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Update on Parental Alienation Syndrome

By Paul L. Feinstein

There has been a lot of confusion between the terms 'Parental Alienation Syndrome' (hereinafter 'PAS') and parental alienation. Nearly every state considers parental alienation a factor in determining child custody. Some states even go further and impose tort liability on the person who alienates a child from the other parent. Much has been written in the 1990s and earlier in this decade about PAS and its founder, the late Dr. Richard Gardner. PAS has many critics, both on a scientific and on a legal evidentiary level.

'The main problem is that PAS focuses almost exclusively on the alienating parent as the etiological agent of the child's alienation. Gardner's proposition as to the cause of PAS is rendered tautological by the following kind of circular reasoning: an alienated child (who is supposedly distinct from an abused child) has by definition a brainwashing parent; hence if a child is alienated, then a brainwashing parent exists and is the sole cause.' Janet R. Johnston: Children of Divorce Who Reject a Parent and Refuse Visitation: Recent Research and Social Policy Implications for the Alienated Child. Family Law Quarterly, Volume 38, No. 4, Winter 2005, page 70, Family Law Section, American Bar Association.

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