4 COMPLEX ISSUES IN CHILD CUSTODY E V A L U A T I O N S

alienation is limited, these children can sometimes enjoy their relationship with
the alienated parent.

Severe Cases of Parental Alienation

In severely alienated families, there is a clear, consistent derogation of the

alienated parent by the alienating parent and by the child. In these more severe
cases, there is a combination of programming, brainwashing, and hostility that
begins with the alienating parent and is taken on by the child against the
alienated parent. In most of these instances, the child and alienated parent had
previously had a positive and relatively healthy relationship, although the
alienating parent can neither admit nor perceive this. Often, the alienating
parent feels a tremendous bitterness and anger toward the other parent, usually
related to feelings of abandonment and betrayal. These families are quite
intractable and may be difficult to evaluate when there are simultaneous abuse
allegations. The alienated parent is often confused and outraged at the change
in the child and rarely understands how this has occurred, except to blame the
other parent. Children in these families often get caught up in the brainwashing
and programming and take on the hostility of the alienating parent, exaggerating
and denigrating the other parent in quite hostile ways.
With these families, the evaluator quite often observes that the words and
phrases used by both the alienating parent and the child are nearly identical.
These more severely alienated families have drawn the greatest attention and
controversy in the popular press and the professional literature. Although these
families are intense, they are rather few in number compared with the mild to
moderate alienated families in which alienation is not too severe. The task for
the evaluator is to understand the family dynamics, determine where the family
exists along the continuum of alienation, and differentiate between alienating
behaviors and those behaviors that may appear (on the surface) to be alienation
but actually have different dynamics. This may include a myriad of parental
issues, dynamics of the psychological splitting, child development issues, and
so on. These evaluations, and particularly finding workable solutions, are
among the more difficult and complex faced by the child custody evaluator.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Gardner (1987) was the first to coin the phrase parental alienation syndrome,
but Wallerstein and Kelly (1980) were the first to write about a process that they
termed "alignment with one parent." In their breakthrough book, Surviving the
Breakup, they wrote,
Alienation and Alignment of Children 5

A very important aspect of the response of the youngsters in this age group (ages
nine to twelve) was the dramatic change in the relationship between parents and
children. These young people were vulnerable to being swept up into the anger
of one parent against the other. They were faithful and valuable battle allies in
efforts to hurt the other parent. Not infrequently, they turned on the parent they
had (previously) loved and been very close to prior to the marital separation,
(p. 77)

Since that time, there has been very little research on child alignment or
parental alienation. Instead, most authors have written about these issues from a
rather subjective view. Gardner's first use of the term parental alienation syn­
drome in 1987 was elaborated in his later books (1992,1995). Clawar and Rivlin
(1991) wrote about programmed and brainwashed children in a book published
by the American Bar Association Family Law Section. Johnston (1993; Johnston
& Campbell, 1988) wrote about children who refused visitation, and others
(Cartwright, 1993; Dunne & Hedrick, 1994; Garrity & Baris, 1994; Lund, 1995;
Turkat, 1994; Ward & Harvey, 1993) have written about the psychological issues
of parental alienation.
Each of these writers focuses on a continuum of alienation as originally
identified by Gardner and suggests that these families are quite troublesome for
the courts. There is a theme in these articles that mothers are more typically the
alienating parent and fathers more typically the alienated parent. The alienating
parent is portrayed as feeling rage and vindictiveness toward the alienated
parent, and the child gets, as Wallerstein and Kelly (1980) said, "swept up" in
this rage. In the most severe cases, these parents are seen as having a funda­
mental psychopathology. The effect of this alienation is dramatic on children.
From the writings, it appears that the children who are most susceptible to
alienation are passive and dependent and generally feel a strong need to
psychologically care for the alienating parent. In both the child and alienating
parent, there is a sense of moral outrage at the alienated parent, and there is
typically a fusion of feelings between the alienating parent and child such that
they talk about the alienated parent as having hurt "us."
The long-term impact of alienation on children and families has not been
well researched. The general view is that children in such families are likely to
develop a variety of pathological symptoms. These include, but are not lim­
ited to,

• splittings in their relationships,

• difficulties in forming intimate relationships,

• a lack of ability to tolerate anger or hostility with other relationships,