An Attachment Model of Parental Alienation
Context: Dr Craig Childress introduced a vastly improved model of parental alienation in 2014, based on attachment theory. It is more accurately called "pathogenic parenting". It operates at a deeper psychological level and replaces (or possibly complements) the Gardner Model from the 1980s. It shows that severe parental alienation is simply a manifestation of standard and established forms of pathologies. The attachment model's explanatory power and precision are remarkable, and it offers insights for identifying children and treating who have been emotionally abused. The model specifies a set of three psychological symptoms (more conveniently described in checklist format) and provides psychological explanation for how bad parenting causes these symptoms and why a parent would use bad parenting. It is a theoretical formulation. No one else has provided an alternative explanation for how a child could end up with these symptoms. No one has pointed to a specific case where a child had these symptoms but they were caused by something else.
Significance: All licensed mental health professionals are obligated to understand it by virtue of their state licensing (boundaries of competence) it is a game changer. The valid underlying clinical construct can no longer be ignored or dismissed.
Summary of the Attachment Model: In brief the attachment model is the intersection of three layers: family systems, personality disorder, and the attachment system. The narcissistic/(borderline) parent psychologically decompensates into persecutory delusional beliefs because of activation of excessive anxiety surrounding the perceived interpersonal rejection and perceived abandonment and inadequacy associated with the divorce. The child is triangulated into the conflict. The induced disruption of the child's attachment system produces a characteristic set of three child symptom features, listed below. These precise clinical indicators form a unique signature, differentiated form other forms of child abuse. These are severe cases where a parent with borderline personality disorder to narcissistic personality disorder has decompensated into persecutory delusions that the other parent is abusive. A longer summary is also available.
The Book: Dr Childress describes his model in his book An Attachment-Based Model of Parental Alienation: Foundations. You can read the overview from pages 17-22, the first chapter, or a News Release . See also the Childress Institute.
Differential Diagnosis of Pathogenic Parenting: Dr. Childress explains the differential diagnosis procedure.
The Collected Works of Dr Childress: An index of 3 published books, over 60 online blog posts, over 60 online documents, and over 40 online videos including two university invited Master's Lectures
Uses Only Accepted Psychology: The attachment model relies only on universally accepted, standard, scientific psychological principles and constructs, documented in approximately 60 standard works of professional psychology. It uses list of standard pathologies. It simply connects the dots in DSM-5, and in doing so, sidesteps all controversy. Every mental health provider is, in essence, already trained in it. There is nothing new. Mental health providers, by virtue of their licensing, are required to understand it (boundaries of competence). By contrast, the Gardner model uses "new" behavioral indicators such as "presence of borrowed scenarios" and the "independent thinker phenomenon". The Gardner model indicators appear no where in standard psychology
See also Dr. Childress' presentation at the Annual National AFCC conference in Boston in June 2017: Overview1, Overview2, and slide deck parts a, b, and c
Dr. Childress' Video Lecture at California Southern University in 2014 and associated slide deck:
1. Slide Deck for both talks (in pdf format) 95 slides for the two lectures above, in a pdf file. Other than the book, this slide deck is the fastest way to learn about the attachment model of parental alienation. Listen to the talk for more details.
2. Theoretical Foundations for an Attachment-based model of "Parental Alienation" A two hour talk on July 28th, 2014 with convenient written transcript
3. Diagnosis and Treatment of Attachment Based "Parental Alienation" A two hour talk on November 21, 2014 with convenient written transcript
Dr. Childress' Slide Decks from PASYMPOSIUM2017: Morning Keynote and Afternoon Part 2
See also observations from the American Psychiatric Association on tendencies of parents with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder.
42 page description for mental health professionals: Re-conceptualizing Parental Alienation (2013, 31 pages) or DSM-5 Diagnosis of Parental Alienation Process (2013, 42 pages).
For answers to common misunderstandings and complaints about pathogenic parenting, see the frequently asked questions.
