Intentionally Alienated from a Parent by a Custodial Parent
I have been doing reunification therapy for the past 20 years. Family law, in my forensic experience, is one of the most difficult areas of the law for a forensic psychologist to engage in. First of all, the range of credentials that various professionals may have who are engaging in custody studies, reunification therapy, psychological evaluations, may be anywhere from no degree, a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, a law degree to a Ph.D./Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology. Clearly, the more training a professional has, one would assume that the professional has been trained in developmental psychology, clinical psychology, and the ability to engage in psychological/psychometric assessment to evaluate the psychological status of a child and the parents.
Parental Alienation Syndrome, while rejected by DMS-V, still remains to be a real phenomenon in my own professional opinion. Of course, parental alienation will occur naturally in any type of adversarial marital breakup. It does not mean that a parent will have it in their mind to intentionally alienate a child from the other parent. Instead, the post-marital conflict is certainly experienced by the child and/or adolescent and because of their cognitive development at any particular stage, they typically will align themselves with one parent or the other. It is difficult for that child or adolescent to come to the conclusion on their own that while their parents are divorcing, they have a right to love each parent, and to stay out of their marital and post-marital arguments. This is, in fact, one of the most fundamental therapeutic goals I have when I am treating children or adolescents whose parents are going through a divorce. I have encountered many cases where there has been intentional estrangement of a child from another parent.