tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27437466339139261502024-03-12T18:04:14.536-04:00CHILDMYTHSThe "Childmyths" blog is a spin-off of Jean Mercer's book "Thinking Critically About Child Development: Examining Myths & Misunderstandings"(Sage, 2015; third edition). The blog focuses on parsing mistaken beliefs that can influence people's decisions about childrearing-- for example, beliefs about day care, about punishment, about child psychotherapies, and about adoption.
See also http://thestudyofnonsense.blogspot.com
Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.comBlogger620125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-71460359523079541652023-10-12T15:18:00.001-04:002023-10-12T15:18:38.492-04:00What's the context for "alienating behaviors"? (Baselines and all that)<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">It would seem quite likely that some
parents do sometimes do or say things that can be considered "alienating
behaviors”—actions that might make children tend to dislike or avoid the
co-parent. Amy Baker, William Bernet, and others have discussed lists of such
behaviors, which can range from a simple eyeroll to a deliberate statement that
“your mother is an evil woman and does not love you”. Some authors, like Bill
Eddy, have even suggested that “alienating behaviors” can be unconscious on the
part of the parent who performs them and can have impacts (on the brain, no
less) even though a child does not consciously notice them. The certainty with
which some authors write about “alienating behaviors” has led to the belief
that these actions are readily observed and that it is known that they are
damaging to children—the natural conclusion being that children must be
separated from “alienating” parents.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It's not all so simple, though, even if we accept for
the sake of argument the claim that children are harmed by a parent’s “alienating
behaviors”. There are so many things still unknown about these actions. What is
the context in which they occur—what are the associated events that we must
understand before any conclusions can be drawn about these lists of behaviors? What standards of comparison apply here? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The situation is rather like the one in which people ask
about the effectiveness of a vaccine. The number of people who get sick or die (from
any cause) after being vaccinated is only one small piece of information. People
do, of course, get sick and die for a lot of reasons. We need to know how often
people get sick and die if unvaccinated, and compare that frequency to the
frequency after vaccination. (Knowing this gives us a baseline to which we can
compare the effects of the vaccine.) If the numbers are the same—or if the
vaccinated people do worse—we may have to conclude that the vaccination is
ineffective or even harmful. In addition, our conclusion may be different if
the types of illness are different in the two groups, or if we see that people
of different ages have different outcomes. And, we especially need to know
whether different kinds of people got the vaccination than went without. All of
these points form the context within which we decide whether a vaccine is
helpful or not.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What, then, is the context within which we need to
look at “alienating behaviors”? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
possible to make a list of possible context items—but it’s critical to realize
that we do not in fact know anything about the frequency of any of the events
we can consider as “alienating behaviors”, or the contexts in which they occur, so we presently cannot know whether it's in any way useful to use about such behaviors in decision-making. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Baseline
measures and standards of comparison </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">How often do functional,
happily-married parents display actions that could be considered “alienating
behaviors”? How often does an annoyed mother or father say, to or in the
presence of children, “your Dad (or Mom) is late again”, or “your Dad (or Mom)
just can’t manage money”, or “your Dad (or Mom) chose this movie and now changed
their mind”, or “you better go and wake your Dad (or Mom) because they are
supposed to take you to soccer today”. How often do these happily married
parents perform eyerolls or other gestures to express displeasure at their
partner? (For comparison, how many husbands and wives, asked if they ever
considered divorce, reply, “never, but often homicide”?) Nobody knows!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These questions are
important because (if answered) they would establish a baseline or standard of
comparison that would provide the context for knowing whether a divorcing parent
was indeed displaying an unusual number of “alienating behaviors”, or was
behaving in much the same way as any married parent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><i> </i></span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Looking
at frequencies of types of behaviors that could include “alienating behaviors”</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Alienating behaviors”
generally involve negative statements or actions directed by one divorcing
parent toward the other. A more general form of this type of behavior could
include negative statements or actions directed toward various other people,
not just the co-parent. If a mother has many negative things to say about her
own mother, her sister and brother, neighbors, and her children themselves,
should her negative remarks about her children’s father be considered to be “alienating
behaviors”? In this context of negative remarks, it seems unlikely that
negative remarks about the father should carry the same weight that they would
in a case where most of the mother’s other statements were positive.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Some people who have many
negative things to say will also make many positive statements. A mother or
father could be highly reactive and have a lot to say about everyone they meet, and speak freely to the children about their opinions. If a father, for example,
both praises the neighbor for his nice yard and complains vociferously that the
man parks in an inconvenient place, this is a different matter than saying only
negative things. Yet a practice of counting or listing “alienating behaviors” would ignore context and give the two sets of negative statements equal weight. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><i> </i></span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Cultural
issues</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Both negative and
positive responses to other people are to some extent determined by cultural
standards. Some groups deliberately say negative things about beloved people so
as not to attract bad luck. Others believe that “Praise to the face is open
disgrace”. Some make a game of mutual insults. Children acculturated in any of
those groups would probably respond differently to “alienating behaviors” than
others—and they might well be more accustomed to observing “alienating
behaviors”. Little as is known about “alienating behaviors” in any case, but
even less is known outside the middle-class Anglo cultural context. Establishing
a baseline or standard of comparison is thus especially difficult for families
where one or both parents are minorities or immigrants or members of small,
culturally unique groups.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Can unanswered questions about any
of these “alienating behaviors” issues be answered, in the future? This might be
possible with a great deal of hard work. However, the work would have to
involve actual observation of behavior. It is not sufficient to infer that there
must have been “alienating behaviors” just because a child is avoiding one
parent. As of right now: if there are no established baselines or standards of
comparison, it is not possible to argue credibly that a parent’s actions are “alienating”,
whether or not they match items on the behavior list presented by Baker, Bernet, and others..<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-15166173201692926472023-08-04T08:40:00.000-04:002023-08-04T08:40:02.071-04:00Parental Alienation, The Tower of Psychobabble, and the ":Straw Woman"<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Karen Woodall, a UK proponent of the parental
alienation (PA) construct, has outdone herself in her 29/7/23 blog post (</span><a href="https://karenwoodall.blog/2023/07/29/the-experience-of-induced-psychological-splitting-in-children-experiencing-parental-divorce-or-separation/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">https://karenwoodall.blog/2023/07/29/the-experience-of-induced-psychological-splitting-in-children-experiencing-parental-divorce-or-separation/</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">).
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 has given a powerful argument in support of the PA belief
system. Has she managed this? Well, let’s look at some details.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">First, let’s examine Woodall’s critical method. It’s a
familiar one—claiming that an opponent’s views are not only wrong but distorted
by their own emotional aberrations, which are easily identified and named, and
which prove that the opponent’s argument is dead wrong. Anyone who has seen
first-year university students at play will recognize this technique. Having
learned a list of terms describing psychopathology, students trot these out in
all disagreements and consider them to be quite telling tactics that
successfully make opponents furiously annoyed. The fact that the terms also
serve to darken counsel is ignored, as actual constructive discussion is not
the goal. The PSYCH 101 method is also common among proponents of controversial
experimental treatments; I saw this years ago during the behind-the-scenes
fight about Holding Therapy, when anyone who opposed the use of this dangerous
treatment was instantly said to be suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But Woodall does not seem to understand that using
this diagnosis-as-evidence approach just makes more competent opponents roll
their eyes with boredom and vicarious embarrassment. She seriously and
apparently shamelessly points to her antagonists in the PA discussion as
showing “denial”, “splitting”, “primitive defenses”—as if these statements,
even if true, had anything to do with evidence for or against PA. By using this
approach, of course, she is ignoring the requirement that practitioners of
psychotherapy have some contact with people before they offer a diagnosis. But
beyond that, she ignores the idea that the accuracy of a statement should be
assessed by observation and measurements of events, not by the characteristics
of the speaker. The reasoning problem Woodall displays here is <i>ad hominem</i>—or
<i>ad feminam</i> – argument; the stress is on irrelevant material about the
opponent that has no purpose in serious discussion other than to irk the
opponent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For a second issue, let’s have a look at Woodall’s
attempt to attack feminism, or what she apparently thinks feminism is. It’s
perfectly true that feminism is an ideology—that is, it’s a statement of values
that does not necessarily include any description of the ways in which those
values should be applied. It’s my impression that Woodall does not understand
the values of feminism. Feminism simply states that girls and women are as much
human beings as boys and men are, and that all human beings deserve equal
dignity and respect from society. Woodall’s claim that feminism “splits” humans
into good women and bad men is simply untrue. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woodall, I think, has feminist values confused
with a <i>matriarchalist</i> approach in which women’s needs and wishes dominate
those of all other people. This is parallel, of course, to a <i>patriarchalist</i>
approach, in which men’s wishes have priority over those of women, girls, and
even boys. It’s very easy for people with an authoritarian bent to mistake the
values of feminism for those of matriarchalism, as authoritarian thinking
always assumes that someone must be owner and someone else be slave. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But let’s suppose that Woodall could in some way
demonstrate that feminist values are all wrong. What would be the conclusion to
draw from that? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woodall’s blog post seems to suggest that
there is some connection between the facts about feminism and the facts about
PA—but there isn’t. Woodall is setting up feminism as a “straw woman”. She
seems to believe that if she can make readers think badly of feminism, they
will also think that she has proved bad things about opposition to PA ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now, there’s a lot more that needs to be said about Woodall’s
arguments. Painful as it is, we need to have a look at the Tower of
Psychobabble she has constructed in this blog post and elsewhere. An
interesting place to start is with her citation of Melanie Klein. Klein, a
British psychoanalyst of the 1940s (give or take), was deeply committed to the
idea that observation of children’s behavior was of no use to efforts to
understand emotional development; instead, the appropriate technique was to
consider the fantasy operations of the infant psyche as they could be thought
of by analytically-trained adults. Such thinking yielded the idea that the
mother’s breast could be thought by infants to be either completely good or
completely bad, in a process described as splitting which could occur later in
development as well. Klein and her followers were strongly opposed to the
thinking of John Bowlby, who used observations of child behavior to develop the
concept of attachment and a plethora of empirical research on early emotional
development. Citing Klein allows Woodall to name a famous historical name but
in fact Kleinian ideas have not received any empirical support that connects
them with PA. (The Bernet work that appeals to “splitting” as an explanation is
highly questionable.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Interestingly, Woodall drags attachment into her
discussion, as well as Kleinian concepts. She does this by citing the egregious
Craig Childress and his self-published claims about the role of attachment in
PA. Childress, like many who have incomplete mastery of attachment theory, believes
that the “attachment system” is easily manipulated and that a child far past
toddler age can have a switch flipped to make them feel attachment to a parent
they have been avoiding. The flipping is done by exposing the child to a
treatment called High Road to Reunification, as carried out by the high-school
graduate Dorcy Pruter. This treatment has never been tested and is in fact an
experimental treatment (as defined by Kaminsky and Clausen in 2017); it has
apparently often included transportation of children to the venue by youth
transport service workers. Childress nevertheless has claimed 100% success of
the treatment—a most unlikely outcome. (Woodall seems unaware of the downside
of citing Childress and may not know that he has been disciplined by two state
psychology boards.) In her blog post, Woodall shows her commitment to the view
that PA is an attachment issue by her reference to “attachment healing” as
facilitated by the treatment she uses.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is much more to say about statements and
implications in this blog post. One is that Woodall assumes that “splitting”
can be and has been measured, so that she feels safe in saying that children in
PA cases show this tendency. Another is that Woodall suggests that if there
were “splitting”, it would have to be caused by the influence of the preferred
parent rather than by any of a myriad other factors in divorcing families. Woodall
also implies that any suggestion that fathers commit more domestic violence than
mothers is based on “splitting” the parents into good women and bad men,
whereas in reality statistics show that men are more inclined to DV than women
are, though no one has claimed that women never display violence; not all
population differences can be attributed to “splitting” even by proponents of
this psychological construct. Finally, Woodall suggests, without a clear
statement, that a parent who is alleged to have alienated a child is in fact an
abuser from whom the child must be removed and protected—a proof by assertion
borrowed from the U.S. PA proponent Jennifer Harman.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">To sum up this too-lengthy critique of Woodall’s
thinking, then: an ignorant attack on feminism, however it is bolstered by
borrowings from psychoanalytic thought and attachment theory, does not constitute
evidence that supports the PA belief system. If Woodall or other PA advocates
want to show that their identification of PA is accurate or their treatments
safe and effective, they need to do this the old-fashioned way, by empirical
outcome research. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-72498055076227522932022-07-16T16:32:00.000-04:002022-07-16T16:32:14.985-04:00Did You Peer At My Article? Facts About Peer Review<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Go into any family court where social science is being
put in evidence,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and you will hear <i>peer
review </i>referenced. “Are the papers on your CV in [portentuous pause…] <i>peer
reviewed </i>journals?” “You are aware, are you not, that the work you are
criticizing was [pause] <i>peer reviewed?”</i> It sounds as if peer review is
an assay for gold content rather than what it is—part of the process by which
articles are accepted for publications in professional journals.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What is peer review and how is it done? Is it a
guarantee that a published article is accurate? This post will attempt to
answer all those questions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When an author submits a paper to be considered for
publication in a professional journal, an editor is usually the first person to
look at the submission. The editor may decide quickly that a submitted paper is
not acceptable for the journal. This might be because the topic is not of much
interest to the journal’s usual readers/ There can be many other reasons too. I
have had papers rejected because, in one case, the information in the paper was
derived from journalistic sources, in another case, because my paper commented
on another paper that had been published some time previously, and in a recent
case, because the editor was afraid of a lawsuit against the journal if the
paper was published there.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If the editor does not quickly reject a paper, he or
she will seek peer reviewers who will give opinions about the paper and
suggestions for improvements. The reviewers may be members of the editorial
board or authors who have published work on similar topics. They receive an
anonymous version of the article and their names are also kept secret from the
article author. It is not necessarily easy to find two or three reviewers for a
paper. Reviewing can be a lot of work, and most people qualified to review an
article are also busy with other professional work. (An academic book editor
recently mentioned to me that book publishers are having a terrible time
getting reviewers for books in development, too.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Some journals ask authors to suggest some reviewers
and even to state whether there are any people they do not want to review their
work. I have no idea how those suggestions are actually used.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When reviewers have been found they receive the
anonymous manuscript to read. (Authors are even asked to hide citations of
their own work by using the word Author instead of their names, but it seems
likely that reviewers can sometimes guess whose work they are reading—and some
authors can probably guess who their reviewers are.) They reviewers often also
receive a list of questions that they should answer as part of their review.
