I’ve been immersing myself in the literature around Parental
Alienation for over 2 years now – hungrily devouring every journal article,
magazine posting, book chapter, seminar and blog that deals with the issue from
one perspective or another. I have met
with so many people who have lived with Parental Alienation on a daily basis –
who deal with pain, loss, shame, guilt, anger, rejection, disbelief, depression,
sadness, ignorance and judgement. I have
met so many more people, professionals such as counsellors, psychologists,
academics, teachers, social workers and lawyers, who have never heard of
Parental Alienation. And then there are
those people that happenstance dictates I bump into. In polite conversation, they ask – “why are
you going to a conference?” or “what are you researching?” After checking out – “do you really want to
know?”, I explain to them what Parental Alienation is, and what my research is
about. It never ceases to surprise, and
dismay, me the number of times I hear “that happened to my
son/partner/daughter/friend/colleague”.
I guess many may see me as a passionate bore. My research is extremely important to
me. But it is driven by seeing the
traumatic effect it has on the lives of the people I love and care about. And it is this personal encounter with
Parental Alienation which drives me on.
I feel driven to raise awareness of Parental Alienation in those
professionals who work with people on a daily basis whose lives are damaged by
this tragedy. I feel driven to raise
awareness in the general public – so that Parental Alienation can no longer be
denied or swept under the carpet in the same way as childhood sex abuse used to
be.
I guess it is this passion and drive which took me to the
recent conference of the BPS History and Philosophy of Psychology section. My
passion and drive and one of my all too frequent moments of madness that
is!! History and Philosophy of
Psychology? Me? I am no theoretical academic. I am firmly rooted in applied psychology. I am very clear that I am here to help people
– not to theorise or speculate. What
drove me was the topic of the conference
“DSM: The History, Theory, and Politics of Diagnosis”. In devouring all those journal articles I had
become aware of the debate around the inclusion of Parental Alienation in the
upcoming latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, DSM5. The debate around
whether we label a child with a mental disorder; the debate around the symptoms
and behaviour manifested in a child due to the alienation process; the debate surrounding
the alienation behaviours of the parent; the debate around prevention and
intervention – and whether a “label” is a pre-requisite for resources to be
made available.
So, I submitted an abstract, which was accepted. I arrived at the conference on 26th
March, and immediately felt that I had made an error of judgement. This was NOT the place for my presentation.
It was the WRONG audience. I felt like a fish out of water, in need of a parachute
to bail out – and probably many other mixed metaphors and similies too. Oh well, I was here now, and thankfully there
was a colleague here who was very re-assuring and supportive. It was with some angst and apprehension that
I delivered my “paper”. I had never been
to a conference where a “paper” meant an actual written paper which was
delivered verbatim. I had prepared my
usual PowerPoint presentation backed up by a few scribbled notes – though I
have to admit that nerves took over and I didn’t “engage” with the audience as
much as I would have liked. I ran a
little over the allocated time, not allowing time for questions and felt I had rushed
things, hadn’t been clear enough or got my points across. I was relieved when it was over. With some surprise, my relief quickly turned
to satisfaction, a sense of fulfilment, and I can say I even felt a wee bit
proud when 2 of the delegates rushed up to me at the end. One of them was very excited, and felt that
my paper validated her own theoretical research and she would like to use it as
an example when she presented her paper the following day. The second was a young woman, who put her arm
on mine and said “Thank you. That happened to me as a child, and now I
know it has a name. Now I know it was
real.”
I want to give my personal thanks to that delegate. Thank you for validating my decision to
present in this strange arena. Thank you
for re-enthusing my drive and commitment to raise awareness of Parental
Alienation. And thank you for sharing
your experience with me.
