The mental state of parents who seriously abuse children through alienation

The experiment which follows is based on 15 years of study of alienating parents and having measured their personality traits in three areas: psychoticism, neuroticism, and empathy. The test used for this purpose was the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire which already has norms for the average population based on age and sex.

Although the sample is small consisting of 15 women and 10 men who have been found to seriously alienate their children against the other party, it is at present the only study carried out to measure objectively the personality traits of such individuals compared with the norms on psychoticism, neuroticism and empathy.

The tables which follow provides the norms and standard deviations of the non alienating normal group and compares this with the alienators on the three dimensions measured.

1. Psychoticism

Table 1

Psychoticism – age norms, means and standard deviations for different age groups for the general population, and parental alienating group (in brackets)

The results indicate that alienators appear to have a higher score on psychoticism indicating signs of mental illness of disturbance related to these symptoms.

2. Neuroticism

Table 2

Neuroticism – age norms, means and standard deviations for different age groups for the general population, and parental alienation group (in brackets)

3. Empathy

Table 3

Empathy – age norms, means and standard deviations for different age groups for the general population, and parental alienation group (in brackets)

Results

The results indicate that:

1. Alienators appear to have a higher score on psychoticism and neuroticism indicating signs of mental illness or emotional disturbance related to these symptoms.

2. Alienators also appear to have a lower score in the area of empathy than the norm of men and women assessed in the general population in the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Manual.

http://www.parental-alienation.info/publications/54-PASeriousMentalDisorder.htm