These questions, and the focus of the review, are different for different
journals. For example, psychology journals are concerned about research design
and statistical analysis, whereas journals focused on family law are more
likely to focus on legal and practice issues.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Reviewers are often asked to return their completed
reviews within a month. When I am a reviewer I usually manage in that time
frame, but not everyone does. Between the search for reviewers and the actual
review process, peer review may take a year or more. I recently withdrew an
article submitted to a journal when it had been a year without any reviews or
decisions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When the reviews have been submitted, an editor will
go through them and decide first whether the article should be rejected or accepted
as it stands (not common). If the editor decides, as is more usual, to accept
the paper if revisions are made in line with the reviewers’ recommendations, he
or she may simply send the decision and the reviews to the author, or may
summarize the reviewers’ concerns. The editor may add his or her own
suggestions for revisions. One of the points the author is asked to make is a
list of the weaknesses of the research or reasoning on which the paper is based.
The author is given a time limit for resubmitting the revised paper.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If and when the revised paper is resubmitted, the
author is also asked to submit a point by point description of the ways the
reviewers’ suggestions have been complied with. An editor will review the
resubmitted material and decide whether to accept the paper at that point, or
to send for another round of reviews, or to reject. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So, these are the steps involved in peer review. They
involve many steps and opportunities for human error. Articles may be peer
reviewed and yet contain problems that are only noticed later. They may also be
correct on the points considered by the reviewers but include misinformation
about material that the reviewers did not understand or attend to. Corrections
on those points may not occur for years, or ever—or they may be brought up by
readers who complain or write rebuttal papers that may or may not be published.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When serious errors are apparent in a published paper,
the journal may retract the paper. Depending on when retraction occurs, the
paper may not appear at all or may appear with a stamp saying “retracted” on
it. Unfortunately, the nature of the Internet is that once such a paper has
been posted, it never goes away, and most readers will not know it has been
retracted. The retracted paper may even be cited in new papers by other authors.
An article by Jeffrey Brainard in Science (1 July 2022) describes unsuccessful
efforts to get journal editors to flag citations of now-retracted papers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The upshot of all this is that peer review is the best
thing we’ve got for assuring the accuracy of published articles. It requires
great efforts from many people—but it is far from perfect. The best thing readers
can do to insure accurate understanding is to be educated, or educate
themselves, on the basic issues found in journal articles they want to read and
use. In addition, when peer-reviewed articles are used in court, it is critical
to remember that research findings are stated in probabilities, not in the
simple terms used in law everywhere except Scotland (where “not proven” is an
option). Applying the conclusions of journal articles to single cases is a
challenge that requires us to think hard even when we would rather have the
answer handed to us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-92162960059905098452022-07-11T15:18:00.000-04:002022-07-11T15:18:43.855-04:00Can We Regulate or Ban Potentially Harmful Psychological Treatments?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Unlike medical scenarios, where severe physical harm
or death can result from some treatments, psychological treatments do not
generally cause immediate and visible harm. The harm done by some psychological
treatments may be delayed, as would be the case in later family dysfunction or suicidal
thinking and actions. The harm may even be indirect, as in the wasting of time
and resources a family needs for a range of expenditures like dance lessons for
another child or home remodeling to give children their own rooms. The use of
potentially harmful, ineffective treatments also delays or makes impossible
other treatments that are safe and effective for children and families. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">An example of a potentially harmful treatment is
Critical Incident Stress Debriefing, CISD, an approach to preventing trauma
responses in people exposed to disasters. When CISD was used following 9/11, it
became apparent that people who did not receive CISD treatment did better in
terms of trauma symptoms than those who did receive it. Psychologists and other
mental health professionals were advised not to use CISD, but the Internet
continues to carry positive messages and encouragement to use CISD. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is not illegal to use CISD, and as the treatment is
used primarily for adults, there has never been real pressure for legal
prohibition. When children or adolescents are harmed by psychosocial
treatments, it is much more likely that there will be pressure to regulate
those treatments by legislation that prohibits their use with minors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even those regulatory bills are not
always passed, or if they are passed do not always speak to the real issues.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In 2001, the state of Colorado passed Candace’s Law,
which prohibited active physical restraint as a therapy. This law was
instigated by the death of a 10-year-old girl, Candace Newmaker, by suffocation
during a psychotherapy purporting to cause her to become emotionally attached
to her adoptive mother. The therapists believed that they could accomplish this
goal by “rebirthing” treatment, ordinarily a brief, silly but harmless
procedure. Candace was wrapped tightly in a sheet and told that she must
struggle to get out and be “reborn”, while helpers pressed rhythmically on her
body in mimicry of uterine contractions. The child was not able to comply and
was asphyxiated. The therapists directing the procedure were convinced that
Candace had to be forced into compliance and ignored her pleas that she could
not breathe. The Colorado legislation was pushed through because of public
horror at the event as well as because of a small number of activists pressing
for passage, but some Colorado therapists continued to support “rebirthing” and
other methods involving physical restraint. Adoption organizations supported
the legislation because many of the children involved in these treatments were
adopted. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In 2003, the state of Utah attempted to pass
legislation banning the use of “holding therapy”, a treatment involving
physical restraint that was related to the “rebirthing” that killed Candace
Newmaker. (Candace had also been subjected to holding therapy, whose tenets
supported the view that she must be forced to comply.) However, the bill
banning holding therapy never came to a vote as opponents ran out the clock on
the final day of the legislative session. Mental health professionals and
activists strongly supported the bill, but it was opposed by practitioners of
holding therapy in the state.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In 2015 and later, more than 20 states passed
legislation prohibiting psychologists from using conversion therapies with
minors. Conversion therapies are psychological treatments intended to alter
same-sex orientations to heterosexual orientations; these treatments involve a
range of unconventional methods such as mock-fighting while naked or <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>using practices related to holding therapy. Conversion
therapies have been very distressing to a number of participants and have never
been shown to be effective. Conversion therapies remain legal when chosen by
adults for themselves or when performed with children and adolescents by
members of the clergy. State psychological associations argued strongly in
favor of the legal ban, as did LGBT organizations that wielded considerable
political power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bill introduced in
the House of Representatives in 2021 prohibited states from using Medicaid
funds for conversion therapy, which was defined as attempts to change sexual
orientation in return for monetary compensation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In 2022, the reauthorization of the Violence Against
Women Act included a model law, Kayden’s Law, which states must enact if they
are to be eligible for any of the funds appropriated under VAWA. Kayden’s Law
is directed at the use of so-called “reunification therapies”, treatments that
purport to correct the attitudes of children who display “parental alienation”
(resistance to or refusal of contact with one of their divorced parents). Among other potential harms, use of these treatments has sometimes placed children in the hands of abusive parents.The treatments are generally done under court orders that prohibit any contact between
the child and the preferred parent for 90 days or longer; the treatments are
claimed to create a good relationship between the child and the rejected
parent. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The model law states that
children are not to be separated from the preferred parent for the purpose of
encouraging their relationship with the disfavored parent, a provision that
would essentially prohibit most reunification therapies.. California has
already reported its bill, SB616, out of committee, while in Massachusetts the
bill is still in committee. These bills are bound to be opposed and challenged
by a number of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>lawyers and mental health
professionals who are deeply involved with parental alienation cases in spite
of the lack of evidence for the safety and effectiveness of reunification
therapies. It will also be opposed by many fathers’ rights groups and by organizations
like Family Access Fighting for Children’s Rights that promote the use of the
treatments. Parents who have been ordered not to contact their children will
also be strongly interested in the legislation, but in many cases those parents
are already bankrupt because of the expenses of their legal fights for custody
of their children. Psychologists and psychiatrists as professional groups have
not taken official positions on this legislation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When potentially harmful psychological treatments are
not regulated by professional organizations, what does it take to ban them by
legislation? There is a horrible advantage to having a child die in the
treatment and become a “crystallized symbol” or “poster child” for opposition
to the practice. Even then, however, there will be those who favor the
problematic practice and want it to continue, who consider the death to be a
pure accident (or, in Candace Newmaker’s case, who suggest that the child died
on purpose in order to distress people). When harms are indirect and not
immediate, there are plenty of people who will say they are negligible harms. Successful
legislation may depend on activism by those with a personal stake in the game,
with financial and other resources, and with the capacity to organize for
political purposes. These factors have played a critical role in the legislative
banning of conversion therapies. Will they exist or be successful with respect
to treatments for parental alienation? That remains to be seen. It is clear
from the examples given in this post that there is no point waiting for
professional groups to take the first strong positions regulating potentially
harmful psychological treatments. But it may happen that when legislation is in
progress, some professional groups will feel that they must speak out one way
or the other. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-30433552284963337882022-06-26T14:08:00.002-04:002022-06-26T14:08:25.347-04:00How Vague Is Your Vagus?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Over a lot of years of professional life, I have seen
some concepts become popularized, reinterpreted, and generalized beyond all
meaning or expectation. One of these concepts was attachment, a rather
technical term to begin with but now the explanation of all sorts of problems
in self-help discussions. Another is parental alienation, once a term applied
to a rare occurrence in divorced families, now a weapon brandished regularly in
family courts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In my pessimistic way, I have been wondering what
would be the next wave of misinterpretation—the next concept that will be made
the explanation for too much and the foundation of treatments without any basis
in evidence. And I think I have found the latest thing: the vagus nerve.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Of course, there really is a vagus nerve. It’s the
tenth of the 12 cranial nerves and helps to regulate the heartbeat as well as having
other similar functions. Some decades ago, Steven Porges created “polyvagal
theory” (PVT), a psychological approach that based emotional and other human
functioning on vagus nerve activity. PVT makes a number of assumptions about
the evolution of the human nervous system and posits that when threat is felt,
human beings revert to an evolutionarily older type of brain function. This is
reflected <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in vagal activity as known
through measurement of an aspect of the heartbeat. Grossman and Taylor in 2007
criticized this view thoroughly, noting both misunderstandings of the
evolutionary background and the functioning of the nervous system.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As so often happens when simplistic approaches to the
human nervous system are popularized, the claims of PVT soon morphed into
treatment plans. The assumption was that if the vagus nerve underlies emotional
functioning, anything that affects the activity of the vagus can also influence
emotional functioning. In the parental alienation treatment program
Transitioning Families, for example, therapists ask clients to “map the
autonomic nervous system” by imagining a ladder and climbing it until they
reach a place of safety at the top, where a comfortable state of vagal activity
is thought to be. Deep breathing is also used, as it is thought be this group
of therapists that it stimulates the vagus to reach a calm state. There is no
empirical evidence that the vagus is influenced in this way or that there are
emotional benefits to the practice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On her website, one Dr. Arielle Schwartz advises
similar techniques that are directed toward affecting vagal activity with the
goal od improving mood and functioning. She says, “The vagus nerve passes
though by [sic] the vocal cords and the inner ear and the vibrations of humming
is a free and easy way to influence your nervous system states”. In addition to
humming, she recommends diaphragmatic or “belly” breathing and slowing of the
breath, which she proposes as a way to stimulate the vagus nerve.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Schwartz also suggests the Valsalva maneuver, a way of
attempting to breathe out even though mouth and nose are closed , as a way to
increase pressure in the chest cavity and vagal tone. She believes that the “diving
reflex” can be stimulated by splashing your face with cold water, putting a bag
of ice on your face, or holding lukewarm water in your mouth. She does not describe
how these practices are supposed to affect the vagus nerve, but the reflex does
slow heartrate and oxygen use.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Some readers will recognize the breathing and humming
techniques as part of yoga and similar practices. They are not directly harmful
and may be enjoyable. Indirect harms are possible if an individual puts resources
of time and money into methods with neither empirical or theoretical evidence
of benefit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Valsalva maneuver can be used to treat a too-rapid
heartbeat. It should not be used by people with high blood pressure or risk of
a stroke. Triggering the diving reflex can be problematic for people with heart
problems or a slow heartbeat. As was the case for breathing and humming,
indirect harms may come from expenditure of resources for methods that may have
no real effect beyond a few minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">PVT methods seem to be appearing on the Internet as
the newest of the new. However, I remember reading a newspaper medical advice
column when I was a young teenager in the mid-1950s.—it spoke of “belly
breathing” and advocated the same sorts of techniques as PVT approaches,
similarly without supportive empirical evidence. The PVT-related concept of the
“enteric brain” and its functions has been posed for decades by the Meridian
Institute of Virginia Beach; this institute is associated with the writings of
Edgar Cayce, the American “clairvoyant”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There seems to be no end to the ways people can
suggest simple solutions to complex mental health problems. The popularization
of PVT seems to be the most recent of these, but it won’t be the last. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-19816893512434507122022-03-28T16:42:00.000-04:002022-03-28T16:42:00.035-04:00Identification by Listicle: Parental Alienation and Those Five Factors <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Author after author has pointed out that as yet there
is no established way of identifying cases in which a child rejects one parent
because of persuasion by the other parent (parental alienation, by definition).
