The psychiatric and mental health communities have deemed alienating behaviors to be psychologically abusive to children. Child psychological abuse compromises alienated children’s functioning in all domains – psychological, emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, and behavioral.
Self-harming and psychosomatic symptoms are examples of alienated children’s compromised behavioral functioning. These behaviors include, but are not limited to:
- Eating disorders.
- Drug addiction.
- Suicide attempts.
- Self-cutting.
Here you will learn how family therapy re-frames the cause and nature of alienated children’s psychosomatic symptoms and self-harming behaviors.
I will begin by referencing the research and clinical literature of the child psychiatrists who founded the family therapy movement in the 1950s by reframing the child’s symptoms.
Emphasis will be placed on the work of child psychiatrist, Salvador Minuchin, the preeminent founder of the family therapy movement and my mentor. Dr. Minuchin specialized in psychosomatic disorders.
I will further discuss several alienation case examples from my practice revealing how alienating parents had caused their child’s psychosomatic and self-harming symptoms.
The Rise of Psychosomatic Symptoms & Self-Harming Behaviors in Alienated Children
Virtually all of the 800 alienated children with whom I had worked were functioning well within normal or exceptional limits prior to the onset to the alienation. I noted a pattern however, among many of these alienated children of suddenly manifesting serious psychiatric symptoms after the alienation had initiated.
For those professionals who did not specialize in alienation, these children’s prior normal functioning did not raise the obvious questions. For me, the obvious question requiring an immediate answer was, “What had caused normal or high functioning children to so suddenly and surprising deteriorate to the point of developing life-threatening behaviors and psychosomatic symptoms?”
When alienated children suddenly develop life-threatening behaviors and psychosomatic symptoms, reason informs that alienating parents are the most probable cause. After all, alienating parents typically grab almost exclusive, if not exclusive, caretaking of the children. This reasonable causal connection demands investigation to determine if the alienating parent is the sudden and surprise causation.
Despite the alienating parent being the logical suspect as the cause of their children’s psychiatric – psychosomatic symptoms and behaviors, alienating parents are rarely suspected of being the cause.
Family therapy points us in the direction of determining the true cause.
Family Therapy’s Reframe of Psychosomatic & Self-Harming Symptoms in Children
Child psychiatrist, Salvador Minuchin, describes how family therapy reframes – thereby re-assesses -the cause of psychiatric and psychosomatic symptoms in children. The reframing points the way to effective remedy. Diagnosis dictates treatment thereby requiring diagnosis to be accurate – all the time.
Dr. Minuchin states:
“In the systems paradigm, every part of a system is seen as organizing and being organized by other parts. An individual’s behavior is simultaneously both caused and causative.
The systems model postulates that certain types of family organization are closely related to the development and maintenance of psychosomatic syndromes in children, and that the child’s psychosomatic symptoms in turn play an important role in maintaining the family homeostasis.
Anorexia nervosa is defined not only by the behavior of one family member, but also by the interrelationship of all family members…The psychological unit is not the individual. It is the individual in his significant social contests.
Nowhere is the truth of this modern challenge demonstrated more clearly than in the studies of psychosomatic medicine. It seems to violate common sense that the contraction of a child’s bronchiole is regulated by sequences of transactions between other family members.
Or the a diabetic patient’s ketoacidosis is affected by the way his parents request his allegiance.
Or that a n anorectic’s not eating is controlled by the way the anorectic and her parents transact the issues of control.”
Nevertheless, our findings clearly indicate that, when significant family interactional patterns are changed, significant changes in the symptoms of psychosomatic illness also occur [in other words, symptom reduction]
Instead of observing and studying the anorectic child alone, we look at the feedback processes by which the family members and the anorectic constrain and regulate each other’s behavior.
In therapy, we look at the transactions among family members the sustain the anorectic syndrome, and we work to change those transactions. Anorexia is more than the girl’s not eating. It is the way the family behaves.” (pp. 20-21)
Family therapy reframes the child’s psychosomatic symptoms from internal to the individual child to the family interactional behaviors. Family therapy rejects the idea that the child is the identified patient having an individual, intrapsychic condition.
