***I will be closing my practice in Melbourne, Australia at the end of 2015 and relocating to Queensland where I will commence PhD research into the social phenomenon of parental alienation***
Firstly, I have been heartened by the large number of congratulatory messages after having clocked over five years specialising in the field of parental alienation; specifically working with rejected/alienated parents to help them reconcile with their children and to reconcile with themselves.
There have been some successes in helping parents and children reconnect. The process of reunification and reconnection has focused my thinking about alienation in a social and especially in a relationship context for which I have developed a working model.
However I have also been engaged with the broader social question about the dialogues we have about alienation; more specifically the silenced and subjugated narratives about alienation as a socially constructed phenomenon.
This has led me to commence my PhD candidacy in 2016 to undertake social science research into the social phenomena of parental alienation. Consequently I am closing my practice here in Melbourne, Australia in order to move interstate to Queensland to commence my research.
This will be the third doctoral level research programme underway in Australia.
It will be some time before I can take on new clients. I give thanks to the trust in which so many people have placed in me to share their traumatic experiences. This has given me the confidence to propose my research program and I also thank the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland for accepting my proposal.
I was moved in this direction through my experience and that of my clients’ of a silencing of the lived experience of rejected/alienated parents, the seeming indifference to the traumatic impact upon children of parental rejection by alienation and its misattribution as the sequel to family violence and high conflict. This leads to the ongoing trauma for rejected/alienated parents and their alienated children where social silence about alienation becomes social and legal denial and complicity in the abuse.
If the current Royal Commission into institutionalised child sexual abuse is any guide, we know that it is in silence that abuse occurs because silence confers implicit permission and power. The ultimate purpose of the Royal Commission is to break down this silence and ultimately to disempower the abusers and empower their victims. This shifts the social discourse about this type of abuse from being ‘okay’ to ‘not okay’.
It is remarkable that alienation is the ultimate abuse of power by a parent over a child and the child’s loved parent. Yet our society is complicit by the absence of the ‘not OK’ social dialogue!
Family violence is ‘not okay’, child abuse is ‘not okay’, drug and alcohol abuse is ‘not okay’, what about parental alienation? Where does society stand on that?
I have felt for a long time now that certainly here in Australia we are operating in a social vacuum about parental alienation, or parental rejection, whatever politically correct term you wish to give it.
This may have led us into the situation now where we have a bad case of the ‘tail wagging the dog’. We have a psycho-legal system that has captured the domain of social engineering without having a clear mandate from society do so. We have a family law system that is deciding the construct of our families based upon presumptions and paradigms that have not been socially validated.
The bottom line is that it is society which decides what sort of family systems, values and beliefs are best for children, families and society, it is society which decides whether it is ‘okay’ or ‘not okay’ for a child to reject a loving parent for absolutely no valid reason other than by the adverse influence of the other parent. The law follows social development, not the other way around!
The question is how to break the cycle of social complicity in alienation? This question has increasingly haunted me until I decided to undertake social science research into the social phenomena of parental alienation. The ultimate purpose for this research is to develop a discourse for alienation equal to the discourses we have about other forms of abuse.
This is the discourse where society gets to say that parental alienation is ‘not okay’, where rejected/alienated parents will no longer have to face the implicit social sanction that they are ‘not okay’ and where society takes a stand for alienated children and says rejecting a loved parent is ‘not okay’.
And if society says parental alienation is ‘not okay’ then the law has to follow.
Similar Posts:
- Ethics Approval for Research into Parental Alienation as a Social Phenomenon
- Research into the Lived Experience of Parental Alienation in a Social Context
- Progress on Research into The Lived Experience of Parental Alienation in a Social Context
- Parental Alienation: A Matter of Social Pathology and Social Justice
- Sociological Implications of Social Alienation and its Demon Spawn Parental Alienation in Families
Great News
Please keep us updated as to both the progress of your research and the category in general
We actually need you to maintain your profile as alienated parents are both hurt and lonely. We need to know we have advocates out there
It is also very apparent that often ex partners endeavours to socially alienate the other parent, further isolating and damaging individuals who have quit dis functional relationships
Parental alienation needs a more prominent profile and well quickest advocates will assist this process
Good luck and keep connected to us via the web
All the very best. This is a very important issue that has not been given sufficient attention by our legal system and by counselors and psychologists. I am indebted to you for your publications and bringing the whole area to my attention and giving the issue the recognition it deserves
Wow! Great move into research into the social phenomenon of PA. I’m very interested in the outcome of your research! Thanks Stan for all your brilliant work providing HOPE ….Helping Other Possibilities Emerge….
