It is our view at the Family Separation Clinic that what is called Parental Alienation is a relational problem in families which creates a defence in the child of psychological splitting. This causes the child to display absolute resistance to the rejected parent when the defence is at its strongest.
In that respect, the child is displaying behaviours which cause them to align with a parent and therefore it appears that they have been brainwashed by that parent. If we look closer however, the presence of conscious and deliberate actions of a parent, whilst present sometimes, are less apparent than covert, relational, and trans-generational dynamics at play.
This is a relational problem, which means that it is caused by relationships between people. It therefore follows, that resolution of the problem can be brought about via therapeutic work on those relationships.
Using the tools of the traditional parental alienation trade…
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