Alienated children suddenly and surprisingly manifest severe psychiatric symptoms that had not been manifested prior to the onset of the alienation. These symptoms weigh on children and encumber them.
Analysis reveals that the alienated child’s severe psychiatric symptoms are caused by the alienating parent’s coercive and manipulative control tactics. These tactics serve the alienating parent’s purposes and goals.
Severe psychiatric symptoms undermine a child’s functioning across all domains – psychological, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal.
Alienating Behaviors Meet the Standard Definitions of Domestic Violence and Domestic Violence by Proxy
Domestic violence involves the abuse of unequal power by exploiting another party to the intimate relationship.
Alienating parents easily exploit their exceedingly unequal power over the child, who is virtually dependent for survival upon the alienating parent.
The alienating parent’s exceedingly unequal power over the child is magnified when contact with the alienated parent is restricted or eliminated.
The alienating parent’s behaviors are virtually the same as the DV behaviors found on the “Duluth Model of Power and Control Wheel,” which is used to assess for domestic violence.
Similarities Between Alienating Behaviors and Power and Control Wheel Behaviors
When alienating behaviors are compared to the behaviors in the Domestic Violence Power & Control Wheel, the similarities are striking.
Alienating Behaviors/ DV Power & Control Wheel Behaviors
- Limiting contact with the alienated parent/ Using isolation
- Limiting contact with extended family of the alienated parent/ Using Isolation
- Badmouthing the alienated parent/ Gaslighting
- Interfering with symbolic contact/ Using coercion, threats, intimidation
- Limiting communication with alienated parent/ Using isolation
- Conveying that the alienated parent is dangerous/ Gaslighting
- Creating dependency/ Using parental privilege and coercion
- Undermining the child’s relationship with a parent/ Using emotional abuse
- Brainwashing child to believe the alienated parent had sexually & physically abused child/ Gaslighting & using emotional abuse & intimidation
- Brainwashing the child that alienated parent is unloving, uncaring, unconcerned, & dangerous/ Gaslighting
- Brainwashing child to believe the alienated parent has abandoned the child/ Gaslighting
- Forcing the child to choose/ Using coercion & intimidation
- Weaponizing the child against the alienated parent/ Using children
- Threatening to. withdraw love if the child does not reject the alienated parent/ Using intimidation, threats, & parental privilege
- Using economic rewards & penalties to manipulate child/ Using economic abuse
- Using privilege & punishments/ Using coercion
- Requiring loyalty/ Using coercion, threats, & intimidation
- Asking child to spy on alienated parent/ Using intimidation & threats
- Asking child to keep secrets from alienated parent/ Using intimidation, threats & coercion
As with adult victims of domestic violence, the alienated child becomes incapacitated by the alienating parent’s abusive misuse of power.
Emotional Control
The alienating parents’ emotional control of the child requires the child to replace loving and positive feelings for and beliefs about the alienated parent with the alienating parent’s hateful and negative feelings for and beliefs about the alienated parent.
Among these negative feelings are: anger, hatred, disappointment, frustration, enmity, disgust, distrust, fear, and more.
The alienating parent’s coercive emotional control of the child to rob the child of the child’s own feelings and beliefs and replace them with those of the alienating parent meets the standard definition of “domestic violence.”
Behavioral Control
Alienating parents employ coercive manipulation that encourages their children to maltreat and physically assault their alienated parent. This cowardly and cynical exploitation of children is to facilitate alienating parents’ mission to drive the alienated parent from their children’s lives.
I have frequently witnessed alienated children employ antisocial behaviors to hurt, humiliate, defy, and emotionally and physically abuse their alienated parent.
Not only do these behaviors meet the standard definition of domestic violence by proxy; these behaviors meet the DSM-5-TR definition of “child or adolescent antisocial behavior.”
Nothing to Do with the Alienated Parent-Child Relationship
Whatever had occurred between the alienating and alienated parents to have caused the alienating parent to feel negatively about the alienated parent has nothing to do with the relationship between the alienated parent and child.
By definition, a case cannot be one of alienation unless the rejected parent’s behaviors were in proportion to the child’s exceedingly anti-instinctual behavior to hate and reject a parent.
