This presentation was given at a parental alienation symposium at the International Congress of Psychology 2016 in Yokohama, Japan. featuring an International expert panel. This presentation features disruptive strategies and tactics that may facilitate reunification in certain cases and where all other options have been exhausted.

1. A Hopeful Presentation on
Reconnection and Reunification
after a History of Parental
Alienation
A Disruptive Approach to a Disruptive Social Phenomena in
Australia
International Congress of Psychology (ICP), Yokohama 2016
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2. A Problematic Context for PA in
Australia
• By definition the favoured/alienating parent may be uncooperative
• Alienated children may not engage willingly with reunification initiatives
• An over-empowered/powerless child too young to appreciate choice,
responsibility & consequence.
• Child inclusive-child focused practice-favour children’s subjective testimony.
• Conflates alignment and alienation
• Formulation of ‘alienated child’ reaction to separation context (coalition
formation, rejected parent implicated, e.g. rigid, non-empathic, conflict avoidant)
• Family law often does not order/enforce interventions to place alienated
children with their rejected parents when it is against the children’s will.
• A relationship issue not an abuse problem-unlike FV/DV
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3. A Problematic Context for PA in
Australia
• Evidence based programmes (e.g. FBAC, FRRP) often out of reach or not
ordered
• Unfamiliarity with PA assessment and ‘fear’ of ordering counter-intuitive
interventions.
• ‘Don’t know what to do’-when confronted by harsh, irrational parental rejection.
• Alienation has no social discourse that proscribes it-in contrast with FV/DV
• PA formulation- scientific-pathological
• FV formulation social-philosophical-phenomenological.
• A traumatised target/alienated parent may be the only one to seek
intervention/resolution
• Disenfranchised trauma/abuse, social/personal invalidation
• Target/alienated parent-becomes the problem instead of the solution.
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4. ICP2016©DialogueInGrowthPty.Ltd.2016
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Favoured/Alienating
Parent (FP)
Rejected/Alienated
Parent (RP)
Alienation
'Insult’
Disorganised-Chaotic Attachment
Alienation Processes
Denigration
Loyalty conflict
Dependence-
parentification
Exposure/involvment in
adult concepts
Climate/environment of
fear or threat
Isolation
Reconstructing memories
Contact monitoring,
interference
Coaching
Interruptive Expessions
of Alienation (appraisal
of other)
Harsh. irrational rejection
'Independent thinker"
'Parroting'
False allegations
Rejection of extended
family
Demotion of RP
Somatic expression (fear,
disgust, repugnance)
Self Interruptive
Split
Social Trauma
Exploitation
Marginalisation
Social exclusion
Destruction of
identity
Powerlessness
Child
Child (self)
Appraisal
Emotionally unsafe
Insecure
Isolated
Invalidated
Not accepted
Fear of rejection

5. PA Principles
• ALIENATING ‘INSULT’: A SUPERVENING process, which :
• Ruptures child’s secure attachment with a loved parent.
• Attachment injury to rejected parent
• SELF-INTERRUPTIVE SPLIT:
• Blocks normal expression of primary adaptive love (appraisal of self)
• ALIENATION INTERRUPTION:
• dismissive-fearful avoidance, harsh, irrational rejection
• Secondary maladaptive emotion. (appraisal of other)
• Rejected/alienated parent: social insult, traumatic dys-regulation
• EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY:
• Rejecting a loved parent- an invalidating responsibility for powerless adolescent’s &
power-seeking teenagers
• SOCIAL INSULT
• Social conditions favourable to alienation
• Social trauma-social injustice, disenfranchised oppression, state collusion, social contr
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6. Socio-Existential-EFT PA Principles
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‘Relentless and
irresistible empathy’:
Empathic validation,
conjecture, evocation:
Evoke primary love
Attachment reframe:
angry-fearful
rejection
=maladaptive
reconnection
seeking
‘Dialectical construction:
between maladaptive
rejection and primary
adaptive love.
Engage choice
&
responsibility.
Do not accept
rejection
Resolve
alienated
parent’s
disenfranchised
social trauma
‘Game changers’:
Disrupt & prevent
sedimentation of
distorted values &
beliefs.

7. Research into Parental Alienation as
a Social Construct
• SOCIAL INSULT
• Social conditions favourable to alienation
• Social injustice, disenfranchised oppression, violation of social contract,
exploitation of privilege (Pease, B. 2010, Rawls, J. 1971, Young, I.M, 1990) )
• SOCIAL TRAUMA
• De-identified as parents, invalidated, implicated in their own rejection
• Oppression: exploitation, marginalisation, social exclusion (Young, I.M,
1990)
• Focus on the child-solution is the rejected parent
• SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION of PARENTAL ALIENATION
• PA as an issue between society and the individual-beyond pathology
• Social phenomenology of PA-equivalent to FV/DV
• The other side of social connection/belonging-expectancy and reward
(Seeman, M. 1959)
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8. The Traumatised Rejected Parent
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…Is the key to any reconnection/reunification
…Are traumatised because rejection by alienation
triggers:
Destruction of
social identity
Social isolation
and invalidation
An existential
violation of
cherished values
and beliefs
Self-destructive, self
deprecating,
negative self-
confirming
intrapersonal
processes
A rupture of
the implicit
social
covenant
between
society and
the individual
Re- engaging a profoundly wounded
‘withdrawer’
Create a social
discourse
about what
happened
Standard trauma
interventions
designed to re
engage a sense of
identity, self-love.
Re-engineer
cherished values
and beliefs
New social
identity
Reconcile
abuse of
power