Three Diagnostic Child symptom features :
1) a prominent suppression of the normal range functioning of the child’s attachment bonding motivations toward one parent, the targeted rejected parent, with a corresponding hyper bonding motivation expressed by the child toward the allied and favored parent
2) the prominent display in the child’s symptom presentation of a specific set of narcissistic and borderline personality disorder features: grandiosity (judgement of parent), entitlement (child feels justified in inflicting a retaliatory retribution on the targeted-rejected parent for the supposed parental failure), arrogance (contempt for inadequate parent), and absence of empathy (for the rejected parent)
3) an intransigently held, fixed and false belief of the child regarding the fundamental parental inadequacy, and often personal inadequacy, of the targeted rejected parent which the child characterizes as a form of emotional or psychological child abuse by the targeted rejected parent".
In effect, parental alienation is the trans generational transmission of attachment trauma.
For more information on encapsulated delusions, refer to Dr. Childress' facebook article.
27 Training Videos on Parental Alienation Dynamics, from Sept 2014, each about 10 minutes long
Click the line above to get an index of the 27 videos. Here are summaries or a transcript of three of the more interesting videos:
Unofficial Transcription by Howie Dennison 2/23/2016: "This video discusses the child's role in establishing the "Alienation Narrative" and the child's role in creating that narrative in the service of narcissistically disorganized personality disorder of the alienating parent. I start by interviewing the targeted parent and begin to hear the family system process of triangulating the child into the marital conflict, allied with one parent, and possibly the enmeshed psychological relationship of that parent. At the very least, I am beginning to suspect the triangulation alliance feature, and I might also begin to hear the beginnings of that splitting dynamic that would be suggestive of a borderline personality disorder process within the family system. Then I interview the child, with an interest in differential diagnosis, and I begin to hear confirmation of the triangulated alliance and also beginning to get evidence of the enmeshed psychological relationship with the alienating parent. The child over idealizes that parent and is hateful toward the targeted parent and in that process of wonderful idealized parent and horrible hated parent and often times the child will use the word I hate that parent is the beginnings of that splitting dynamic. And so when the hear the potential of splitting of all good and all wonderful I am then beginning to look for a personality disorder and given the nature of this type of family dynamic I am looking for a narcissitically organized personality disorder with borderline features and potentially either, depending on how you conceptualize it, paranoid personality features or a persecutory delusional disorder. And so then I interview the allied parent and I get that narcissistic presentation I am all the wonderful parent and the other parent is inadequate and horrible and if I try to challenge that and say I see the child as being the problem the narcissistically organized parent just denies it and will avoid identifying the child as having any problem and the child presents no behavior problems at all. Let me discuss how all that functions within the necessary narrative for the narcissistically organized parent. At the seed core of narcissism is a fundamental sense of self inadequacy and the narcissistic self inflation is the defensive process against this tremendous sense of inadequacy. And what happens in this alienation dynamic because the child is in an enmeshed relationship with this parent the child expresses this narcissistically disorganized personality disorder through the narrative actions of the child and the child's actions construct this narrative of the targeted parent as being inadequate and abusive and the alienating parent as being wonderful and a superlative parent. And so when the child rejects the targeted parent the child's rejections defines the targeted parent as a bad parent. Why else would the child reject the parent if it wasn't that the parent was so bad. Now if the mental health clinician accepts this presentation they are colluding with the personality disorder and the alienation dynamic that is being created here. They are absolutely missing the relationship processes involved. That is what the child and the alienating parent want us to believe. They are creating the rejection in order to define the targeted parent as an inadequate abusive person. In addition, the child's all wonderful behavior with the allied parent defines that parent as the all wonderful terrific parent great parent which serves the narcissistic inflation of that alienating parent's narcissistically disorganized personality disorder. And so the child's behavior is defining each of those parents within that splitting dynamic. And that definition of the parents services the narcissism of the alienating parent, that I am the all wonderful parent and that core sense of inadequacy is then projected onto the targeted parent where the alienating parent can