Family therapy labels the dysfunctional family interactional behaviors as the clinical condition requiring remedy and labels the family system as the identified patient.
The dysfunctional family interactions at play when children manifest psychosomatic and other severe psychiatric symptoms can by summarized by the phenomenon of “family triangulation.”
In family triangulation, one parent – known as the triangulating or favored parent – co-opts the child as an ally in the parental conflict with the other parent – known as the targeted parent.
Triangulation thrusts the psychosomatic child into the untenable, no-win/double bind situation of having to choose the triangulating parent over the targeted parent. Triangulation requires the child to sacrifice the relationship with the targeted parent as a price to pay for maintaining the love and approval of the favored parent.
Next here I discuss what Dr. Minuchin and his colleagues describe as “family triangulation” and the consequential harm to the child.
FURTHER READING: Alienating Parents Cause Their Children’s Psychiatric Symptoms
Salvador Minuchin MD on Harm to Children from Triangulation
Dr. Minuchin views family triangulation, which spawned the birth of the family therapy movement in the 1950s, to be the cause of psychiatric symptoms in children. Dr. Minuchin and his colleagues founded the family therapy movement when they re-framed the psychosis in their child patients from being intrapsychic to being family inter-relational.
Dr. Minuchin (1978):
“In triangulation and parent-child coalitions, the spouse dyad is frankly split in opposition or in conflict, and the child is openly pressed to ally with one parent against the other. In triangulation, the child is put in such a position that she cannot express herself without siding with one parent against the other. In a parent-child coalition, the child tends to move into a stable coalition with one parent against the other.” (p. 33)
Dr. Minuchin (1972):
“The rigid triangle can also take the form of a stable coalition. One of the parents joins with the child in a rigidly bounded cross-generational coalition against the other parent….Whenever the child sides with one, he is automatically defined as attacking the other.
Dr. Minuchin (1981):
When they must function as autonomous entities, they may face a serious crisis. When the children reach late adolescence and must begin to separate from the family, psychotic breaks and psychosomatic illness can occur. (P. 142.)
FURTHER READING: Alienating Parents Are Raising Antisocial Kids
Jay Haley on Reframing Psychiatric Symptoms in Triangulation
Haley (1977):
“It is always an oversimplification to describe psychiatric symptoms as if they could be isolated from the general problems of society. The ills of the individual are not really separable from the ills of the social context he creates and inhabits, and one cannot with good conscience pull out the individual from his cultural milieu and label him as sick or well.” (p. 2)
Haley (1990):
“The people responding to each other in the triangle are not peers, but one of them is of a different generation from the other two… In the process of their interaction together, the person of one generation forms a coalition with the person of the other generation against his peer.
By “coalition” is meant a process of joint action which is against the third person… The coalition between the two persons is denied. That is, there is certain behavior which indicates a coalition which, when it is queried, will be denied as a coalition…
In essence, the perverse triangle is one in which the separation of generations is breached in a covert way. When this occurs as a repetitive pattern, the system will be pathological…
A parent-child coalition not only undermines the authority of the other parent but makes the authority of the favoring parent dependent upon support from the child.” (pp. 31-48)
Murray Bowen, MD, on Harm to Children from Triangulation
Dr. Bowen (1978):
“As patterns repeat and repeat in a triangle, the people come to have fixed roles in relation to each other. The best example of this is the father-mother-child triangle. Patterns vary, but one of the most common is the basic tension between the parents….
The mother wins over the child, who moves another step closer toward chronic functional impairment. The pattern is described as the family projection process. Families replay the same triangular game over and over for years, as though the winner were in doubt, but the final result is always the same.
Mauricio Andolfi, MD, on Dysfunctional Relationships from Triangulation
Dr. Andolfi was known for treating the most disturbed children. His patients were schizophrenic, suicidal, or anorectic.
