The Child in PAS

 

Children of Divorce

Most children and adolescents of divorce are eager to have an ongoing relationship with both parents. In a nonclinical sample of 131 children from 60 divorce families, the majority of children were eager to visit their noncustodial fathers and often wanted more time than the usual every other-weekend allowed (5). This finding held at follow-ups 18 months and 5 years later. For children whose fathers did not take much of an interest in them, their longing for both parents was very painful. Where the father did take an interest, 20 per cent of children were in considerable conflict about visiting and 11 percent were genuinely reluctant to visit, most notably those who were between 9 and 12 years of age. Nineteen per cent of the children who were reluctant or refusing to visit were aligned with one parent in actively doing battle against the other parent. Children in these alignments came to share the views and outrage of the parent with whom the child identified, often the parent who felt abandoned and rejected in the divorce. These children rejected the parent who was perceived as deserting the family, despite a previously close, loving relationship with that parent. Children in alignments were found to be less psychologically healthy than those whose divorce adjustment allowed them to maintain their affection for both parents.

Children's Alignments in High Conflict Families

Johnston and Campbell's research on divorce families in high conflict for three years or more found a measurable degree of alignment between children and one parent in 35 per cent to 40 per cent of children from 7 to 14 years of age (6). Similar ratios were obtained by Lampel, who studied latency-age children participating in custody evaluations (7). Comparing aligned children with non-aligned children, Lampel found that the aligned children tested as angrier, less well adjusted, and less able to conceptualize complex situations. They expressed greater self confidence, however, possibly reflecting the relief obtained by opting for a simplified, relatively black-and-white solution, as opposed to feeling 'caught in the middle' of parental conflicts. Published in 1996, this article of Lampel refers to Gardner's work on PAS.

Children Who Reject One Parent

Ten years earlier, Lampel reported on 18 consecutively referred high conflict divorce families, including a group of children who actively rejected one parent (8). In these seven cases, the rejected parent was the father. Lampel found the child's lack of normal ambivalence noteworthy in these seven cases and further observed intense collusion between mother and child. Lampel implemented a family intervention strategy which treated these children's reactions as a phobia with hysterical features. One child who was placed with the rejected parent for six to eight weeks while Lampel worked intensively with all family members reported a marked reduction in symptomatology. Of the remaining cases treated with phobia reduction techniques, results ranged from minor improvement to deterioration. In the three cases where intervention clearly failed, Lampel concluded it was because the mother's collusive involvement with the child was too strong.

Children Who Refuse Visitation

According to Johnston in 1993, 'It is surprising that such a perplexing and serious problem as children's refusal to visit has received so little systematic attention by researchers' (9). In a study focused specifically on this problem, Johnston recognized Gardner's work on PAS. Results of research by Johnston and her colleagues led to the conclusion that children's resistance or refusal to visit a nonresidential parent after separation and divorce is an overt behavioral symptom that can have its roots in multiple and often interlocking psychological, developmental and family systemic processes. Clawar and Rivlin articulated similar findings in their study published two years earlier.

Developmental Issues of Children Who Refuse Visitation

Analysis of data from 70 high conflict divorce families enabled Johnston and her colleagues to identify specific developmental issues for each age group which can impact children's reluctance and refusal to visit. Emotional disturbance of the primary parent, usually the mother, was found to exacerbate developmental effects. For 2 to 3 year-olds, age appropriate separation anxiety from the mother was found to be a factor in resistance to visitation. In normal development, children this age have not yet developed an internalized image of the primary parent figure.

Their sense of time is not yet sufficiently developed for them to understand that they will be getting back to the primary parent within a comfortable time frame. Parents may blame each other when children this age display resistance to visitation, even though such problems may be due in part to developmental factors.

Johnston found that 3 to 6 year-old children in high conflict divorce tended to shift their allegiances depending on which parent they were with. This may contribute to children's difficulty in transitioning from one home to another. Normally, children in this age group have not yet learned to entertain two conflicting points of view. As a result, when the child is told in mother's home that father does not provide enough money, the child will temporarily align with mother. The child will shift allegiance to father when told in his home that mother just wastes the money. Children from 3-6 years of age become easily confused and can readily excite concern and chaos by telling different stories to each parent. In addition, the normal course of development is for children's preferences to shift back and forth from one parent to the other as they grow older and sort out their gender identity. Children in the 3-6 age range experience a strong drive to align with the opposite sex parent and to compete with and to exclude the same sex parent. In divorce, the young child's developmentally normal fantasies about eliminating the same sex parent may be fulfilled. This creates intense guilt and anxiety for the child, which can contribute to resistance to visitation.

