When I first began working in family court I would work with families where a parent (usually mother) was considered to be 'implacably hostile' by a psychiatrist or psychologist. My work involved assessing the family dynamics and constructing a treatment plan. This assessment involved seeing the child with the parent they were rejecting, in nine times out of ten of these meetings, the child would appear to be entirely comfortable with the parent they were said to hate by the implacably hostile parent.

1. Whilst many parents whose children are aligned to them will say that they want their child to have a relationship with the rejected parent, closer scrutiny will often show that a child is in a double bind position. 2. A double bind position is created when someone who has power over a child tells them verbally that they want them to do something, whilst signalling covertly that they must not do it.

1. Working on the principle of putting your own oxygen mask on first, we begin the process of becoming a therapeutic parent by working on your understanding of the trauma story which began when your children started to align with their other parent and reject you. 2. Because looking through a trauma lens, this story becomes easier to understand and allows you to reframe your thinking about what has happened to your child and to you so that you are no longer a helpless bystander.

1. Journalists posting about internal biases within the Judiciary when their own ideological biased agenda can be seen from outer space, demonstrates how the views and opinions of this campaign group, are believed, by them, to be objective truth instead of subjective experience 2. And therein lies the problem, when subjective ideologically based views are presented as truth and everything else is believed to be the result of oppression, there can only ever be a binary right/wrong experience of the world.

1.Theproblem we are treating, when we work with a family where a child is strongly (hyper) aligned with one parent and strongly rejecting of the other, is alienation in the child and of the child, from the child's own authentic sense of self & the ego splits which arise from this 2. in the object relations theory of Melanie Klein and British psychoanalyst W. Ronald D. Fairbairn (1889–1964), fragmentation of the ego in which parts that are perceived as bad are split off from the main ego as a mechanism of protection. (APA definition)

1. What should family court professionals to do when their children reject their mother with contempt and say she is abusive after divorce? Believe them or recognise the child is being coercively controlled and not speaking from their own authentic experience? 2. Children who reject with contempt and hyper align with an abusive parent are not speaking with their own voice but that of a controlling parent. And the child’s behaviour is the same whether it be a mother or a father who is being rejected.

..the best predictor of the security of our children's attachment to us, is our ability to narrate the story of our own childhood in a coherent fashion. By detecting blockages to narrative integration and then doing the necessary work to overcome them, we free ourselves 1 ..and ultimately, our children, from the cross generational patterns we want to avoid creating. Seigel D, J. (2011). Mindsight. New York: Bantam Books 2

The problem with this idea - 'Coercive Control of Women as Mothers via Strategic Mother-Child Separation' (Katz), is that the same defensive behaviours in the children are seen as in situations where mothers cause father-child separation. 1 In order to influence a child to reject a mother, a father has to cause the child to enter into primitive defensive processes which causes alienation of self from self. If the primitive defense isn't there, the child won't reject. 2

We treat splitting, because we know that a child who has been forced into a situation where they have had to reject a relationship with a parent in order to be able to cope with complex dynamics, is at risk in later teens and throughout the twenties of 'social thinning.' 1 Social thinning leads young people to withdraw from the world because they are unable to cope with normal relationships. What looks like a simple thing to most young people, may be impossible to navigate for young people suffering from social thinning. 2

My current case load includes four women whose children have been influenced against them by coercive control strategies carried out by the fathers of their children. In all four cases, the children are refusing to see or speak to their mother. 1 In all four cases, the children have been found to be emotionally and psychologically harmed by their fathers and I have been asked to undertake our clinical trial as a result. All of the children show the signs of psychological splitting, as well as contempt for their mothers. 2

The signs of induced psychogical splitting in children are hyper alignment with a parent who is causing anxiety in the child and rejection of the other parent. Children are seen to be hyper aligned with mothers or fathers and they reject mothers or fathers as a by product 1 The hyper alignment has a particular quality, it is anxiety based and the child is either enmeshed with the parent or being controlled through fear. 2

What lies beneath a child's alignment and rejection of a parent after divorce and family separation? Personality disorders, attachment disorders, coercive control, psychiatric disorders, cultural assumptions, conscious manipulation, cross attempts to control the child. 1 PD include - Histrionic -self-dramatization in which individuals draw attention to themselves, crave activity and excitement, overreact to minor events, experience angry outbursts, and are prone to manipulative suicide threats and gestures. (APA)

Splitting was first described by Ronald Fairbairn in his formulation of object relations theory; it begins as the inability of the infant to combine the fulfilling aspects of the parents (the good object) and their unresponsive aspects (the unsatisfying object 1 The child does not experience the self and the object, nor the good and the bad as different entities. Kernberg, Otto F. (1990). Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. London. p. 165. 2

In DA/Feminist Theory, no mother can be considered to have influenced a child to reject a parent and all such claims are made by abusive fathers as a defence against domestic abuse. 1 DA theory says that the notion that a child can be influenced to reject a parent is abusive in itself unless it is a father influencing the child to reject a parent, in which case that is called coercive control. 2

Displays of parental neediness, helplessness and dependency also elicit caregiving responses from children. (Kredier & Motto, 1974). 2 Children often serve in loco parentis as a direct consequence of parental neediness, over dependency, and preoccupation with unmet needs. (Zeannah & Klitze, 1991). 3

In the face of abuse and neglect, especially at the hands of those they love, children need enough psychological distance from what is happening to avoid being overwhelmed and survive psychologically intact. 1 Providing some modicum of self esteem and hope for the future, requires children to doubt or disremember their experience and to disown the bad (victim) child to whom this has happened as ‘not me’. Janina Fisher 2017

three red flags of emotional abuse
1. The child hyper aligns & rejects with contempt.
2. The aligned parent supports this as confirming their own experience of the rejected parent.
3. The child displays omnipotent belief that they are in control of the family system. 1 When observed the child displays omnipotent behaviours which give way to anxiety if challenged, this can cause escalation of allegations against the rejected parents and anyone seeking to intervene. 2

Treating induced psychological splitting requires proximity to the split off part of self (rejected parent) and the therapist’s capacity to understand the double bind the child is in. 1 Therapy in these circumstances is not about talking, the child does not have the capacity for reflection at this stage, it is about holding the boundary and creating protected space for the child to encounter the split off part of self which is held by the rejected parent. 2

When hyper alignment with a parent is combined with contemptuous rejection of the other, investigation of the hyper alignment is necessary. Hyper alignment hides coercive control strategies and enmeshment. 1 Enmeshment is a pathological
Relationship in which the child’s needs are seen as indivisible from that of a parent (usually a mother). Coercive control is a pathological pattern of relationship in which a child is forced to adhere to parental wishes. 2

Inducing psychological splitting in a child via attachment threat is child abuse because it puts the adult needs before the child - ie: if you want me to love you, you must think like me and act like me. 1/2 This is different to the splitting response seen when an adult is abused, when rejection of the abuser is a rational thing to do in response to being abused 2/3