Stan: Many congratulations on this big change in your life. On behalf of everyone at Parental Alienation Study Group, we wish you the best.
Hi Stan,
Your research interests me. For nearly a decade-despite all my attempts to sustain contact- my 4 children have refused to have any contact with me. I am not a bad person and love my children unconditionally. But my children don’t want my love, remain fully controlled by my ex-husband and have also cut off all contact with anyone who knows me.
The “silence” around PA and PAS needs to be broken so children can flourish with the love of both their parents.
Susan from Brisbane
I am very gratified that you will be conducting research in Queensland. I do believe that raising societal awareness of PA through research is imperative, and that it is, through this, that mental health and the law will follow.
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
Regards
Stan
Dear Stan Korosi.
My three children hate me and I love them very much. My husband is so cruel towards me and they sided with him because he appears to be so strong and I appear to be so weak and they do not want to be persecuted by their father by having a honest, loving relationship with me. I live in Mount Morgan qld and if you need my help in your research I would gladly help. Joan
Ditto what Josn above said. Similar situation for me and if you need a case study or help w/study I’m more than happy to be available. It’s souls destroying, completely unfair and Can have long term consequences as I’ve talked to adult friends in the reciwving end of this tactic by a parent.
Ditto , except my children are young adults . Old enough to make adult choices but too immature not io be manipulated , do sad
Oh my goodness! I’ve not ever come across your Advocacy! I’m in N.S.W, The horrendous court saga and tragic custody “alignment” that has engulfed my children’s childhood now us suffocating them in their most crucial years.
I’m desperately trying to get the attention of the right person/service… It’s exhausting!
Could anyone guide me to any resource that can help me with this – How does one fight for the ” actual “, when one is constantly consistently fighting the fictitious? The alienator is BRILLIANT at bouncing from professional to professional – using their manipulative skills to show ‘sincere protective behaviour’.
What language to use when trying to get this PAS across go professionals? I have spoken to dozens! Of councillors, magistrates, psychologist, solicitors, so many professionals who have either never heard of this condition, abuse, or know very little about it.
Thank you for your dedication to families in dire straights and sinking their dissolution!
I have four children alienated from me due to alienation from my mother and their now deceased father. It has been alienation on a grand scale , I was completely unaware of the abuse until I caught both mother and their father in the act of diminishing me on different occasions. Love has always been my only motivation throughout the mothering years and to finally have my eyes open is both liberating and shocking.
Alienation can be entrenched within the family system. It does not necessarily occur only between parents and their children but can involve members of the extended family. It is not unheard of that a grandparent and a partner will collude to alienate children from a biological parent. The initial motivation may be to use children as a proxy to express the aligned paren’s distress to the other parent. This causes a child to become aligned with the distressed parent and to unconditionally support them by signalling their distress to the other parent. Obviously this is a highly maladaptive approach, to use a child to express something that one is unable to express themselves. Alienation however is something different, its motivation may be driven by hatred, to punish and to exclude and as such is totally disproportionate to whatever transgression may have occurred.
It is also typically the case that alienation like sexual abuse occurs behind “closed doors” and the alienating parent is not aware of alienation until it is too late. parents in your situation cannot blame themselves for this, you cannot respond to what you cannot see and you cannot see because it has been deliberately hidden from you. I must emphasise this is not a failure on an alienated parent’s part. In my experience, some alienating mothers harshly Judge themselves and indeed are harshly judged by other women to have failed at ‘mothering. in contrast, men construe themselves as having failed to provide and failing to protect. Many alienating fathers have said to me ” this happened on my watch”. They see themselves as having failed at manhood in spite of the fact that men have an archetypical appreciation of alienation by the simple fact they cannot carry a baby. I am aware of how suicidal men can be when they perceive themselves as having failed at manhood- don’t be that man.
You have not failed, you have been failed by others. They are responsible, not you.
Thank you Stan, this post has motivated me once again to keep on going.
I have been in such a dark place for such a long time without my babies that i’ve convinced myself i deserved this or it was all my fault, (manhood failure indeed!) to the point where i believed my children were better off without me as i have nothing to offer.
