Talk:Parental alienation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Portal |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, which collaborates on Psychology and related subjects on Wikipedia. To participate, help improve this article or visit the project page for details on the project.
|
||||||||
Contents |
[edit] comment from 2006 with no heading
I have doubts about this part of the text:
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 A. Gardner, who makes the point that inclusion of the word syndrome is specific as regards the cause of the child's alienation, whereas omission of that word is not.
The word syndrome does in my opinion not look at the absence or presence of causes. Compare to things like down-syndrome ( originally not labelled to a cause). I just wrote a short note on that problem in Dutch. Helas I'm not good enough in English to translate it. --Joep Zander 15:18, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Joep, the whole idea of 'syndrome' seems absurd to me too. I listen to Psychiatrist William Glasser on this. He does go to cause and effect and suggests that all (non-organic) behavior is a choice 'crazy' or not as an attempt to meet internal needs common to all people. However these 3,300 and counting syndromes are big business in the United States.
Anacapa 02:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Claims that fathers are evil
A recent addition was:
Some legal scholars assert that the concept of 'parental alienation' shifts the analysis away from the best interests of the children to the rights of the parents
This is a false characterization of existing legal practice, and it is also implying that the "best interests of the children" are to keep the father away. Also, why is this referred to as "syndrome" in some sentences and not others? Please create an account and don't trash the article anonymously. DanP 11:48, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
The previous round of editing by DanP cut out citations to relevant scholarly literature, and introduced a citition to a website containing supposed quotations made by women (but not specifically referencing parental alienation at all). This reference was deleted in this editing solely because it did not support the proposition for which it was cited: i.e. "These efforts have been met with criticism from women's rights groups who are critical of the need for a father in the family." That sentence has been edited out since the proposition is not supported by citation to any scholarly research or literature and appears to be an ad hoc assumption made by the prior editor. I see no reason to slam women's groups for criticizing the syndrome. It would be just as inappropriate to edit references to men's groups by adding a phrase 'men's groups who believe that women make up all abuse allegations and support the elimination of child support.'
For this reference to be useful, it needs to provide information about the theory, cititions to research supporting the theory, and provide critiques of the theory, including citations and research. To do otherwise is to deny the readers access to useful relevant information and violates the neutrality premise.
It is concerning that the prior editor chose to delete references to scholarly research; the principle of neutrality governing Wikipedia is that both sides of the debate should be presented and that relevant citations should not be edited out or deleted. I thought that the recent edits introducing citations to other scholarly works were interesting and provided information to readers about why parental alienation is a controversial theory. Why not let readers go to the citations and read them for additional information? As I understand it, there is also interesting scholarly research in the legal/psychological fields supporting PAS; I'll look for a good survey article and post a reference to it as well. Perhaps the editor who first introduced the citations can come up with something as well.
[edit] Merger with PAS
Why was this transferred to PAS? I have reverted for the time being. This redirect was not a valid action, even by references of Garner [1]. If you run a Google search, one can easily find parental alienation -- totally separate from the syndrome. PAS is the syndrome and it focuses on the child, and "parental alienation" is the actions of the parent, not necessarily the syndrome. DanP 23:05, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
I will have to read more about this. My impression was that, despite Garner's bias, he has done a great deal to formalize the subject. Do we really have to have two pages with so much overlap? Is there really a well-understood notion of "parental alienation" that is quite distinct from what Garner wrote about? Gardner obviously had NPOV issues, but he is dead now. He gets his bio page and there should be a PAS page. He does not own PAS, we all do. There are other voices and it is best to compare them directly with Gardner. Why do we need a PA page as well? I think the reader would benefit from seeing the PA/PAS stuff all together on one page and then let them make their own judgements. If there are laws and rules on PAS but not PA, fine. Note them and move on. There has got to be a way to unify this stuff. Amorrow 22:58, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
Though I have a wikipedia account, this is such dangerous stuff in the courts, that I will post anonymously. I specifically went to a Ph.D Child Psychologist on the Roster of Parental Advocates for Maricopa County. After describing my situation to him, he assured me I need to google for "Parental Alienation" and not to describe what was happening to my children as "Parental Alienation Syndrome." They are in fact seen as different things. My understanding is that Parental Alienation may lead to Parental Alienation Syndrome. As an example, Parental Alienation is one parent badmouthing the other parent. Parental Alienation Syndrome is a child that has undergone Parental Alienation now coming to turn against that targeted parent. 130.76.64.16 03:07, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Agreed !!
