Best practices for assessing parental alienation: perspectives of clinical psychologist's working as experts in a South African setting

Abstract

The occurrence of parental alienation and its associated traits have long been discussed in literature. The pathological alignment of a child with a parent in a high-conflict divorce has been independently studied and characterised by several clinicians. Richard Gardner first used the term parental alienation syndrome (PAS) in the 1980s, and he defined PAS as a child's obsession with criticising a parent caused by indoctrinating behaviour of the other parent. The criticism against PAS includes that it is a contentious, poorly understood, and researched construct that is mostly employed in the context of child custody battles. It is claimed that it takes the form of a "child's campaign of denigration against a parent" (Gardner, 2001)This study has found this criticism to be frequently exaggerated and unfounded, as findings show that in high-conflict divorces, the alienating parent does engage in conscious and unconscious behaviour that shapes the child's perception of the alienated parent unfavourably; and this does impact on the child’s emotional wellbeing as well as that of the alienated parent. This indicates that PAS is an avenue for further research considering its prominent influence on family dynamics in South Africa.. A qualitative study was undertaken to explore best practices for assessing parental alienation. It addressed the perspectives of mental health professionals working as experts in a South African setting. The study took place in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The expert participants were selected using purposive sampling, and data was gathered using semi-structured interviews. The data obtained was analysed using qualitative content analysis. According to the expert participants in this study, in order to identify PAS, the evaluator needs a grounded understanding of the conceptualisation of parental alienation and should be able to differentiate parental alienation from the concepts of gatekeeping and estrangement, which may co-occur with parental alienation. A series of clinical interviews, psychometric assessments and parent-child observations have to be conducted, and the evaluator should collect collateral to further strengthen the assessment procedure. The most common instruments used in the evaluation for adults were the MMPI-3, MCMI-IV and PAI and the most common assessments used to evaluate children were the Draw-A- Person, Kinetic Family Drawing, Bene Anthony Family Relations Test and the Childrens Apperception Test. This study provided to be useful to novice evaluators as this can serve as a guideline for the assessment of parental alienation for the novice evaluator. This study only included clinical psychologist, further studies should include all mental health professionals that deals with parental alienation for a richer and more comprehensive output. A compilation of an assessment for parental alienation and common training for the legal professionals and psycho-legal professionals will be beneficial to this divisive field.