PARENTAL ALIENATION

Parental alienation occurs when one parent attempts to turn children against the other by

(1) speaking to the children in a way that denigrates the targeted parent

(2) blocking the children from contact with the targeted parent, and

(3) telling false narratives that put the targeted parent in a negative light to others such as friends, family members, teachers, etc.  This behavior may include false accusations such as of child abuse that force targeted parents to defend themselves in court.

The Costs of Parental Alienation

• Harms children.
• Deprives parents and grandparents of their rightful parenting and grand-parenting role.
• Is increasingly considered a form of child abuse, and in fact one of the most damaging forms of abuse. The emotional consequences of severe alienation can last a lifetime.  An alienating parent teaches the child to become narcissistic, borderline and/or sociopathic. It also has been shown to create emotional distress in the children, potentially resulting in depression, anxiety, poor school performance, chronic anger, vulnerability to addictions, and suicidal ideation.
• Is a child protection issue.  Is also an assault on parental and grandparental rights.
• For a list of resources explaining alienation please scroll down this page.

Self-Help for Depression, Anger, and Anxiety if an Alienation Situation is Distressing You.

1. Please feel welcome to view my TEDx talk on lifting depression.
2. I have posted free podcasts on self-help for depression and anxiety.
   Listen especially to Depression, A Disorder of Power and Anxiety: Friend or Foe?.
3. My book Prescriptions Without Pills and the associated worksheets and videos on the book’s free website offer additional self-help ideas for relief from anger, depression, anxiety, and more.

More Suggestions for Coping With Parental Alienation

Parents who find themselves in an alienated situation typically experience serious emotional pain.  They reel with defensive feelings, confused about how they could be being accused of actions that they have not done.  They look back on the many ways they have been a good parent and do not understand why these no longer appear to be in either the child’s or the alienating parent’s memory.  They feel depressed at seeming to have lost their child, fearful about the harm being done to their child, and angry at being named as the toxic one.

Feeling calmer in an alienation situation can begin with learning about at least the following five facets of alienation:

1. The psychological roots of alienation: Alienating parents almost always manifest narcissistic, and borderline personality features.  They often also lie and disregard the harm they do to others in the manner of anti-social personalities.
2. The typical progression of alienation goes from mild to moderate to severe, and from one to many or all of the children in the family.  For this reason it is vital that targeted parents take early action to address the problem at the first signs that it may be emerging.
3. How to diagnose alienation: Therapists generally need additional training in this specialty area to recognize Gardner’s 8 signs of alienation in the child and Baker’s 17 strategies of alienating parents (see below for links).  They otherwise are at high risk for reaching an incorrect diagnosis. If you are working with a therapist who is not either well-read or highly trained in alienation, request that they read up or find another.
4. How alienation is best treated psychologically.  Individual therapy alone for the alienated child not only will be unlikely to resolve the alienation; it is likely to reinforce the pattern. Alienated children must be treated in joint sessions with the targeted parent.  The alienating parent must be in treatment as well to learn to recognize and stop his/her alienating behaviors.  Treatment addressed toward helping the parents resolve the issues that motivate the alienation also can help. Court intervention is generally essential in more severe alienation cases where time allotted to the targeted parent in the court-approved parenting plan is being blocked. In the case of severe alienation, urgency is an issue.  Earlier intervention prevents worsening and increases the likelihood of successful treatment for all case.
5. How to handle the legal proceedings necessary in most cases to rectify an alienation situation.  Michael Bone and Brian Ludmer, in particular, have written on this issue.  Note especially that lawyers without strong experience in this area will be highly likely to lose your case.  Experience in other areas of law is insufficient for lawyers to win alienation cases.
6. For a list of some of the research on alienation (through 2023), please scroll down to the bottom of this page.  Thank you Dr. med. Wilfrid v. Boch-Galhau.