In his 1989 book, The Myth of Atlas: Families and the Therapeutic Story, Dr. Andolfi states, “As with any other relational triangle, coalitions are possible, more or less masked, that produce dysfunctional relationships” (p. 214).
FURTHER READING: Alienating Behaviors – Domestic Violence Upon the Child
Linda Gottlieb, LMFT, LCSW – Alienation Case Examples of Harm to Children from Triangulation
False Face Must Hide What False Heart Doth Know
A 14-year-old girl was referred to me by her psychiatrist upon the girl’s discharge from the psychiatric hospital after a suicidal threat. The girl further had had a history of cutting herself during a period of several years. The psychiatrist had worked with the girl individually during her 10-day hospital stay but was unable to determine the reason or reasons of the girl’s cutting behavior and suicidal ideation.
I required the girl’s parents participate in the daughter’s intake, which they did but reluctantly. The parents had divorced just prior to the girl’s initiation of her cutting behaviors. Prior to the divorce, the girl was meeting developmental milestones, was doing exceedingly well in school, had many peer relationships, and took an interest in numerous extra curricular activities. The girl had had no psychiatric history while the parents were still together.
I asked the parents for their opinions as to why their previously well-functioning daughter precipitously developed her severe psychiatric symptoms. The parents then engaged in an intense blame game, each accusing the other of being the cause. The argument escalated to a level of extreme hostility.
Rescuing her parents from their intensity, the girl distracted them from their marital argument by shouting out, “I know my father did not want me to be born.”
Upon the girl’s decisive verbal eruption, the alienation narrative was unleashed. The mother had been brainwashing the girl for years with utter fabrications that her father did not love her, wanted to abort her, and had not been an involved father for most of her childhood. The Due to being pathologically enmeshed with her mother, the girl absorbed her mother’s feeling of being an unfairly overburdened parent.
Reframe: A successful suicide would have freed the girl from the loyalty conflict that had been imposed upon her by her alienating mother. A completed suicide would have enabled the girl to please both parents. That is, her mother would no longer be overburdened by parental responsibilities, and her father would finally be granted his wish for the girl’s birth was undone. How tragic for the girl that she perceived death to be her only resolution to the triangulation.
I Am My Mother’s Keeper
The parents of a 17-year-old boy applied for individual therapy for their son. They stated the boy was repeatedly truant from school and using weed – before weed was legal in New York. I required them to come in as a family, which included 4 younger siblings.
The intake paperwork that they had submitted prior to the intake session accused the father of committing domestic violence several years previously against the mother. The mother did not file contemporaneous DV reports with the Court or with police; she did not seek medical treatment or therapy for any bodily or emotional harm; she never confided the alleged DV incident in a friend. No details of the DV allegation were provided on the intake form although details were requested.
The father adamantly denied having engaged in any form of abuse against the mother. The very belated DV allegation emerged only after the father threatened the mother with making a CPS report if she did not agree with him to get help for their son, that she had thus far been refusing to do.
The family arrived, and the mother and 5 children moved the office chairs so that they could seat themselves virtually on top of each other. This left the father to sit alone and virtually outside of the group. When a family goes to these lengths to seat themselves in this fashion, it is suggestive of alienation. Family history that I later obtained confirmed my initial tentative suspicion of alienation.
I asked the 17-year-old boy why he brought his family in for therapy. Looking surprised by my question, he responded that he had no idea. I expected this response. I then asked him if he had any idea who in the family might be benefitting from his truancy. Now looking astounded, he, not surprisingly, had no answer to this question. No one in the family could answer this question either.
I then looked to the parents for their ideas about their son’s truancy. The parents began to argue with each other in a verbally abusive manner. The father accused the mother of enabling their son, stating that she drives him to meet his friends when he should be in school, and she further supplies him with funds to buy weed.
