At the Moderate level of Parent Alienation (PA), the symptoms, as you would imagine, start to appear more frequently and more intensely. At this stage one may see if not all eight symptoms at least six or seven of them. Gardner would argue that you will see all eight symptoms.
The Campaign of Denigration has now ratcheted up to a much more involved level. The child is being a lot more vocal about their dislike, hatred and the faults of the targeted parent. The Campaign of Denigration typically is what most people call the Moderate level. In its scope the Moderate level is a wide ranging spectrum of symptoms, definitely more than seen before.
There is a theme being developed that the child will bring up in an unsolicited way when they are in the therapist’s office or a judge’s chamber.
The reason this surfaces at this point is because visitation problems emerge. This is also a typical time people are establishing relationships with attorneys and they may or may not seek out a mental health professional as an advocate. It is at this point that things become much more visible.
Just as the accusations have increased to a threshold level, the same is observed for the Weak, Frivolous and Absurd Rationalizations for those deprecations. The child is much more verbal about their disdain for the targeted parent. But again, their arguments and rationales for their complaints are not really substantiated.
Here the PA process really begins to show up most clearly. It is in the combination of these two symptoms at this point. Because now the child is clearly saying things like “I don’t want to go see (the targeted parent), I don’t like them”, etc. And then when asked, what do you mean, what did she/he do? There will be, first of all pauses, then “I don’t know, I just don’t like her/him”. Next you will begin to hear responses that are about manufactured things or they take minor things that have happened and exaggerate them well beyond what they were. This is a significantly different presentation than in the Mild level.
This now becomes a theme that upon investigation doesn’t make a lot of sense. There is a tremendous need for a comprehensive investigation into the dynamics of these families. A clinician who is naive about this problem will ask themselves and others “what happened here”? If they don’t know the dynamics of PA, and the underlying dynamics of the family in question, they will think, something bad must have happened between this child and parent, when in actual fact all the evidence suggests the targeted parent and child had a very good relationship. Now there has been this change, without any clear reason or any precedent for the change.
With Lack of Ambivalence these children are very clear, Mom or Dad is all bad and the other parent is all good. Since this is a process the child’s ambivalence does not suddenly disappear but it will begin to slowly evaporate. If the child is shown photographs of life before divorce and asked about them, they will have very little to say or they will say that they were faking it, or they had to do that or the targeted parent would beat them, etc.
When asked straight away “Have they ever had a good time with this parent, Have they ever had a good relationship”, the answer is no.
We will outline additional symptoms of Moderate levels of Parental Alienation next week. If you are looking for additional information on PA in child custody cases, start here.
