Category: Alienation

History of terminology – Professionals may use the term parental alienation or incorporate Dr. Childress’s terms AB parenting or pathogenic parenting. Notably, the nomenclature is an issue addressed over the years.

Previous names include:

• Alienated child: Kelly and Johnston, 2001 (The alienated child)
• Child alienation: Stahl (n.d.)
• Malicious parent syndrome: Turkat,1999 (titled initially malicious mother syndrome)
• Pathological alienation: Warshak, 2006
• Parental alienation disorder: Bernet, 2010

Quote: “This is about power,
manipulation and control by a selfish often mentally unwell parent who hates their ex
more than they love their own child. The mourning for the child and parent is a (sic)
ongoing till the day the child is old enough to break free to love that parent. Sometimes
the damage is irreversible where the child cannot bond because they have lived a life of
conflicted thoughts and suppression.

Fact: Alienation occurs in around 10% of its private law caseload, involving around
6,000 children a year. A. Douglas, Cafcass chief executive
“When contact is re-established between the parent and the child, the damage is
already done. Especially if the accusing parent has utilized alienating tactics, bringing
the child into adult situations, planting false memories, or instilling fear toward the
accused parent into the child.” The Fathers Right’s Movement.

The reason parents file false allegations in custody cases is for the simple reason; they
work. False allegations are made because one party possesses the deceptive belief this
will give the accusing parent the upper hand based on the premise the accusations
permanently damage the accused parent on an immediate and long-term basis.

One rationale why lying is rampant in family court is because differentiating a lie from
the truth is difficult. In a custody battle, both parents may exchange mutual accusations about the other parent. “Anger, bitterness and need to destroy the other becomes paramount.”

There is rarely, if any, penalty to the accuser while the accused is unwillingly pushed
into an oppressive life of nightmarish qualities. The Kafkaesque inspired existence is
where the accused will struggle against their will using all assets, reserves and supplies
within reach; however, the truth is that the accused does not stand a chance, continues fighting and full of hope even within the air of bleakness.

Taken from the NAAP Report

https://fb.me/e/1HDbGrB29

The empathy gap has also been an important idea in research about the causes of bullying.^[10]:IV In one study examining a central theory that, “only by identifying with a victim’s social suffering can one understand its devastating effects,”^[11] researchers created five experiments. The first four examined the degree to which participants in a game who were not excluded could estimate the social pain of participants who were excluded. The findings were that those who were not socially excluded consistently underestimated the pain felt by those who were excluded. A survey included in the study directed at teachers’ opinions of school policy toward bullying found that those with an experience of social pain, caused by bullying, often rated the pain experienced by those facing bullying or social exclusion as higher than teachers who did not have such experience, and further, that teachers who had experienced social pain were more likely to punish students for bullying.^[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_gap

A hot-cold empathy gap is a cognitive bias in which people underestimate the influences of visceral drives on their own attitudes, preferences, and behaviors.^[1]

The most important aspect of this idea is that human understanding is “state-dependent”. For example, when one is angry, it is difficult to understand what it is like for one to be calm, and vice versa; when one is blindly in love with someone, it is difficult to understand what it is like for one not to be, (or to imagine the possibility of not being blindly in love in the future). Importantly, an inability to minimize one’s gap in empathy can lead to negative outcomes in medical settings (e.g., when a doctor needs to accurately diagnose the physical pain of a patient),^[2] and in workplace settings (e.g., when an employer needs to assess the need for an employee’s bereavement leave).^[3]

Hot-cold empathy gaps can be analyzed according to their direction:^[2]

1. Hot-to-cold: People under the influence of visceral factors (hot state) don’t fully grasp how much their behavior and preferences are being driven by their current state; they think instead that these short-term goals reflect their general and long-term preferences.
2. Cold-to-hot: People in a cold state have difficulty picturing themselves in hot states, minimizing the motivational strength of visceral impulses. This leads to unpreparedness when visceral forces inevitably arise.

They can also be classified in regards to their relation with time (past or future) and whether they occur intra- or inter-personally:^[2]

1. intrapersonal prospective: the inability to effectively predict their own future behavior when in a different state. See also projection bias.^[4]
2. intrapersonal retrospective: when people recall or try to understand behaviors that happened in a different state. See retrospective hot-cold empathy gaps.
3. interpersonal: the attempt to evaluate behaviors or preferences of another person who is in a state different from one’s own.

The term hot-cold empathy gap was coined by Carnegie Mellon University psychologist, George Loewenstein. Hot-cold empathy gaps are one of Loewenstein’s major contributions to behavioral economics.