DISTINGUISHING PARENTAL ALIENATION FROM PARENTAL ESTRANGEMENT

It is critical to distinguish a child who rejects a parent because he/she has been genuinely abused (physically, emotionally and sexually) or neglected (estrangement) from a child who rejects a parent because he/she is alienated from a parent. 

PA is easily distinguished from other forms of abuse because some of the behaviours exhibited by an alienated child are unique and different from those of children abused in other ways (see aove). For example alienated children will give frivolous reasons for rejecting a parent which parrot what they have been told by the alienating parent. 

Another key difference is the lack of ambivalence shown towards each parent - the alienated child considers one parent all good and the other parent all bad. In the psychological jargon, this phenomenon is known as “splitting” and is considered a primitive defence mechanism insofar as it is observed in various personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). 

This phenomenon of splitting in alienated children has been known since the 1980s is discussed further in the section on the psychology of PA. Research has shown that splitting is not observed in intact, divorced or even neglected children (REF). This study used a detailed questionnaire to measure the degree acceptance / rejection of a parent in these various different groups compared to alienated children. This research shows that splitting is uniquely found in alienated children and is a reliable way of distinguishing alienation from estrangement. 

These observations are consistent with observations that abused children in foster care typically yearn for their abusive parent (16) and hope the parent will reform (36). They are also consistent with the fact that abused children tend to engage attachment-enhancing behaviours rather than attachment-disrupting behaviours toward their abusive parents (17). This, again, is in line with our understanding of psychology and is discussed below.