No one has shown a valid and reliable method of discriminating those cases from
others in which various different events may be the cause of the child’s
resistance or refusal to have contact with one parent (not parental alienation,
by definition).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nevertheless, proponents assert that they have a
method for identifying PA cases. This method involves their five factor model,
as put forward by William Bernet and others. But is that model anything more
than a listicle with other listicles embedded in it? Certainly it has never
been shown to be valid and reliable by empirical work—but it could be that such
work will appear in the future. Meanwhile, let’s look at the factors and
consider how they are applied. I draw this list of factors from Bradley
Freeman’s chapter in the 2020 PA book edited by Lorandos and Bernet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Factor One: The child actively avoids,
resists, or refuses a relationship with a parent.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Interestingly, at one time the child was described as
rejecting contact with a parent. Now we have rejection of a relationship, which
is rather different. Along these lines, Steven Miller (the emergency medicine
physician and PA expert witness) has said in a presentation that the problem is
rejection of a normal relationship with the parent; this, like other aspects of
the five factors, is certainly left open to interpretation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But how is this factor actually used in assigning the
PA category to children’s behavior? In one case I am familiar with, a girl
asked for contact with her father but he refused on the grounds that he feared
she would accuse him of sexual abuse. The father nevertheless sought custody
and alleged PA. In another case, a 17-year-old girl who had spent week on and
week off with her parents for 8 years asked to change to weekdays at her
mother’s, weekends and holidays at her father’s. This led to the father
alleging PA on the part of the mother. In a third case, children did not resist
visiting their father but behaved very badly (e.g. throwing food at him). Apparently
helpless to control the children, he alleged that PA by the mother was the
source of this bad behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Factor One is thus, in practice, excessively broadly
and vaguely defined and has the potential to be identified in many situations
where a supposedly alienated parent is simply not pleased with the child’s
attitude or behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Factor Two: Presence of a prior positive
relationship between the child and the rejected parent.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Factor Two may be difficult to demonstrate except
through the testimony of teachers, neighbors, and distant family members. The
reunification therapy Turning Points asks attendees to bring photos and videos
from the past that show the child and parent together in positive ways, and
these are used to show the child that in the past they liked the parent whom
they now reject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But how many families
photograph screaming arguments between parent and child or record one of the
other refusing to speak? Any records from the past are likely to be of positive
events, however frequent or infrequent they may have been.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Even in intact families, developmental and other
changes are often linked with more and with less positive relationships in the
course of a child’s life. A parent may be temperamentally well-suited to
dealing with a cuddly, dependent baby but less able to care for a negative,
tantrum-throwing four-year-old—or vice versa. The period around puberty is for
most families a time when earlier pleasant relationships seem to falter, in
part because of a child’s negative emotionality and desire for autonomy, as
well as for reasons in the parents’ own lives. Divorced families too go through
relationship changes of this kind, which may be interpreted as PA by certain
proponents but are not necessarily caused by parental persuasion.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the absence of empirical work<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>showing that early positive relationships are
normally followed by consistently positive later relationships, and that
periods of negativity are not developmentally appropriate, PA proponents cannot
argue effectively for Factor Two as a reasonable way to demonstrate whether or
not parental alienation exists in many cases. In addition, demonstrating that
there was an initial positive relationship in a specific case may be difficult
or impossible, even with extensive investigation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Factor Three: Absence of abuse or neglect
or seriously deficient parenting on the part of the now rejected parent. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As is generally the case about proof of absence, the
absence of abuse, neglect, and seriously deficient parenting is difficult to
demonstrate. When allegations of abuse are investigated by child protective
services and said to be unfounded, this is by no means evidence that abuse did
not occur, but simply shows that there was no clear evidence that it did occur.
As Freeman himself point out, there are no clear definitions of seriously
deficient parenting. Psychological injury remains vaguely defined in that
evidence of such injury might not be apparent for years after an event occurred
and the event would commonly be accompanied by other events that might be
actual causes of any demonstrable psychological injury.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As Madelyn Milchman has noted, parent-child
relationships may be negatively affected by single or repeated events which
individually could not be considered abuse or seriously deficient parenting. In
one alleged PA case, a father repeatedly tickled a child severely even though
she begged him to stop. In another, a 12-year-old girl got her period when at
her father’s house and asked him to go out to get her menstrual hygiene
supplies; he refused and told her to just use toilet paper. In a third, a
father posted signs reading “no parental alienation” in all the rooms of his
house. None of these actions could be considered abuse or even seriously
deficient parenting, and they did not cause demonstrable harm to the children.
Nevertheless, each of these situations could easily have played a role in
causing a child’s estrangement, especially in combination with repetitions or
other similar actions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Absence of abuse, neglect, or seriously deficient
parenting can thus not be considered the proof that a child’s rejection must be
caused by the persuasion of the preferred parent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Factor
Four: Use of multiple alienating behaviors on the part of the preferred parent</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Freeman points out that “it is necessary for the
evaluator to identify specific [alienating behaviors] that have apparently
caused the symptoms of PA” (2020, p. 68). Here is where an additional listicle
enters the picture: PA proponents refer to a list of alienating behaviors
established by Amy Baker and colleagues, who interviewed about 40 adults on the
ways their parents had behaved one or more decades previously. Baker created a
list of alienating behaviors based on the interviewees reported recollections
but did not look for objective evidence that might have supported or failed to
support her list. Nor did she (or anyone else) investigate whether parents
alleged to be alienators<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>performed these
behaviors more or less frequently than others who were not said to be
alienators.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It has thus never been clarified empirically whether
children who reject a parent are more likely than others to have a parent who
carries out behaviors from Baker’s list. An additional problem is that some of
the listed behaviors are likely to occur in private and are rarely to be
observed by people outside the family, although others may be noticed by close
friends or relatives and reported during an investigation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Critics of the PA belief system have expressed concern
that if a child rejects one parent, it is too easy to assume that the preferred
parent’s actions are the cause of the rejection. It is certainly true that
quite ordinary statements or actions can be interpreted as alienating
behaviors. At the height of the COVID pandemic, a major PA proponent told me
that it was alienating behavior when a mother told her 14-year-old that he
could go to visit his father but would have to quarantine for 14 days when he
came home (at this time, people were told to quarantine after travel or other
exposures outside the home). A mother’s failure to tell her children daily
about their father’s goodness and importance can be considered alienating
behavior. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The alienating behaviors that are the subject of
Factor Four thus remain ill-defined and seriously under-researched, and do not
provide useful evidence for decisions in cases of alleged PA.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Factor
Five: Exhibition of many of the eight behavioral manifestations .of alienation
by the child. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A listicle conveying behaviors that he considered
diagnostic of PA was published by Richard Gardner decades ago and has been used
by PA proponents ever since. Once again, there has been no empirical work to
show how often these behaviors occur in children alleged to show PA and how
often they occur in other children. Without empirical evidence, it would be a
mistake to assume that some behaviors occur exclusively, or much more
frequently, in children alleged to have PA.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Absence of guilt about an action, for example, can and
does occur in both children and adults when they feel justified in the
behavior, even though it may cause discomfort and harm to another person. A
child or adolescent who is told that a parent is unhappy because of their
rejection may reminisce about the parent’s remembered offenses (of commission
or omission) and think, “it serves her right if she’s upset.” Older children
and adolescents can certainly understand that in some situations, whatever they
may have done, they are not to blame and are not expected to experience guilt.
Failing to experience guilt when distress seems to be deserved is by no means a
predictor of a lack of empathy or the capacity for remorse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The decision that a child’s rationale for rejecting a
parent may be “frivolous” or “absurd” cannot be made objectively or out of
context, as the reason for the rejection is a matter of the child’s own
perceptions. These may be childish and egocentric or based on naïve worldviews,
but they are real and require responses for the best outcome. Indeed, to claim
that childish rationales are most characteristic of children alleged to have PA
is not logical unless it can be shown that other children of the same age are
less inclined to give childish reasons for issues like staying home from school
or starting a fight with their brothers. Children who give childish reasons for
any issue may be more likely to give such reasons for rejecting a parent than
those who rarely give childish reasons for anything. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Young adolescents are especially likely to say they
are “independent thinkers” about every issue as they fight for autonomy. Unless
it is shown empirically that children in PA cases are more likely than others
to display this belief, it makes no sense to say that being an<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“independent thinker” is symptomatic of PA. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>*********************************<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Examining these various PA listicles, it becomes plain
that we have no data-driven reasons to accept them as providing a way to
identify PA in children. If PA proponents want to support their claim that they
can identify PA – and treat children to restore good relationships—they will
need to get to work and provide good information from well-designed and
well-implemented research. To date, this has not happened. But the listicle
approach is not sufficient to justify upending people’s lives. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-57823068029189483702022-03-25T16:13:00.000-04:002022-03-25T16:13:34.286-04:00Bishop Wilberforce Rides Again; or, Parental Alienation Advocates Admit a Problem<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">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 </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">cri
de coeur</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> 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 of Mendoza and Bernet, many individual authors have also critiqued
parental alienation (PA) publications and have concluded that there is only a
small amount of empirical research on this subject, and that small amount is
poorly designed and implemented.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A fruitful response to these critical remarks about PA
would have been to carry out new and properly designed research (and, no, the
recent efforts of Jennifer Harman to test outcomes for a reunification therapy
are not properly designed). But this is not what has been done by PA advocates.
Instead, in this Statement, they label materials published by opponents to PA
as fraudulent and defamatory. They demand retractions of commentaries
discussing the problems of PA research and offering alternative hypotheses for
cases in which children resist or refuse contact with one of their divorced
parents. But they do not state exactly which publications they mean, or where
their faults lie.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Statement contends that opposing publications have
“severe errors such as falsification of data, adulteration of original sources,
and defamation “ (p. 17). These would indeed be reasons for complaint to
academic or medical institutions with which authors were affiliated, as well as
to journals that published the papers. Investigations showing that these things
had occurred would lead to serious professional discipline and retraction of
papers. But the Statement says this did not happen—they were ignored. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Notably, however, the authors of the Statement do not
say to whom they complained or what they complained about, except that in one
case they complained to the American Psychological Association about a passage
they considered defamatory, and the passage was deleted. By failing to state
the particular papers they find problematic, of course, Mendoza and Bernet
themselves avoid complaints of defamation. With respect to the claimed
falsification of data, they manage to convey to some readers which authors they
are accusing, because only three or four articles opposing PA actually present
new data. The authors of those articles may want to think about whether this
circuitous communication succeeds in defaming them; it is certainly no joke to
be accused of falsifying data.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What I find especially engaging about the Statement is
that by making it, Mendoza and Bernet have shown that PA does not meet the Frye
standards for admissibility of scientific evidence. The Frye standard, and one
part of the Daubert standards, require that a concept be generally accepted in
the relevant scientific community. If so many professionals, including journal
editors, reviewers, and even the American Psychological Association, have acted
to reject PA ideas and methods, this is a clear indication that these concepts
are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> generally accepted by those
who form the relevant scientific community. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What does it all have to do with Bishop Wilberforce? Well,
in 1860, T.H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce participated in a debate
about evolution, Huxley supporting Darwin’s views and Wilberforce contradicting
them. Wilberforce asked a very silly question, and Huxley turned to a companion
and said, “The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands.” Huxley and the other
supporters of Darwin won that debate. I don’t think I need to say more.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-84115638569874288342022-02-21T10:26:00.000-05:002022-02-21T10:26:18.857-05:00The Foster Child Mantra and Parental Alienation<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When advocates of the parental alienation (PA) belief
system discuss their conjectures about children’s attitudes toward parents,
they often mention the claim that foster children wish very much to return to
their abusive parents. William Bernet and Linda Gottlieb are notable repeaters
of this assertion.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Let’s examine this claim under a strong light, and
then go on to look at the unstated implications.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If PA advocates were talking about children from about
8 months to 5 years, and if the children had been in foster care for a few days
or weeks only, their statement might well be correct. For toddlers and
preschoolers, familiarity trumps almost everything else. After some time passes
and new caregivers and the foster home become familiar, the children are more
likely to avoid parents who not only were abusive but are now unfamiliar. Of
course, these young children are not the usual candidates for PA claims or
related reunification therapies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Most children in PA cases are between 9 and 17 years
of age, and this is the age group aimed at by reunification therapies. How do
children in this age group respond to foster care? It’s true that in many cases
they would like to leave their foster homes (especially group homes), and the
only place that is usually available to them other than foster care is the home
of abusive parents. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some empirical
research (Maaskant, van Rooij, Bos, & Hermanns (2016), Journal of Social
Work Practice, Vol. 30, pp. 379-396) has shown foster children as thinking
better of the foster parents than of the biological parents, but this does not
necessarily mean that the children would prefer to stay in foster care if they
had a choice. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s important to discriminate between wanting to
leave a place (foster home or home of “alienated” parent) and wanting to be
somewhere else (bio parents’ home or preferred parent’s home). There are
multiple reasons why a child in foster care may want to leave the foster
home—just as there are multiple reasons why a child in a PA case might want to
avoid one parent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here are some reasons for wanting to leave some foster
homes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Abuse by foster parents or other children in the home<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Unfamiliar food, customs, language<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Crowding and lack of privacy<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Required contact with authorities who may not be
trusted<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Pressure to conform to unfamiliar religious practices<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Requirement of transferring to unfamiliar school near
foster home<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Loneliness without familiar friends, siblings,
cousins, grandparents<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Difficulty in making friends when stigmatized as
foster child<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These reasons for wanting to leave a foster home
should not be confused with reasons for wanting to return to the parental home,
such as:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Wanting affection and companionship of parents<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Feeling concern about the needs of siblings or others
living in the home<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These lists of motives for wanting to leave foster
care and/or return to the parental home show that there are multiple reasons
why such a move might be desired by foster children. But what is very notable
is that children in PA cases do not have most of these motives, if indeed they
have any of them. Children alleged to have PA as the cause of rejection of a
parent are generally living in comfortable middle-class homes (parents who are
not in comfortable circumstances cannot afford PA litigation), have familiar
friends and siblings nearby, attend schools where they are known and
comfortable, do not experience the stigma associated with foster care, have
familiar food and other daily experiences, and are already with the parent they
prefer. These children have none of the reasons foster children might have for
wanting to see a rejected parent, whether or not that rejection is the result
of abuse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is clear that the analogy between the foster and PA
living situations does not hold. Why, then, do PA proponents bring up the posited
desire of foster children for their parents as somehow relevant to the
attitudes of children in PA cases?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is a strong but unstated set of implications
that PA proponents apparently intend to have drawn from their foster child
mantra.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is what I believe it is:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If foster children still long for their abusive
parents, the attachment, love, or need of children for their parents must be of
extraordinary strength, even outweighing the wish for survival.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If such attachment, love, or need for parents is not
in evidence in PA cases, something horrible must have happened to break the
“instinctual” connection (see Gottlieb for statements about this).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The horrible event could not have been physical or
psychological abuse by the rejected parent, because (returning to the original
claim), such abuse is not enough to change the child’s attachment, love, or
need for parents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Someone other than the rejected parent must thus have
done the horrible thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The only possible culprit is the preferred parent or that
person’s relatives or other proxies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thus, QED, the preferred parent is guilty of a form of
abuse so terrible that it alters the basic nature of the child and the needs
that have developed in the course of evolution. The child is now a monster who
has a lost an intrinsic human quality, and must be carefully rehabilitated and
