Parental alienation syndrome

Parental Alienation Syndrome is described as a childhood disorder that arises almost exclusively in the context of child custody disputes. Its primary manifestation is the child's campaign of denigration against a parent, a campaign that has no justification. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) parent's indoctrinations and the child's own contributions to the vilification of the target parent. When true parental abuse and/or neglect is present, the child’s animosity may be justified and so the PAS explanation for the child’s hostility is not applicable.

The name was coined by Richard Gardner in 1985. PAS has not been included in the DSM, and there is still some controversy as to whether it can be considered a true syndrome.

Signs and Symptoms

As described by Gardner, some of the hallmarks of PAS are:

• The Campaign of Denigration: the child has a campaign against the target parent

• Weak, Frivolous, or Absurd Rationalizations for the Depreciation: the problems the child quote are absurd or inappropriate for the reaction, eg. target parent chews too loudly, target parent is the devil's spawn

• Lack of Ambivalence: no half-way mark to the animosity -- it is simply full bore

• The "Independent-Thinker" Phenomenon: the child feels that all this thought and emotion is their own idea and that no-one else had anything to do with their thoughts

• Reflexive Support of the Alienating Parent in the Parental Conflict: the alienating parent can do no wrong, and there is never a need to question that

• Absence of Guilt Over Cruelty to and/or Exploitation of the Alienated Parent: no feeling that abusing the target parent has any sort of wrongness to it

• Presence of Borrowed Scenarios: use of what are obviously other people's memories in creating the hateful thoughts, e.g. quoting instances that before the child was born or was very young, that the child never saw, or that never happened

• Spread of the Animosity to the Extended Family and Friends of the Alienated Parent: involvement of all of the target parent's family.

Medical

There has been much legal and medical argument about whether the term "syndrome" should be allowed in connection with this type of emotional abuse of children. However, given its prevalence there has been a move to have it recognised as a specific syndrome - parental alienation syndrome. This is a position first advocated by the late American psychiatrist Dr. Richard Gardner who was mentally ill, and died due to self inflicted woulnds with his own butcher knife, in fact he promoted pedophilia..prompted to consider as a syndrome the cluster of symptoms listed in the previous section.

Legal

In the United States, approximately 40 percent of children live without their own biological father. According to the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, "usually judges are not required to make a finding of domestic violence in civil protection order cases."[1]

According to Illinois Bar Journal, women can use court-issued restraining orders as a tool to get sole custody, blocking the father from visitation. It says this can be part of the "gamesmanship of divorce."

Legal systems usually require the views of the child to be known to the court. For example, in the UK there is a welfare checklist which the court must follow (The Children Act 1989 s.(3)) The first item on the list is to establish "the ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child concerned (considered in the light of his age and understanding)." Fathers' rights campaigners claim that the courts do not try to detect whether the mother has alienated a child against their father and consequently the father is unjustly excluded from the life of their child. Lady Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the Family division, (i.e. the top UK family court judge) stated in (Re L, V, M, H (Contact: Domestic Violence) [2002] 2 FLR 334 at 351):

There is, of course, no doubt that some parents, particularly mothers, are responsible for alienating their children from their fathers without good reason and thereby creating this sometimes insoluble problem. That unhappy state of affairs, well known in family courts, is a long way from a recognised syndrome requiring mental health professionals to play an expert role.

Some father's rights groups have lobbied for acceptance of the parental alienation syndrome in the family courts in the United States, or have sought acceptance for parental alienation as a legal concept to be applied in custody cases. (There is scholarly controversy regarding the difference between 'parental alienation syndrome' and 'parental alienation'. Some critics suggest that 'parental alienation syndrome' cannot be refered to as a 'syndrome' since it does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manutal of the American Psychiatric Association, nor is the syndrome recognized by the American Medical Association, or the American Psychological Association. Advocates of the concept have largely side-stepped this debate by simply referring to it as 'parental alienation.') Parental alienation and 'parental alienation syndrome' have been readily accepted by father's groups who believe that there is a persistent pattern of falsified allegations of abuse made by women against father's in custody cases.

Women's advocacy groups argue that the syndrome is gender-biased or biased in favor of non-custodial parents. See e.g. Zorza, 'Friendly Parent' Provisions in Custody Determinations, 26 CLEARINGHOUSE REV. 921-25 (1992). Gardner has been generally criticized for having formulated a theory based upon a number of false assumptions. An interesting general critique can be found at [2]. Although 'parental alienation syndrome' is often raised by the parent who does not have primary caretaking responsibilities (statistically more likely to be fathers), in practice,'parental alienation syndrome' is a concept which can be raised by parents of either gender.

Courts have generally declined to rely upon the 'parental alienation syndrome' as the basis for a child custody determination. See e.g. In the Interest of T.M.W, 553 So. 2nd 260, 262 Fla. Dist. Ct. App., 1988. Critics of 'parental alienation syndrome' generally point out that it is not a generally accepted theory within the scientific community and that it lacks a widely agreed upon definition, firm diagnostic criteria, and empirically based research studies. Warshak, Richard A., "Current Controversies Regarding Parental Alienation Syndrome", American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 19, No. 3, 2001, p. 29-59.

In order for a scientific theory to be accepted in the courts of the United States, the trial court must find under the state or federal rules of evidence that the theory can be admitted on scientific grounds. See generally Federal Rule of Evidence 702. Many courts have failed to recognize parental alienation as admissible under evidentiary standards set forth in either Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013, 34 A.L.R. 145 (D.C. Cir. 1923), or Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993).

See Also

• Children
• Divorce
• Family law
• Visitation

Further Reading

• SPARC Parental Alienation Information Archive
• Richard Gardner and Parental Alienation Syndrome archive of Newsday.com assessment of the future of PAS
• http://web.archive.org/web/20041009145604/www.rgardner.com/refs/