The mother responded by acknowledging that she does drive the boy to meet his truant friends because they are “nice boys” who do not use hard drugs. The mother continued to justify her behavior by stating that her son refuses to attend school no matter what; if she did not drive him to meet up with this “nice” group of friends who only did weed, he would hang out locally with not so nice boys who used hard drugs.
The father easily gained the upper hand in the argument with his wife given how ludicrous her reasoning was to justify why she was enabling their son. The mother quickly retreated and fell silent. Coming to his mother’s rescue, the 17-year old boy then jumped to his feet, violated his father’s space, and threatened to kill him with a baseball bat after the session. The mother made no effort to restrain or admonish her son – her ally in her conflicts with her husband, who is the boy’s father.
Reframe: The 17-year old had become his mother’s ally and protector in an alienation drama. In this drama, the mother had convinced the five children that she was a victim of domestic violence by their father. The mother was rewarding the boy with money and taxi service to keep him as her ally. The boy, who had been a straight A student headed to an Ivy League school before the marital conflict, was sacrificing himself to be his mother’s protector. This would have been an impossible role to fill were he to be away, meeting the expectations of an Ivy League curriculum. The boy’s only resolution to this impossible situation was to sacrifice and sabotage himself so that he did not have decline acceptance into an Ivy League school.
The Boy Who Unmasked Falsehood and Brought Truth to Light
A severely alienated 12-year-old boy had been unlawfully held by his alienating mother from contact with his father for more than eight months. The night before the boy and his father were to leave for New York to participate in a Court-ordered Turning Points for Families intervention, the mother brought the boy to the emergency room and had him hospitalized for suicidal threats.
The father went to the hospital with his Court order that had given him sole legal and physical custody of the boy and with a protective separation of the boy from his alienating mother. The mother was escorted away from the boy’s bedside and out of the hospital. The father was escorted to the boy’s bedside. The boy greeted his father with, “Dad, I’m not suicidal. I only threatened suicide because mom told me that if I made that threat, I would not have to get on the plane and go with you to New York.”
Outcome: The hospital promptly discharged the boy to his father with follow up treatment at Turning Points for Families. They had a successful reunification. Ten years later, the boy has just graduated from college, has a loving relationship with his father, and is in a healthy intimate relationship. His mother, however, has not forgiven him for reuniting with his father. She has sadly estranged herself from her son, who is now a healthy, happy young man.
Catastrophic Delays in Reunification for Severely Alienated Children
Tragically for children, social media platforms have become a means for alienating parents to share with each other their “successful” strategies for thwarting Court-orders for reunification interventions.
Manipulating severely alienated children to make threats of suicide has become a customary strategy used by alienating parents to thwart reunification interventions. These children were then psychiatrically hospitalized for a fictitious diagnosis.
This coercive tactic, more often than not, has thwarted the Court-ordered reunification intervention from taking place.
Even more catastrophic for alienated children, their hospital psychiatrists unnecessarily placed them on psychotropic medications to treat this falsified suicidal threat. These medications have the highest black-box warning for children under the age of 18 years.
Fortunately, when a Turning Points for Families eventually occurred for these children, every one of them were subsequently weaned off these medications by their psychiatrist upon returning home with their alienated parent.
The real child abuse in parental alienation is the coercive manipulation of alienated children by their alienating parents to make false suicidal threats resulting in unnecessary psychiatric hospitalization and administration of black-box psychotropic medications.
FURTHER READING: Parent Alienation and Child Psychological Abuse in the DSM-5
Conclusion
Unregulated social media platforms have served as exceedingly successful means for spreading misinformation and disinformation about parental alienation. The deceptive and false claims distract attention and remedy from the profound harm to children from parental alienation. The harm adversely effects children for a lifetime across all domains of functioning.
Note that those who spread these deceptive and false claims never dispute the 70-year history of family therapy that determined family triangulation – another label for parental alienation – causes severe psychosomatic and self-harming behaviors in the triangulated child.
It is estimated that 250,000 children each year suffer from parental alienation. That is unacceptable when we know the cause and we have the remedy for safe and effective remediation.
