses to use Gardner's terminology, the problems posed by these
cases to families, professionals and the courts are very real. Reluctance to
consider Parental Alienation Syndrome by name, along with the diagnostic and
interventions it entails, tends to contribute to the perpetuation of the
problem in a variety of ways. Like any other label, that of PAS has the
potential to be misapplied and misused. Whether or not it is the appropriate
diagnosis in a given instance must be determined based on facts of the case,
corroborated historical evidence and data from multiple sources. An
appropriate diagnosis of PAS, including level of severity as Gardner
recommends, can make the difference between allowing a case to go beyond the
point of no return or intervening effectively before it is too late.
REFERENCES