[edit] Facts vs fights?
From the notes above and from a glance at the PAS discussion I can see this is a loaded subject. As a child (and ongoing now) I was alienated by both parents against the other, my mother the 'obsessive' alienator and my father the 'active' alienator. This did such terrible trauma to me and my clan (sibs) that I doubt I will ever forget it. I would like to see non-sexist language here because both female and male parents alienate. I would also like to see PA (the conduct of alienating parents) separate from PAS (the conditions/conduct induced in alienating children). Last I would like us to focus on the conduct of alienating parents (the science) rather than on political and legal fights here and let the chips fall where they may. To assist in that I have found and added articles in the external links that closely match what I know about PA from the child's point of view. Anacapa 05:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I am also an adult who was severely alienated, but only against one parent. I was not so much brain washed to believe that my "target" parent was guilty of what they were accused of (Daily -- sometimes hourly) but tortured mentally to behave in ways contrary to my beliefs and in line with the alienating parent. Failure to be "loyal" were dealt with severely. The result was what is described as Parental Alienation Syndrome on my part. The knowledge that you are half of each parent and that one maintains a position that the target parent is not worthy of getting air, undermines a child's self confidence and self-esteem. Trust issues are not uncommon. 4honor
[edit] Loosing the Rational
I have grave doubts about this text a whole, although especially this part:
Extreme forms of parental alienation include obsessive brainwashing, character assassination, and the false inducement of fear, shame, and rage in children against the target parent. Moderate forms of parental alienation include loss of self control, flareups of anger, and unconscious alliances with the children against the target parent. In its mildest forms, parental alienation includes occasional mild denigration alternating with a focus on encouraging the children's relationship with the other parent.
For starters brainwashing, could be stated to occour as a natrual occurance, in human beings. We all watch TV, and read newspapers, and listen to what is stated in them often as fact. So Brainwashing can occour as both extreme, nutral and mild. The same can be said of the smyptoms listed above. Flareups, anger, shame, can all be mild, moderate, or extrem. The whole of this paragraph, should be either (i) scrapped, or (ii) rewritten.
I have severe doubts about the authentisity of this artical as a whole. --User Martin 00:11, 31 Aug 2006 (UTC)
Parental aliention can occur for a variety of reasons. Assuming it's the father who is being alienated from the child (still the more common situation,) one possible reason could be, for instance, the fact that the father physically abused the child. Many such instances of course occur, quite genuinely. Little wonder that the father becomes alienated from the child, and the fault is of course his.
However, there are also cases in which although the father is not abusive at all, he is accused by the mother of being so. Usually the accusation is one of sexual abuse. She makes this accusation either because she believes for whatever reason that such abuse really did occur, or, more commonly, as a deliberate and malicious ploy to drive a wedge between father and child. Having made the accusation, the mother then goes on to "program" or "brainwash" the child into believing that the abuse really did indeed occur, and that the child should therefore withdraw his/her affection (preferably all contact altogether) from the father.
This is a form of emotional abuse by the mother. It produces a set of symptoms in the child, identified by Gardner. And the point about PAS, as distinct from PA, is that the same types of symptoms can be seen in most (all?) children who have suffered the same type of treatment from their mothers -- ie the children are all sufferers of a syndrome.
One definition of a syndrome is that common causes in a wide variety of unrelated cases produce the same set of symptoms in the victims. AIDS is a good example of a syndrome.
Note that the Parental Alienation Syndrome refers to the effects in the children of the causes of the syndrome, not to the causes (biological, behavioural, or any other) of those effects -- ie PAS does not refer to the either of the parents involved. So the term Parental Alienation refers to the alienation of a parent from a child for any reason (including some quite genuine ones,) while Parental Alienation Syndrome refers to the effects in the child of one parent's deliberate attempts to alienate the child from the other parent unreasonably.
Branching out a little, the US publication The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is used as the "bible" of psychotic disorders in the English-speaking world. Its current edition (DSM-IV-TR) does not mention PAS at all, and this fact is sometimes cited by opponents of Gardner's and others' work to "prove" that PAS therefore does not exist. Such people could have used a similar argument using with editions of DSM to "prove" that AIDS did not exist, when of course it did but hadn't at that stage been recognised. Some fifteen or more years elapse between publication of the various editions of DSM, and a great deal of new research in a whole host of topic areas is done in such a period. The next edition, DSM-V, is presently due to be published in 2011. PAS has been suggested as a topic for inclusion, and because of the research done since DSM-IV was published there is no reason to suppose that PAS will not be listed in the new edition.