Alienated Mothers – Victims of Domestic Violence by Proxy
The domestic violence by proxy behaviors that occur in alienation are whopping, not-so-secret occurrences that are being experienced by alienated mothers.
Alienated mothers are being routinely battered by their sons and sometimes by their daughters at the behest of alienating fathers.
Alienated mothers, who comprise 50% of my caseload, feel abandoned by the groups that intervene to protect women from DV. Alienated mothers feel they are being forsaken by the professionals in these groups who deny, for misguided reasons, that alienation is real.
Misguided Reasons for Denying Alienation
DV professionals fear that some DV perpetrators will play the “alienation defense card” as a means to be acquitted of their heinous and unpardonable acts. But this is a logical fallacy known as “appeal to the consequent,” which, in essence, throws the baby out with the bathwater.
The appeal to the consequent logical fallacy means that argument is denied or rejected because its consequence is undesirable. If this fallacy guided medical decisions, then chemotherapy would be banned because of the consequential side effects of nausea and hair loss.
Science provides the method to rule in DV just as science provides the method to rule in PA.
It is not an either-or situation to protect women or to protect children.
What Alienated Mothers Want and Expect From Domestic Violence Professionals
Alienated mothers wish for their sons to get the desperate help they need to relinquish their antisocial, battering behaviors and have the expectation for becoming law-abiding, socially responsible adults.
Alienated mothers fear that if their sons do not get preventive help in their youth, they will grow up to be perpetrators of DV in their intimate relationships.
Alienated mothers are desperately attempting to save their physically violent sons from themselves and from the influence by their alienating fathers.
Screaming for Remedy
The concerns of alienated mothers are screaming for remedy. I agree completely.
By denying the very real existence of alienation, a generation of potential adult DV perpetrators is being promoted and produced – however unintended – by the very professionals committed to end DV.
It is incomprehensible to me that so many of these professionals, who have made the protection of women their life’s work, yet ignore the potential conflagration of minor boys becoming adult DV perpetrators.
Prevention of the perpetuation of DV begins with recognition that alienation is real, is abusive to mothers as well as fathers, and is most of all abusive of alienated children for whom DV behaviors are being normalized by alienating parents.
Harmful Effects on the Child From the Alienating Parent’s Coercive Power and Control Behaviors
The alienating parent’s coercive mind-control and manipulative behaviors of the child are a serious violation of the child’s boundaries.
It is no wonder that alienated children, who had been functioning well or exceedingly well prior to the onset of the alienation, manifest severe psychiatric symptoms after the onset of the alienation.
I am speaking of an array of psychiatric symptoms that often include cutting, suicidal threats and ideation, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, panic, anxiety, depression, other self-harming behaviors, juvenile delinquency, criminal behaviors, and more.
The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Studies
The harm to children from the alienating parent’s coercive control and manipulation is reflected in Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) studies. I cite below four of the ACE studies.
Felitti, et. al., (2006) writing in “The enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood,” published in European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, made the point that household abuse and domestic violence can adversely affect brain development. This ACE study states:
“The organization and functional capacity of the human brain depends upon an extraordinary set of sequences of developmental and environmental experiences that influence the expression of the genome . . . Unfortunately, this elegant sequence is vulnerable to extreme, repetitive, or abnormal patterns of stress during critical or circumscribed periods of childhood brain development that can impair, often permanently, the activity of major neuroregulatory systems, with profound and lasting neurobehavioral consequences.”
Spinazzola, et. al., (2014) writing in “Unseen wounds: The contribution of psychological maltreatment to child and adolescent mental health and risk outcomes, published in Psychological Trauma, addresses the surprising degree of harm to the child from psychological abuse:
“Our findings strongly support the hypotheses that PM [psychological maltreatment] in childhood not only augments, but also independently contributes to, statistical risk for negative youth outcomes to an extent comparable to statistical risks imparted by exposure to physical abuse (PA), sexual abuse (SA), or their combination (PA + SA).”
Nurius, et. al,. (2015), writing in “Life course pathways of adverse childhood experiences toward adult psychological well-being: A stress process analysis” published in Child Abuse & Neglect, discusses the extent of psychiatric disabilities in adulthood from ACE experiences:
“Exposure to significant childhood adversity affects a daunting proportion of young people, constituting one of the most detrimental impacts on youth development. Early life adversities include experiences such as maltreatment, neglect, witnessed violence, and household dysfunctions such as parental mental illness or substance abuse . . . Exposure to these events generates step-dose patterns wherein greater exposure to multiple forms of stressful experiences are associated with a wider range of impaired health outcomes, including psychiatric.”