This is not the role model i had planned to be and the complete opposite of who i was before they were taken.
Reading your advice and studies is helping enormously, so i’d just like to thank you once again for sharing it here.
Ihave posted my comment above . Life has very little meaning and each day is filled with grief and sadness due to the burden of cruelty and hatefulness being the legacy my mother and ex husband left behind after their deaths.
Dear Senator Pauline Hanson and One Nation Party and any other politicians who say they care..
Please Stop The CHILD ABUSE.
Please stop the ALIENATING.
Please stop fathers from taking their own lives because they are so heartbroken!
Why do mothers have more rights then father’s???? WHY??
The Child Support Agency. They Have Too Much Control. Children are being abused and brainwashed by the alienating parent and encouraged to be alienators.. Alienators are being rewarded for hiding their children away from the other parent.
Playing mind games and it is not safe for the children physiologically.
My fiance and I have been together for almost six years.
My partner has terrible depression and anxiety due to the stress of the Child Support Agency and his ex partner. The mother of his now 10 year old son
I have had to make a facebook page up just to let my stepson know that we do care and love him but his mother keeps him hidden away. No photos. No communication and worst of all she would not even let my partner know what school his son attends. We begged to go to his first day of kindy and she called my partner a “babysitter”.
My step son would stay with us on weekends and holidays when I was first introduced to my partner.
He used to beg his mum at drop offs to stay with us longer even mentioning one day that he wanted to live with us. This was of course the last day we saw him since 2011. Thankfully I have photos to show him one day but physiologically his brain has been really messed with.
Children should not have to go through this.
Then my partner pays child support even though he can’t work at the moment due to spinal surgery.
As you know.. THE LESS THE CHILD SEES THE VISITATION PARENT THE MORE MONEY THE VISITATION PARENT HAS TO PAY… HOW IS THIS FAIR ???
Then his ex partner goes and has another baby with her new husband and my partner and I have to suffer as his child support bill went up AGAIN TO PAY FOR A NEW CHILD THAT IS NOT HIS?? How is this even legal??
Plus his ex partner has also tried to illegally change my stepsons last name. How is this fair or legal? Where are my partners fathering rights?
She sends him away to camps and peoples houses to be looked after by strangers that we do not know yet she will not let him and his father have a relationship and mt partner has no criminal convictions, never hurt anyone.
Family court is a waste of time and money as the system it is based on is bias and unfair. The mother will just lie and make things up to get her way like most cases and the poor child comes out even more psychologically confused and hurt. This is our reason we have not pursued the family courts. We do not want my step son thrown into a world of choas and anger which is what would happen. He has already suffered enough pain.
My partner is a good person and even more a GREAT FATHER but due to narcissistic woman like his ex partner him and his son have to suffer.
As I am writing this to you, we have just had to organise a florist to directly send my step sons christmas gifts to him so his mother does not take them away or hide them from him. What childhood is that? He can’t even see his father or father’s family at christmas. Everyone suffers and my partner and I really dislike christmas now as you can understand.
EQUAL PARENTING 50/50
FIGHT FOR ABUSED AND BRAINWASHED CHILDREN
HELP MAKE OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS BETTER AND STRONGER
Christmas is the worst time for us and I am sure a million other Alienated Children and Families as well.
I have to listen to my partner saying he would rather be dead then live with the bereavement of a child that is still alive everyday.
Please HELP PLEASE I BEG OF YOU before more father’s take their lives due to this heartbreaking predicament.
I thank you for your time,
Emma-Kate Russell
(1) I’ve been curious as to the political reasons why PA is just not being addressed.
One of the big ones seems to be the way the political system works, and how it is manipulated by highly motivated politicians and minority groups with particular ideologies.
I’m going to be overly terse here to avoid a long essay and say that it seems that psychologically damaged individuals are highly motivated, adopting such detrimental ideologies (perhaps as a result of their trauma), becoming politicians, performing skewed research to support their agenda or forming minority groups. Public money flows from politicians to the research, which is then used by the politicians to justify funding of NGOs formed by the minority groups of the same agenda.
For example an organisation that aims at preventing childhood sexual abuse is founded by a parent of an abused child. They claim that PA is just an excuse by the abuser. Clearly this could happen in some cases but to say that happens in all cases goes so far against so much research that it does not seem a person capable of objective thinking could believe such. This is especially ironic as to call all cases sexual abuse and never PA is to abandon the child victims of PA to their abuser, which is the very antithesis of what the organisation claims to be about. To my understanding only psychological issues like loss of critical thinking skills, generalising as to the “enemy” and the like, possibly as a result of trauma, could do this.
