Parental Alienation Syndrome: Invention Or Reality?
Since Richard Gardner first described the term parental alienation in 1985, there have been very diverse controversies and criticisms derived from this construct. Detractors of the concept have relied on different types of arguments to invalidate its existence in recent decades, which authors such as Suárez and Nodal (2017) have analyzed in a recent review in order to shed some light on this complex phenomenon.
So that… Is the concept of Parental Alienation Syndrome founded? Let’s see it.
Gardner’s original definition of SAP referred to the “alteration that usually appears in the context of a divorce, in which the child despises and criticizes one of his parents, when such negative evaluation is unjustified or exaggerated (in Vilalta Suárez, 2011).
The SAP involves that one parent harmfully influences the child to reject the other parent in those cases in which there is no evidence of any type of abuse by the alienated parent towards the child. Specifically, the following are included as defining signs of SAP (Vilalta Suárez, 2011):
According to the aforementioned authors, in the Practical Guide to Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender Violence, prepared by a group of experts on the subject and by the General Council of the Judiciary in 2016, the impossibility of validating the existence of the SAP.
This categorization is based on the fact that such psychological entity It is not included in the classification systems of reference mental disorders current ones, such as the DSM-V. This is especially relevant since this document becomes a fundamental guide in the field of forensic psychology and can in turn condition the conception that professionals in the area of clinical psychology have of the SAP construct.
In the work carried out by Suárez and Nodal (2017), different arguments are presented that call into question the justifications offered by the detractors of the SAP and the authors of the aforementioned Guide when invalidating its existence.
First of all, it seems that The nomenclature of SAP itself, defining it as a syndrome, has generated much debate in the sense of whether its conceptualization as a pathological phenomenon, a mental disorder or an illness should be legitimized.
1. Pathologization of a relational phenomenon
According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), a syndrome is defined by a set of signs and/or symptoms that, based on their frequent co-occurrence, can suggest a pathogenesis (DSM-IV-TR, 2014). While it is true that the “syndrome” element may be insufficiently scientifically justified in SAP, This does not mean that the existence of the situational phenomenon can be denied that parental alienation describes. This can be considered independent of whether there is sufficient consensus to grant it the nosology of a syndrome.
Related to the above, the SAP has not been included as such in any of the versions of the DSM, despite the fact that the debate of including it or not among the group of experts responsible for the official preparation of the current manual was very present.
2. The circular argument
In this sense, the authors of the work allege that the fact that the SAP was not finally included in the classification system, It does not necessarily imply that its existence should be denied See the examples used such as “battered woman syndrome” or homosexuality, which was defined as a mental disorder until 1973. Both justify the fact that, although there is no specific diagnostic label for a psychological problem during a given time, , this may be equally relevant and of priority attention in clinical professional practice.
Thus, if SAP or AP (parental alienation) is finally contemplated in a future revision of the DSM, would this imply that only from that moment on could it be defined as a mental pathology and not before?
3. Supposed lack of interest from Psychology
Another of the arguments that Suárez and Nodal (2017) question refers to the belief that SAP has not been (and is not) the object of interest of the psychological scientific community. The text lists numerous works that show precisely the opposite, although it is true that they also include meta-analysis studies that describe the difficulty of empirically validating the SAP Therefore, it cannot be said that there is no interest on the part of the scientific community in the clinical and forensic area in investigating and delimiting SAP (or AP) more objectively.
In addition to the above, it seems that in the area of jurisdiction, no ruling from the Supreme Court or the Strasbourg Human Rights Court can be found that intrinsically questions the existence of the SAP.
SAP and DSM-V
As mentioned previously, SAP is not recognized as a nosological entity in the DSM-V. However, in the section corresponding to “Problems that may be the subject of clinical attention” it seems to contemplate an entity called “Relationship problems between parents and children.”
Considering its diagnostic criteria, this can be adjusted to what is defined in the SAP: psychological based problem, related to family education and that causes functional impairment at a behavioral, emotional and cognitive level. Therefore, although it is conceived as a relationship problem and not as a mental disorder, it seems that SAP or AP can be described in a way that makes it possible to detect it through specific defining indicators in real cases, the assessment of the need to require an intervention at a psychological and/or forensic level and, finally, that allows the continuation of investigations in the future that determine more accurately what implications the SAP presents.