protected from contact with the soul-destroying preferred parent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If this line of reasoning is not what PA proponents
want us to follow, I wish they would say so. Otherwise, I do not see why they
repeat the unfounded and irrelevant statement about foster children wanting
their abusive parents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-43473717459755627802022-01-03T15:22:00.002-05:002022-01-03T15:22:35.625-05:00Parental Alienation Webinar: Miller Talks and Talks<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I will summarize as well as I can some of the content
of Miller’s talk, but I should note to begin with that he rather flatteringly
called me out by name as a critic of PA concepts and practices. There are quite
a number of other psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals
who have taken positions similar to mine. Perhaps Miller wanted to do me a
favor by making my opposition more generally known.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Miller’s rather turgid and rambling presentation went
on for two hours and in most points resembled the testimony I have heard him
give in court. The apparent organizing principle of the presentation was to
stress critical thinking errors and fallacious logic that Miller feels PA
opponents have used and misused. Oddly, it appeared that in pointing to various
fallacies used by PA opponents, Miller was falling into the same problematic
paths. I will give some examples of assertions Miller made and when it seems
necessary I will note logical errors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 1. </span></span></span></i><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Miller
stated that PA opponents say that there is no such thing as parental
alienation. I have never seen this statement, that PA does not exist, made by
any of the people I know to have discussed this topic. In the thirteen chapters
of <i>Challenging Parental Alienation </i>(Routledge, 2022), not a single
author says that PA does not exist, although all of them express concern about
the overuse and weaponization of this term in family courts. One chapter in
that book discusses at length how to rule out other possible causes of a child’s
rejection of a parent until only PA is left, thus showing that the author
considers PA to be a possibility.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Miller noted in the
webinar the deceptive reasoning involved when one attributes to others
positions that they have never taken. In the course of my decades of study of
alternative psychologies and psychotherapies, I have seen this kind of
attribution used frequently, and it is no surprise to see it used by PA
proponents. Attributing a denial of PA to PA opponents like myself is a clever
ploy because parents and others who are involved with PA allegations are likely
to interpret the statement that someone denies the existence of PA as a hostile
denial of anger and distress surrounding family conflict—this understandably
makes them angry at the person who is said to have denied their troubles. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 2. </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Miller
played the M.D card frequently and implied (at least) that PA is a medical
problem that can be identified only by specialists, who are likely to be
physicians. One of his efforts along this line involved attempting to reason by
analogy from medical concerns to PA and vice-versa. (I will omit the detour
into affirming the consequent he took in this process, because the abuse of
analogies is more obvious.) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I, and other authors,
have noted that identifying alienating behavior on the part of a preferred
parent is regrettably often done by inference rather than direct observation. A
child shows some or all of the “ eight manifestations” of PA, and it is
inferred that the preferred parent has caused these manifestations by
persuading the child to reject the other parent. PA proponents regularly say
they do not do this, but their published work does not describe the methods
that they use to establish that alienating behavior has occurred; I would think
this would be a topic of interest to them, as such would make possible
investigations of cases where a parent did<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>his or her best to alienate a child, but the child continued to do well
with both parents. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Miller has said, and said
in the webinar, that if this reasoning were followed (that inference should not
be used in this way, I think he means), no medical test would be possible. An
electrocardiogram could not be accepted as a way to identify a heart attack,
for instance, and this test IS accepted, therefore examination of the eight PA
manifestations should also be accepted as a way to identify PA.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">However, EKG use and PA
identification from “manifestations” are quite different things:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Heart functioning</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
depends on electrical activity in the heart muscle and elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When a heart attack
occurs, the electrical activity is disrupted.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">An external measure, the
EKG, evaluates the internal electrical activity and allows symptoms like pain
to be interpreted as resulting from a heart attack with its electrical
disruption, or from some other cause in which electrical functioning remains
normal.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Because the mechanism of
heart functioning is known to involve electrical activity, treatments that
alter electrical activity can be put to work to restore good functioning.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">However, a child’s <i>rejection
of a parent </i>can occur for many reasons, not solely because a preferred
parent has persuaded the child. Unlike heart electrical activity, rejection of a
parent can depend on multiple factors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Measures of any of the
possible causes of child rejection are ambiguous and difficult to carry out,
unlike the EKG measure. The “eight manifestations” describe the child’s
behavior, not the reasons for it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The mechanism by which parental
alienating behavior could cause the child to reject one parent has never been
described; this is true of all examples of persuasion, where only a few
mechanisms (like cognitive dissonance) have been identified.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the absence of
adequate measures and mechanisms, there is no way to discriminate between
rejection caused in one way and rejection caused in another way except by
observation of parental alienating behavior. There is thus no parallel between
identification of PA on the basis of child behavior and the use of an EKG, the
latter being effective at discriminating between some causes of symptoms and
others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Because the mechanism of
persuading the child to reject a parent is not understood (and would probably
be different for children of different ages), there is no obvious treatment
method based on a mechanism, and identification of PA is not parallel with use
of an EKG or other medical tests.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 3. </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I
will address one other statement made by Miller in the webinar. This is the
statement that PA is not necessarily refusal of contact, but is rejection of a
normal relationship with a parent without justification. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The definition offered by
PA proponents like Miller, Bernet, Lorandos, etc. has always failed to be
either operationalized or clearly defined, because of the inclusion of
justification as a criterion. Reasons that are or are not “justified” will vary
with child age, culture, personality, even religious beliefs. Unless a specific
list of reasons deemed to be (or not to be) justified is provided, decisions
about justification are clearly subjective (or, to use Miller’s and Gottlib’s
locution, “pattern recognition”). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now, it appears that
Miller is adding a second ambiguous term, “normal relationship”. Once again,
the age of the child, the culture and other circumstances, individual
differences, and so on, all help to determine a range of “normal”
relationships. Without clear definitions and examples, this addition to the definition
of PA opens the door for identification as PA of anything a parent does not
like—a child’s affection, obedience, gratitude, enthusiasm, affinity of
personality, for instance. I acknowledge freely that some children’s actions
toward a rejected parent are shockingly inappropriate and it is no gift to the
child to allow them to go on, but to include the ill-defined term “normal relationship”
does not help us deal with these real problems. I am afraid that instead of
helping families, speaking vaguely of normal relationships can simply encode parents’
and practitioners’ views about authority and family hierarchy that do not work well
in intact families and have the potential to explode conflicted relationships following
divorce. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">That’s all from me,
folks. Anyone who wants to see what Miller actually had to say is free to buy
the recording from the Family Access website. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-61363894699647144852021-12-07T14:08:00.001-05:002021-12-07T14:08:24.761-05:00Alternative Psychotherapies Include Some Parental Alienation Interventions <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Similar terminology for psychological treatments has
lagged. People do not usually speak of complementary and alternative
psychotherapies (“CAPs”). One real reason for this is that unconventional
psychological treatments are rarely used in a complementary fashion together
with conventional treatments. Unconventional treatments are generally put
forward as alternatives to conventional therapies. As a result of this
situation, I suggested in a book published some years ago (“Alternative
Psychotherapies”, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) that we simply use the term
alternative psychotherapies (or therapies, or treatments, or interventions) to
describe unconventional treatments that lack clear evidence of safety or
effectiveness. Alternative psychotherapies are of particular interest because
they can do both direct and indirect harm to clients. We see, for example, that
“conversion therapies” intended to change sexual orientation can do direct harm
by increasing depression and suicidality, and indirect harm by using up family
resources that could be used better in other ways.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Having spent years looking at alternative
psychotherapies for children like Attachment Therapy (AKA Holding Therapy), I
am interested in what all of these treatments have in common. I notice,
certainly, that proprietary treatments for parental alienation (a child’s
rejection of one divorced parent in circumstances thought to indicate persuasion
by the preferred parent) meet requirements to be called alternative psychotherapies.
Interventions like Family Bridges or Turning Points for Families have never
presented adequate evidence of effectiveness and have shown little or no
concern about safety issues. But Family Bridges and Holding Therapy are vastly different
in most ways. Are there points they share as alternative psychotherapies?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am going to describe some characteristics that I
think are shared by various alternative psychotherapies, including those
directed at parental alienation. Please note, though, that I am taking the
opportunity to use this blog as a way to speculate on points that are not yet
clear to me. Some of what I mention here does not come from the published work
of parental alienation proponents (for example), but from organizations that
serve to popularize certain viewpoints. For Attachment Therapy, an example would
be radzebra.org. For parental alienation therapies, the organization Family
Access—Fighting for Children’s Rights has become very active in the last year
or so and is moving from webinars into a subscription television service.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">I.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Proponents of alternative psychotherapies
state that conventional treatments exacerbate children’s problems. Such
exacerbation may be attributed to the vulnerability of conventional therapists,
who believe lying children or allow themselves to be manipulated by children or
parents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">II.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Proponents of some alternative
psychotherapies have argued that children’s experiences of distress during
treatment were minimal when compared to the predicted negative outcomes of
remaining untreated or treated only by conventional methods.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">III.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Proponents of some alternative
psychotherapies warn against attention to children’s statements or wishes, on
the grounds that mental health problems will be worsened if children are
allowed to exercise autonomy; children are also characterized as liars who must
be called to account. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">IV.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Proponents of alternative psychotherapies
predict serious long-term consequences for children who do not receive their
recommended treatments. Proponents of Attachment Therapy have long claimed that
untreated children will be violent in childhood and will grow up to be serial
killers (Ted Bundy has often been cited as an example). In a recent email,
Family Access claimed that children who did not receive parental alienation
interventions as recommended would be sociopaths in adulthood.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">V.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Proponents of alternative psychotherapies may
create alternative diagnostic categories and announce them as “not yet” in
DSM-5 or ICD-11, implying that these diagnostic manuals will eventually accept
the categories.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">VI. Proponents of alternative psychotherapies claim that only people they have trained can carry out their methods, and that extensive conventional training is not needed, or that the treatments are not actually mental health treatments so no licensure is required.</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">VII.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Proponents of alternative psychotherapies
may claim scientific evidence for their methods when in fact there is no
evidence that meets the usual standards required for support of psychological
treatment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">VIII.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Proponents of alternative psychotherapies
may respond to criticism by personal attacks rather than by discussion of
evidence or of planned systematic outcome research.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s my impression that alternative psychotherapies
share these as well as other characteristics. I would be interested in hearing
others’ comments about additions to or deletions from this list.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-75255084269985863632021-12-07T13:05:00.001-05:002021-12-07T13:05:57.339-05:00NYT Lets “Relinquishment Trauma” Pass<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">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 experiences <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
her emotional reactions, and I would not dream of arguing about what she feels.
(What would be the point of doing that, anyway? I only bring it up because
there will be some people out there who castigate me for what they see as
denying lived experience.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">However, there is one part of Spiers’ narrative that
is not a description of her experiences and feelings, but a speculation on why
she feels as she does. I had hoped that this particular speculation had fallen
under its own weight when deployed in the past, and I am shocked to see it
printed in the New York Times.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The speculation I refer to is the idea that babies “bond”
to their biological mothers during gestation, and as a result they later suffer
from “relinquishment trauma” if adopted or fostered. This idea was put forward
in the 1990s, not by “researchers” as Spiers suggests, but by authors like
Nancy Verrier, whose book “The Primal Wound” has served to distress many adopted
individuals and adoptive families. Verrier, and her colleagues at the
Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) have held
that separation of a child from its biological mother, even on the day of
birth, causes an intense and lingering sense of loss and difficulty with social
relationships.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This speculation, repeated by Spiers in <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>her NYT piece, contradicts much that is known
about emotional development. It also fails to consider alternative explanations
for cases where adopted individuals do suffer from a sense of loss, loneliness,
and difficulties with relationships. These facts and the existence of
alternative explanations need to be considered before anyone accepts the idea
of a “relinquishment trauma” affecting adopted individuals.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here are some specific points that contradict Spiers’
claims about “relinquishment trauma”, a factor which, if operative, would presumably
affect all adopted children:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">I.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The great majority of adopted children do
very well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">II.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When there are problems that can reasonably
be associated with adoption these are usually seen in late-adopted children.
Much research on this point was done after the closing of the notoriously dreadful
Romanian orphanages in the 1990s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">III.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Attachment behaviors, in which infants and
toddlers show their preference for familiar people and seek them when
distressed or frightened, are not apparent until at least six months after
birth. Newborn babies have been shown to recognize the smell of their mothers’
milk, but they do not show fear and distress when cared for by other people, as
they will do in later months. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">IV.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Feelings of loss and distress in adopted
individuals can be explained without appealing to “relinquishment trauma”. Most
adopted people will learn at some time that they are adopted and will either
learn or imagine the circumstances of the adoption. Those circumstances are
never pleasant and may range from the deaths of one or both biological parents
to extreme youth or poor health or drug involvement of the biological mother to
abandonment of the mother by the father and her own parents. It is possible, though
less likely, that the biological mother simply did not want any children or had
reason to reject this one as a child conceived through rape or incest.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Learning (or imagining)
and processing any of these possibilities can place a serious psychological
burden on adopted individuals. Feelings of loss and the need for comfort are
likely to follow—especially if adoptees are told that they must be affected by “primal
wounds” or “traumas” that are offered as explanations for feelings that have
much more evident causes. Mental health professionals who stress “relinquishment
trauma” as a reason for adoptees’ psychological distress should consider iatrogenic
effects they may be creating. The New York Times opinion editors might also
give some thought to this problem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-69184775919067760662021-11-24T14:48:00.000-05:002021-11-24T14:48:42.417-05:00Parental Alienation and “Science Claimers”, or, “I’m Rubber, You’re Glue”<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">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. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">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 alienation proponents. Like
abusers, who respond to accusations with DARVO tactics (deny, attack, reverse
victim and offender), the PA group has come to the point of using criticisms
they receive as allegations against their critics. You say they don’t
understand demand characteristics, they respond that YOU don’t understand
demand characteristics. You refer to PA ideas as a belief system, PA proponents
refer to your positions as a belief system (Harman actually did this). This
reversal is reminiscent of the playground response, “I’m rubber, you’re glue,
what you say bounces off me and sticks to you”, or to the kid-witty rejoinder
“I know you are, but what am I?”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Science
Deniers label is presumably a “reversal” response to the many published and
presented criticisms of research work otherwise claimed to support the parental
alienation belief system. For a number of years, critics of PA have been
pointing out that there is no established way to identify (much less quantify)
parental alienation, and that as a result there is no way to compare children’s
attitudes before and after a PA intervention like Family Bridges or Turning
Points. In addition, when PA proponents have attempted outcome research on the
effects of their intervention programs, they have always used designs yielding
low levels of evidence, so that their conclusions cannot be given the weight
that is assigned to evidence-based treatments like Coping Cat or PCIT.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nevertheless, Harman and other PA proponents have
continued to claim that PA interventions and evaluations meet the Daubert or
Frye<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>standards for admissibility of
scientific evidence. As critics contradict this claim, PA proponents like
Harman do not argue point by point why their work is adequate, nor do they
address the specific criticisms supplied, or attempt to design research that
meets higher standards. On the contrary, they simply re-assert that their work
is “scientific”, and like Harman a few days ago, declare that anyone who is
critical is therefore a Science Denier ( and to be classed with people who do
not accept the reality of global warming). Thus, they seem to state, they are
rubber and we are glue, and our criticisms of research failings prove that we
refuse to take a scientific stance on PA issues.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It seems to me that there is no problem here of anyone
“denying science”. The problem is that Harman and her colleagues are Science Claimers.
