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Issues in Diagnosing Parental Alienation

Preprint · September 2018

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20947.84002

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 Issues in Diagnosing Parental Alienation 1

Issues in Diagnosing Parental Alienation

by Shawn A. Wygant, M.A.

For many years therapists have shied away from treating clients who suffer from severe
personality disorders. In fact, many health insurance companies will deny reimbursement for
treating Axis II disorders (Kersting, 2004). Yet, what happens when a parent with a personality
disorder fears losing his or her children in a high conflict custody battle? How does that parent
cope? According to the literature, many of these vulnerable parents commonly resort to using
primitive defenses such as denial, projection, idealization, devaluation, and splitting (Bernet et
al., 2017; Gordon et al., 2008; Kopetski, 1998).

Identifying Primitive Defenses

Sigmund Freud first wrote about primitive defenses in his 1894 treatise: The Neuro-Psychoses of
Defence (Freud, 1894). In particular, he described an “energetic and successful kind of defence”
used by the ego to “reject incompatible ideas” and their associated “affects” by denying that they
“never occurred” in the first place (Freud, 1894, p. 52). From Freud’s perspective, denial
represented a form of “psychosis” which he classified as “hallucinatory confusion” (Freud, 1894,
p. 52). Other writers have described denial as a natural primitive defense against perceived
dangers that develop early in life (Spitz, 1961). Spitz opined that “closing the eyelids” should be
considered a “prototype” of the mechanism of denial (1961, p. 635). When we see something
that looks dangerous, we close our eyes and make it disappear.

More recently, Clawar and Rivlin (2013) recognized a type of denial defense technique used by
alienating parents they called “Denial-Of-Existence Technique” (p. 31). Among the 1,000
families they studied, they found that some parents would teach their children to deny the
existence of the other parent. They explained that: “By excluding any discussion of the other
parent or ignoring the topic when raised by the child, the brainwashing parent can send a subtle
message to the child that the other parent is not significant. He or she does not exist in our
conversation, and therefore, he or she does not, in social terms, exist” (Clawar & Rivlin, 2013, p.
31).

This behavior often peregrinates into body language used by the alienating parent that
“communicates to the child that the other parent is
unworthy or insignificant” or in some cases
“dangerous” (Clawar & Rivlin, 2013, pp. 31 &
103). For example, blatantly ignoring the other
parent at a basketball game or other important
social events (p. 33). Another common denial
technique identified by Clawar and Rivlin (2013) is
to cut out the image of the other parent from all of
the family photo albums and in some cases severing
just the head of the other parent leaving the children
to view just the torso as a reminder to them that the
other is in essence socially dead (p. 32).

Copyright © 2018
Shawn A. Wygant All Rights Reserved
 Issues in Diagnosing Parental Alienation 2

Unfortunately, this happens more often than is reported and can have deleterious effects on the
child especially when accompanied by “negative comments about the physical image of the
target parent” (p. 11).

When a child is repeatedly exposed to a parent who uses the denial-of-existence technique, the
child may develop their own version which can
manifest as “borrowed scenarios” or “reflexive
support of the alienating parent” (Lorandos et
al., 2013, p. 17). Borrowed scenarios refers to
“rehearsed statements” made by the child that
are similar, or in some cases, “identical to those
made by the alienating” such as “You never
took me anywhere fun” when there are family
pictures and videos at the targeted parent’s
house which clearly document the opposite is
true (p. 17).

Resolving Cognitive Dissonance through Splitting

This whole process of denial often works insidiously within the child to eventually erase and
replace anything good the child experienced with the target parent. The child in this state of mind
is conditioned “to doubt his or her ability to perceive reality” out of a maladaptive loyalty to the
alienating parent. The alienating parent in these cases consistently resists the child’s
interpretations and ultimately filters out any good memories and replaces them with a “rewritten
script” that casts the alienating parent as being all good and the target parent as being all bad
(Clawar & Rivlin, 2013, p. 59).

This begins to show up in the child as a “lack of ambivalence” which is associated with the
primitive defense “splitting” (Bernet et al., 2017, p. 1). Splitting was first described by Freud
(1938) as a legitimate defense by the ego to resolve a double-bind conflict when he wrote: “Let
us suppose, then, that a child’s ego is under the sway of a powerful instinctual demand which it
is accustomed to satisfy [e.g., giving and receiving love from the targeted parent] and that it is
suddenly frightened by an experience which teaches it that the continuance of this satisfaction
will result in an almost intolerable real danger [e.g., the loss of love and affection from the
alienating parent]” (p. 275).

Thus, the splitting process happens when there is a “conflict” between the “demand by the
instinct” in the child to continue to receive love and affection from the target parent and the “the
prohibition by reality” that by so doing the child may be rejected by the alienating parent (Freud,
1938, p. 275). Clawar and Rivlin (2013) refer to this as the Threat of Withdrawal-of-Love
Technique as they describe: “Here, the children come to fear rejection or loss of love from a
parent if they express love or a desire to be with the other parent. It becomes implicitly or
explicitly understood that to be loved and accepted, the child must become a cohort and also turn
against the other parent” (p. 47).

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Shawn A. Wygant All Rights Reserved
 Issues in Diagnosing Parental Alienation 3

A more recent description of this process is provided by Bernet et al. (2017) in the Journal of
Forensic Sciences: “We consider splitting to be a maladaptive mechanism by which children
protect themselves from the uncomfortable feelings of cognitive dissonance, that is, from anxiety
caused by ongoing parental conflict. When there is continual warfare between the mother and
father, children often find it difficult to maintain affection for both parents at the same time.
They typically resolve the dissonance by the mechanism of splitting, that is, by gravitating to an
enmeshed relationship with one parent and strongly rejecting the other parent” (p. 2).

