Parental Alienation

Parental alienation is the process, and the result, of the psychological manipulation of a child into showing unwarranted fear, disrespect or hostility towards a parent or extended family members.

The construct of “parental alienation” represents the child’s triangulation into the spousal conflict through the formation of a cross-generational coalition with a narcissistic/(borderline) parent. This cross-generational coalition of the narcissistic/(borderline) parent with the child is directed against the other parent, causing a breach in the child’s relationship with the targeted parent. In this cross-generational coalition, the child is being used by the narcissistic/(borderline) parent in a role reversal relationship as a “regulatory object” for the regulation of excessive parental anxiety triggered by the divorce. - Dr Craig Childress

Divorce is never easy, especially if there are children involved. Occasionally there will be a tale of divorced couples where one parent alienates a child from the other.

Examples of parental alienation are:

to carry out campaigns for disqualifying a parent’s behaviour upon exercising his/her parenthood;
to obstruct the exercise of parental authority;
to obstruct the contact between a child or adolescent with one of their parents;
to obstruct the legal right to exercise family life;
to deliberately withhold from a parent relevant personal information on the child or adolescent, including school-related, medical, and address changes;
to file false charges against a parent, their family members, or against grandparents;
to obstruct or prevent their presence in the child or adolescent’s life;
to change residence to a distant place, without justification, in order to make it difficult for the child or adolescent to live with the other parent, their family member, or grandparents.

Dr Craig Childress, a US psychologist and expert in the field of parental alienation explains parental alienation as a situation in which one parent consciously or subconsciously turns their shared children against the other parent, through various means of manipulation. It often involves the premise that one parent falsely accuses the other of abuse and indoctrinates the child into believing that abuse took place, whether it be mental, physical, sexual, or a combination.

While there are many true cases of abuse, what is key according to Dr Childress is to look at the child’s behaviour. “It’s the child’s behaviour that need to be observed. Unnecessary levels of anxiety or fear of the alienated parent can be a sign.” Eventually, children can become so indoctrinated and eager to please who they view as the “powerful parent,” they may start hating or abusing the targeted parent themselves. According to Dr Childress, parents who indoctrinate children into alienating the other parent are linked to narcissist borderline pathogenic parenting. The symptoms of narcissism include: grandiosity, entitlement, absence of empathy, haughty, arrogant behaviour and delusional belief systems.

Dynamic

Symptoms emerge from the family’s inability to successfully navigate the transition from an intact family structure that is united by the marriage to a separated family structure united by the children and by the continuing parental roles with the children. Due to one parent’s inability to adjust to a separated family structure, the termination of the marital bond also terminates a parent-child bond as a result of distorted parenting practices by the parent who is unable to process the sadness and grief of divorce.

Personality Level

The narcissistic-borderline parent defends against the self-experience of fundamental inadequacy and a fear of abandonment by projectively displacing these fears onto the other parent by means of the child’s induced/elicited symptomatic rejection of the other parent. “You’re the inadequate parent (person); not me. You’re the abandoned parent (person); not me. “I’m the ideal, never-to-be abandoned parent”.

Origin

A narcissistic-borderline parent is characteristically unable to experience and metabolize sadness and grief, and instead interprets sadness as “anger and resentment, loaded with revengeful wishes” (Kernberg, 1975, p. 229). The narcissistic-borderline parent then influences the child into interpreting the child’s own sadness and grief regarding the divorce in a similar way, as “anger and resentment, loaded with revengeful wishes” directed toward the other parent

Origin

The inherent interpersonal rejection associated with divorce threatens to collapse the pathological parent’s narcissistic defenses against self-inadequacy and triggers an intense fear of abandonment. These fears represent the internal working models of the pathological parent’s attachment system, which is activated to mediate the interpersonal loss associated with the divorce.