9. ‘12 (non-linear) Steps’
Step
• 1. Create a safe and secure base for
the children:
• 2. Develop strategies to counter
alienation processes
• 3. Relentless and Irresistible Empathy
• 4. From moral outrage to
compassionate outcomes.
• 5. Create Constructive Tension
(Dialectical Construction):
• 6. Make no emotional demands.
Strategy
• 1. Do not engage conflict, TP should become a
secure base. Protect child from exposure to FP
• 2. Establish own relationships with
institutions, validate child’s relationships with
BOTH parents
• 3. Empathically evoke primary love. Use
empathic validation, conjecture, evocation,
memories of past events.
• 4. Resolve rejected/alienated parent’ s intra-
psychic, interpersonal and social trauma
• 5. Keep child (randomly) in contact with
conflicting emotional states
• 6. Do not not set up implicit ‘demands’ for
emotional validation.
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10. ‘12 (non-linear) Steps’
Step
• 7. Disrupt the Alienation Process.
• 8. Appreciate alienating parents
emotional needs and motivations.
• 9. Focus on your children’s needs and
how they are affected.
• 10. Understanding the infinity loop-how
FP/AP & TP are STILL connected
• 11. Child Development issues relevant
to your parent-child rupture
• 12. Parental Alienation Education:
Knowledge is your strength.
Strategy
• 7. ‘Game Changing’ disruptive strategies
to prevent sedimentation of alienation
‘interrupt’.
8. Favoured parents (FP’s) need to feel
‘in control’ = anxiety.
• 9. Keep children out of the ‘middle’.
Dissolve loyalty conflict, appreciate
parentification
• 10.Stop Target Paremts (TP’s) playing
into conflict fomented by FP
• 11. Recognise that child is exercising
power in response to age & stage
powerlessness. New discourse focusing
upon child’s agency.
• 12. Appreciate the 7-stage alienation
process model & alienation
interactional cycle
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11. 7 Stages to Alienating a Child
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Create a Loyalty ConflictStage 3Force the Child to align strongly with
one parent against the other
Force The Child to
Resolve the
Conflict
Manipulate the child to turn away from
the formerly loved parent
Stage 4
Create the Alienating EnvironmentStage 1Discount the role of the other parent
Use isolation, conflict and power
Convince the Child to Contrary
‘Truth’
Denigrate the target parent Stage 2

12. 7 Stages to Alienating a Child
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The status quo for Legal, Social and Financial Services Stage 7 Enforce
Severance
Sever the Previously
Loving RelationshipStage 6Make the child unhappy and unwilling to be with
the target parent
Alienate the ChildStage 5Support the child to engage in irrational,
unfounded, exaggerated criticisms of the
rejected parent
When parents
often seek help

13. Case Study
• PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING CASE STUDY IS BASED
UPON ACTUAL EXAMPLES AND CONTEXTS.
BECAUSE OF THE NATURE OF PARENTAL ALIENATION,
THE TACTICS, METHODS OF ALIENTION AND THEREFORE
THE COHTEXTS ARE COMMON ACROSS MANY
SITUATIONS.
THE PRESENTATION DESCRIBED HERE OCCURS
FREQUENTLY AND TYPICALLY FALLS OUTSIDE LEGAL
REMEDIES.WHILST YOU MAY RECOGNISE YOURSELF IN
THIS EXAMPLE, ANY RESEMBLANCE IS PURELY
COINCIDENTAL.
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14. Case Study
• Adolescent (15 y.o) boy ‘Aaron’
• ‘Equal’ shared care ordered by the FCA with “Jane”, the mother
and with his father ‘Eugene’
• Alienation processes: Oppositional parenting, contact
interference, adult concepts, isolation, exaggeration
• Staged argument: ‘Aaron’ now living with his father and does
not want to see his mother again.
• Communication controlled by ‘Eugene’.-e.g. ’POS-parent over
shoulder’ interactions.
• ‘Jane’s’ attempts had made matters worse.
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15. Outmaneuvering PA
• Transforming social identity
• Recognising PA dynamics,
• Rebuilding social validation & identity
• Constructing an empowering social narrative
• Oppression-self repression to activist/advocate for alienated
child
• Affirming self-agency, responsibility and choice.
• Self-validation, conditions of worth, resolve social & attachment
injury
• Reframing rejection as maladaptive attachment seeking
• Attachment reframes poor concept of self underlying dismissive
avoidance
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16. Outmaneuvering PA
• Disobeying (carefully) ‘edicts’
• Covert attempts value/validate that the child wants a
relationship
• The ‘game changer’-surprise visits
• A powerful message that the child is worth risking all
• evokes primary love-dialectical construction
• Empathy using memories of past events
• Past events evoke ‘interrupted’ experience of primary love
• Establishing independent relationships/credibility with schools
• Acknowledge and engages powerlessness-empowering
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17. 12 Months Later-no miracles but…
• ‘Jane’ and ‘Aaron exchange semi-regular e-mail
communications
• ‘Jane’ and ‘Aaron meet semi regularly by arrangement-may be
covert
• ‘Eugene’ and his partner continue attempts to control and
exclude ‘Jane’.
• New discourse with ‘Aaron’ focused upon his development,
agency, authenticity, choice and responsibility
• ‘Jane’ reconciled with herself, ‘socially re-identified’ and no
longer triangulated into an abusive system
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