Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome/Disorder

Induced parent-child alienation has been described in the psychological professional literature for more than 60 years. However, only in the eighties and nineties six research groups, or in some cases individual researchers, introduced names for the phenomenon: Wallerstein & Kelly and Johnston & Roseby speak of “pathological alignment” and “visitation refusal”; Clawar & Rivlin of “programmed and brainwashed children”; Kelly & Johnston of “The alienated child”; Warshak of “pathological alienation”; Gardner, Kopetski and Kopetski and Rand & Rand of “Parental Alienation Syndrome”, and Bernet of “Parental Alienation Disorder” or “Parental Alienation”.

Although parental alienation is already integrated into the judicial codes of various countries (for example Brazil) and although it has explicitly entered the case law of many countries and of the European Court of Human Rights, the phenomenon is still stubbornly trivialised or denied.

The author—a psychiatrist and psychotherapist—has lent a voice to some victims of parental alienation among the many documented cases from his practice. Their letters, case histories, interviews, and follow-up interviews describe their life experiences and resulting serious problems that have stayed with them well into adulthood.

This book is a plea for the recognition of induced parentchild alienation as a form of psychological child abuse, for timely prevention and intervention, and for an end to its trivialisation and denial.