Parental Alienation Syndrome Isn’t in the DSM…Yet

…but It’s in Plenty of Arguments

Parental Alienation Syndrome Isn’t in the DSM Yet, but It’s in Plenty of Arguments

Coined in 1985 by psychiatrist Richard Gardner, PAS describes a set of behaviors exhibited by kids whose parents deliberately turn them against the other parent, through a variety of techniques that are at once coercive, manipulative, vindictive and sociopathic.

“It’s a violent act to a child’s mind,”

Jason Patric tells Newsweek, speaking of PAS, which he says he began investigating following his initial trial to assert his parental rights with Gus. He believes parental alienation is akin to what domestic violence was 40 years ago—a dirty secret that is harming millions but not acknowledged by many mental health professionals.

One of the reasons PAS hasn’t been embraced universally is because of controversies that punctuate Gardner’s career. In 1992, for example, at the height of the tumultuous scandal in which Woody Allen’s former partner, Mia Farrow, accused him of child abuse, Gardner told reporters that “screaming ‘sex abuse’ is a very effective way to wreak vengeance on a hated spouse.” Many took this as a tacit diagnosis of PAS—inferring that Gardner had sided with Allen and believed Farrow had manipulated her children into falsely believing Allen was a sexual abuser.

Following the 2009 in vitro-assisted birth of Gus, a very public legal argument broke out between mother Danielle Schreiber and her former boyfriend and the child’s sperm donor, Jason Patric. Patric, a well-known actor who starred in films such as The Lost Boys and Speed 2: Cruise Control, petitioned for parental rights, arguing that he and Schreiber had been partners for years, and that he had every intention of fathering the child. He says he kept his name off the birth certificate to protect Gus from media attention.

In the meanwhile, it has been 72 weeks since Patric last saw the child.

He has also launched the website Stand Up for Gus to promote awareness of parental alienation syndrome (PAS), a mental health syndrome he fears his son may have to deal with for the rest of his life, based on the acrimonious relationship between his parents.

Source: Parental Alienation Syndrome Isn’t in the DSM Yet, but It’s in Plenty of Arguments

https://vimeo.com/groups/standupforzoraya/videos/163880288

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American Fathers

So you’d rather watch tournament games and go bowling than support a “We Are Fathers” campaign for justice and equality. Well that’s your choice, it’s a free country, in theory anyway. But you should know that countless lawyers, child experts and bureaucrats are cheering you on because they profit from all this apathy and a misguided sense of priorities. In America today, our government is engaged in the lucrative expansion of a child control bureaucracy that is harming our families, productivity and moral fiber as a nation. This vast public enterprise has invaded every aspect of private life, often wielding power beyond that exercised by the NSA, CIA or IRS. It is a silent and insidious trend eroding parental rights repeatedly declared by our Supreme Court to be the “oldest liberty interest” protected by the United States Constitution. This interest is shared equally by fathers and mothers. But in practice, the male half has not been accorded its rightful place among our human rights due to a profit motive in family court driven by needless custody, support and divorce contests. Census Bureau reports continue to show the gender disparities on all domestic fronts. After promoting a parental rights cause in Paris recently, I was amazed to note how a million people together with world leaders could rally in that city within days to support free speech. Meanwhile, here in the states, more than 70 million fathers have yet to mobilize after a century of widespread discrimination. Such discrimination is having harmful impacts on all aspects of society and quite likely the female population more so than its counterpart. Veterans, minorities and high profile figures are particularly vulnerable to a court system that has placed money and politics over genuine parent-child relationships. Fathers are a vital component of any social or family structure as they have been since the beginning of civilization. Unfortunately federal entitlement laws and incentive funding to the states have marginalized that role to a point of virtual extinction. This has led to educational costs, heinous crimes and moral deterioration on a vast scale corroborated by an exodus from all manner of religion. In practical terms, our taxpayers are funding the creation of social ills and then forced to pay for it on the back side with costly welfare programs. Future generations will look back one day and be amazed at how truly barbaric our domestic relations courts once were. A scheme of laws and processes derived from feudal equity doctrines has been retained which features loving parents engaged in brutal contests over their offspring in a public arena. A winner-take-all battle for custody leads to overregulation of families by the state and marginalization, alienation or outright extinction of one fit parent from the children’s lives. Anal investigations of the combatants’ backgrounds by self serving advisors incite further controversy to last a lifetime. It is a spectacle reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum. No person or entity has ever been able to achieve a comprehensive study of the vast detriment which this archaic custody and support system has had upon our society. Any such effort would assuredly be stymied because custody and unequal parenting are highly profitable. Yet common sense dictates that our nation could be well served with sweeping reforms here in our least scrutinized branch of government. We can put a man on the moon, split atoms, engage artificial intelligence and achieve vast breakthroughs in medicine but remain unable to extricate family courts from their nineteenth century practices. www.Facebook.com/AmericanFathers

12 thoughts on “Parental Alienation Syndrome Isn’t in the DSM…Yet”

  1. A real psychological ailment. Can it be possible that these people are so busy taking out children that they stopped feeling. I say yes.

    I also remember an interview with a CPS Social worker that he claimed they had a monthly quota like a shopping note.

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