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.
But I have seen this now, and not just from Craig
Childress.
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.) , Turning Points for
Families: A Therapeutic Vacation. 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.
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).
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 year for human beings. These two concepts (experience-expectant
and experience-dependent plasticity) have taken the place of the old idea of
instinct.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.