Dr. Heitler’s Blogposts on Parental Alienation 

On psychologytoday.com, I have written multiple articles on alienation.  This listing is in the order in which I posted them.

Further Resources

The following websites offer much excellent information on all of these topics.

1. Read up on the alienation phenomenon. Information is power.

For starters, this reading is essential:

1. 8 signs in the child of alienation (Gardner), how to distinguish the three levels of alienation: mild, moderate and severe
2. 17 strategies of alienating parents, and how to respond to them (Amy Baker and Paul Fine)
3. 5 categories of alienation (a shortened list of Amy Baker and Paul Fine’s’s 17 alienating strategies)
4. An earlier (1999) quite comprehensive article by Douglas Darnell with excellent clarity; good for parents and therapists, and also for lawyers and judges.
5. Severe alienation is a form of psychological child abuse and is therefore a child protection issue.
6. Edward Kruk’s article on alienation as child abuse and as a form of family violence.
7. EXCELLENT NEW WEBSITE ON ALIENATION: https://www.parentalalienationisreal.com/

Books on Parental Alienation

1. .Search parental alienation on Amazon for many excellent titles by Warshak, Gottlieb, Baker, Woodall and Woodall, and others.
2. Look also for youtube videos by adults who were alienated as children.
3. Some clients have told me that they found Warshak’s book Divorce Poison particularly helpful.  Others have recommended Understanding Parental Alienation by Woodall and Woodall.

Free support for parents and grandparents

1. In the Denver area, a therapist named Phillip runs an excellent free monthly support group.  You can find out more about this group here.
2. Familyaccessfightingforchildrensrights.org offers a monthly free telephone-based lecture and question-answer session.  These Sunday evening phone seminars are a must for anyone dealing with alienation.  They are generally attended by over 1,000 alienated parents and grandparents and by both legal and psychological professionals from around the globe. Get both support and current cutting edge information at these monthly conference calls
3. Join the free group at PASG.info.  They have excellent information.

Treatment for Alienated Children

The main key to successful therapy for alienation is to have a therapist who is truly knowledgable about the phenomenon.  Ask if they are familiar with the work at least of Amy Baker, Linda Gottlieb and Richard Warshak.  If not, try a different therapist.

The article at this link, which is by Linda K. Gottlieb, explains the kind of therapy that works with severely alienated children.  Less intensive versions of these methods can be effective with less fully alienated children.

Note that in most cases, for therapy to be effective, for most of the sessions the child and the alienated parent need to be in the same room, talking with each other.  If “reunification therapy” does not include the alienated parent in treatment with the child, it most likely will not accomplish anything and may even intensify the alienation.

Individual therapy for alienated children tends to result in a worsening of the alienation as the child mainly serves as a mouthpiece for the alienating parent, and the therapist may inadvertently validate false beliefs about the targeted parent.

Colorado Professionals Who Research Parental Alienation

Jennifer Harman, PhD is a professor in Fort Collins who can serve as an expert witness explaining parental alienation to courts.  Her recently published article on parental alienation in Psychological Bulletin takes a giant step forward in explaining this phenomenon to the psychology profession.  For more information on the kinds of testimony she can offer in court cases, in person or via Skype, see here.  See this overview of her important article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181127171419.htm

More Research and Academic Articles on Parental Alienation

The following letter and list of articles were sent to PASG.org by a European specialist in parental alienation.  It’s an excellent and updated list of articles that are must-reads by every professional, and by parents and grandparents as well, who deal with alienation cases.

January 2019
Dear colleagues,

As a retired specialist in psychiatry, neurology, psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, I have for many years been concerned with the subject of parental alienation, both in theory and in practice (see also my publications on www.drvboch.de and www.pas-konferenz.de).

