I have just returned from participating in a symposium on parental alienation: “Parental Alienation: A Critical Problem for Families in Many Countries” presented at the International Congress of Psychology (ICP 2016) in Yokohama, Japan. Six of us representing Japan, U.S.A, Australia and Hong Kong had been working towards this symposium for over a year.
My part of the symposium was to present the Australian context for parental alienation: “A Hopeful Presentation on Reconnection and Reunification after a History of Parental Alienation: A Disruptive Approach to a Disruptive Social Phenomena.
This presentation outlined the unusual model I have developed and the accompanying intervention methodology for working only with the rejected-alienated parent.
As a specialist parental alienation consultant, I work in an unusual context, where only the rejected/alienated parent will seek help.
Often, their alienated children are now adults, having grown up in the shadow of a family law that grants them the unheard of privilege of choosing their own parents when they cannot drive, vote, or even legally fill a vehicle with fuel.
Typically, mandated assessments conducted under the aegis of family law fail to consider parental alienation as a plausible hypothesis and therefore subsequent interventions are ineffective or simply unavailable. Regrettably, it is still the case in Australia that parental alienation is not regarded as a form of abuse of both the alienated child and the rejected parent. This is despite the fact that the definition of family violence within the Australian Family Law Act, 1975 contains a reasonable functional description of alienation.
Even when alienation is considered, Australian family law relies upon a model of alienation focused upon the ‘alienated child’ concept (Kelly, J.B, Johnson, J.R. 2001) that implicates the rejected-alienated parent in their own rejection and which leads to alienated children being considered the best informants of their own situation in spite of the coercive influence of the alienating parent that even this model recognises.
Furthermore, this model locates alienation along a spectrum of parent-child affiliations, as though it is just another parenting context to which a child must adapt. We do not see family violence or child sexual abuse associated in any way along the same spectrum as a normal parent-child affiliation, simply because these presentations are regarded as abusive and have nothing to do with parenting or families. This is a case of child inclusive-child focused ideology being inappropriately applied to a case of abuse for which it was never intended.
Australian Family Law is inconsistent in the manner in which it assesses the impact of alienation upon children. There have been notable cases where children have been ordered to remain in the care of an parent assessed as alienating simply because the children’s testimony was considered plausible in spite of the known effect of alienation on children’s perception and judgement and because, bizarrely, the alienating parent was regarded as the ‘better’ parent!
Perhaps the most important part of the context for this presentation is giving equal stature and voice to the impact of alienation upon the target parent. Naturally enough in matters of emotional abuse we focus upon its helpless victims notably the children, observing the predisposition to adverse outcomes later in life.
Notwithstanding that this is a necessary focus, it is still not appropriate to neglect the trauma suffered by parents rejected in this way particularly because it is those parents who are instrumental in healing the traumas and emotional/attachment injuries alienation inflicts upon their children. With parental alienation, we have to ‘prescribe the problem’. That is, the rejected parent is the solution to their alienated child’s rejection. Practitioners and their alienation-informed interventions then facilitate the remediation of the latent, interrupted relationship.
I consider it unlikely that Australia will adopt this consideration until it ‘joins the dots’ that deliberately rupturing a child’s relationship with a ‘good enough’, loved family member is an abuse of both the child and the rejected family member.
This cannot happen happen for as long as we subscribe to a philosophy that implicates the rejected parent. We must appreciate the uniquely triangulated form of abuse that characterises alienation in which the rejected parent is the uiltimate target and the alienated child is ‘weaponised’ against them.
For this reason, a significant focus of my approach is upon recovery from the specific form of intra-personal, interpersonal and social trauma caused by parental rejection by alienation. The latter dimension is the subject of my doctoral research. It is possible for a rejected-alienated parent to facilitate a reconnection with their children by addressing the impact of alienation upon them as a parent, as a person and as a member of society and then respond strategically and empathically to their alienated children.
Perhaps we can take some comfort when we compare our situation to Japan, where alienation is ignored, maternal custody is favoured in the majority of cases and parental child abduction is legal for the purpose of establishing a status quo for the law to then enforce under the principle of continuity.