They assert that their views “are science” and therefore anyone who rejects
those views is “denying science”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman, as a Science Claimer, said not a word about
the nature of the scientific enterprise, about research design, or about any of
the reasons why PA evaluation or outcome research should or should not be
regarded as meeting scientific criteria. She did not for a moment address the
criticisms of PA work that have been widely discussed by psychologist, psychiatrists,
social workers, lawyers, and judges. Instead, she spent much of the
presentation instructing her audience about professional journals and wowing
them with how complicated it is to publish in a peer-reviewed journal. She
introduced and contrasted peer-reviewed scientific journals and scholarly
journals, asserting that she and other PA proponents have published scientific
work in highly-rated journals, and comparing impact factors and other metrics
in a way that was probably of little interest to her audience (but did sound
important.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman spoke with pride (as indeed she deserves to do)
of publishing an article in Psychological Bulletin, a major professional
journal with a high impact factor. She denigrated critiques of that article on
the grounds that they were late and were published in less prestigious
journals. She did not, however, note that her article was not “scientific” in
the usual sense, in that it did not report or analyze any new empirical data. Harman’s
article was a review or commentary article, discussing other people’s empirical
work, just as were the published critiques of the Psychological Bulletin paper.
Harman also failed to address any of the criticisms of her article’s claims and
conclusions. For example, rather than discussing the criticism that her
comparison of parental alienating behaviors to family violence should be considered
an analogy, she stated firmly that in her “scientific opinion” the equation of
the two was a correct and real one rather than a matter of reasoning by
analogy. The two terms, she said, meant the same thing, had the same referent. She
equally firmly restated her conviction that abused children protect and do not
reject their abusive parents, a common assertion of PA proponents but one that
has been critiqued and should be discussed in all its complexity and
implications. Although there are both empirical and logical factors that Harman
should have addressed if she wanted to support the PA belief system as
scientists do, she failed to speak to any such points. She simply acted as a
Science Claimer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Of course, I am using the term Science Claimer only to
mirror the term Science Denier. There is already a perfectly good word to
describe the act of saying that one has scientific evidence for a position when
there is in fact no adequate evidence. This is called pseudoscience.
Identifying a set of claims as pseudoscience is not denying science, but
clarifying the difference between an evidence-based position and one that is
largely speculative but is asserted to be otherwise. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-42957718039001909812021-10-25T14:18:00.000-04:002021-10-25T14:18:15.381-04:00Two of These Things Belong Together: Evidence Based Treatment, Evidence Based Practice, Evidence Informed Intervention <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">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 topic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Since the 1990s, medical specialists and psychologists
have focused a good deal of energy on creating evidence based medicine and
evidence based psychological treatments. They have used the term evidence based
treatments (EBTs; sometimes called empirically-supported treatments, ESTs) to
describe medical or psychological interventions that have been shown to be safe
and effective through information collected according to established research
rules. EBTs are treatments that have been shown to be effective in treating
particular conditions by at least two studies that use randomized controlled
trials or clinical controlled trials. At least one study needs to be done by
independent researchers, not people involved in the method itself. There are a
number of other requirements for these studies, for example that the people
evaluating the outcome of a treatment should be “blind” to (unaware of) which
clients received the treatment and which did not. Readers can find further
descriptions of the rules of research at <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="http://www.effectivechildtherapy.org/">www.effectivechildtherapy.org</a></span>
, a website sponsored by Division 53 (Clinical Child Psychology) of the
American Psychological Association.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Although this point is not always made clear, it is
also generally considered that EBTs will not be potentially harmful treatments
(PHTs). It’s well understood in medicine that a powerfully effective treatment
may have unwanted adverse side effects, and such treatments have to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>be chosen with the understanding that there is
a risk/benefit ratio to be considered. Psychologists have only fairly recently
begun to consider that a psychological treatment can have adverse effects as
well as—or even instead of—beneficial ones. There is still too little known
about adverse events of psychotherapies to make it easy to calculate risks and
benefits of treatments, but a treatment with a known potential for harm would
presumably not be considered an EBT at this point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">EBTs are the ones that “just don’t belong here” out of
the.group of three in my title. How are evidence based practice (EBP) and
evidence informed intervention (EEI) different from EBTs? Why is it important
to consider the differences?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">To answer the last question first: although
psychologists and other mental health professionals have been encouraged to
strive to use EBTs by their national professional organizations, they do not
always do so. One very practical reason is that the research has not been done
to provide a clear evidence basis for all psychosocial treatments. In fact, if
people did not use treatments that are currently without a clear evidence
basis, no data could be collected to show whether or not those treatments are
demonstrably safe and effective. (However, when such treatments are used, it
should be made clear that they are experimental treatments whose effectiveness
has not been decided.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A second practical reason for failure to use EBTs is
that such treatments require very specific training. They are “manualized”—that
is, there are prescribed ways of handling the events and timing of treatment.
People trained to carry out EBTs must go through an extensive program that
makes sure that their use of the treatment method is very close to the
intervention whose outcome was tested empirically. Such training can be
expensive in terms of time and other resources and is not available to every
mental health practitioner.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But there are other reasons for failure to use EBTs,
as well as the practical points. Mental health professionals may in many cases
be people who feel that they know how to help others psychologically, that their
personalities and compassion are as or more important than the precise methods
they use. Like physicians who may prescribe a medication “off-label”, mental
health professionals may feel that they have the authority and the
responsibility to alter the way therapy is done, to personalize it in ways that
they feel work for themselves and for their clients.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">EBPs and EEIs are the results of this last reason, as
well as of the scarcity of EBT resources. In both of these approaches (EBP or
EEI), the idea is that a practitioner looks to the best available empirical
research on therapies and chooses treatment from those, while also considering
a client’s preferences and the therapist’s own experience, or “practice
wisdom”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are, however, some flaws
in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this approach. The first is that the
best available research may not be at EBT level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, none of the various parental
alienation treatments have evidence at the EBT level, though there is published
outcome research with weaker designs and implementation. To use the EBP
language, this is the best available evidence—yet it is not at the level
psychologists are encouraged to use, nor are these interventions apparently
presented as experimental in nature. (On the contrary, PA advocates insist that
they are supported by evidence adequate for admissibility in family courts,
rather than acknowledging the level of evidence available.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is quite understandable that practitioners choose
the EBP approach when there are no EBTs available for use. But—when there are
EBTs, as there are in many situations involving children’s mood or behavior, there
are fewer reasons to bring in “practice wisdom” and client preferences.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Evidence informed interventions (EEIs) use the same
preference and wisdom factors as EBP. But they also argue that the quantitative
studies used in EBT work cannot give information from the patient’s
perspective, for which they consider qualitative and mixed methods research to
be most important. These types of research are expensive in time and resources
and thus often use small numbers of participants, making it difficult to be
sure about results and also making it hard for other researchers to replicate. A
recent book on custody and parenting coordination, “Evidence-informed
interventions for court-involved families” (edited by Lyn Greenberg, Barbara
Fidler, and Michael Saini), presses the EEI approach rather than encouraging
more stringent research designs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">According to an Australian source (facs.nsw.gov.au) an
EEI approach means using research evidence (level not stated), lived experience
and client voice, and professional expertise in mking treatment decisions. The
nature of the research evidence is not mentioned (and I have to wonder whether
there can be experience that is not “lived”?), nor is there any discussion of
the proportions of these sources practitioners should use in their
decision-making. EEI proponents, in my opinion, see psychotherapy as an art
rather than a science and believe that family events in particular are too
complex to be approached effectively on the basis of EBT-level outcome research.
I cannot say that they are necessarily quite mistaken in this view, but I would
say that art should not be presented as ”evidence” in the scientific sense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Advocates of EBP and EEI have on their side the
practical facts I mentioned earlier—that EBTs are not always available , and
that if only currently-known EBTs are used, we can never have any more EBTs identified.
Given that these issues are important, however, there would appear to be no
reason to withhold from courts and clients the fact that EBP/EEIs should be
identified as “experimental” for the simple reason that they are not EBTs. The
failure of proponents of these non-evidence-based treatments to identify their
methods appropriately leads me to question their reasons for stressing
preferences and experience over evidence. An attendee at a conference recently
posed for me the question: isn’t it important to provide some treatment when
there is a problem? I think it is not—unless it has been demonstrated that the
treatment is safe and effective. Otherwise, is the practitioner simply deciding
to use a treatment because he or she can do so and wants to do something,
perhaps has even told the client or a court that he or she can help?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These are tangled webs, I am afraid, and I do not
claim to know why people choose EBP/EEI and fail to say this is what they are doing.
What I do know is that the word “evidence” in EBT, EBP, and EEI should not be
taken to have the same meaning at all times. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-37710616694075216842021-10-18T14:05:00.004-04:002021-10-23T13:22:48.766-04:00Challenging Parental Alienation: A New Book for Professionals and Parents <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Well, TA-DA! The first book
arguing against PA principles and practices is to come out on Dec. 3, 2021!
Here is the reference info:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Mercer, J., & Drew, M.
(Eds.) (2022). Challenging Parental Alienation. Milton Park, UK: Routledge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I wish I could tell you the
price, but I don’t know what it is; it’s the publishers that set this, not
authors or editors. But, if it turns out to be too pricey for you, you could
ask your public library to buy it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Pre-publication orders can be placed at https://www.routledge.com/Challenging-Parental-Alienation-New-Directions-Professionals-and-Parents/Mercer-Drew/p/book/9780367559762</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">This edited book has
chapters by a number of lawyers and of psychologists and others involved in the
family courts. Especially notable is that chapters deal not only with PA in the
United States, but with family court and domestic violence issues in Canada,
Australia, and the United Kingdom. And, we are proud that the book includes
material written by a young woman who went through a PA treatment and by a
mother who experienced psychotherapy based on PA assumptions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Here is the Table of
Contents, with authors’ names for each chapter:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Table
of Contents<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 1<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Introduction to Parental Alienation Concepts and Practices<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jean Mercer and Margaret Drew<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Section One<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">When a Child Avoids a Parent:
Understanding the Problem<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 2<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>History of the Parental Alienation Belief System<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Julie Doughty and Margaret Drew<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 3<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
International Expansion of the Parental Alienation Belief System Through the <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">UK and Australian
Experiences<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Julie<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doughty<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and Zoe Rathus<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 4<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Experiences of Parental Alienation Interventions<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Adrienne Barnett, Arianna Riley, and “Katherine”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Section Two<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">When a Child Avoids a Parent: Identifying
and Treating Problems <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 5<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Evaluations for the Courts in Child Custody Cases:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An Attorney’s Perspective<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nancy Erickson<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 6<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Distinguishing Alienation from Child Abuse and Adverse Parenting<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Madelyn<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Milchman<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter
7<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Comparison of Parental<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alienation Treatments and Evidence-Based
Treatments for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Children <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sarah Trane, Kelly Champion, and Steven Hupp <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 8 Gender Credibility and Culture: The Impact
on Women Accused of Alienation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Margaret Drew<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 9<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Developmental Changes in Children and Adolescents: Relevance for
Parental <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Alienation Discussions <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jean Mercer<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Section Three<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">When a Child Avoids a Parent: Scientific
and Legal Analyses<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 10<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Parental Alienation Concepts and the Law: An International
Perspective<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suzanne Zaccour<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 11<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Questioning
the Scientific Validity of the Parental Alienation Labels in Abuse <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Cases<span style="color: red;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Joan Meier<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 12<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Parental Alienation, Science, and Pseudoscience<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jean Mercer<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;">Chapter 13<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Conclusion: Current Issues About Parental Alienation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jean Mercer and
Margaret Drew<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 105%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-79834665149448528492021-10-14T14:51:00.000-04:002021-10-14T14:51:07.629-04:00Parental Alienation Science Stumbles Along<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Amy Baker and William Bernet have for some years been
the PA principal investigators of note. Their work has featured absent or
questionable control groups, retrospective self-report information in many
cases, and an insistence on forcing ordinal data into Procrustean parametric
analyses.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now the Colorado psychologist Jennifer Harman is
taking the lead in weak studies, whose publication allows her to assert
repeatedly that children involved in ambiguously-defined parental alienation
cases are victims of family violence. She has recently added to her assertions
by declaring that rejected parents are the objects of coercive control by the
ex-spouse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I will briefly describe and comment on two recent
Harman publications.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman, J., Saunders, L., & Afifi, T. (2021).
Evaluation of the Turning Points for Families (TPFF) program for severely
alienated children. Journal of Family Therapy, DOI: 10.1111/1467-6427.123666.