Given the “complex situation” of cases of parental alienation (particularly in German-speaking countries), may I refer you, for the sake of simplicity, to my article “Parental alienation (syndrome) – A serious form of psychological child abuse”, recently published in the Austrian peer-reviewed journal “Neuropsychiatrie” (2018) 32 (3): 133 – 148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-018-0267-0. English translation: in: Mental Health Fam Med (2018) 14: 725 – 739, http://mhfmjournal.com/pdf/MHFM-117.pdf (double blinded peer-reviewed).

Another (peer-reviewed) article written in English is a review of the well-known “Parental Alienation – Handbook for Mental Health and Legal Professionals”, C. C. Publ., Springfield, IL., USA, 2013, by D. Lorandos, W. Bernet & S. R. Sauber, which I would like to recommend to you. (in: EC PAEDIATRICS (2018) 7.8: 820 – 822. (https://www.ecronicon.com/ecpe/pdf/ECPE-07-00320.pdf).

Other scientific works about interventions in severe Parental Alienation-cases:

Warshak, R. A. (2015 a) Ten parental alienation fallacies that compromise decisions in court and in therapy. Profes- sional Psychology, Research and Practise 46 (4): 235 – 49.

Warshak, R. A. (2015 b) Parental Alienation: overview, management intervention and practice tips. Journal of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers 28: 181 – 248.

Warshak, R. A. (2018, October). Reclaiming Parent-Child Relationships: Outcomes of Family Bridges with Alienated Children. American Journal of Divorce & Remarriage. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10502556.2018.1529505; https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/XgUAi2nnTyNhmmHT8JSd/full

Warshak, R. A. (2019, October). When Evaluators Get It Wrong: False Positive IDs and Parental Alienation. Psychol- ogy, public Policy, and Law. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/law0000216

Warshak, R. A. (2020) Parental Alienation: How to prevent, manage, and remedy it. In: Lorandos, D. & Bernet, W., Science and Law, C. C. Thomas Publ., Springfield, IL.

Templer, K., Matthewson, M., Haines, K. & Cox G. (2017). Recommendations for best practice in response to paren- tal alienation: findings from a systematic review. Journal of Fam. Therapy 39 (1) 103 – 122, https://doi/abs/10.1111/1467-6427.12137

Reay, K. (2015): Family reflections: a promising therapeutic program designed to treat severely alienated children and their family system. American Journal of Fam. Therapy, 43 (2): 197 – 207.

Gottlieb, L. J. (2013) The application of structural family therapy to the treatment of parental alienation syndrome. In: Baker AJL, Sauber SR (Eds.) Working with alienated children and families – a clinical guidebook. New York: Routledge, p. 209 – 31.

Matic, A. E. & Miricå, S. C. (2016): Specific Deontological/Ethical regulations concerning the involvement, duties and the active role of certain categories of civil servants regarding the protection of family relationship against Parental Alienation Syndrome. Perspectives of Business Law Journal, 5 (1): 94 – 100.

April 2021

April 2021 Kruk, E. (2018). Parental Alienation as a Form of Emotional child Abuse: The Current state of Knowledge and Directions for Future Research, Family Science Review, 22 (4): 141 – 164
Harman, J. J., Kruk, E. & Hines, D. A. (2018) Parental Alienating Behaviors: An Unacknowledged Form of Family Violence, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 144, No. 12., 1275 – 1299, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000175
Poustie, C., Matthewson, M. & Balmer, S. (2018). The Forgotten Parent : The Targeted Parent Perspective of Parental

Alienation, Journal of Family Issues, 1 – 26, https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X18777867
Woodall, N. & Woodall, K. (2019). Working with post-separation pathological splitting in children. London: Family

Separation Clinic. www.familyseparationclinic.com
Krill-Reiter, L. E. (2019). Parental Alienation as a Predictor of Adult Marital and Romantic Relationship Quality, Wal- den Dissertations and Doctoral Studies Collection.