--Seymour John 01:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand the last two paragraphs of this article at all. They do not make sense and are unattributed. The Children Act embodied in statute the existing common law that in private law proceedings the welfare of the child was paramount. It also introduced the concept of parental responsibilty, residence and contact, rather than the previous concepts of custody and access. In practice the main difference in private law was an increased awareness on the part of parents that the children, not the parents, had rights and that there was an expectation that they would agree to a solution in the interests of the child. Cases of extreme hostility by one parent towards another, for no apparent reason, played out through the child, do occur, but are a small minority of cases. However, accusations of unreasonable hostility or 'parental alienation syndrome' by parents who's controlling, bullying or abusive behaviour has in fact caused the difficulties, are far more common.Fainites 23:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
In response to the above post. The last two paragraphs have been subjected to a series of editing, by various people with a particular point of view. I have changed them slightly, but suggest that if it was looked at from a different perspective with a natural point of view it indeed may make sense. I have edited them slightly to make more sense. There are people, both mothers and fathers, that can not gain justice for the mistreatment of their children, and stand accused of 'alienation'. It is quiet common in law for someone who wishes their views to be taken seriously to be accused of 'alienation' where that is simply not the case at all. I respect the "point of view" regarding 'abusive behavior' being more common, but should it not be respected also that another "point of view" would be that 'accusations of unreasonable hostility' or 'parental alienation' being a false accusation made when another claim a diffrent accusation can be common. --Martrn 01:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] recent revert of PAS info added to page
I recently added this information to the page. "The parental alienation syndrome is not currently considered a syndrome in the DSM-IV and the American psychological association officially takes no position on "the purported syndrome." Statement on Parental Alienation Syndrome. American Psychological Association (2005-10-28). Retrieved on 2008-04-12. It has been stated that the parental alienation syndrome should not be admitted in court, due to evidentiary and causation problems with its theory and due to the dangerous feeling of reliability and believability in this self-published theory. Wood, CL (1994). "The parental alienation syndrome: a dangerous aura of reliability" 29: 1367-1415. I added this because the next paragraph talks about PAS. "Critics of the "Parental Alienation" defence used in custody disputes say such legal arguments are not supported by research." This was reverted because the editor felt it should go into the PAS article instead. The info I added is a brief synopsis of info from the PAS article. I believe this brief synopsis of related material should be added back to the aricle to help readers better understand the issue. ResearchEditor (talk) 02:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
- This article is on parental alienation. There is another page on parental alienation syndrome. I would move your piece to that article, if I were you.--Vannin (talk) 05:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] The New Paradigm - Support for PAS
PAS is a growing concern and often not addressed successfully by the courts. What courts most generally address are the rights of Fathers and Mothers. Each case is determined on the biases of the court and the general social norms of the time and locale. One of the current drivers of the social norms are the growing Father's Rights Groups.
Father's Rights Groups are now common. The general (and false) assumption is that mothers have the upper hand in the courtroom. But that is not true in most courts across the nation. In fact, it has become well-known that father's are often held to a much more lenient set of standards. This has resulted in fathers having increased parental time, including sole custody, and one of the results has been an increase in Parental Alienation by Fathers.
One of the most powerful alienation tactics is to become the Party Dad. With the more lax set of standards applied to dads and, on average, a higher income, Dad is free to become the 'best-friend' aka 'party-dad'. Now mom is not only the one making the kid eat their vegetables, but mom is also the 'party-pooper'. This does lead to parental alienation. And this, the most insidious of all alienations, is avoided by the professional experts. aka, children have a tendency to want to be with the parent that is their 'best-friend' and to avoid the other parent, the parent with the rules and regulations.
It is shocking to note the number of mom's here in Colorado that are being alienated from their children. It has become quite a fight, a very expensive and disheartening fight, to retain half-time parenting rights. And then the dads, advised by their groups, and not fearing reprisals from the experts, use sports (and other activities) to create a barrier that is quite successful in alienating moms from their children.
It is sad to note, there are not many groups that support mother's rights at this time.
MamaCoder (talk) 12:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
