Customer Reviews

The Parental Alienation Syndrome: A Guide for Mental Health and Legal Professionals

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I am the father of two sons who were alienated from me according to the pattern described and analyzed by Dr. Gardner in this book. In the process of fighting in court for 6 years for at least minimal contact with my sons, I did a good deal of research on PAS and even wrote an unpublished book manuscript that dealt in part with PAS. I.e., I know what I am talking about, and not just from the perspective of my own case. I consider Dr. Gardner's book to be a major contribution to social psychology. This book was the first to define and articulate the dynamics of PAS. Dr. Gardner takes great pains to distinguish PAS from other phenomena and to provide one detail after another than can help an observer to diagnose a given case. He shows a keen appreciation for the pressures on the children and the differing behaviors of oldest and younger children. Many of his observations will strike a person going through a PAS case as uncannily predictive. His characterization of the pathological behavior of lawyers, psychologists, and judges in many of these cases is damning. It certainly fit the "professionals" who mishandled our case or used it for their personal gain. Dr. Gardner's prescriptions for reform of the psychological and legal handling of these cases are useful. Equally helpful is his unflappable common sense. He spent years dealing with family problems at US Army bases in Germany and has seen just about every crazy situation imaginable. So he is not fooled, as are many observers, by the endless allegations of the alienating parent against the allegedly hated parent. Nor does he hesitate to put the obsessive denigrators in their place, if need be. My research turned up two sources of statistical evidence that corroborated Dr. Gardner's finding that roughly 9 out of 10 of the alienating parents are the mothers. PAS is one of those phenomena that the media seem incapable of reporting accurately and analytically, or even reporting at all. Yet psychologists are coming to see that it is quite widespread. Indeed, PAS may account for a certain portion of the fathers who are said not to care for their kids. If you want to understand PAS, there is no better place to look than Dr. Gardner's book.

This review will be short by design.There has never been a more important work ever done in matters of emotional child abuse and/or brainwashing where one parent to a divorce wants to alienate their child against the other parent out of spite or revenge. For those parents who become the target of such alienation and who don't understand the sudden hateful and hurtful behavior of their now brainwashed and alienated child toward them, this book will give you the answers you need.It will be for those parents like having an illness that no one can diagnose until one day you find a doctor that can easily spot your condition because of all the easily identifiable symptoms that he alone seems to know where everyone else is groping in the dark for the proper diagnosis. As the author says toward the end of the book..." when I describe these symptoms to parents who have encountered this problem with their children, they all tell me..'It's as if you have been living in my house for the past year'"

My sister found this book a lifesaver.

She does not have a clinical background, but she could finally give a name to what her husband was doing to the children. She was the alienated parent -- a mirror reverse from the traditional.

She highly recommends this author. Also she recommends his followup book **Therapeutic Interventions for Children with Parental Alienation Syndrome** by Richard A. Gardner.

If any part of these books will help my sister get out of her miserable situation, then they are worth their weight in gold.

MjM

If you know of an expert willing to look at our case and testify in court (fully compensated of course), please email us. As a divorced mother, finding the man of my dreams seemed very far away, until it unexpectedly happened in 1994. I got along fine with my ex, and my son saw his dad as often as possible, twice as much as the court papers stated. It never occurred to me to NOT let him go, or to even utter a negative comment about my ex or his new family. My son was thriving with 2 moms, and soon to be 2 dads. However, the mother of my step-son was the opposite of me. She not only withheld visitation, she actually believed she was doing it "for the best interest of her son". She was (is) extremely overprotective of him, yet is not affectionate with him (no hugs/no kisses), must sleep with him, bathe with him *which we believe we got stopped with the help of a psychiatrist when he was 8*, instills fear in him regarding normal childhood activities, ie: riding a bike ("if you ride a bike, a car will hit you and you will die"), swimming ("If you go out of the baby pool, you'll drown even if a grown-up is with you"), amusement park rides, "Those things break all the time and lots of little kids die because they ride them"), and on and on. Of course these conversations the mother had with the child were at the same time she would find out we (dad and stepmom) were going to take the kids swimming, camping, boating, vacation, etc. Thus, the child would refuse to even try anything we had planned. Although she scared him into not riding a bike until he was over 7 years old, she would always duplicate whatever we bought him. (bike, clothing, toys, etc). The boy could also "never answer questions" asked by dad, stepmom, stepbrother, or any other family or friends from "our house". So, when asked his teachers name, his response "I forgot", or "Do you want to go to Bobby's birthday party?" His response, "I don't know". or "What do you want for Christmas/birthday?", his response, "I don't know". It interferes with our every day living. The pressure he is under to NOT have a good time at our home is apparent in his schoolwork and behavior at school (not good). Thus, the school contacts her, not dad, and she has him evaluated for ADHD, without informing psych. of environmental factors that would affect his behavior, thus he is now "officially" ADHD, and on Ritalin. SO, as time went on, and the medication didn't make many changes in his behavior, she had him diagnosed again, this time with ODD, and he's now on another medication, Risperdal ("so he won't be compulsive" says his mom). However, dad was never informed of the testing, prescribing of medication, etc., until it was too late to do anything about it. School information, medical information, extra-curricular activity info., have been difficult and sometimes impossible to get (yes, is joint custodial parent). WE know what is happening, but so far have been unable to make the "whole big picture" come out to anyone who can make a difference. This book will make a difference to us and this child, we only wish we had known about PAS a long, long time ago. Many thanks to those who made this book possible, and best wishes to those of you who must buy this book, may it help you as it will help us. To any judges/mediators/court appointed guardians, etc. Keep an open mind and do not take everything you are told at face value. The child cannot speak how he truly feels, as he is in fear for his own well-being and fear of abandonment. Thank you.