This seems to be the same phenomenon in the political handling of DV, which ironically causes invalid DV reduction measures to be utilised – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DLZa37LJTg
(2) All sorts of family relationship cut-offs are common but society seems to equate “common” with “normal” and then with “Therefore OK”.
If we had such attitudes to cancer and heart attacks we would just let people die without bothering to develop medical treatments.
An interesting reflection on the manner in which our society continues to perpetuate the very dynamics that seek to destroy it, how society normalises the destruction of its essential social unit, the family. The core proposal seems to be that instead of healing their wounds, people injured by social issues such as child abuse then go on to focus exclusively upon their injury to the exclusion of its causal factors. Yes, loss of critical thinking on additional to emotional dysregulation is a consequence of trauma. In the example given of social attitudes to DV, we can observe that the incidence of DV continues to increase with increasing focus upon gender and punitive measures. ‘Prevention’ becomes a trojan horse for perpetuation. Society continues to invest in traumatisisng individuals who then go on to engage in life and social action based upon skewed and distorted world views. Ideally, this should be a social corrective mechanism but it is not.
PA raises even deeper and broader issues about how alienation is woven into the existential human experience and into the fabric of our society. It seems to be in our nature to alienate those who we perceive as not like us and who therefore present a threat. The more individualistic our society becomes the more alienated we become from ourselves and from others. It is our social relationships that regulate our social and moral compass. The alienated children become parents are at risk of perpetuating alienation again, simply because they have learned and normalised that loving relationships are fluid and can be reconfigured at will to suit immediate purposes. We can only wonder if the seeds of the demise of our society and of humanity have not only been sown but have sprouted like weeds.
Wow! It is wonderful to see the proactive stance you are taking on something that is so heartbreaking for those who are subject to such a devastating and life altering challenge.
Parental alienation affects so many and the stereotype that is mother against father couldn’t be further from the truth.
Courts in Australia do not recognize parental alienation and in fact shun at it’s existence. This makes the parent such as myself in the unfortunate situation of eventually walking away from children whom I love with all my heart.
I hope that your research is not only something that gives you the answers you seek, but ones that we also seek. In turn I trust that advocates such as yourself can assist persuade the judicial system that parental alienation does exist and is destroying the lives of everyone involved.
It is deeper than only the parents and children. It affects all within the target family and friends. It changes a person forever and it creates so many unanswered questions along the way.
My genuine and sincere thanks for your passion and stance on something so personal and emotional.
Thank you for your support. Yes, family law in Australia is still somewhat ambivalent about alienation. On one hand, they recognise that children can be alienated but consider it a ‘family relationship problem’ for which they require both parents to ‘prove’ their capability. On the other hand in extreme cases the family court has (albeit with some reluctance) acknowledged severe alienation (at least to the extent that a ‘preferred parent’ is ‘compromised’ or incapable and the targeted parent is a better option) and ordered a change of parental responsibility and care.
What is still not recognised by anyone is that parental alienation is a form of social engineering driven by one parent reconfiguring the family system according to their own image. This is reshaping our society but no one has been asked whether this is the way we want our families to be or the society in which we want to live.
We need to open pathways to these types of discussions.
Im so glad to hear someone is in this field and trying to do SOMETHING!! Never have I felt so frustrated depressed and alone yet ganged up on in a literal sense…
Thank you Stan for your aspiration to raise public awareness of parental alienation, and to bring to public consciousness that it is “not OK” to prevent any child, from having the loving care of a parent throughout their life.
Almost 6 months ago, my daughter left an abusive relationship, bringing both her children with her. Unfortunately, at the first opportunity, the 11-year old son, was ‘interned’ by his father. Now the heartbreaking process of alienation from his mother is almost complete; she is struggling to keep up even minimal contact with him. Being here on this website, is part of my desperate search for help; as I watch my daughter being emotionally devastated by this alienation from her son, while at the same time, experiencing continued harassment and abuse by her ex-partner. This is an ‘evil’ in our society, resulting in thousands of children being denied the continued loving care of a parent; with repercussions on our society.
Once again, thank you, and may your research bring great benefit.