(Please note, this publication is not the same as American Journal of Family
Therapy, which also publishes pro-PA material.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman et al. collected data about TPFF, an intensive
program run by the LCSW Linda Gottlieb. Like other PA interventions, TPFF
requires that children be court-ordered into the program or that an agreement
between the parents be approved by the court. Like other PA treatments, TPFF
lasts about 4 days, involves prohibition of contact between child and preferred
parent, for at least 90 days, and requires “aftercare” for both parents and
child or children, performed by a a PA-approved therapist. TPFF also requires
the preferred parent to write a letter to the child acknowledging his or her
attempts at alienation. Gottlieb videotapes therapy sessions, and the
videotaped material was made available to Harman et al. Gottlieb, incidentally,
claims almost 100% success in creating positive relationships between children
and previously rejected parents; as this rate of success has been questioned,
it was desirable from Gottlieb’s viewpoint to have a positive report from
Harman..<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman was interested in evidence that TPFF was safe
for children, as I and other authors have questioned whether this is so. On the
grounds that none of the observed 32 children from 15 families ran away or
carried out any self-harm during the program, and that Gottlieb states that
none of the previously-treated children with whom she keeps in touch have done
so, Harman concluded that TPFF was safe for children. She did not report on
other possible aspects of harm, for example the PTSD diagnosed in a child
following another PA intervention. Harman stated her belief that children who
have reported distress and harm from PA interventions were simply still alienated,
and would not have made such reports if their alienation had been repaired.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman also sought to know whether TPFF was an
effective treatment for PA cases. To do so appropriately, of course, she would
have needed to compare a group of TPFF-treated children with a matched control
group who received no treatment or some other form of treatment. To compare
behavior before and after treatment (as of course has also been done by Richard
Warshak and other PA proponents) is to beg for confounding of variables so that
it is impossible to know whether any changes were actually caused by the
intervention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reports following Family
Bridges experience point to threats from therapists as reasons for behavior
change, but it is unknown whether such threats occur during TPFF.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Like some other PA proponents, Harman asked her staff
to evaluate child behaviors on a Likert scale, rating behaviors from 1 to 5.
Again like other PA proponents, Harman took these evaluative data and performed
a statistical analysis which would only have been acceptable if the measurement
method met certain criteria which were not met. The conclusion that TPFF is an
effective treatment thus remains open to question.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There are many concerns about the basic data as well
as about the data analysis. The videotapes evaluated by Harman’s students were
made by Gottlieb and certainly in her presence (it is not clear whether other
people than parent and child were in the room at the time). This is far from an
independent set of data, as Gottlieb’s presence signaled to both parents and
children what behaviors were desired, and indeed necessary to bring the program
to an end. The correct method would have been to have the recording done by a
person who was not aware of the purpose of TPFF and who observed <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>parent and child without Gottlieb being
present. Without wishing to stress that videorecordings can be cherry-picked, I
would also note that the recordings should have stayed in the possession of the
neutral recorder until handed over for analysis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The research report by Harman, Saunders, and Afifi
thus adds to the collection of weak studies of PA interventions, but in fact
does not allow any clear conclusions about the safety or effectiveness of TPFF.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A second recent publication by Harman is this:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman, J., Maniotes, C, & Grubb, C. (2021). Power
dynamics in families affected by parental alienation. Personal Relationship.
(this journal is unfamiliar to me and the pdf I downloaded did not contain any
DOI information.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In this study, Harman and her colleagues approached
special interest social media groups like Facebook divorce or parental
alienation groups. They provided a survey and asked for emails from people who
would be willing to be interviewed, and interviewed 50 fathers and 29 mothers
about their experiences with their ex-spouses and children following divorce.
The point of the study was to examine how these experiences fit the concept of
coercive control and how power dynamics were related to parental alienation—interestingly,
the very features that protective parents have been attributing to parents now
rejected by their children. Harman et al. appear to have collected information
closely related to parental alienation concepts, for example, that “in some
cases the adultification [of children] took the form of allowing the children
to decide whether they wanted to have their parenting time with the targeted
[sic] parent or by sharing inappropriate information with the children”,
statements frequently found in discussions by PA proponents. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It would seem that reviewers or others must have
queried Harman’s personal commitment to PA ideas and her ability to be
objective on the topic. Harman stated that “the first author contends that her
experience as an alienated step-parent provides a unique perspective to the
study and has helped to gain the trust and confidence of the parents that were
interviewed, as many were afraid or concerned about their experiences not being
believed.” She noted also that the second and third authors were included
because they did not <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>have PA experience
and could provide “more objective interpretation of the data”. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There are a number of concerning issues here. The
first is that interviewees were sought from organized groups who were likely already
to share certain views of post-divorce events, particularly views of parental
alienation as they felt it had negatively affected their lives”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a matter not so much of preaching to
the choir but of being preached to by a choir that has memorized the hymns for
the season. Members of social media groups are likely to share beliefs both before
they join (this is why they join), and afterwards, when they have thoroughly
informed each other of their opinions and experiences. One would imagine that
anyone who planned to use regression methods would want to include a number of “nonbelievers”
to show a comparison to a different power dynamic among them, but this did not
happen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">That Harman thought her personal experiences would set
interviewees at ease is worrisome, as it suggest that she told the interviewees
about her own life, thus introducing various types of bias in the forms of the
wish to please her, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>social conformity to
the standards she supplied about views of post-divorce relationships, and
increased memory and reporting of events that could be interpreted as PA.
Harman’s statement that the second and third authors would be more objective in
interpretation of data seems to be an acknowledgment that she herself would not
be objective—although it is difficult to know how one can be subjective in
reporting statistical results.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Once again, Harman and her colleagues have added yet
another questionable study to the trove already provided in courts of law as “evidence”
to support PA concepts regarding identification and treatment of a posited
disorder.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-48001555802196034142021-10-12T14:25:00.000-04:002021-10-12T14:25:47.853-04:00Talkin' Pseudoscience/Parental Alienation (Blues)<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">In recent
months, I have come across the use of the term “pseudoscience” several times in
advocacy for and against the parental alienation belief system. One blog post
declared (but did not provide a rationale for the view) that parental
alienation (PA) beliefs are pseudoscience. A little earlier, William Bernet, a
well-known proponent of PA, declared in a journal article that critics of PA
are pseudoscientists. The PA proponents Linda Gottlieb and Steven Miller have taken
Bernet’s position in print and in testimony.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">This conflict
has quickly descended to the mutual finger-pointing, tit-for-tat, “I know you
are but what am I?” level. “Pseudoscience” is not just an insulting term; it
has a real meaning, which I will talk about here.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">I would
suggest, as a definition of pseudoscience, the following: pseudoscience is the
claim that certain ideas have been supported by empirical data collected and
analyzed by methods approved by members of the most closely related scientific
discipline—when no such data collection and analysis have actually occurred.
Please note that I do not say there has been no data collection at all (though
that can happen), but simply that the methods used are not the ones agreed upon
by members of the appropriate discipline. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">To
elaborate on this definition, I am going to discuss some hallmarks of
pseudoscience as considered in the 2019 Cambridge University Press book Pseudoscience
in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, edited by Stephen Hupp. The introductory
chapter of this book (by Hupp, Mercer, Thyer, and Pignotti) notes a few common
characteristics of pseudoscience:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 1 </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">It
involves exploited expertise, where someone who is a genuine expert in one
field provides testimony in an area where he or she lacks training. For
example, Steven Miller, a prominent figure in parental alienation discussion,
is in fact an emergency medicine physician. Warren Farrell, who has testified
about his observations of children in PA cases, is a political scientist who
has written about fathers’ rights.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 2 </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">There
is no research support (as in the claims made by Craig Childress and Dorcy
Pruter) , but the promoters of the treatment have financial interests in the
treatment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 3 </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">There
is inflated research support; “exaggerated claims are made on the basis of
poorly designed or conducted research or research published in journals with
very low scientific standards”. This is the case with the well-known research
reports of Richard Warshak or of Amy Baker, reports which present
weakly-designed and implemented research as if it met high standards. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 4 </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">An
important mechanism of the treatment is implausible based on current scientific
knowledge, as is the case with PA claims about brainwashing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">5 </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Pseudoscience
often includes references to established biological or physical concepts that
are irrelevant to claims made and appear to have no purpose but obfuscation and
a “veneer” of science. Reports about PA methods supposedly associated with polyvagal
theory would be included here, although polyvagal theory itself is very much
open to similar criticism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Proponents
of the PA belief system claim, pseudoscientifically, that they have empirical
research evidence for their concepts, even though they have in no case complied
with the evidence base standards set in medicine and in psychology over at
least 20 years now. In addition, as I have just shown, their claims share
hallmarks of pseudoscience. It is for them to correct these failings if they do
not wish to be called pseudoscientists. Incidentally, addressing a topic other
than PA, the developmental psychologist Lawrence Steinberg recently discussed
the pitfalls of claims of cause and effect in outcome studies with
nonrandomized or other correlational designs – highly relevant to PA issues
(nytimes.com/2021/10/10/opinion/Instagram-facebook-mental-health-study.html).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">What,
then, about the statement that opponents of PA are pseudoscientists? This is
absurd on the face of it, because opponents have done only a very few empirical
investigations of matters associated with PA, and none of PA itself or of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the proprietary PA interventions. PA opponents
on the whole do not offer claims of scientific evidence, so what they do offer
is not pseudoscience. Instead, PA opponents have offered commentaries and critiques
of PA claims that are designed to show weaknesses of PA concepts and of PA
outcome research. If PA proponents paid <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>attention to these critiques and made serious
efforts to develop acceptable empirical work on this topic, there would be
benefits for children and parents. Such benefits, however, do not seem to be a
major goal of PA advocates. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-2202036605086459412021-10-04T10:22:00.000-04:002021-10-04T10:22:20.979-04:00Gottlieb Addresses FAF on Interesting Subject of Cognitive Errors about PA <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The organization </span><a href="http://www.familyaccessfightingforchildrensrights.com/" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">www.familyaccessfightingforchildrensrights.com</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
has been putting on a series of webinars by proponents of the parental alienation
(PA) belief system. On Oct. 3, 2021, the speaker was Linda Gottlieb, creator of
the Turning Points for Families (TPFF) intensive intervention for children who
reject or resist contact with a divorced parent following posited manipulation
by the other parent. Gottlieb addressed herself to the subject of “nonspecialists”
and “pseudoscientists” and advised parents whose children are resisting contact
with them to use her statements to have professionals who disagree with her
positions dismissed from the case they bring.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is, of course, a certain flavor of the
schoolyard taunt “I’m rubber, you’re glue” here, as Gottlieb and other PA
supporters have been correctly termed pseudoscientists, and the idea of a
specialty in this area has been severely questioned as tending to focus on one
issue when many should be considered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here are some concerning ideas put forward by Gottlieb
in the webinar:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 1. </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gottlieb
continues to speak of diagnosis of PA, when it is clear that there is no such diagnostic
category in DSM-5 or ICD-11. She does not speak of identification of child or
parental behavior, as would be appropriate if there is no established diagnosis
of the family situation in question.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 2. </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gottlieb
fails to note that there is no established protocol for identifying PA and discriminating
PA cases from cases where resistance results from experiences with the rejected
parent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 3. </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gottlieb
continues to insist that when a child is identified as showing PA, and when the
preferred parent is known to have shown parental alienating behaviors, this situation
is equivalent to an adverse childhood experience (ACE). ACEs have been shown to
correlate with a number of undesirable physical and mental health outcomes, and
Gottlieb claims that similar outcomes would result from PA. This is, however,
simply proof by assertion, as no empirical work has ever shown any particular
outcome, positive or negative, of the child’s experience when PA is claimed to be
a factor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 4. </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gottlieb’s
argument that PA is an ACE leads her to state categorically that where there is
PA, the preferred parent’s actions are equivalent to child abuse (CA). The
PA=CA equation is repeated throughout the presentations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 5. </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Having
defined PA as equal to CA, Gottlieb proceeds to state the position that PA is
even worse than CA. In order to make this argument, she refers to her own
experience with foster children who had been abused and neglected and who nevertheless
wanted to visit their parents. Children in PA cases do not want this, by
definition, which leads Gottlieb to say that their experiences of manipulation
have been so severe as to interfere with the “instinctive” wish for contact
with parents, as displayed by the foster children. Gottlieb and other PA
proponents have frequently made this argument, and it is time to rebut it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Let’s consider the
differences in the current living situations of these two groups. Children in
PA cases are living comfortably in familiar homes, with adults they trust and
care for, with access to friends, siblings, supportive school situations, and
sports or hobbies they have chosen. Foster children are in unfamiliar settings
that may or may not be comfortable, they are supervised by unfamiliar adults
who do not necessarily care for them, they may share the foster home with the
carer’s children and a number of other foster children and therefore feel a
lack of either privacy or friendly intimacy, they may suffer abuse from other
children or from the foster parents themselves, they may be mocked at school as
foster children or seen as potential problems by teachers, and they may not be
able to visit other children in their homes or have any contact with their “home”
friends. The food they are given and the religious practices of the foster home
may be quire unfamiliar to the children. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Should we be surprised,
then, that foster children long for their familiar home setting and even for
contact with a parent who may at times have been abusive (but is not being
abusive at the time)? And should we be surprised that a child in a PA case does
not wish to exchange a familiar, comfortable setting, with pleasant social
contacts and familiar activities, for a less familiar, even unknown, situation
with a parent who has been rejected for various weaker or stringer reasons? I don’t
think we need to enter into ill-informed discussions of instinct to answer
these questions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> 6. </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gottlieb’s
argument that PA=CA is intended to justify prohibition of contact between the
child and the preferred parent for 90 days, often increased in further 90 day
increments. Defining the preferred parent as a child abuser is the foundation for
making these cases equivalent to child protection cases and removing the child
from the home. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gottlieb’s lengthy presentation
failed to support her claims about PA or the implication that her TPFF
intervention is a successful one.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By the way, another PA
proponent, Jennifer Harman, who makes claims about PA and CA exactly like
Gottlieb’s, has recently published what purports to be an evaluation of TPFF
(see Harman, J., Saunders, L., & Afifi, T.[2021]. Evaluation of the Turning
Points For Families (TPFF) program for severely alienated children. Journal of
Family Therapy.) Regrettably but unsurprisingly, Harman et al report positive
outcomes for TPFF while continuing to make the usual design errors of PA
supporters. They use a Likert scale but apply parametric statistics, they have
no comparison group, and they base their conclusions on videorecordings made by
Gottlieb rather than on any independent data source. I might also point out
that they define harm to children as limited to self-harm and running away—curiously
different from the mental health disorders they attribute to untreated PA experiences.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-84106943321162560972021-09-24T14:41:00.001-04:002021-09-24T14:41:32.460-04:00Ill-Judged Encouragement of "Facilitated Communication" by Vermont<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;">Janyce Boynton, an activist working to protect nonverbal
people and their families from use of the discredited “facilitated
communication” (FC) technique, has commented on another blog about events in
the state of Vermont. I am reposting these links because I think it is critical
for people to know how problematic FC actually is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;">Although supporters of FC believe that this method of pointing
at letters and words allows nonverbal people to communicate their real thoughts
to others, it is unfortunately the case that no systematic evidence supports
this claim. Instead, we have seen disastrous effects on families when FC “interpreters”
have made accusations that family members had abused their nonverbal relative.
