Parental Alienation Defined
Parental alienation is an observable family dynamic in which one parent brainwashes a child to reject the other parent for no protective reason. This frequently occurs in high-conflict divorce and custody cases and is easily recognizable by mental health professionals who specialize in diagnosing it.
Rejecting a parent is anti-instinctual behavior. Alienated children must therefore buy into the brainwashing in order to override this instinct to need and love a parent.
The brainwashing by the alienating parent is so powerful, children feel coerced to manufacture their own denigrations about the alienated parent.
The “rationalizations” for rejecting the alienated parent are utterly out of proportion to anything that parent has done, and for which no uninfluenced child would ever reject a parent. Consider the following frivolous rationalizations:
- We hated the trip he took us on to Disney.
- The floor is too dirty for my dog to walk on.
- Momma violates my space when she hugs me.
- I could not speak my truth.
- My lawyer will make sure I never have to see you again.
- The judge will listen to my demands, I have my constitutional rights.
Alienated children’s denigrations often include false sex abuse allegations. Believing a false sex abuse allegation is exceedingly harmful to a child because a child will suffer the same risk factors as if the sexual abuse had actually occurred.
Believing a false sex abuse allegation portends a poor prognosis in life if the child is not disabused of this false belief.
The phenomenon of parental alienation involves all the family members and describes the interactions between and among them.
Parental Alienation Syndrome Defined
As opposed to PA, which focuses on the family members’ interactions with each other, PAS centers on the child. By definition, a syndrome can apply only to an individual and cannot apply to a relationship.
Child psychiatrist, Richard Gardner was the first to coin the label “PAS” after observing 8 co-occurring symptoms in a child when in the context of adversarial custody and as a result of brainwashing behaviors of the child by one of the parents against the other parent.
FURTHER READING: Manifestations of Alienated Children – As Seen by an Expert
Dr. Gardner clearly stated that a diagnosis of PAS required observation of parental alienating behaviors that had resulted in the 8 symptoms developing in the child.

The Fallacious Anti-Syndrome Claim Rejected
Dr. Richard Gardner described eight co-occurring symptoms that had he observed in a sub-group of children whose parents were undergoing divorce and when one of those parents was observed to be brainwashing the child to think negatively about the other parent.
This is exactly the faithful DSM-5 necessary and sufficient criteria for a syndrome, which is:
“A grouping of signs and symptoms, based on their frequent co-occurrence.” (p. 830)
The eight manifestations of an alienated child irrefutably qualify as a syndrome. That is, when you see the occurrence of one of the symptoms in child whose parents are engaged in a contentious custody battle, you tend to see the occurrence of all or most of the manifestations.
As I discussed in a previous article, the erroneous anti-syndrome claim is based upon Kelly and Johnston’s 200, so distorted DSM definition of syndrome that it effectively changed the necessary and sufficient criteria of a syndrome.
The Fallacious Claim That the DSM-5 Task Force Rejected the Concept of PA
It is a deliberately-orchestrated, fallacious argument to claim that PAS was not included in the DSM-5 because the concept had been rejected by the DSM-5 Task Force. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The fallacious claim the DSM-5 task force rejected the concept of PA has been resoundly and specifically disputed by child psychiatrist, William Bernet, in a 2017 article co-authored with two other child psychiatrists, who had contributed to the family relational section of the DSM-5.
In this 2017 article entitled, “Child Affected by Parental Relationship Distress” (CAPRD), published in the peer-review Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, these authors affirmed that PA, by name, is an example of CAPRD.
CAPRD appears in the relational section of the DSM-5 along with two other DSM-5 relational problems, “parent-child relationship problem” and “child psychological abuse”, both of which these authors also state occur in PA.
The Low Known Error Rate of Gardner’s 8 Symptoms
Extensive research and the clinical literature find that Gardner’s eight symptoms identify an alienated child have an exceedingly low error rate.
In fact, Harvard educated physician, Steven G. Miller, determined that Gardner’s 8 symptoms have an error rate of <1%. Only a biopsy has a more accurate error rate, which is 0%.
My evidence-based practice found results consistent with Dr. Miller’s finding for the <1% error rate of Gardner’s 8 symptoms.
All 750+ alienated children with whom I had directly treated manifested all or most of the symptoms. The severity of the alienation was assessed according to the number and severity of the symptoms that the child manifested.
These observations confirmed that the 8 symptoms have a very high detection rate for identifying an alienated child.
By the same token, of the 1000 non-alienated children with whom I had directly treated and who were experiencing their parents’ divorce, they did not manifest even one symptom let alone a cluster of them.
These observations confirm that the 8 symptoms have a very high rate of ruling out for a non-alienated child.
I have found the same consistent results for the 8 symptoms in my forensic document review of a few thousand children.