Dr. Gardner has studied this controversial syndrome extensively, and is one of the few people willing to talk about it publicly. Currently going through this with my daughter and her mother, this book has helped me recognize happenings that I would have otherwise dismissed. I highly recommend this book for anyone going through "difficulties" with children who are from divorced, separated, or single-parent families. Dr. Gardner uses real-world examples to explain situations and explores this subject in great detail. Although he has targeted this book for legal and mental health professionals, any parent who fits into the above category would benefit.

Despite its obvious biases against the legal profession and against mothers, it has excellent descriptions of the signs of parental alientaion and the most aggressive and descriptive strategies to use against alienating parents. If you can get beyond Gardner's obsession about having parental alientation accepted as a syndrome and recognize how very real parental alienation is, then you will find what Gardner has to say most valuable.

56% of the experts who compile the (DSM) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual have ties to the pharmaceutical industry. 20 million Americans suffer from an undiagnosed and unrecognized disorder: restless leg syndrome (RLS) Does this mean the disorder doesn't exist?

(PAS) is characterized by a cluster of symptoms that usually appear together in the child, especially in the severe types.
1. The child denigrates the alienated parent with foul language and severe oppositional behavior.
2. The child offers weak, absurd, or frivolous reasons for his or her anger.
3. The child is sure of him or herself and doesn't demonstrate ambivalence, i.e. love and hate for the alienated parent, only hate.
4. The child exhorts that he or she alone came up with ideas of denigration. The "independent-thinker" phenomenon is where the child asserts that no one told him to do this.
5. The child supports and feels a need to protect the alienating parent.
6. The child does not demonstrate guilt over cruelty towards the alienated parent.
7. The child uses borrowed scenarios, or vividly describes situations that he or she could not have experienced.
8. Animosity is spread to the friends and/or extended family of the alienated parent.

There is a good analogy between PAS children and those who have been removed from their homes and seduced into secluding themselves in cults. To think that one can provide such youngsters simply with psychotherapy - while they still remain living in the cult compound is simpleminded and even grandiose. Even if the child were treated seven sessions a week, one session each day, all of the remaining time would be spent in the compound with ongoing exposure to the cult indoctrinations. PAS children need deprogramming just like cult children, and the deprogramming is likely to be effective when the child is removed from direct exposure to the indoctrinators. This is the only hope for the child in the severe category of PAS.

This is an excellent book, well thought out and highly professional.
(unlike the "thera-puke" style of pathetic **anonymous** reviews entered here, or under the usual pseudonyms)
One word of caution: If you are the alienated parent do not count on any support from Courts, Social Services or Church when you mention Parental Alienation. Get yourself a lawyer and therapists who will accept it, and fight with you. Nothing will happen on your own.

If you send "officials" this this book, they will most likely not read it.
If you appeal to "oficials" to help, they will probably (quite literally) ignore you.
Your best bet is to become involved with one of the PAS "self-help" groups. There's not much you can do to help your kids, but you can help yourself that way. And helping yourself will, eventually, help them.

A dad of two young adults, who suffered from PAS since well before the Divorce 6 years ago.

The 2nd edition of this seminal book (first edition published in 1992) was published in 1998. Its author, child psychiatrist Richard A. Gardner, unfortunately died an "untimely" death in 2003.

The prolific scope of Dr. Gardner's professional scholarship is convincingly displayed by Dr. Gardner's authorship of 50 books - not to mention innumerable journal articles - about, inter alia, the Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), the medical effects of divorce, and psychotherapy with children. The staggering scope of Dr. Gardner's professional scholarship accords Dr. Gardner with considerable scholarly credibility and authority that towers above those who irresponsibly and speciously seek to discredit or ignore Dr. Gardner's pioneering concept, definition and scholarly explication of the Parental Alienation Syndrome.

It comes as no surprise to me that when I conducted an Internet search to access Dr. Gardner's website, I found Dr. Gardner's website has been incorporated (with acknowledgment) into the website of Dr. Richard A. Warshak, author of the immensely popular book about PAS entitled DIVORCE POISON, and Dr. Warshak's DVD entitled WELCOME BACK, PLUTO, which also focuses on PAS. Dr. Warshak appears to the "spiritual" and the literal heir to Dr. Richard A. Gardner's seminal and indispensable scholarly work on PAS.

I had presupposed that Dr. Gardner's book, THE PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME, had been eclipsed by more recent scholarly literature on PAS. I was mistaken. THE PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME is a classic, is of great and continuing scholarly merit, and deserves to remain in print - particularly in the face of the onslaught of parents (and their advocates and allies) who alienate their children against the alienated child's other parent, i.e., the "rejected" parent.

Although Dr. Gardner's THE PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME is an indispensable classic of considerable continuing merit, Dr. Gardner's scholarly book contains 50% more textual content than Dr. Warshak's popular DIVORCE POISON (2001), and for that reason the text of Dr. Warshak's DIVORCE POISON is probably more accessible - and requires less effort to read - to most "rejected" parents of PAS. However, Dr. Gsrdner's THE PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME is richly useful supplemental reading.

According to Newsweek magazine, in 2007 the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges denounced the theory (of PAS) as "junk science," and several states have passed legislation to curtail its use in custody cases involving allegations of domestic violence. In addition, PAS is not listed in the DSM-IV Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I would advise all interested individuals to conduct current and up to date research on the topic before purchasing this book.