CONTACT INFORMATION Linda J. Gottlieb, LMFT, LCSW-r 8 Folger Lane Dix Hills NY 11746 631-673-6665...

CONTACT INFORMATION

Linda J. Gottlieb, LMFT, LCSW-r8 Folger Lane

Dix Hills NY 11746

631-673-6665 work

[email protected]

www.LindaGottlieb.com

www.EndParentalAlienation.com

Linda Kase-Gottlieb, Jan 2014, prepared for Parental Alienation Awereness Organization

What to do When the Judge is Hesitant to Remedy Alienation

Linda Kase-Gottlieb, LMFT, LCSW

Parental alienation is becoming an epidemic: Clawar and Rivlin, in Child Held Hostage: Dealing with Programmed and Brainwashed Children , published by the American Bar Association, stated that

some degree of alienation occurs in

80% of all divorces.

Linda Kase-Gottlieb, Jan 2014, prepared for Parental Alienation Awereness Organization 3

We have to start acknowledging that alienation is a form of emotional child abuse an that it must therefore be treated as any

other form of child abuse: removal from an incorrigible perpetrator. The alienating parent is a child abuser. And the severe or obsessed alienator is likely to be incorrigible. These cases are becoming an

epidemic, and, given the high divorce rate, we are losing a generation of children.


I originally planned to talk tonight about treatment for cases of alienation, and I hope to be invited back to do so. But after extensive collaboration about these cases with my colleague, Dr. Steven Miller, I decided that a

more meaningful focus for this presentation is to address why the professionals who intervene in child custody so often get cases of alienation wrong and backwards. I am including in these professionals: mental health therapists, the custody evaluator, the GAL and/or attorney for the child. And when the reports and testimony of these professionals are presented in the legal proceedings, the resulting court rulings perpetuate the alienation. This

does not serve the best interests of the child.


The following are the agenda for this Webinar: 1. Describe how professionals repeatedly and frequently miss the

blatant alienation; confuse it for estrangement to which they assert that targeted/alienated parents contribute, and assign equal culpability to each parent’s contribution to the child’s rejection of the targeted parent

2. Provide the basics of a valid family assessment and custody evaluation;

3. Critique of an invalid interpretation of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or MMPI (the most common test given in custody evaluations;)


4. Define the terms of alienation, estrangement, and hybrid cases;5. Present a effective strategy to create reasonable doubt about the

distorted, invalid, and possibly biased testimony of the court’s appointed experts without alienating the judge;

6. Explain how alienation is a form of emotional child abuse and of the severest kind;

7. Discuss how to influence the judge to recognize that leaving the children with the alienator is riskier than transferring custody;

8. Express the ineffectiveness of reunification therapy in severe cases of alienation;

9. List effective treatment programs.


1. How do all these professionals get things wrong and backwards?

This question is meaningfully answered in Dr. Miller’s chapter entitled, “Clinical Reasoning and Decision-Making.” in a book entitled, Working with Alienated Children and Families: A Guidebook. (2012). Edited by Amy Baker and Richard Sauber.


A. PAS cases are counterintuitive: the brain is hardwired to make very common thinking mistakes in cases of alienation. The brain is fooled just like it is in an optical illusion. PAS is counterintuitive, for example, in that we think:

1. If a child rejects a parent, that parent must have done something to warrant it: somehow brainwashing is not considered as the explanation

2. It is irrational for the child to align with the abusive parent who is the alienating parent

3. The pathological enmeshment in these cases appears to be healthy bonding


B. As a result of the above, the therapist, evaluator, Guardian Ad Litem, attorney for the child, will get the case wrong and backwards.

These professionals make COMMON COGNITIVE ERRORS leading to serious and very common clinical errors WHICH ASSESS THE ALIENATING PARENT TO BE THE BETTER PARENT IF NOT ABOVE REPROACH WHILE THE TARGETED/ALIENATED PARENT IS ASSESSED TO POSSESS VERY LIMITED PARENTING SKILLS AND PERHAPS EVEN to be A “HYSTERICAL PARANOID.