Similar Posts:
- Important Changes for Parental Alienation Services in Australia
- Parental Alienation in Australia, A Year in Review
- Alienated Children Ordered Into Juvenile Care: An Australian Perspective
- Does Mediation Encourage and Collude with Parental Alienation and Child Abuse?
- Are Mothers and Children being Silenced in the Family Court?
“It is possible for a rejected-alienated parent to facilitate a reconnection with their children by addressing the impact of alienation upon them as a parent, as a person and as a member of society and then respond strategically and empathically to their alienated children.” Really? I almost feel that after the amount of time and the critical time that my teenage daughter has been physically alienated from me, she really wouldn’t care how I felt 🙁
A very well articulated perspective and you clearly have a good understanding of the spectrum of emotions us alienated parents suffer through. I whole-heartedly agree with your ‘prescribe the problem’ suggestion with regards to a treatment or solution to the pain for the children. Coming from someone who has been completely alienated from his 4 children, now aged 11-18, for the past 5 years, I have suggested to anyone who will listen about our ‘so sad story’ that after nothing else has worked with the custodial parent and her supporters approach, the one thing that they’ve never tried is to ‘prescribe the apparent problem!’
The biggest thing I see as an obstacle to the approach in my case is the the attitudinal paradigm shift that would be required by so many adults and supporters of these children for them basically to admit how wrong they have been to support parental alienation. I’ve always compared it to someone being wrongfully convicted and serving time in jail for a crime they didn’t commit…..the irony of the ‘convicted party’ being empowered, by the very accusers who placed him in jail, that his advocacy of innocence may be the solution, just seems to great for anyone to grasp.
And as if it doesn’t get sadder, my ex-spouse and the custodial parent just passed away at a very young age due to cancer and unfortunately, has taken the secrets necessary to healing her children with her while leaving the children in her family’s hands to continue the alienation in her honor:(:(
Anyway, great article and insight….keep up the great work!!
Hi Stan; I am a father in the UK who has been in a PA situation for about 6 years and has first hand witnessed the incompetence of the UK child custody assessors (Cafcass) and UK Family Court system. I would be very interested in receiving a copy of your PhD thesis (if it is now complete) or when it is published. If you need any information about the UK system then I may be able to help as I have read a large volume of work in the field. I really liked your style and detail of analysis and hope that your articles receive the publicity they deserve in order to shed insightful light on this most pervasive of problems.
Hi Mark,
Thank you for your thoughts and kind words, in spite of your situation. Believe it or not, I am in contact with colleagues in the UK/Scotland. From what I have learned from them it seems that UK/Scotland is certainly ahead of Australia in regard to responding to PA, notwithstanding CAFCASS (we have our own version here).
I am hoping that you have had some good support, observing that some of the PA experts such as Karen Woodall and the late Ludwig Lowenstein are in your country.
I started my social science PhD in parental alienation this year, so there is a long way to go yet but I do hope to publish ‘as I go’. My mission is to establish a social pathology and social construction of parental alienation to provide society with a dialogue about PA-to put PA on the social map so to speak along with family violence
Thank you for your encouragement.
This approach actually worked for me. I am a mother that was alienated from her daughter. While the alienation was going on I would scream, cry ask my daughter how she could do such things to me. Explain the difference between right and wrong and let her know how much pain her actions caused me. I would write her long letters describing the things she did and how painful they were to me. It took 4 years but this strategy finally worked. At the time I wasn’t using it as a strategy I was just expressing my pain to my daughter and my disbelief that my sweet little girl would suddenly start treating me this way. The other part of what really helped was that I never gave up on him even though it was for long painful years. At the time it wasn’t really using this as a strategy I was just expressing my feelings to my daughter. I also dragged her to four or five different therapist. If one didn’t seem to be getting through to her him I would take it to the next one they are not very many therapists that are skilled in dealing with parental alienation.At this time she is 17 and she lives with me full-time and she occasionally will see her father who was the alienating parent. She ended up with a lot of self hatred for the things that she did to me and a dislike for her father and.. she continues to work through in therapy.