The present study highlights the characteristics of separated families in Italy for whom Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) has been diagnosed during court custody evaluations.
The study analyzed the psychological reports of 12 court-appointed expert evaluations of families for whom PAS had been diagnosed. Twelve evaluations that did not receive the PAS diagnosis served as a control group. A specific coding system was used for data analysis.
The results indicated that the alienating parents were always the parents who had custody of the children. Children who were diagnosed with PAS were predominantly the only child in the family, had identity problems and manifested manipulative behavior. The consultant in these cases suggested individual psychotherapy for the children and recommended foster care to the Social Services agency.
Divorce has become a significant social phenomenon in Italy since the end of the 1980s and early 1990s; it has gradually increased to the same proportions observed in other parts of the Western world. There has been a 60% increase in the number of divorces since the beginning of the 1990s, from 50,000 cases in 1990 to 86,000 cases in 2009. Almost 50% of the cases from 2009 involved a child. Twenty percent of the cases were judicial divorces, and the judicial dispute usually concerned child custody. One of the greatest challenges facing forensic psychologists, lawyers and judges relates to cases in which children reject a parent after the divorce. In these cases, the court's decisions are often ineffective both because of the complexity of the situation and because there is no agreement between the two parties. Considering these difficulties, Gardner's theorization (1985) was broadly accepted throughout Italy because it filled a gap. By proposing specific logical categories, Gardner's theory enabled the understanding of a child's rejection of a parent in terms of a more inclusive framework rather than simple parental inadequacy. More than twenty years after Gardner's original formulation, there is an extensive body of literature on the topic, which bears witness to the intense interest surrounding this issue (Baker, 2010, Fidler and Bala, 2010a, Friedlander and Walters, 2010, Johnston, 2003, Kelly and Johnston, 2001, Lowestein, 2010 and Warshak, 2010).
Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is a relational pathology, originally identified by Gardner, 1985 and Gardner, 1987, that can develop in adversarial divorce situations. Data have also suggested that, in some families, PAS can precede the divorce (Baker & Chambers, 2011). “It's a disorder in which children, programmed by the alienating parent, embark upon a campaign of denigration against the alienated parent,” (Gardner, 2004a, p. 80). PAS recognizance depends on the child's behavior and not on the alienating parent's campaign of denigration.
Gardner (2004a) proposed eight diagnostic criteria for identifying the syndrome in children (Fig. 1). In the presence of real abuse or abandonment on the part of a parent, such animosity can be justified and in this case it is not possible to diagnose PAS. “Because this syndrome generally appears as a cluster, children who suffer from PAS typically exhibit most of these symptoms,” (Gardner, 2004a, p. 83). There are three clinical levels of PAS: mild, moderate and severe (Gardner, 2004a).