Felitti, V. J. et al. (1998) writing in “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences, ” published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine link ACE experiences to pre-mature death from physical diseases. They state:
“We found a strong graded relationship between the breadth of exposure to abuse or household dysfunction during childhood and multiple risk factors for several of the leading causes of death in adults. The number of categories of adverse childhood exposures showed a graded relationship to the presence of adult diseases including ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease.”
The Alienated Child’s Clinical Presentation
When science is applied to assessing an alienation case, it is obvious that alienating parents project their abusive behaviors onto the alienated parent.
Unhappy, deeply unhappy, having been coercively controlled by their alienating parent to forsake the irreplaceable loss of a parent.
Afraid, deeply afraid, having been coercively controlled by their alienating parent to override the survival instinct for a parent.
Hopeless, deeply hopeless, having been coercively controlled by their alienating parent to believe that their survival depends exclusively upon the alienating parent.
Insecure, deeply insecure, having been snatched of emotional security from having their alienated parent meaningfully in their lives.
Terrified, deeply terrified, having been coercively controlled by their alienating parent to believe that their alienated parent want to hurt them.
The Child’s Psychiatric Symptoms – Symbolic of the Family Dysfunction of Alienation
The alienated child’s threats of suicide and suicidal ideation are symbolic of the death of the relationship with the alienated parent.
The alienated child’s cutting is symbolic of having to cut a parent out of her/his life.
The alienated child’s other self-harming behaviors are symbolic of the harmed relationship with the alienated parent.
Failure to Accurately Assess the Cause of the Child’s Sudden and Surprising Psychiatric Symptoms
It is astonishing to me that the cause of the child’s sudden and surprising sprouting of psychiatric symptoms is typically attributed to the alienated parent. And it is stunningly astonishing to me when the attribution is made in the virtual absence of any contact between the alienated parent and child – typically for years.
The failure to adhere to the scientific method to make clinical findings is the cause of the catastrophic erroneous finding that the alienated parent is to blame for the child’s manifestation of severe psychiatric symptoms.
The scientific method involves avoidance of cognitive errors. The primary cognitive culprit in blaming the alienated parent for the child’s symptoms is the “causation fallacy.”
In a proper causation analysis, it must be found that the dependent effect had been preceded by the claimed causation.
To the contrary of complying with causation analysis, the alienated parent’s reactions to the trauma from alienation are cited to be the cause of the child’s psychiatric symptoms.
Additional failure to comply with causation analysis is that the alienating parent’s behaviors are not even considered, and therefore not assessed, to be the possible cause of the child’s psychiatric symptoms.
It is even more surprising that the alienating parent is typically not considered to be the cause when the child had begun to manifest psychiatric disturbances only after the onset of the alienation – when the alienating parent was the primary, if not exclusive, caretaker.
What non specialists in alienation due instead of undertaking a causation analysis is to rely upon the statements of the programmed child and on the statements of the highly-invested alienating parent that the alienated parent is the guilty party.
Using an analogy for the absurdity and unreliability of being informed exclusively by self-report, consider the DV victim who recants the abuse by claiming that she or he misinterpreted the behaviors of the DV perpetrator!
Despite the absurdity of accepting self-diagnosis in general, non-specialists in alienation unconscionably accept programmed alienated children’s self-diagnosis that the alienated parent is the cause of their sudden, inexplicable eruption of severe psychiatric symptoms.
Conclusion
Alienating parents engage in coercive mind-control and behavioral manipulation of the child to for their selfish, abusive purposes. These alienating behaviors meet the standard definitions of domestic violence and domestic violence by proxy.
The frequent result to alienated children from alienating behaviors is the development of serious psychiatric symptoms.
Failure to undertake a scientific analysis to determine the correct cause of the child’s psychiatric symptoms is harmful to the child. A contraindicated treatment intervention is invariably the result and effective measures to treat the child’s debilitating functioning is delayed and even denied.