Children of divorce in the 6 to 7 year age range are more likely to suffer from loyalty conflicts, and tobe concerned about hurting their parents. Such conflicts reflect the normal child's growing sense of morality and capacity to seethings from the viewpoint of another. Children 7 to 9 years of age have begun to develop the capacity to imagine how their parents view them and to experience the cognitive dissonance of their parents' conflicting views. There may be a growing need to resolve such conflicts because children in this age range experience the loyalty conflicts of divorce more acutely.

High conflict divorce children in the 9 to 12 year-old group are particularly vulnerable to forming strong, PAS type alignments with one parent, as they try to 'resolve' their earlier loyalty conflicts. Johnston noted that adults also tended to expect more of children this age, viewing them as 'old enough to take a stand' inparental disputes. Forty-three per cent of these children were in strong alignments and 29 per cent in mild alignments. According to Johnston, these figures approach Gardner's estimate that 90 per cent of the children he has assessed in custody evaluations exhibit varying degrees of PAS. Johnston found that in some cases, parent-child alignments often continue for several years into mid-adolescence. As teenagers, some aligned youngsters develop the capacity to take a more objective, independent stance. However, a significant proportion of high conflict divorce children are unable to withdraw from the parental fights and maintain their stance of rejection and denigration toward the target parent throughout adolescence.

Strong Alignments

Johnston found that 28 to 43 per cent of the 9 to 12 year-olds were in what she termed 'strong alignments', characterized by consistent rejection and denigration of the other parent (9). Children tended to make stronger alliances with the more emotionally dysfunctional parent, who was more likely to be the mother. In Impasses of Divorce, Johnston described children in strong alignments as forfeiting their childhood by merging psychologically with a parent who was raging, paranoid, or sullenly depressed. Factors within the child which contributed to the formation of strong alignments were found to be: (i) need to protect a parent who was decompensating, depressed, panicky or needy; (ii) need to avoid the wrath or rejection of a powerful, dominant parent (often the custodial parent on whom the child was dependent; and (iii) need to hold onto the parent the child was most afraid of losing, for example, a parent who was too self-absorbed or who was only casually involved with the child.

Extreme Alignments

Among children who were refusing visitation, Johnston identified a particularly troubled group of children whom she described as being in 'extreme alignments'. In her most recent book, she and Roseby reserved Gardner's label 'parent alienation syndrome' for these cases (10). Children in extreme alignments were more likely to be viewed as disturbed by parents, teachers and clinicians. These children exhibited bizarre and sometimes destructive behavior. They were more likely to display unintegrated, chaotic attitudes with few workable defenses. Often the child's negative interpretation and distortions of the target parent's character and behavior were found to have a bizarre quality.

Pseudologia Fantastica

Bernet suggested that the century-old concept of pseudologia fantastica is one explanation for elaborate, implausible, untruthful reports of abuse (11). Children who exhibit pseudologia fantastica represent certain fantasies as if they were actual occurrences, although there is little or no reality basis for these stories. Ditrich posited that children who engage in pseudologia fantastica do so in order to defend against the pain of an unbearable, present reality (12).

Failed Separation-Individuation

In a recent book chapter entitled Parental Alignments and Alienation Among Children of High Conflict Divorce Johnston and Roseby opined 'Rather than seeing this syndrome as being induced in the child by an alienating parent, as Gardner does, we propose that these 'unholy alliances' are a later manifestation of the failed separation-individuation process in especially vulnerable children who have been exposed to disturbed family relationships during their early years' (10). These disturbed family relationships are viewed as the byproduct of interparental conflict and narcissistic disturbance of one or both parents. These authors hypothesize that the more extreme forms of parent alienation in early adolescence have their roots in failed separation-individuation from the alienating parent during the earliest years of the child's life. This developmental failure adversely affects the young person's life and developing sense of self. The most important ingredient in certain severe parental alienation cases, according to Johnson and Roseby, is the child's vulnerability and receptivity to the alienating parent, rather than 'conscious, pernicious brainwashing' by an embittered parent.

In contrast to this view, mental health professionals practicing in the forensic arena often find evidence of substantial volitional activity on the part of the alienating parent in severe PAS.

Important Deviations From Usual Developmental Trends

When children who are resistant to visitation deviate from usual developmental trends, it is important to evaluate and understand the reason. Children who form consistent alignments with an alienating parent may never have separated psychologically from that parent. Examples of this are described by Dunne and Hedrick in their study of 16 severe PAS families (2), which was reviewed in Part I. There are a variety of contributing factors to children forming strong parent-child alignments before the highest risk period of 9 to 12 years of age. These factors include: 1) a failed separation-individuation process between parent and child; 2) intense parental pressure; 3) a child with precocious cognitive development who is more sensitive and vulnerable to parental conflict. Children can become aligned with one parent even though there is relatively little overt conflict and estrangement between the parents. Seemingly mild and subtle forms of parental influence can have significant effects, according to Clawar and Rivlin.

