Talk:Parental alienation syndrome
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Can somebody please check the accuracy of this: "In the United States, approximately 40 percent of children live without their own biological father. Most of these cases reflect situations where the father is incarcerated, abusive, or abandoned the family." It sounded suspect to me that a majority of absent fathers are guilty of these crimes, and it lacks comparison with women. Smilingman 21:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Would PAS really be called a "disorder" if accepted into the DSM? Asperger's Syndrome, for instance, is in the DSM, but is still a Syndrome. Thsgrn 08:11, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
The DSM is full of all kinds of babble. It is in the first crude stage of science which is classification. As such anyone seems to be able to claim anything is a syndrome which little or no cause and effect logic. Witness the controversy over Anti-social disorder or Sociopath/Psychopath. Even psychriatrists cannot reliably 'diagnose' the famous and obscure sociopaths among us such as politicians, busnessmen and other less legal criminals. I take no issue with Dr Gardner because I think he was just using the tools available to him that is calling everything under the sun a syndrome. We need to question the whole idea of syndromes and focus on whole system of relationships here.
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[edit] Needs work
I think this article needs some more work. As is, it seems to underscore the views of fathers' rights groups by uncritically accepting the idea that Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is directed against fathers by mothers. Although Gardner's early work dealt with instances of mothers who encouraged PAS in their children, in his later writing Gardner said that fathers encouraged the development of PAS just as often as mothers did. Moreover, it may be important to recognize that Gardner developed his theory of and criteria for PAS based on earlier work done by Judith Wallerstein and others who were interested in the phenomenon of children who aligned strongly with one parent and rejected the other during the parents' separation and divorce.
The judicial record of the acceptance and rejection of PAS is uneven. It has become widely accepted in Canada, for example (which is where I live), such that many "parenting coordinators" (usually mental health professionals appointed by family courts to work closely with high-conflict families to reduce or better manage conflict between the parents) explicitly list expertise in assessing PAS as one of their qualifications.
Quill driver 22:06, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
This article indeed needs balance. However I suggest that the courts are often among the last authorities to establish unbiased science. I suggest those who wish to study actual facts read Children Held Hostage by Stanley Clawar, and B Valerie Rivlin for a non-sexist study of this topic. It is based on a 10 year study of 700 families in the authors' counseling work with children of divorced couples. Clearly there is a real phenomenom going on here and clearly while mothers choose to alienate children more often, fathers do it too.
no email 1/23/06
Gardner is a psycho who stabbed himself to death. "PAS" is what abusive men call it when their ex wives and children don't want to put up with their abuse anymore and leave or object to their violent and controlling behavior. Gardner didn't do any legitimare research and self published his own rantings. FACT ON CA is an anti-feminist father's rights group what works to eliminate shild support and idolizes men who commit suicide as great dads. Not exactly a scholarly source.
Any parent who tells a child that an abusive parent is great and encourages the child to normalize the abuse would be a bad parent. The normal healthy response to a woman or child who is abused is antipathy for the abuser. This is called domestic violence, not PAS.
There is a reason all of the courts have rejected "PAS" as fake.
[edit] Weird!
There was some kind of technical problem here: the page was not rendering. I have purged the cache and now it seems OK. Maybe it was that software upgrade a few hours ago... -- 209.234.96.194 00:33, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
- I'm glad it worked out; maybe you're right about the upgrade. --Allen 00:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Avoiding controversy: high scholarship standards
I would like to avoid this article from needing a "controversy" tag on the talk page. I feel that the best as to do this is to insist that that level of scholarship on the article be high. There are dozens of web sites on either side of the argument that really just help to fuel the fires of controversy by stoking the ignorant primitive feelings of the partisans. Please: do not dumb down the article. It is perfectly possible to let this article expand while maintaining a high level of scholarship. -- 209.234.96.194 00:11, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Poisoned against his father by vengeful mother
In 2004 my wife (now ex-wife) left for Bermuda while pregnant with my twin daughters. I was placed on the immigration stop (personna non-grata) list and have never seen my children. This is because my ex-wife claims that although I have never tried to harm her, she is afraid that I might.
The truth is that I have never even received a speeding ticket, I lived in Bermuda for three years and never had a black mark on my record. My lifelong reputation is above reproach.
My ex-wife's mother acted in a similar fashion and prevented my ex-wife from meeting her father until she was 24 years old. To this day her 34 year old brother has been so poisoned against his father that he refuses to even meet him. This is commonly known as Parental Alienation Syndrome. There is no question in my mind that it indeed does exist.
More at [1]
[edit] Material removed
I've removed the following from the article because no citation was given:
In a study of 700 "high conflict" divorce cases followed over 12 years, it was concluded that the elements of PAS were present in the vast majority of cases. Children Held Hostage, authored by a male clinical sociologist and a female clinical social worker shows eight stages of parental programming and brainwashing, explains the alienating parents' purpose, rationale, and tactics, and diagnoses the type, extent, and degree of social-psychological impact on the children. The parental alienation tactics studied here resemble those found in totalitarian states and mind control groups.
In particular fathers' rights supporters claim to have observed PAS in contested divorce and child custody litigation in family courts.
87.74.18.60 12:34, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Pas is junk theory
PAS has been discredited by many noteable persons on recent years. much on the www to suppor this.
Gardner's had a Theory of Atypical Sexuality "The younger the survival machine at the time sexual urges appear, the longer will be the span of procreative capacity ..." As part of his theory, Gardner (1992, pp. 24-5) proposes that pedophilia serves procreative purposes. Although the child cannot become pregnant, a child who is drawn into sexual encounters at an early age is likely to become highly sexualized and thus will crave sexual experiences during the prepubertal years. Such a “charged up child” is more likely to transmit his or her genes in his or her progeny at an early age. Gardner (1992, pp. 24-5) states: “The younger the survival machine at the time sexual urges appear, the longer will be the span of procreative capacity, and the greater the likelihood the individual will create more survival machines in the next generation.”
He also developed his own theory concerning the evolutionary benefits of deviant sexual practices or paraphilias. Gardner proposes that many different types of human sexual behavior, including pedophilia, sexual sadism, necrophilia (sex with corpses), zoophilia (sex with animals), coprophilia (sex involving defecation), klismaphilia (sex involving enemas), and urophilia (sex involving urinating), can be seen as having species survival value and thus do “not warrant being excluded from the list of the ‘so-called natural forms of human sexual behavior.’” Such paraphilias may serve nature's purposes by their ability to enhance the general level of sexual excitation in society and thereby increase the likelihood that people will have sex, which then contributes to the survival of the species" (Gardner, 1992, p. 20).
He also states: “The sexually abused child is generally considered to be the victim,” though the child may initiate sexual encounters by “seducing” the adult.
PAS is used by men's rights groups to discredit protective parents, always used against mothers, and has not ever (at least not that I can find) been applied to men. Although the term "Parential Alienation Syndrome" is not quoted as such by judges today, as they dont want to be critisied for believing the theory,I was listening to a judgment a few weeks ago, well that judge must have swallowed the PAS book and was regurgitating the contents - drug addict, abusive father got the contact he wanted and mum threatened with jail time if she so much as utterred another word against dad, to the extent that she if she 'suspects' further abuse, she is not even allowed to take the child to a doctor without court consent.Dottii1 11:45, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