then reject it in the guise of the targeted parent. Your the inadequate one, not me, I am the all wonderful one additional that borderline process of fear of abandonment is being expressed through the child's rejection of the targeted parent. From the perspective of the narcissistically organized alienating parent, "I am not being rejected, I am being adored. You are the one that is being abandoned, not me" And the fear of the narcissistically organized parent is that someone, somehow, somewhere will recognize that they are an inadequate person. They are bad. They are not OK. And once we recognize that we are going to leave them. And so they get this narcissistic inflation "I am all wonderful and the child is never going to leave me they adore me. I am the wonderful parent. It is the other parent that is being abandoned." So again it is the projection of the abandonment fear or that inadequate fear onto the targeted parent. If as a clinician you miss this that is a serious, serious diagnostic failure on your part. How can you possibly miss such a flamboyant display of a personality disorder? The only potential reason is that you don't know what you're doing. You should begin to recognize the structural family systems process of triangulation alienation and as you begin to explore that you should recognize the seeds of splitting and as you recognize the seeds of the splitting and begin to explore for a personality disorder you should be able to recognize the narcissistic organization and the borderline organization to the relationship parent and recognize this alienation narrative that the child's behavior is defining. And one of the key elements in recognizing this is looking at the authenticity of that child's definition of the targeted parent "
Unofficial Transcription Intro by Howie Dennison 2/23/2016:This video discusses diagnostic information collected during the child interview process. (The child's authenticity of rejecting the targeted parent.) The child provokes the parent, and the child uses the parent's response as justification for their anger. "I hate my parent because they disciplined me when I verbally abused them." The truth is that if you look at behavioral sequences, the child is not the victim of abuse, but the child is the perpetrator of the abuse.
Unofficial Transcription by Howie Dennison 2/23/2016: "Hello I'm doctor Craig Childress in the clinical psychologist in Pasadena California. I work with children and families around issues of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, angry oppositional defiance disorder, parent-child relationship problems, marital problems things like that. In this video series up discussing a particular type of parent-child relationship problem that I refer to as a parental alienation dynamic. In this video segment what I'd like to discuss is clinical competence issues related to the diagnosis the axis1 diagnoses of the delusional disorder and a shared psychotic disorder. Now the persecutory delusional disorder of the alienating parent and the shared psychotic disorder the child that shared through the enmeshed psychological relationship represent major axis one disorders in they fall under the category psychotic disorders. And that sounds pretty severe. That's the same category that other diagnoses such as schizophrenia fall under. And it is, it's a pretty significant in severe category of diagnoses. the issue becomes how did a clinician miss such a serious diagnosis. And here's my guess as to how that happened. First, child's therapists are not particularly sensitized to working with the psychotic disorder. The psychotic disorders tend to show up as schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and they show up in late adolescence and involve major mental disabilities. And so there's a different class of psychotherapists that work with that than the ones who work with child and parent-child relationship problems we see you in child therapy and we tend to see angry opposition kids, family problems, things like that, and we don't tend to see psychotic disorders. And so there's just not a lot of experience in child therapists working with psychotic disorders. Now for my own personal background, I worked for 15 years on a major UCLA research project regarding schizophrenia and we would track schizophrenic patients from their first psychotic break for about three or four years and so it was a longitudinal project. And through my association with that project I was trained to clinical competence in a particular clinical interview scale called the brief psychiatric rating scale bprs and that rating scales was about 18 items as I recall that 18 symptoms such as depression, anxiety, bizarre behavior, as well as the psychotic symptoms, unusual thought content, which is delusions, hallucinations and and conceptual disorganizations. And it was a seven-point scale. Anything rated 4 and above was considered psychotic on the psychotic scales. Anything below 4 was considered sort of normal range, maybe unusual, but still in range. and what we would do on that really scale is we will be making fine scaled discriminations such as on unusual thought content for delusions. The difference between a 4 and a 5. 