Harman, J. J., Bernet, W. & Harman J. (2019) Parental Alienation: The Blossoming of a Field of Study, aps (Association for psychological science), Current Directions in psychological science, 1 – 6, sagepub.com/journals-permissions, https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419827271

Lorandos, D. and Bernet, W. (Eds.) (2020). Parental Alienation – Science & Law, Springfield, IL., C. C. Thomas Publ. In this book the authors address – among others – the seriously distorted and biased misinformation on Parental Al- ienation theory and practice in considerable detail. They provide a precise rebuttal of the abundant and outright false information that has been published regarding Parental Alienation.

Harman, J. J. & Lorandos, D. (2020). Allegations of Family violence in Court: How Parental Alienation Affects Judicial Outcomes. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/law0000301.
The authors tested a set of findings reported by Meier et al. (2019):
They say: “These findings, along with several others, raise concerns that the methodological, analytical, and statisti- cal problems we detail about Meier’s report that make her conclusions untrustworthy. Discussion focuses on the importance of using open science practices for transparent and rigorous empirical testing of hypotheses and the dangers of misusing scientific findings to mislead influential professionals who affect the well-being of millions of families.” (See the complete article for details.)

Gebhardt, G.: Sarah Cecilie, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qgj3WXYHyo. You can view all versions of this film made by Action Against Abduction (website at https://www.youtube.com/user/PACTonline.)

Another important film about Parental Alienation (Syndrome) from Alexander Dierbach (in German language) with the title “Weil Du mir gehörst” [“Because you are mine”] was shown at the film festival in Munich (27th june – 6th july 2019; https://www.filmfest-muenchen.de/de/programm/filme/film/?id=6089) and at the film festival in Ludwigsha- fen on September 5, 6 and 7th 2019. It shows the whole tragedy of Parental Alienation in thousands of similar family cases in Germany and millions worldwide (Harman et al. 2018). The film can be seen with English subtitles at https://www.bitchute.com/video/R1IO4B9BrCUM

The following information is from
Dr. med. Wilfrid v. Boch-Galhau
Specialist for Psychiatry, Neurology, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy (retired) Oberer Dallenbergweg 15
97082 Würzburg (Germany)
www.praxis@drvboch.de
www.pas-konferenz.de

The term “parental alienation” does not yet feature as such in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). But the internationally used “International Classification of Diseases” (ICD-11) of the World Health Organisation (WHO) referred to “parental alienation” since 18 June 2018. (Code QE 52.0, under caregiver-child relation problem as index factor. This was confirmed by the seventy-second World Health Assembly on 25th may 2019 (https://icd.who.int/dev11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/547677013). This was absolutely necessary in order to stop the meanwhile endemic and worldwide problem of Parental Alienation as a form of “psychological child abuse (ICD-11, Code T82.2 and DSM-5, Code V995.51). (Kruk, 2018; Harman et al., 2018). The long discussion about PA seemed to be ended with that decision. But then, in Sept. 2019, a dubious and biased document was posted on the ICD-11 (orange version) website by a group of “critics of the PA-concept” from the fields “Child abuse”, “Domestic violence” and with a feminist focus called “Collective Memo of Concern to World Health Organization”, which criticized that very decision. Thus, the Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee (MSAC) secretariat removed “Parental Alienation” and “Parental Estrangement” on 25th Febr. 2020 without giving a convincing and detailed explanation of the investigation or research that supported such a belated decision. Trans- parency is here at issue. That means: The debate goes on.

Parental Alienation is a custody issue but also a child protection issue. The supervisory bodies of the child welfare office and the family court should in these cases be required to act accordingly (Harman et al., 2018).

A Study published in 2014 by the American Psychological Association (Joseph Spinazzola et al., 2014) “Unseen wounds: The Contribution of Psychological Maltreatment to Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Risk Outcomes” shows that children who are emotionally abused face similar and sometimes worse mental health.

