Customer Reviews

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

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Clear, clean,professional analysis of psychotic child abuse in
custody and child support litigation.

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

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in court for 6 years for at least minimal contact with my sons, I did a good deal of research on PAS and even wrote an unpublished book manuscript that dealt in part with PAS.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.

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.

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.

Gardner's self-published work is extremely deficient scientifically, exhibits extreme gender-bias toward women and assumes that all women are vindictive and all children are liars. This "syndrome" he purports is not based on systematic research, instead developed from personal observation and prejudices. Gardner has never tested his theory, and most of its foundational assumptions have been disproven. Virtually every symptom Gardner describes as evidence of PAS is open to opposing interpretations. Gardner's recommendations to send children to juvenile detention centers and mothers to jail for reporting abuse fly in the face of the goal of any therapy or treatment--establishing trust and "do no harm". This is nothing more than one man's opinion which is now being used across the country as a slick legal defense for abusive parents to gain custody of their victims and exact revenge upon the protective parent. It should not be relied upon by any reasonable person. Mental health professionals should be cautioned against using such an unscientific and harmful ideology in custody evaluations, as it could potentially result in ethics violations and malpractice claims by protective parents and their children who have been irreparably harmed by incompetent assessments.

I am a dad in Dallas Texas. If moms are so good at programming children, as Gardner submits, children would be cleaning up their rooms! Don't be fooled by this drivel that masquerades as science. I love the creative therapeutic approach of throwing moms in jail when kids don't want to visit dad. Was this taken from the Third Reich or what? Creative Therapeutics? No, it's Creative Thera-Puke! I'm going to love it when the moms in America who have been victimized, stripped of their children, by the mindless followers of Richard Gardner file a class-action lawsuit against the grand poobah himself.