Karen Woodall, a UK proponent of the parental alienation (PA) construct, has outdone herself in her 29/7/23 blog post (https://karenwoodall.blog/2023/07/29/the-experience-of-induced-psychological-splitting-in-children-experiencing-parental-divorce-or-separation/). She presents an attack on what she believes feminism to be, as if it were a statement relevant to the evidence about PA. Feminism (as defined by Woodall) is criticized, and via the usual PA method of abuse of analogies, Woodall concludes that she ha ..read more

  If a psychosocial treatment is powerful enough to change someone’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior for the better, we need to be aware that it would also be possible for the treatment to change matters for the worse. Psychological treatments, like medical practices, can have the potential for harm to the recipient. When the person being treated is a child or adolescent, it’s quite possible that harm to the client can be accompanied by harm to some or all of the rest of the family. Unlike medical scenarios, where severe physical harm or death can result from some treatments, psychologic ..read more

  If you look at academia.edu, you will find a lengthy document entitled “Statement of the Global Action for Research Integrity in Parental Alienation”, by Alejandro Mendoza Amaro and William Bernet—the latter, of course, a major figure among advocates of the parental alienation belief system in the United States and elsewhere. The Statement appears to be a cri de coeur conveying the authors’ distress that parental alienation principles and practices have been roundly criticized by organizations like the American Professional Society on Abuse of Children (APSAC). To the further discomfort ..read more

  On Jan. 2, 2022, the organization Family Access Fighting for Children’s Right presented one of a series of webinars related to the parental alienation belief system. The Jan. 2 webinar was a presentation by Dr. Steven Miller, the emergency medicine physician, with the following title: “How Should Alienated Parents and their Attorneys Respond to False and Misleading Criticisms of Alienation Science?” Readers will note that Miller’s title did not suggest that he would address accurate criticisms of the parental alienation belief system, and indeed he did not do so. I will summarize as wel ..read more

  Since the 1990s, the movement toward evidence-based medicine has been associated with a term for medical practices that are not evidence-based. These are often referred to as complementary and alternative (CAM) methods. Complementary methods are those that are used together with conventional evidence-based treatments; readers can no doubt figure out that alternative medical practices are used on their own. CAM approaches are without clear evidence of safety or effectiveness—if that evidence were present, they would just be medicine, not CAM. Similar terminology for psychological treatme ..read more

  Every adoption is simultaneously a triumph or a tragedy for most or even all of the particpnats. The New York Times op-ed by Elizabeth Spiers demonstrates this fact (“I was adopted. I know the trauma it can inflict.” E. Spiers, Dec. 6, 2021, p. A23). Whether there would have been greater tragedy without the adoption of a child is something we can only guess at, and out guesses are different for different individual cases. Spiers tells her story and describes her own emotions about her childhood and her adult meeting with her biological mother. No one else can possibly know her experienc ..read more

  In a webinar (“Parental Alienating Behaviors and Coercive Control: The One and the Same” [sic]) sponsored by the “family access” organization on Nov. 21, Jennifer Harman, the parental alienation proponent, named a number of critics as Science Deniers (her caps). I was one of those who received this label, among whom were Bob Geffner, Joan Meier, Madelyn Milchman, Linda Neilson, and Joy Silberg.   The statement that we are Science Deniers, as she puts it (with initial caps), is yet one more example of the “reversing” pattern of addressing criticism so characteristic of parental alie ..read more

  Yes, although all these things in my title have the word “evidence” in their names, one is different from the others. The differences hinge on what people mean by evidence and its implications, and this is a real question, not a version of asking what “is” is. Under different circumstances, “evidence” can be what my neighbor tells me happened on our street, or some material that a judge decided to accept in court over the protests of one party to a suit. It can also be information that has been collected according to the rules set by a group of scientists whose work is relevant to the t ..read more

  There is a good deal of published material about “parental alienation” (PA). Unfortunately, when parents are confronted with allegations that they have made a child reject the other parent, it can be very hard for them to find the professional journals that publish this kind of material. The books that parents could find in the library or buy are almost all by PA proponents who try to support allegations that a parent has caused a child’s reluctance for contact with the other parent. Well, TA-DA! The first book arguing against PA principles and practices is to come out on Dec. 3, 2021 ..read more

  Over the last few years, a major goal of proponents of the parental alienation belief system seems to have been to amass a series of weakly-designed and implemented “scientific investigations” to allow the proponents to argue that there is scientific support for their views. This preference for quantity over quality is understandable, as serious empirical investigations are time-consuming and costly in planning and resources, and family courts are more impressed by hearing about dozens of studies than interested in understanding how meaningful those studies are. Amy Baker and William Be ..read more