April 2021 as children who are physically or sexually abused, yet psychological abuse is rarely addressed in prevention or treating problems for victims. (https://www.apa.org/education/ce/1360375 )

From Sept. 12 – 14, 2019 the Third International conference of the Parental Alienation Study Group, took place in Philadelphia, PN., USA (see: www.pasg2019.com; www.pasg.info). During this conference it was possible to hear from the leaders in the field how to understand, prevent and manage Parental Alienation.

Dr. Miller, a Harvard trained specialist in the field of Parental Alienation, explains in a 5-minutes-video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fgRJh26Jho, the heavy mistakes professionals dealing with severe Parental Alienation cases can make.

The website https://ckm.vumc.org/pasg/ today lists around 1,500 publications of scientific relevance from about 55 countries worldwide on the subjects parental alienation, parental alienation syndrome and related subjects.

International developments

Parental Alienation is an international phenomenon, which empirical studies have shown to exist in various coun- tries (Dum, 2013 a, in: Lorandos, Bernet & Sauber, 2013, ibd. p. 425 – 467), and which is reflected in more than 1000 court rulings, for instance, in the United States and Canada (Bernet, 2010), (Lorandos, 2013, ibd.), in the Brazilian law on Parental Alienation/Law 12318 of 2010 (Brockhausen, 2013, ibd.), in the laws of some other South American countries (Dum, 2013 a, ibd., p. 425 – 467) and in rulings by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for instance, Sommerfeld v. Germany (2003); Koudelka and Zavrel v. Czech Republic (2006 and 2007); Plasse- Bauer v. France (2006); Minecheva v. Bulgaria (2010); Bordeiana v. Moldava (2011) and others, (Dum, 2013 b, ibd., p. 439 – 444); and recently: K. B. and others v. Croatia (2017) (https://strasbourgobservers.com/2017/04/25/k-b-and-oth- ers-v-croatia-the-courts-first-steps-to-tackle-parental-alienation); Aneva and others v. Bulgaria (2017): http://hu- doc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-176982; Case of R. I. and others v. Romania (2018) http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-187931 and Case of Pisică v. Moldavia (2019): http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-197214

Concerning the case of Pisică v. Moldavia (2019) (see above) Sünderhauf, H. & Widrig, M., have written an article “EGMR anerkennt ‘Parental Alienation’ vom 29. Oktober 2019” [“EHCR acknowledges ‘Parental Alienation’ from 29th october 2019”] https://doi.org/10.21257/sg.160. This article appears in English language in the book “The Routledge International Handbook of Shared Parenting and Best Interest of the Child” (eds., by de Torres Perea, J. M., Kruk, E. & Ortiz-Tallo, M.) Routledge, available after may 27th, 2021.

In France by the national court of appeal Cour de Cassation (No. 660 of 26th june 2013; 12-14.392) https://www.courdecassation.fr/jurisprudence_2/premiere_chambre_civile_568/660_26_26933.html),
and in rulings by the higher regional courts of several European countries, for instance: Croatia, England, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland and others (Bernet, 2010).

There are – internationally and especially in German speaking countries – still not enough therapists who are famil- iar with the subject “Parental Alienation” and have completed suitable (further) training.
In view of the recently published international scientific findings on Parental Alienation (such f. i. by Warshak, 2015 a, b, 2018, 2019, 2020; Matic & Mirica, 2016; Templer, Matthewson, Haines & Cox, 2017; Kruk, 2018; Harman, Kruk & Hines, 2018; Lorandos & Bernet, 2020; Harmann & Lorandos, 2020; and others). This will hopefully change soon.

In the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, England, Israel, Croatia, Spain, and in few instances in Germany programs of intervention are used and successfully evaluated in cases of parental alienation (see also my article “Pa- rental alienation (syndrome) – A serious form of psychological child abuse” in Neuropsychiatrie, 2018, 32 (3): 133 – 148). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-018-0267-0 (German language) and in Mental Health Fam. Med. (2018) 14: 725 – 739; http://mhfmjournal.com/pdf/MHFM-117.pdf (English language)