According to Dr. Miller:

“Clinicians who attempt to manage them [cases of alienation] without adequate skills are likely to find themselves presiding over a cascade of clinical and psychological disasters.” (p. 11)


As quoted from Dr. Miller in the following slides are Four of the most common cognitive errors: (please refer to Dr. Miller’s chapter for a more complete list of these errors):


1. Anchoring Effect:

The phenomenon by which judgment is unduly influenced by initial information; often accompanied by inadequate adjustment when new information becomes available. For example, being influenced by a biased GAL report and refusing to modify thinking based on new evidence to the contrary, such as positive reports from the targeted parents long-standing therapist who emphatically states that the TP’s symptoms are being situationally created and maintained by the alienation.


2. Confirmation Bias:

The tendency to focus on evidence that might confirm a hypothesis while neglecting evidence that might refute it. For example, placing emphasis on MMPI scales that favor the alienating parent or reflect that parent in a positive light while minimizing or ignoring scales that reveal that parent to be faking answers; dismissing scales that reveal the targeted parent in a positive light and misinterpreting the targeted parent’s raw scores in insolation from the effects of the alienation on that parent’s emotional life.


3. Premature Closure:

Making a diagnosis or other decision before obtaining and/or considering sufficient information. For example, completing and submitting a court report without obtaining information from the targeted parent’s long-standing therapist; failing to do interviews with all relevant collateral contacts primarily collateral contacts who have positive things to state about the targeted parent.


4. Fundamental Attribution Error:

Concluding that behavior is dispositional or character-logical when in fact it is situational. For example, when the origin of the targeted parent’s anger is not the result of some character flaw but rather is due to having been maltreated by the other parent and their children; is due to being treated unfairly and/or biasedly by judicial and mental health professionals who had been coopted by the alienating parent! Who would not have a normal angry reaction to these kinds of situations? Prior to the initiation of the alienation, this parent was emotionally stable and was quite capable of managing her/his emotions but this is ignored when the fundamental attribution error comes into play.



2. Partial list of Axioms for completing a proper family assessment and or custody evaluation. (taken from table 2.1 of Steve Miller’s chapter, where a complete list can be found.)

Axiom Comments Questions that clinicians should ask

1 Consider the total clinical picture

Consider all aspects of a problem

What was the prior relationship between the child and the rejected parent?

Is the favored parent manipulating the child?

Is there credible evidence that the rejected parent is abusive or neglectful?How cooperative is each parent with respect to both therapy and co-parenting?How credible are their stories?

Are there discrepancies or inconsistencies?

Does either parent breach court orders?

Is there psychopathology?

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2 Gather Adequate Evidence

Obtain Sufficient high-quality evidence

Do I have an in-depth understanding of this family?

Do I have enough high-quality evidence?

Do I need additional collateral source information?

Have I overlooked disconfirmatory evidence?

Have I overlooked circumstantial evidence?


3 Use proper reasoning Always employ metacognition (thinking about thinking)

Have I used both System 1 and System 2 (intuition and analytic reasoning)?Have I displayed any biases?

Have I followed the laws of logic and probability?

Have I found a plausible explanation rather than the correct explanation?

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6 Develop an adequate differential diagnosis

Rank competing diagnoses What are the possibilities? I need to rank them


7 Consider Severity Grade severity using a sliding scale and consider whether problems are getting better or worse

Is the child’s alienation mild, moderate, or severe?

Is the parent’s behavior mild, moderate, or severe?

Is the behavior pathological, e.g., delusional, bizarre, or extreme?Am I guilty of severity neglect?

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Analyze the evidence

Analyze the evidence with respect to amount, quality, strength, and weight. Seek confirmatory and dis-confirmatory evidence. Seek direct and circumstantial evidence. Explain any discrepancies and inconsistencies.

What is the evidence for alienation?

What is the evidence for estrangement?

If both are present what are their relative contributions?

Are the parents’ behaviors causally connected to the child’s alignment?

Have I confused the strength of evidence with the weight of evidence?

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Many states have promulgated standards about how to undertake a forensic evaluation, and you should check to see if your state has done so. Most custody evaluators don’t know about their state’s guideline or fail to follow them if they do. Look for the criteria of familiarity with family dynamics. Only the degree of Marriage and Family Therapy offers a profound understanding of family dynamics.

All other mental health professionals must take extensive training in family dynamics in order to adequately understand this, and most do not. If your state does not have standards, there are generally accepted standards published by the legal profession. Get these standards and apply them to a bad custody evaluation. These standards are RARELY followed. They are probably not known to most evaluators.