4 is an encapsulated delusion that's just barely over threshold, whereas a five is more of a bizarre delusion. Six is okay, now we have significant delusional processes that are flooding all over the place. And seven is pretty severe, generally for hallucinations or conceptual disorganizations. So were making fun scale discriminations between 3 and a 4, 4 and a 5, 5 and a 6. So we were being trained to clinical competence in making these rating. So I've been sensitized what delusions look like at various scales. And this particular delusion, this persecutory delusion, I recognize, it'd be kind of tough to identify okay, because it's not a bizarre delusion. It's what's called a non bizarre delusion. Is it possible this other parents is inadequate and abusive? Oh absolutely, that's within the realm of possibility, so it's a non-bizarre delusion. The definition of a delusion is a fixed false belief system that is non-responsive to contrary evidence, can't change it, and it's fixed and it's false. and it doesn't respond to the contrary evidence. That's a delusion. In this case it's an encapsulated solution, so it's a non bizarre encapsulated delusion, where encapsulated means its targeted around a very specific area. And when you get an encapsulated delusion, the person can look totally fine. They can go to work, they can talk, then can look totally fine. They can talk to people and socialize at a party and you'd never know the delusional. But you get to that one specific area where they have the delusion and you go, oh my goodness that's really unusual. That's called encapsulated delusion, and on the BPRS we would rate it a 4. And so the persecutory delusion it's not bizarre. And so it's not calling attention itself. In addition the child's behavior within the in the alienation narrative confirms that delusion. Okay, that the child in rejecting the targeted parents and yet being wonderful for the alienating parent and likely being wonderful at school and wonderful in the session present is being very hyper mature, very verbal , very well-organized. This is a wonderful kid. And yet the kid the kid is really angry at this one parent. There must be a reason for it! And since they are not generally angry, it must have something to do with this one parent. And so the the child's behavior confirms the delusional disorder of the persecutory inadequate target parent. That's its function of that child's behavior. It is part of the whole personality disorder process the alienating parent. And so because the child's behavior confirms the the presentation, and because it's an encapsulated and because it's not a bizarre delusion and because the child therapist typically doesn't have much experience with psychotic disorder or recognizing delusions, they simply miss recognizing the psychotic disorder they just simply missed the delusional disorder. Now what should have happened though is at the splitting dynamic should have alerted the child therapist to look for personality disorder and in looking for the personality disorder we should recognize the borderline narcissistic and paranoid features and when you get to the child and you begin to look at that behavior sequence of the child and realize that the child is not the victim of abuse but the perpetrator abuse begin everything begins to fall apart. And as you look at the targeted parents and you do behavioral analysis of what the interactions look like and you realize that the target apparent is totally normal range parenting, and yet you look over at the alienating parent you have this presentation of narcissistically organized inflation and you have a splitting dynamic and you have this sort of paranoid malevolent intent it all begins to come together. But because the therapist missed the splitting dynamic, because the therapist missed the the personality disorder, they will then also miss the delusional disorder. Now, I have a serious problem with that. Okay well I could understand how the diagnosis was missed, it was never the less missed. That's a problem, because the problem is it hurts the child. It leaves the child in an enmeshed psychological relationship with us seriously disturbed parent, who has a significant axis 1 and axis 2 psychiatric disturbance. That's going to harm the child. In addition, in missing those diagnoses, the therapist begins to collude with the pathological process of the alienation, and so it hurts the child but also hurts the targeted parents who is the healthier parent, who is then deprived of a relationship with their child. And so while I can understand how the child therapist missed these diagnosis, the clinical diagnosis, or the DSM diagnosis of the personality disorder and the psychotic disorder, I can understand how they missed it, that doesn't make it OK. People got hurt. If you are going do this work, you need to be competent. It's okay for it's okay for a lawyer to miss recognizing a psychotic disorder or a personality disorder, it's okay for our a banker to miss, or a stockbroker, but it is not okay for psychotherapists to miss it. That's our job. And so what's just to me is a l level professional competence, and so in the next step segment, I'm going to be discussing issues of professional risk management regarding that."
Dr Childress Speaks with the Child - A series of 8 short videos for alienated children, each about 10 minutes long:
1. Dr Childress Speaks with the Child - Introduction
...