Even though those investigations did not show that such abuse had occurred,
unsubstantiated or even retracted allegations of abuse cannot be undone and
continue to harm families and individuals.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;">Here is what Janyce Boynton has had to say about the
involvement of Vermont with FC: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;">Vermont DAIL's Commitment to a Discredited Technique</span><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><a data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="0" href="https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/vermont-dails-commitment-to-a-discredited-technique" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; orphans: 2; text-align: start; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank"><span style="background: white; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/vermont-dails-commitment-to-a-discredited-technique</span></a><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">"New" Vermont Facilitated Guidelines.
Really?</span></span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><a data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="1" href="https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/vermont-facilitated-communication-guidelines-really" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; orphans: 2; text-align: start; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank"><span style="background: white; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/vermont-facilitated-communication-guidelines-really</span></a><span style="color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Vermont Allows Abuse Allegation Disclosures and
Interviews Using a Discredited Technique</span></span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
</span><a data-auth="NotApplicable" data-linkindex="2" href="https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/vermont-allows-abuse-allegation-disclosures-and-interviews-using-a-discredited-technique" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; orphans: 2; text-align: start; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank"><span style="background: white; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/vermont-allows-abuse-allegation-disclosures-and-interviews-using-a-discredited-technique</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-10830551035417262252021-09-09T11:11:00.000-04:002021-09-09T11:11:33.807-04:00Not on the Levels: Harman Says She Evaluated Turning Points<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Jennifer Harman, a proponent of the parental
alienation belief system, has published an article that reports her attempt to
evaluate Linda Gottlieb’s intensive parental alienation treatment, Turning
Points for Families (TPFF). For those readers who are interested, the citation
is<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman, J., Saunders, L., & Afifi, T. (2021).
Evaluation of the Turning Points for Families (TPFF) program for severely
alienated children. Journal of Family Therapy. DOI: 10.1111/1467-6427.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In this post, I will discuss a number of issues of
research design and analysis that argue against any conclusion that TPFF is a
demonstrably effective treatment for parental alienation (PA). It’s notable
that this conclusion, though not exactly reached, was possibly assumed in Harman’s
plan, as she notes early in the paper that Gottlieb has provided
“evidence-based treatment since 1994. (It is not clear what this means, as
Gottlieb has stated that she did not formulate TPFF until 2015.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My title for this post, “Not on the Levels”, is not a
calumny against Harman’s integrity or her appropriate intentions in carrying
out this piece of outcome research. I think it is most parsimonious to assume
that Harman intended to do this work correctly but made some errors that
closely resemble those of other PA proponents like William Bernet and Amy
Baker. These errors can be described in terms of “levels” of various kinds –
particularly levels of evidence and levels of measurement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">I.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Levels of evidence<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman et al. state in
their abstract and essential points that they have shown that TPFF is an
effective treatment. They have not concerned themselves, or reminded their
readers, about the idea that not all outcome studies are equally meaningful.
How much credence can be given to an outcome study depends on the way data were
collected and the comparisons that were made (if any). (More about this concept
is available at </span><a href="http://www.effectivechildtherapy.org/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">www.effectivechildtherapy.org</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
and at </span><a href="http://www.cebc4cw.org/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">www.cebc4cw.org</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">,
websites that evaluate outcome research on therapies for children and
adolescents.) Reports of the effectiveness of a treatment can be said to be
evidence-based when the outcome research has involved randomized controlled
trials or careful clinical controlled trials; in both these cases, the word
“control” signifies that treated individuals’ outcomes were compared to
outcomes for similar individuals who received a different treatment. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman’s study did not
involve any comparison group. It was essentially a study of events in a single
group over a period of time, a level of evidence sometimes described (a bit
deceptively) as “promising”. (“Of interest” might be a better description for
treatments with these uncontrolled outcome studies.) Just as Harman could not
correctly claim that Gottlieb has been doing evidence-based treatment for a
long time, she and her colleagues cannot correctly state that this attempt at
evaluation has shown the effectiveness of TPFF. In order to reach that conclusion,
they would have needed to do similar observations on a matched group of children
and parents who did not receive TPFF, and to show differences between the
treated and untreated groups.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">II.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Levels of measurement<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In 1946, the Harvard
psychologist S. Smith Stevens (known to students at the time as “Shitty Smitty”
for his rather unlovable personality) published a seminal paper in the journal
Science, on the idea of levels of measurement and the kinds of statistical
analysis that could be used for each one. The idea here is that we can and do
measure events in different ways. If I look at a painting and say that it
contains greens, blues, and pinks, I am measuring in a very simple way. If I
say that this painting is greener than that one, I am measuring in a somewhat
more complex way. And if I say I have counted 92 green one-inch squares in this
painting and 95 green one-inch squares in that one, I am at the most complex
level of measurement of all. If I can count how many green squares there are in
different paintings, I can say, for example, that one painting has twice as
many green squares as another one, or I can state the mean number of green
squares in a group of paintings. I can’t do that kind of arithmetic if I am
simply saying that one is greener than another, and if I can’t do that kind of
arithmetic, I can’t use the various important parametric statistics like means,
standard deviations, Student’s t, or ANOVA. Instead, I have to use some less refined
statistics from a group called nonparametric statistics.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman’s statistical
analysis falls by the wayside because she has ignored levels of measurement,
just as Bernet and Baker have done elsewhere. She has performed what someone has
called “quantitative alchemy” by trying to force measurements of what is
“greener” (more desirable) into statistical procedures that are meant for
measures that can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. This does not
lead to meaningful conclusions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman, Bernet, Baker,
and other PA proponents have an unfortunate affection for Likert scales. These
are the ubiquitous ways of measuring that ask people to rate an event or
statement as “don’t agree at all”, “agree somewhat”, “totally agree”, or some
version of that procedure. That is what Harman did in her study: observers of
videorecordings rated events they saw on a Likert scale. This scale does not
permit any of the arithmetical operations needed for parametric statistics,
because it is not reasonable to claim (for instance) that a rating of 5 is 5
times a rating of one. Nevertheless, Harman and her colleagues (including the
statistician who sees to have been given authorship for that reason) have gone
merrily along and presented means and other parametric statistics as if they
are appropriate.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Just for the sake of
argument, however, let’s for a moment accept the use of the parametric
statistics and look at how the rated behaviors changed over time. I would have
assumed that the goal of TPFF was to improve the parent-child relationship
quality. Harman et al say “we did not anticipate large changes in relationship
quality in a short, 4-day intervention”, and they were apparently right not to
anticipate such, as the t for this measure was -0.66, p=0.51. (I would ask,
though, if you don’t anticipate a change in 4 days, why design a 4-day
intervention?)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As a final point on
measurement in this study, it was unclear to me why Harman did not just use a
count of events, which could have been analyzed parametrically, and did not
present any information about whether the observed behaviors were performed by
the child or by the parent. Are any reported changes to be read as changes in
the child’s behavior, the parent’s behavior, or both? Perhaps the moral of this
story is that there should be a license required to use the SPSS package.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">III.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Levels of severity and their implications
for research design<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Harman et al title their
report as involving “severely alienated children”. Yet here is what they say
about the children: “The majority of the children who [had] refused to have ay
relationship with the alienated parent traveled significant distances across
the country and spent several hours or days with them <i>prior to the
intervention…</i>a large number of alienated children had transferred custody
to the alienated parent for between a week and as long as 44 days after the
order had been entered.” In other words, although these children had been said
(by someone) to be severely resistant to contact with one parent, they now were
not resisting at all even before the TPFF program began. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If it is true that the
children were not resistant when they arrived at TPFF, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>what confounding variables must we consider as
possibly causing this change from the previously reported resistance? Is the
court order alone the cause of any changes suggested as resulting from TPFF? Is
TPFF to be praised as not having caused the children to become resistant again?
Why is it appropriate to use an expensive and disruptive program if the
children are already doing what was wanted, and why, in particular, should the
preferred parent be ordered to participate in treatment with a TPFF-approved
therapist? This would appear to be a good business model but a weak treatment
model.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Beyond the issue of
levels of severity, of course, there is the much larger issue of how PA is
identified to begin with. The only consistency in the various treatment program
outcome studies is that a court has decided there is PA present. On what basis
that has been done remains unclear. Harman, unfortunately, states that the
Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire, discussed by Bernet and colleagues
as a way to discuss “splitting”, is a PA assessment tool! I hope her PA colleagues
will talk to her about this point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">IV.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Levels of harm<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The possibility that PA
treatments can be harmful to children and adolescents, which I as well as other
authors have considered, is of much concern to PA proponents. Harman et al,
like other PA advocates, remark that my published discussion of this point is
based on a small number of cases in which the children claiming harms were
still alienated. There has been a gradual increase in the number of anecdotal
claims of this kind, with at least one PTSD diagnosis, but I would be the first
to acknowledge that they have never been investigated systematically, nor have
the reports brought PA proponents to look for adverse effects of their
programs. There are a number of lawsuits in the making as some affected children
approach their 18<sup>th</sup> birthdays, and those will bring out some
interesting information.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Anyone treating children
and adolescents is bound to have concerns about very serious harms,
self-injury, depression, suicidality or completed suicide, or running away and
being trafficked or otherwise injured. Harman et al stated that no harms were
caused by TPFF, as no children ran away or self-harmed during the intervention or
some subsequent period. These measures are important but minimal. It may be
that following the expected lawsuits we will see some evidence of harms that
proponents of PA interventions will have to consider in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On a number of different
levels, the outcome research on TPFF reported by Harman et al fails to support
the conclusions that TPFF is a safe and effective treatment for children in
cases of parental alienation. In addition, the serious flaws of design and
analysis in this work suggest that the critiques of Joan Meier’s work, recently
presented by PA advocates, may be open to serious question. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-17589219329293640762021-08-20T11:38:00.002-04:002021-08-20T11:38:28.749-04:00A New Book on Allegations of Parental Alienation for Parents and Professionals <p> </p><p class="TOCFrontMatter"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">A new book questioning claims about parental
alienation is about to be published. Here are the citation and the Table of
Contents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCFrontMatter"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Mercer, J., & Drew, M. (2022, in production). <i>Challenging
Parental Alienation. </i>Milton Park, OXON: Routledge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCFrontMatter"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Table of Contents<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCFrontMatter"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Foreword<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 1<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Introduction
to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Parental Alienation Concepts and Practices</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl30"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Jean Mercer and Margaret Drew</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCPartNo"><a name="bld8"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Part 1: </span></a><a name="blditl1"></a><a name="itl31"><span style="mso-bookmark: blditl1;"><span style="mso-bookmark: bld8;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></a></p>
<p class="TOCPartTitle"><span style="mso-bookmark: itl31;"><span style="mso-bookmark: blditl1;"><span style="mso-bookmark: bld8;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">When a Child Avoids a Parent: Understanding the
Problem</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 2<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>History
of the Parental Alienation Belief System<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl32"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Julie Doughty and Margaret Drew</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 3<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
International Expansion of the Parental Alienation Belief System Through the UK
and Australian Experiences<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl33"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Julie Doughty and Zoe Rathus</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 4<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Experiences of
Parental Alienation Interventions<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl34"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Adrienne Barnett, Arianna Riley, and “Katherine”</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCPartNo"><a name="bld9"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Part 2:<o:p></o:p></span></a></p>
<p class="TOCPartTitle"><span style="mso-bookmark: bld9;"><a name="blditl2"></a><a name="itl35"><span style="mso-bookmark: blditl2;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">When a Child Avoids a Parent: Identifying and
Treating Problems</span></span></a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 5<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Evaluations for the
Courts in Child Custody Cases: An Attorney’s </span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Perspectiv</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">e<a name="itl36"><o:p></o:p></a></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><span style="mso-bookmark: itl36;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Nancy Erickson</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 6<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Distinguishing
alienation from child abuse and adverse parenting<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl37"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Madelyn Milchman</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 7<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Comparison
of Parental Alienation Treatments and Evidence-Based Treatments for Children<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl38"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Sarah Trane, Kelly Champion, and Steven Hupp</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 8<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Gen</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">der Credibility and Culture: The Impact on Women
Accused of Alienatio</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">n<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl39"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Margaret Drew</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 9<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Develop</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">mental Changes in Children and Adolescents:
Relevance for Parental Alienation Disc</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">ussions<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl40"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Jean Mercer</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCPartNo"><a name="bld10"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Part 3: </span></a><a name="blditl3"></a><a name="itl41"><span style="mso-bookmark: blditl3;"><span style="mso-bookmark: bld10;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></a></p>
<p class="TOCPartTitle"><span style="mso-bookmark: itl41;"><span style="mso-bookmark: blditl3;"><span style="mso-bookmark: bld10;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">When a Child Avoids a Parent: Scientific and Legal
Analyses</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 10<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Parental</span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"> Alienation Concepts and the Law: An International
Persp</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">ective<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl42"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Suzanne Zaccour</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 11<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Questioning the Scientific Validity of the Parental
Alienation Label in Abuse Cases<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl43"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Joan Meier</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 12<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pare</span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">ntal Alienation, Science, and Pseu</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">doscience<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl44"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Jean Mercer</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterTitle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chapter 13<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Co</span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">nclusion: Current Issues About Parental Ali</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">enation<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="TOCChapterAuthor"><a name="itl45"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;">Jean Mercer and Margaret Drew</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-no-proof: yes;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-59667485428283076502021-08-19T15:34:00.000-04:002021-08-19T15:34:10.362-04:00When Parental Alienation Proponents Argue Biological Causes<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s common nowadays for popular writers to claim
biological or even specific genetic reasons for concerning behaviors. Any
issues remotely connected to attachment are likely to get this highly
speculative biological post hoc explanation. Until recently, though, I had not
seen many proponents of the parental alienation (PA) belief system appeal to
biological factors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But I have seen this now, and not just from Craig
Childress.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Linda Gottlieb, a rising PA proponent and increasingly
frequent expert witness in PA cases, has now adopted biological arguments. She
outlines these in her document Gottlieb, L. (n.d.) , <i>Turning Points for
Families: A Therapeutic Vacation. </i><a href="http://parentalalienationexpert.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/5/4/22545256/09-29-2016_treatment_protocol_for_sever_alieantion_2016_treatment_protocol_for_cases_of_severe_parental_rejection.pdf">http://parentalalienationexpert.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/5/4/22545256/09-29-2016_treatment_protocol_for_sever_alieantion_2016_treatment_protocol_for_cases_of_severe_parental_rejection.pdf</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gottlieb’s position is that it is “instinctive” for
children to be attached to their parents. In making this claim, she ignores
decades of discussion of the role of instinct in animal and human life. Many
years ago, the term instinct was used to describe situations in which an
individual’s behavior was completely controlled by inherited biological
factors; he or she had not learned how to do something, and also could not
learn how to refrain from doing it. In 1955, the renowned student of
comparative animal behavior Frank Beach predicted accurately that the term instinct
would soon disappear from discussion in the mainstream of psychology (Beach, F.