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Ask that all forensic interviews be video recorded! That will permit an independent, objective critique of the methodology and competency of the evaluator. A COMPETENT evaluator will not object. The following are minimum interviews of one each that MUST be undertaken to rule in or out for alienation:

a) Each child alone b) All siblings togetherc) Each child with each parentd) All siblings with each parente) The parents togetherf) A family interview (this is the single most important interview, and

I have yet to see it done!)

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3. So the forensic evaluator has made all the above cognitive errors (and many more), and what do you know, you have been diagnosed with paranoia---SURPRISE!

Yes surprise, because no one who knows you well ever labeled you that before. Certainly before the onset of the PAS, your kids did not. No one ever suggested that you need therapy because you thought the world was against you. You functioned well as a parent and you had a healthy relationship with your kids. You functioned on the job if you worked, and you functioned in the home if you were a stay at home parent. How did this happen? How did the results of the MMPI label you paranoid, depressed, panic stricken, or with some other strange, previously-undiscovered pathology about you? Do not despair.

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The results of the test are not the be-all and end-all because:

a) The test is designed for hypothesis generation not for hypothesis confirmation. It is a misuse of the test to be used for confirmation.

a) The test interpretation is subjective, and I just discussed how evaluators can develop biases leading to subjective misinterpretation. (For example, there are multiple scales in this test, such as for paranoia, faking, and depression. Which scales the evaluator emphasizes and which are de-emphasized is subjective and can skew results.)

b) The MMPI has not been validated for a person undergoing high conflict divorce and for severe alienation. (I am not referring here to minor triangulation or alignment.) The reference population of the MMPI 2 is a normative population based on the 1980 census---this population is therefore not matched to the severely alienated parent. The test results for the targeted/alienated parent reveals what one would expect from a person undergoing a severe case of alienation – particularly if her/his concerns have been trivialized, dismissed, and criticized by numerous mental health and legal professionals who are frequently co-opted by the alienating parent.

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d. The interpretation of the raw data cannot be done in isolation. The clinical context of someone undergoing severe alienation is significantly different from the context of a general population. So, for example, if you took the test the day after you had been falsely accused of sexually abusing your daughter, thereby put out of your home with just the clothes on your back, and were apprised by your attorney that you could be sent to prison for a long time (sound all too familiar to many of you?) I would not call that situation optimal test conditions and conditions that accurately reflect your general stabilty. Do you think a person may come out APPEARING paranoid after going through this?)

d. The clinical context must be considered as a factor in assessing the raw data (the person’s answers.) Often the context is not considered----particularly if interpreted primarily by a computer and not by the evaluator! It is imperative to determine how the raw data was interpreted.

d. A PAS-aware evaluator would assert that the targeted/alienated parent does not exist in a normative situation.

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g) The custody evaluator may have subjectively and biasedly chosen to emphasize some clinical scales of the MMPI and de-emphasize or ignore others in order to portray you in the worst light and the alienating parent in the best light. Unfortunately, I have witnessed this in several cases I have testified on.

g. Should we be surprised that the targeted parent would test positive for paranoia? After all, aren’t your kids, your ex, the system talking negatively about? Filing false allegations about you? etc. Even paranoids have enemies.

g. In conclusion, I am saying that you would likely have very different results had you taken this prior to the onset of the alienation.

g. Unfortunately, you may need to hire your own expert to combat a bad MMPI test. But it will likely be well worth the investment depending upon how distorted your test results were.

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4. Alienation v. estrangement v. hybrid cases (combination of both)

a) Alienation is very simply defined as a child’s unwarranted

deprecation and rejection of a parent generally at the behest of the other parent but can be orchestrated by another significant person in the child’s life. The rejection is completely out of proportion to anything that the alienated parent did in relation to the child. Alienation is readily diagnosed (meaning that there is a high probability for the presence of alienation) by the presence of Gardner’s 8 characteristic symptoms in the child along with the research supported (refer to the studies by Amy Baker) of the 17 alienating strategies by the alienating parent. (please utilize my free website for an in-depth description with examples of the 8 symptoms.) www.endparentalalienation.com.