The PA Family Phenomenon in History
No one can credibly argue that the phenomenon of PA—regardless of its label over time—does not exist. By perpetuating this erroneous claim, alienating parents and their lawyers are endeavoring to distract the court’s attention from the very real psychological abuse that the alienating parent is inflicting upon the child.
The child psychiatrists who founded the Family Therapy Movement labeled the very same family dynamic occurring in PA as “triangulation.” Triangulation spawned the birth of the Family Therapy Movement in the 1950s.
Family Therapy’s Founders described triangulation as a dysfunctional cross-generational alliance between a “triangulating” parent and child with the goal of marginalizing and dismissing the “target” parent.
The dynamic was observed to play out on child psychiatric wards during the child’s visits with their families. The child’s psychosis resulted from the triangulation dynamic.
Parental Alienating Behaviors and Strategies
Severely alienating parents utilize several of the 17 alienating behaviors that have been shown by Baker & Fine (2007, 2013) to be highly specific for and suggestive of an alienating parent.
This means that these 17 alienating behaviors have been shown by replicated research studies to have a low error rate for ruling in an alienating parent and for ruling out a non-alienating parent engaged in a custody dispute.
Baker and Fine’s 17-alienating behaviors have been widely accepted and relied in the scientific community for identifying an alienating parent.
PA is Examples of DSM-5-TR Relational Problems
- Child Psychological Abuse
- Child Affected by Parental Relationship Distress (CAPRD)
- Parent-Child Relational Problem
- Domestic Violence
- Domestic Violence by Proxy
- Child or Adolescent Antisocial Behavior
- Delusional Disorder
- Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another
1. Child Psychological Abuse
Occurs because the alienating parent undermines the child’s psychological need for the alienated parent, sanctions and encourages of the child’s antisocial treatment of the alienated parent, often berates and terrorizes the child to compel loyalty, and makes the child complicit in breaking the law by violating the alienated parent’s court-ordered parenting time.

2. Child Affected by Parental Relationship Distress (CAPRD)
Occurs when the alienating parent triangles the child into parental conflicts, requires the child’s allegiance and loyalty, enmeshes the child in efforts conquer and defeat the alienated parent, and to exploit the child as a spy on the alienated parent.
Many behaviors occurring in CAPRD meet the criteria of domestic violence (as when the alienating parent uses coercive mind control to rob the child of the child’s own feelings, wishes, opinions and opinions with respect to the alienated parent and then implanting that parent’s.)
Many behaviors occurring in CAPRD meet the criteria of domestic violence by proxy (as when the alienating parent encourages and sanctions the child’s emotional maltreatment and physical assault of the alienated parent.
3. Parent-Child Relational Problem
As reflected in the child’s pathological enmeshment with the alienating parent and in the damaging, dysfunctional detachment from the alienated parent.
4. Domestic Violence
Domestic violence because of the alienating parent’s coercive control and manipulation of the child to reject the alienated parent and to substitute her/his feelings, wishes, and beliefs for those of the child’s and
5. Domestic Violence by Proxy
Domestic violence by proxy because of the alienating parent’s encouragement and sanction of the child’s emotional maltreatment and physical assault of the alienated parent.
6. Child or Adolescent Antisocial Behavior
As reflected in the child’s emotional and frequent physical maltreatment of the alienated parent and extended family.
These behaviors, coached and permitted by the alienating parent, are particularly harmful to the child because the seed is being planted for the development of an antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Once it becomes characterological it is virtually irreversible.
7. Delusional Disorder
This occurs as a consequence of the child’s pathological enmeshment with the alienating parent resulting in the child feeling compelled to introject the alienating parent’s highly distorted—if not delusional—views of the alienated parent and of the family history.
8. Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another
This occurs because alienating parents coerce their children to make threats of suicide or to claim other severe psychiatric symptoms as a means to avoid contact with the alienated parent, who is blamed for having caused the child’s symptoms.
Some professionals have incomprehensively accepted this prima facia claim that the alienated parent is the cause of the child’s symptoms—even when there had been no contact with the child for many years.
Conclusion
The truth about parental alienation is that it is real, it is diagnosable, and it is abusive to children.