Here is an annotated list of a few of these articles from Dr Childress' blog mentioned above:
Understanding the Child's Experience "Your child loves you with all their heart. Your are the world to them. They are lost. They are living in a psychologically dangerous world of ever-changing truth and reality. They must do what it takes to survive in the dangerous psychological world of living with the narcissistic/(borderline) parent .We must be able to protectively separate the child from the pathology of the narcissistic/(borderline) parent before we can restore the child’s authenticity." March 2015
Identifying Pathology The reluctance to want to label a parent with a personality order does great harm. Also, “under conditions of unrelieved adversity and failure, narcissists may decompensate into paranoid disorders. Owing to their excessive use of fantasy mechanisms, they are disposed to misinterpret events and to construct delusional beliefs. Unwilling to accept constraints on their independence and unable to accept the viewpoints of others, narcissists may isolate themselves from the corrective effects of shared thinking. Alone, they may ruminate and weave their beliefs into a network of fanciful and totally invalid suspicions. Among narcissists, delusions often take form after a serious challenge or setback has upset their image of superiority and omnipotence. They tend to exhibit compensatory grandiosity and jealousy delusions in which they reconstruct reality to match the image they are unable or unwilling to give up. Delusional systems may also develop as a result of having felt betrayed and humiliated. Here we may see the rapid unfolding of persecutory delusions and an arrogant grandiosity characterized by verbal attacks and bombast"
Re-conceptualizing Parental Alienation This 2013 article describes the psychological and interpersonal processes of "parental alienation" from an attachment system framework. It addresses the clinical features of "parental alienation" entirely within standard and established psychological constructs:
The Attachment System
Induced Supression
Inducing the child's symptoms
The Child's personality disorder symptoms
Parental Personality Disorder Traints
Mis-attribution of Meaning
Parental Regulation of Anxiety
Reenactment of Attachment Trauma
Treatment Implications
Phases of Therapy 1.) Rescue the Child 2.) Recovery of the chil's self authenticity 3.) Restoration of the Parent-Child Relationship 4.) Reunification with the Pathogenic Parent
Ju-jitsu Parenting: Fighting back from the down position 2013. 23 pages. Dr Childress acknowledges that communication dynamics associated with "parental alienation" are filled with unavoidable traps and intense double-bind control dynamics. Since targeted parents are pummeled in every communication, Dr Childress offers suggestions for a different approach to parenting communication.
An invitation for writing collobaration Dr Childress invites help for getting papers published in peer reviewed journals
Technical Discussion of Attachment Pathology: Personality Pathology and Disorganized Attachment A Letter to Mental Health Professionals, Feb 2015.
How Dr Childress Diagnoses Parental Alienation This is a more modern, attachment based model of alienation that uses concepts that are standard in Freudian Psychology
Childress: Documenting Attachment Based Parent Alienation in a Legal Context
Dr Childress Treatment (kids put in custody of targeted parents until children's behavior improved) How to Eliminate PA - kids put in custody of alienated parent until the alienation stops. Mexico just passed a law so that the alienated parent becomes the custodial parent.
The Hostage Metaphor I have just added another article entitled "The Hostage Metaphor" to the Parental Alienation section of my website at www.drcachildress.org. This new article discusses the processes by which the child psychologically surrenders to the psychopathology of the narcissistic/(borderline) parent, and it ends with a focus on the child protection issues associated with attachment-based "parental alienation." This is one of my personal favorite articles, perhaps because I am giving voice to the child's perspective.'~ Dr. C. Childress
Professional to professional letter - Hostile Rejecting Child VariantDr Childress lays it all out and comes closer to figuring it out than anyone else I have ever seen. This explains the theory behind parental alienation, and everything else. Or the hyper anxiety variant Professional to Professional Letter, Hyper-anxiety variant
Stark Reality Children must first be protected from retaliation from the targeting parent before they can be expected to open an emotional connection with the targeted parent.
The Appointment of Minor's Counsel Must Stop Insightful description of the harms done to a child by the Guardian ad Litem System
Splitting September 2014. When children or parents use a defense mechanism of viewing someone as 100% bad or 100% good, there is psychological distress underneath the symptom.