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b) Most evaluators get the diagnosis wrong: they proclaim that the targeted/alienated parent contributed to the child’s rejection of her/him, and these evaluators thereby label these cases as hybrids when they are either entirely or primarily alienation cases. These evaluator fail to ask the question: “If there had been no alienating parent would the targeted parent’s behavior alone been enough to warrant the child’s rejection?” It is not sufficient for evaluators to state only, “Both parents contributed.” It is incumbent upon the evaluator to assign weight to the severity of each parents’ behaviors and assess what % each parent contribute

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Amazingly and irresponsibly, these evaluators rarely evaluate for such severity. They generally fail to punctuate the cruelty, tenacity, and the deliberateness of the alienating parent’s behaviors and goal (particularly in severe cases) to sever the relationship between the other parent and their child. These cruel behaviors, as most of you know, include but are not limited to, false allegations of child abuse and child sex abuse; false domestic violence allegations resulting in the TP’s ejection from the family home; denying the TP access to the child and to the child’s medical, educational, and social life, etc. But, on the other hand, because the TP expresses anger as a normal defensive reaction to being abused and rejected, the evaluators deem this to be the TP’s contribution. I consider this to be a gross misinterpretation and negligence.

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c) When the targeted parent does have the normal defensive reactions to being abused and rejected not only by the child but exacerbated by the professionals who have intervened in the case, this may be referred to as a case of secondary estrangement. In other words, it occurs as a result of the alienation that preceded it. In other words, the behaviors on the part of the targeted parent is the result of that parent reacting to the child’s deprecation, humiliation, rejection, and maltreatment, etc. of her/him. In other words, the parent has a normal negative reaction to being hurt by her/his beloved child. Or the parents had made the typical trial and error mistakes of parenting but is never forgiven. Or that parent is somewhat strict to compensate for the permissiveness of the alienating parent. In the case of secondary estrangement, the child’s rejection is also totally out of proportion to anything the parent did.

I would challenge any mental health professional not to have an angry reaction to being repeatedly abused, disrespected, and rejected by her/his beloved child. Or to employ the appropriate discipline for her/his child when the child is permitted by the alienating parent to act-out. Or to seek psychiatric care when her/his child exhibits extreme mental instability, as many alienated children do. 30


d) In the case of primary estrangement, to the contrary, the parent’s behavior must be causally connected to the child’s rejection, meaning that it temporally preceded the rejection. And the behavior must be severely neglectful and/or abusive enough that would justify the rejection. You need not be a professional to assess for such behaviors. The standard of a prudent person’s or parent’s perception will suffice.

d) How to find this family dynamic in the DSM 5 (pp. 715-719)

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5. You must not attack the person of the court-appointed evaluator. Not a smart idea! (In fact, you may have to avert attacking several of the court’s LOCAL professionals, such as therapists and attorneys, who preceded your expert and who will not likely practice or be known locally) Instead:

a) Point out that the cases of alienation are a subspecialty in the mental health world and require special training, education and experience, which your expert possesses.

b) Credit the evaluator (and any other professional involved in the case) for his or her expertise in his or her particular area of expertise. Express that you recognize that they do indeed have the best interests of the child in mind but that cases of alienation are extremely complex and easily misinterpreted by a professional not trained in the subspecialty of alienation.

c) Convey that, due to the counterintuitiveness of alienation cases previously discussed, it is not surprising that the local experts got it wrong. This does not make them bad professionals.----just not experts in this particular area of mental health. (As my colleague, Steve Miller, repeatedly states, “Three third-graders don’t make a ninth grader.

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6. Alienation is child abuse. It must therefore be treated as any other case of child abuse: removal from the incorrigible alienating parent.

a)The DSM-5 on p. 719 states, “Child psychological abuse is non-accidental verbal or symbolic acts by a child's parent or caregiver that results, or have reasonable potential to result, in significant psychological harm to the child----indicating that the alleged offender will harm/abandoned – people or things that the child cares about.”

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b. From Gottlieb’s Amicus Brief that alienation is child abuse:

1. A child cannot feel loveable if a parent is perceived to have abandoned her/him and does not love her/him. The inevitable result is that the child “will seek love in all the wrong places.”

2. A child’s self-concept is that she/he is constituted of ½ mother and ½ father. If a child hates a parent or thinks ill of a parent, then the child will have self-hatred; this inevitably induces bad behavior.