(1955). The descent of instinct. Psychological Review, 62, 401-410.) Beach argued
that the evidence pointed to the conclusion that all behaviors developed
through a combination of genetically-regulated nervous system functions AND
individual experiences. Accumulated evidence showed that behaviors did not
develop solely as instincts (inherited behavior patterns shared by all members
of a species).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">More sophisticated discussions of human behavior
patterns led to replacing the idea of instinct with two explanatory concepts.
One was that human development in some areas was a matter of
experience-dependent plasticity; the nervous system was “plastic” or malleable
and changed (learned) as a result of experience. The second idea, the one more
relevant to the concept of instinct, was called experience-expectant
plasticity. This term applied to situations where experience could have a
powerful effect, but was by far the most powerful at a particular period of
life and might have little effect earlier or later. Experience-expectant
plasticity is exemplified by emotional attachment to familiar people and also
by the learning not just of a concept of language but of a specific language—both
events that begin in the second half of the first <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>year for human beings. These two concepts (experience-expectant
and experience-dependent plasticity) have taken the place of the old idea of
instinct.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nevertheless, we see Gottlieb in her document claiming
that attachment to a parent is not only instinctual but permanent and
invulnerable to normal experience. In making this statement, she ignores not
only the changes that have occurred among psychologists in use of the term
instinct, but also the fact that the toddler’s attachment behavior and
motivation modulate with maturation and experience so that adolescents feel and
behave very differently toward parents. She also ignores the fact that in cases
of adoption or other changes, even toddlers lose their attachment for one
person and develop it for a new caregiver.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But these points are irrelevant to Gottlieb, as she uses
instinct as a rhetorical device. Rather than pursuing an argument about causes of
a child’s avoidance of one parent, she wants to be able to claim that an
avoiding child must have experienced some powerful malicious actions on the
part of the preferred parent, because otherwise the “instinctive” love for the avoided
parent could not have been undone. (To support this argument, she states,
incorrectly , that children who are abused maintain their attachment to
caregivers. This is only true of toddlers and not of the older children and
adolescents who are usually the subjects of PA cases.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If a child’s love for a parent were actually
instinctual in the old-fashioned , all-biological sense, it would by definition
be invulnerable to experience. If it is vulnerable to experience of any kind,
it is not instinctual, but a characteristic that develops through a combination
of experience-expectant and of experience-dependent plasticity. The real
purpose of Gottlieb’s “instinct” argument would seem to be to imply scientific
support for claims about PA. Curiously, Gottlieb, like other PA proponents,
acknowledges that not all cases where a child avoids a parent are matters of
alienation—a child might learn to avoid an abusive parent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But wait, what
about the argument that abused children still want to be with the abusive
parent? Can this work both ways? It seems that according to Gottlieb’s views
about abused children, those who are abused should not avoid the abusive parent,
but instead want even more to be with that person. Only those who were not
abused (but something else happened, like persuasion by the preferred parent)
can want to avoid one parent. Thus avoiding a parent becomes proof that the
child was NOT abused, doesn’t it? And how convenient this is for a parent who
wants to allege that the ex-spouse or the child is lying about abuse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If someone wants to use scientific concepts for
persuasive argument, it would pay to keep up with the science. Otherwise
someone is likely to come along and point out a few errors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-10247041827448724622020-12-10T10:53:00.004-05:002020-12-13T14:16:58.643-05:00Eye Contact and Other Baby Milestones That Cause Worry<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">When I started this blog ten years ago I was most
interested in issues for infants and toddlers, and that remains my “first love”.
In recent years I have gotten into the morass of “parental alienation” concerns
and I have been spending a lot of time writing about that topic for
publication.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">However, I know there is still a need for discussion
of baby matters, because I frequently get personal emails from young parents
who are worried about whether their babies are developing normally. Many of
them are terrified that some developmental glitch (as they see it) means
autism. Others are just generally frantically worried about everything.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If people are worrying a great deal because of their
own anxiety and depression following the birth of a baby, giving them
information can only briefly reduce their anxiety. In those cases, they (and I
mean, You, if you are like this) need to find someone to talk to and get some
support and help as they work through this stage of life. Nowadays,
obstetricians are supposed to screen patients for perinatal mood disorders (AKA
postpartum depression) and to provide them with referrals for help. Not all do
this—but if they do not, nevertheless they are the first line of help for
patients who can bring themselves to ask for it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">For other people—ones who are only worried because of
something they saw or read—just getting some better information can be helpful.
Here are some thoughts about infant development that might save some people
some distress:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">VARIABILITY: Babies do not read the child development
books or follow those milestones exactly! Here’s the deal. The age given as
appropriate to a “milestone” like sitting unsupported is an average drawn from
hundreds of babies. It’s a piece of arithmetic that produced that average from a
long list of numbers. It might well be that no baby whose age at sitting was
listed actually sat alone at the age that is calculated to be the average.
Development is variable, with about half of babies doing something later than
the average and the other half doing it earlier. How much later or earlier?
That’s the question, and you will not be able to figure this out easily from
most books you can get. There is a normal range of ages at sitting alone (or
whatever) and all you need to know is that your baby is within that. There are
no prizes given for earliest independent sitting or anything else. Yes, of
course it is troubling and perhaps a problem if a skill is achieved very late,
but if you are getting regular well-baby care that will be picked up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Please note also that a particular baby can be early
on one achievement and late on another. Some people have thought that those who
walk early talk later and vice versa, but I don’t know if that’s really true.
Certainly they seem to put one development on hold while they work on another
one for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SUPINE versus PRONE: When my children were babies, I
and all the other parents put them down to sleep on their tummies (prone
position). We were told this would prevent them from choking if they spat up. In the late 1990s, some not very good research
was interpreted to mean that all babies should be put down on their backs
(supine position) to prevent SIDS. The baby’s sleeping position helps to
determine the order in which muscles get stronger and come under control. Lying
prone makes it easier to develop head control and strengthen arms and
shoulders. Lying supine slows those achievements. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The list of milestones you see was developed when
babies usually lay prone. The milestones that are listed as associated with
particular ages are those that occur for babies who spend most of their time in
prone. The list of ages and milestones is not the same for babies who spend
their time supine. You probably put your baby in supine, as you have been told
to do, and you probably don’t do much tummy time because the baby fusses when
you do and you are afraid he or she will die right before your eyes from SIDS!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We do not at this time have a good list of ages and
milestones for supine-lying babies. All I can tell you is, don’t panic when you
see your baby is not doing what the list derived from prone babies says should
be happening.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">EYE CONTACT: I am sure you don’t gaze into other
peoples eyes every chance you get. You look at another person, look away, even
use your eyes to point out something you want the other person to look at. Babies
don’t gaze into eyes much, either, and they do it when they feel like it.
Nursing babies under 6 months usually shut their eyes and get on with the job.
Older nursing babies often put their hands to the mother’s face, poke a finger
up her nose, and generally look her over. Those photographs you see in
advertisements, where a beautiful nursing mother is gazing into her baby’s eyes
in a charming room with nice curtains and all--
I just wonder how many shots it took the photographer to get that
picture! <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Eye contact with very young babies (under perhaps
three months) is complicated by a lot of things. They are often not fully awake
unless they are upright. They cannot see things that are very close to their
faces. They need bright light to see well, and if your face is in shadow as you
bend over them, they don’t really see you. What’s more, just like you, they don’t
do everything they can do, every time they get a chance to do it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">By the way, a young blind baby may appear to be making
eye contract just in response to hearing a voice, so you really can’t always
tell hat’s happening.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Does your baby of more than three months seem to be
interested in people or pets and look at them more than at inanimate objects? That’s
what you really want to know.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></p>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I am hoping these
thoughts may help a little—but then parenthood is really about worrying—let’s
just try not to let it get too uncomfortable, because that causes trouble for parents and babies alike.</span>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-47839002238306730182020-10-05T09:20:00.001-04:002020-10-05T09:20:59.893-04:00An Ill-Judged Award Decision: Attachment Issues<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Several weeks ago, my Russian colleague Dr. Yulia
Massino alerted me to the fact that the American Psychological Association had
given an award for international humanitarian achievements to the Danish psychologist
Niels Peter Rygaard. Rygaard is the head of the Fairstart Foundation, an
organization devoted to help and training for foster parents and others working
with parentless children.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">While fully recognizing and applauding the aims of
Rygaard’s work, some of us were most concerned about recognition of an
organization whose website and history show connections with some disturbing
fringe beliefs about emotional attachment. These beliefs include the idea that
children who have had little consistency of early care and have experienced
many separations in infancy and toddlerhood will have antisocial tendencies.
Such fringe beliefs are shown through the misinformation shown about
characteristics of 5-7-year-old children and by a link given to the Attachment
Disorder Network. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The ADN fosters, and has long fostered, the mistaken
view that a problematic attachment history is expressed in hostility, cruelty,
and a preoccupation with harm to others. That view has been responsible in the
past for inappropriate treatments like “holding therapy” that have caused
documented child deaths and probably undocumented psychological injuries to
children. I hear from time to time to adults who recall and still suffer from
the harms they experienced as a result of such fringe beliefs and practices.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dr. Massino was especially concerned about the APA
award because of the influence Rygaard and some of his associates have in
Russia, where there is continuing discussion about appropriate rules for
adoption, foster care, and orphanage care.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After hearing about the award to Dr. Rygaard, I
contacted the co-chair of the APA committee that chose the recipient of this
award. He was very pleasant and receptive and, I think, paid attention to the
material I sent him and to my complaint that this was an ill-judged decision..
However, I soon received a message from APA to the effect that the award would
stand.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This was not surprising, and I did not really expect
any concrete result from my complaint. It would certainly be exceedingly
awkward to retract an award of this kind, and I had not argued, nor did I
think, that Rygaard <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>himself had done
anything harmful to children. I was simply concerned that the APA committee had
made the award without sufficient consideration of the background and with the
groups that Rygaard was allied with since the publication of his 2006 book, if
not before. Without at all wishing to assume guilt by association, I
nevertheless did not want APA inadvertently to provide support to a view of
attachment that is not only incorrect but potentially harmful to children.
Although APA is not in the usual sense an international organization, it should
take some responsibility for the effects of decisions on children in other
countries.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I do not want to take away praise for the hard work of
Dr. Rygaard and the Fairstart Foundation. It may seem to some readers that I am
splitting hairs when I express concern about fringe beliefs in the background.
But in fact decisions and practices often derive from background assumptions, and
those assumptions can be strengthened by approval of groups that share them. I
wish the APA awards committee had paid more attention to the background in this
case.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-60384852577388553052020-06-22T14:45:00.004-04:002020-06-22T14:45:31.670-04:00Interview With Susan Gerbic About Parental AlienationThis is a little over an hour long:<br />
<br />
<br />
https://youtu.be/pD4CTPG-HAI<br />
<br />Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2743746633913926150.post-4375247043714651222020-06-22T14:41:00.005-04:002020-06-22T14:41:55.728-04:00ADHD, FDA, and Video Games<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Recently the Food and Drug Administration approved a
video game that is purported to be helpful as a treatment for attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Parents and teachers are often concerned about kids
whose behavior indicates ADHD, as their inattentiveness and high activity level
combine to cause problems for their learning at school and at home, and serves
as distractions to their teachers and parents as well as to other kids. The
adults are bound to find attractive the idea that having the children play a
video game can help improve their focus and self-control.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m not going to state the manufacturer or name of the
specific game that was approved by the FDA. It doesn’t really matter, and I’m
not in the business of telling people what to buy or not to buy. What is
important is that people always need to find out certain things before they
decide to put their resources into a treatment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">An important question is, who paid for the research?
Obviously, research funding can come from neutral, objective sources who have
no reason to want one outcome or another. But it can also come from highly
interested parties—and in this case that’s what happened. The manufacturer paid
for the research and got the outcome they wanted. When we say that a treatment
is evidence-based, however, we ask for two independent researchers both to show
the beneficial effects of the treatment. If someone unconnected with the
manufacturer got the same results as the people funded by the manufacturer,
that would be something to encourage us to use the treatment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A second important question is, what does the outcome
have to do with the original problem? Lots of treatments have effects, and it
can be seen that they make a difference of some kind. The question is whether
the difference they make is relevant to the problem everyone was worried about.
In this case, that has not happened. The kids played one video game and their
attentiveness was measured. Then they played another game 100 times, went back
to the first one, and their attentiveness had improved—voila, a desirable
outcome. However, none of the ratings by their parents, of attentiveness and so
on, were improved. If the wish had been to create a treatment that would help
the kids play video games better, this one would be good, but of course that
was not the point of treating ADHD.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Just because we (in general) always hope for a pill or
a potion to “fix” problems of development and behavior, rather than to have to
do any difficult work, there will always be offerings of this kind. I mentioned
one a while ago: “Forbrain” , which according to its website “energizes” the
brain when you speak using a bone conduction headset. How you know whether your
brain has or has not been energized is not mentioned. That’s typical of devices
offered to treat autism, speech and hearing problems, and attention
difficulties—even some that seem highly plausible and were created by very
knowledgeable people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The difference between the ADHD video game and the
others is that in the ADHD case the FDA has approved, suggesting that the game
has been found both safe for use and effective. That last part is questionable,
as I have pointed out. And this is a<i> prescription</i> game, sounding very
impressive and encouraging parents and teachers to see it as worth a try,
whatever it costs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It all amounts to <i>caveat emptor. </i>Ask the right questions!<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<br />Jean Mercerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619393019771381980noreply@blogger.com0