Child's Active Contributions in PAS

The fact that Gardner identifies the child as an active participant in the PAS is sometimes overlooked. Active contributions by the child can be part of an effort to take care of an angry, disturbed, or otherwise troubled parent with whom the child is aligned.

Some PAS children manipulate conflicts between the parents for the feeling of power it gives them in the divorce family situation which is otherwise beyond their control. Young adolescents in search of greater freedom may amplify their complaints about a stricter parent to the more permissive one, capitalizing on the permissive parent's eagerness for validation of his or her fixed negative view of the other parent. This reinforces the permissive parent's inability to contain the child and exacerbates acting out behavior. Regardless of the relative contributions to the PAS by the alienating parent or the aligned child, a mutually reinforcing feedback loop may develop which is resistant to outside influence and to reality testing. A self generating 'brainwashing' process results.

In Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP) involving older children, it is the parent who originally initiated the child's factitious illness or victimization. In the context of a continued symbiotic parent/child relationship, older children may then learn to set up this situation themselves, producing factitious symptoms which induce a complicitous response from the MSP parent. Similarly, in moderate to severe PAS, children may learn to get their needs met by fabrication and manipulation. Where there is a particularly enmeshed relationship between the aligned parent and child, the child's legitimate strivings for autonomy are continually under mined.

The Overburdened Child

Divorce almost inevitably burdens children with greater responsibilities and makes them feel less cared for. Children of chronically troubled parents bear a greater burden. They are more likely to find themselves alone and isolated in caring for a disorganized, alcoholic, intensely dependent, physically ill, or chronically enraged parent. The needs of the troubled parent override the developmental needs of the child, with the result that the child becomes psychologically depleted and their own emotional and social progress is crippled. Wallerstein and Blakeslee used the term 'overburdened child' to describe this problem (14). Wallerstein has encountered PAS [personal communication to the author, 1991], but she prefers to conceptualize it from the 'overburdened child' framework.

The Psychologically Battered Child

According to Garbarino et al, psychological maltreatment of children is more likely to occur in families where the atmosphere is one of stress, tension and aggression (15), an apt description of high conflict divorce. The Psychologically Battered Child, published in 1988, does not mention divorce directly but uses such terms as 'marital discord' and 'family breakdown'. The special problems of children of divorce are more fully recognized in a subsequent book by Garbarino and Stott, in which Gardner's work is cited numerous times, including his work on PAS (16).

According to Garbarino et al, psychological maltreatment can be viewed as a pattern of adult behavior which is psychologically destructive to the child, sabotaging the child's normal development of self and social competence. Five types of psychological maltreatment identified by Garbarino et al are adapted for PAS and described below:

1) Rejecting - The child's legitimate need for a relationship with both parents is rejected. The child has reason to fear rejection and abandonment by the alienating parent if positive feelings are expressed about the other parentand the people and activities associated with that parent.

2) Terrorizing - The child is bullied or verbally assaulted into being terrified of the target parent. The child is psychologically brutalized into fearing contact with the target parent and retribution by the alienating parent for any positive feelings the child might have for the other parent. Psychological abuse of this type may be accompanied by physical abuse.

3) Ignoring - The parent is emotionally unavailable to the child, leading to feelings of neglect and abandonment. Divorced parents may selectively withhold love and attention from the child, a subtler form of rejecting which shapes the child's behavior.

4) Isolating - The parent isolates the child from normal opportunities for social relations. In PAS, the child is prevented from participating in normal social interactions with the target parent and relatives and friends on that side of the family. In severe PAS, social isolation of the child sometimes extends beyond the target parent to any social contacts which might foster autonomy and independence.

5) Corrupting - The child is missocialized and reinforced by the alienating parent for lying, manipulation, aggression toward others or behavior which is self destructive. In PAS with false allegations of abuse, the child is also corrupted by repeated involvement in discussions of deviant sexuality regarding the target parent or other family and friends associated with that parent. In some cases of severe PAS, the alienating parent trains the child to be an agent of aggression against the target parent, with the child actively participating in deceits and manipulations for the purpose of harassing and persecuting the target parent. This is particularly likely to occur in what Turkat called Divorce Related Malicious Parent Syndrome (17, 18).

Psychological maltreatment can be mild, moderate or severe. Effects on the child may vary according to the child's age, temperament and ability to access social support. Children who have been psychologically maltreated by the primary caretaker on whom they depend are more likely to exhibit a variety of psychological and social handicaps. These make them vulnerable to detrimental outside influences.