Forming a Covert Coalition & Mounting a Campaign of Denigration

Once an ‘enmeshed relationship’ is formed between the child and the alienating parent, the
existing “dyadic conflict” between the parents “may set off a chain of shifting alliances”
(Minuchin et al., 1978, p. 30). The enmeshed relationship in this instance is often characterized
by “an extreme form of proximity and intensity” that results in boundary crossing (p. 32). When
boundaries are crossed, a vulnerable child “may join or be enlisted by one parent against the
other” (p. 32).

This can create a loyalty conflict. Loyalty conflicts develop when a child is pressured to favor
one parent over the other. Parents who pressure their child to takes sides in parental conflict
frequently employ “strategies” for gaining the favor of their child such “badmouthing,”
“withdrawal of love,” or “forcing [the] child to choose” (Baker & Fine, 2013, p. 95). Amy Baker
(2011) explains that when these strategies are used by alienating parents it conveys a three-part
message to the child:

“(1) I am the only parent who loves you and you need me to feel good about yourself, (2)
the other parent is dangerous and unavailable, and (3) pursuing a relationship with that
parent jeopardizes your relationship with me” (para. 2).

Children who give into these pressure tactics by rejecting a beloved parent will often display
emotional or cognitive impairments which predisposes them to develop serious mental health
problems such as anxiety or depression. This is why the recently published fourth edition of the
APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreatment describes these alienating behaviors as
“exploiting/corrupting” and “terrorizing” psychological maltreatment:

• Placing the child in a loyalty conflict by making the child unnecessarily choose to have a
relationship with one parent or the other.
• Restricting or interfering with or directly undermining the child’s important relationships
(e.g., restricting a child’s communication with his/her other parent and telling the child
the lack of communication is due to the other parent’s lack of love for the child)
• Coercing the child’s submission through extreme over-involvement, intrusiveness, or
dominance, allowing little or no opportunity or support for child’s views, feelings, and
wishes; micromanaging child’s life, and/or manipulation (e.g., inducing guilt, fostering
anxiety, threatening withdrawal of love, placing a child in a double bind in which the
child is doomed to fail or disappoint, or disorienting the child by stating something is true
[or false] when it patently is not)” (Hart et al., 2017, pp. 147 & 148).

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Shawn A. Wygant All Rights Reserved
 Issues in Diagnosing Parental Alienation 4

Whenever these circumstances are the dominating aspect of a parent-child relationship, a

“perverse triangle” is involved (Haley, 1973, p. 16). A perverse triangle is a “pathological
relationship structure between three persons, in which two persons on different hierarchical
levels [parent-child] form a coalition against the third [the other parent]” that typically takes the
form of an “overstepping of generational boundaries” (Simon, Stierlin, & Wynne, 1985, p. 261).
Haley elaborates by stating that “the coalition between the two persons is denied” and that “the
separation between generations is breached in a covert way” (Haley, 1973, p. 17).

If left unabated, this covert “cross-generational coalition against the other parent” frequently
develops into a “stable coalition” (Minuchin, 1974, p. 102). A vulnerable child drawn into this
kind of stable coalition with an alienating parent, can be successfully used as a weapon in an
“unrelenting campaign of denigration” against the targeted parent (Gardner, 1985, p. 4).
Tragically, this can result in murder as in the case of the Lohstroh family (In the Matter of
E.C.L., 2009). It that case, the mother, Deb Geisler, spent more than 2 years falsely accusing the
father, Dr. Rick Lohstroh, of sexually abusing their two sons. After numerous investigations,
CPS, law enforcement, and the family court all believed that the mother was manipulating the
boys into believing their father had molested them and that he needed to die. One Friday
afternoon, after Ms. Geisler gave her oldest son, Eric, a 20 mg dose of Prozac and left a loaded
.40 caliber Glock semi-auto pistol on a night stand; Eric picked up the gun, walked out to his
dad’s car, got into the back seat and shot his dad 3 times in the back killing him (MSNBC
Dateline, 2009).

Unfortunately, this is not the only case where a perverse triangle has resulted in murder (Heinz,
2011). Many families fall prey to this kind of parental alienation which is why it is important to
understand how it presents in clinical and forensic settings.

References

Bateson et al. (1956). Toward a theory of schizophrenia. Behavioral Science, 1(4), 251-264.

Baker, A. J. L. (2011). Parental alienation is emotional abuse of children. Psychology Today.

Retrieved September 1, 2018 from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caught-between-
parents/201106/parental-alienation-is-emotional-abuse-children

Baker, A. J. L., & Fine, Paul, R. (2013). Educating divorcing parents: Taking them beyond the
high road. In Amy J. L. Baker and S. Richard Sauber (Eds.), Working with Alienated Children
and Families: A Clinical Guidebook (pp. 90-107). New York: Routledge Press.

Bernet et al. (2017). An objective measure of splitting in parental alienation: The parental
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Shawn A. Wygant All Rights Reserved
 Issues in Diagnosing Parental Alienation 5

Freud, S. (1894). The neuro-psychoses of defence. In James Strachey (Ed.), The Standard
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 Issues in Diagnosing Parental Alienation 6

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