3. Because lying, deceit, disrespect, and aggression have been normalized, alienated children frequently fail to conform to their cultural environment.

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4. Because the child’s judgment, perception, reality testing, and superego have been compromised, psychosis and/or social deviancy are frequent consequences.

5. The double-bind situation of being unable to have, love, and be loved by both parents often creates psychosis.

4. Remaining with hatred and anger is not healthy under any circumstances, let alone for a parent.

4. The process of using a child to serve the emotional needs of the alienating parent and doing that parent’s appalling bidding is abuse in itself. It is a reversal of a healthy family hierarchy.

5. The child’s individuality is squashed when the alienating parent fails to recognize the child as a separate person from her/him with different needs, feelings, and opinions----particularly for the other parent.

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9. The child is in a chronic state of depression regarding the loss of such a significant person as a parent.

10.Anxiety results due to the possibility that a slip of behavior will reveal the child’s true love and longing for the alienated parent, thereby incurring the wrath of the alienating parent.

11.The child suffers from the guilt of having maltreated, disrespected, and rejected a parent. And if that parent is no longer around due to either death or unknown whereabouts once the child lifts her/his repression regarding this family dynamic, she/he will suffer a lifetime of guilt.

9. The emotional vacuum left by the loss of a parent is filled with unhealthy and destructive things: eating disorders; drugs and alcohol; criminal activities; destructive relationships; truancy; cutting; suicidal behaviors, school truancy, underperforming and/or failing in school etc.

(This Amicus Brief can be downloaded for free on my website.)

c)Refer to Amy Baker’s research in Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome.

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7) How to make the Judge “get it”

a. You must present massive overwhelming evidence (a phrase coined by Steve Miller) of the abuse and its detrimental affects on your children. Given that there is likely a 95% resistance to transferring custody, the judge must be persuaded that doing nothing (leaving the child with the alienator) is riskier than transferring custody.

a. Do not pussy foot around. Use specific, graphic examples from your particular case. Make the judge SEE---rather EXPERIENCE---the face of alienation. For example, don’t just describe the detrimental effects of the abuse from the alienation on your children. Bring the abuse into the courtroom with pictures (perhaps life size) of the effects. Show the cutting, the violent behaviors, the hair pulling, the hysteria, etc. Bring in videos of how your kids behave and maltreat you. (this is one reason why I video record the reunification sessions so they can be played for the judge).

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c) Read for the courtroom any disturbing poems and writings by your children that reflect the detrimental effects.

d) Bring in pictures your children drew that are indicative of their emotional and behavioral disturbances.

e) Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words; but a video is worth a million pictures.

(I am not an attorney. These suggestions for legal strategy were made by a a NY attorney, Tim Coyle, with whom I collaborate on the alienation cases I am hired to testify on. But I can say this from my own experience with the courtroom: if you do not have the guts to dramatize the abuse to your children, there is virtually no chance you will overcome the judge’s 95% prior probability of aversion to transferring custody!)

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8) Reunification therapy in mild to moderate cases of alienation.

Why a family systems approach is the treatment of choice. (refer to pp. 213-214 of the Guidebook.)

This will be a lecture/webinar for another time that delves more into the 11 reasons why Family Systems approach is the best.

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9. Reunification therapy does not work in severe cases: it is illogical to believe that an hour of therapy once a week will overcome the influence of the alienating parent the rest of the time.

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10.What does work for severe cases of alienation?

a) transfer of custody to the targeted/alienated parent or a neutral setting

b) no contact with the alienating parent and child for a minimum of 90 days

c) therapy for the alienating parent by a PAS-aware therapist

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11.Where are these programs

a) Richard Warshak’s program in Texasb) Kathleen Reay’s program in Canadac) starting my program in NY

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I would like to thank the following people for their assistance:

Joan T. Kloth-Zanard of PAS Intervention

This concludes the presentation. I will now respond to questions and comments.

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CONTACT INFORMATION

Linda J. Gottlieb, LMFT, LCSW-r8 Folger Lane

Dix Hills NY 11746

631-673-6665 work

[email protected]

www.LindaGottlieb.com

www.EndParentalAlienation.com


CONTACT INFORMATION Linda J. Gottlieb, LMFT, LCSW-r 8 Folger Lane Dix Hills NY 11746 631-673-6665...

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