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capital in the form of skills and knowledge that help the
child act in new and productive ways as an adult.
Extended family also provide social connections,
knowledge, and emotional and social investments
[30,31]. Alienated children often lose these important
relationships due to PABs (such as preventing grand-
parent visits), which can reverberate throughout their
lives [5,20]. They lose opportunities for learning skills
and life perspectives that contribute to their future
success, and social connections that provide resources
outside of the immediate family.
Loss of community
Relocating to a new neighborhood, state or country is a
PAB that severs or minimizes contact between the child
and alienated parent [20,22]. The child is propelled into
an unfamiliar environment away from their friends,
school, and neighbors, compounding the alienated
child’s loss. Children relocated internationally are also
removed from familiar cultural and social norms that are
part of their identity [32]. These losses occur during a
time when the child is indefinitely isolated from their
social support system [32] and hence forced to manage
their multitude of losses alone.
Interconnectedness of loss
The loss of the parent-child relationship illustrates how
complex and interactive these different losses are. Par-
ents playmany roles in the child’s life to provide resources
and opportunities, consistent with Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs [33] as shown in Table 1. There is no upper limit a
child can receive in each areadeven if one parent pro-
vides opportunities and connections, the child still ben-
efits from those provided by the other parent. Moreover,
the absence of a parent has meaning over and above the
absence of opportunities and resources, particularly when
the child is manipulated to falsely believe that a parent is
unloving, unsafe, and unavailable. When the child feels
they are damaged by their association and thereby sym-
bolically dissociate from the alienated parent, this action
negatively impacts their self-esteem [34] and they sup-
press their memories of love and affection regarding the
alienated parent [35]. When the child loses connection
with their own truth and sense of self, this creates anxiety
and depression [3] and can make the child less amenable
to remaining connected with the alienated parent. By
losing the alienated parent-child relationship, the child
becomes completely dependent on the alienating parent,
which makes them more vulnerable to sacrificing their
own needs for the alienating parent and they lose their
own identity, childhood, and extended family connections
in the process.
Theoretical applications
Many theories are useful for understanding PA and how
it creates such devastating losses for children, including
attachment theory. Infants seek comfort and proximity
to an attachment figure because their attachment pro-
vides survival benefits when activated by unsafe situa-
tions (e.g., being alone) [36]. When parents respond to
their children’s bid for comfort in a predictable and
loving manner, children develop the experience of the
parent as safe, loving, and available. Alienating parents
undermine this attachment by convincing a child that
the opposite it true about their other parent [19] which
affects how the child feels about themself, the other
parent, and relationships more generally.
Identity fusion theory [37] helps explain why alienated
children strenuously support and defend the alienating
parent, join that parent in denigrating the alienated
parent, make false allegations of abuse, and pressure
siblings to do the same [21,23,38]. Identity fusion is
characterized by pervasive feelings of oneness within a
group that blurs boundaries between the individual and
others, and PABs create this type of fused identity.
Consequently, group members, particularly genetically
related kin, are motivated to do as much for the group as
for themselves, feel obliged to help and defend each
other, and will endorse and enact extreme pro-group
behaviors [39].
Uncertainty reduction theory can also help explain why
children participate in unjustified parental rejection.
When people lack confidence in a relationship’s future,
they engage in behaviors to reduce uncertainty and
unpredictability [40], such as looking for information to
explain the deterioration of a relationship [41]. Alien-
ated children look for any reason (often trivial) to justify
their rejection of the alienated parent and will use
ineffective strategies to reduce their uncertainty and
cope with the loss induced by the alienating parent,
such as preemptive obstruction (ending the relation-
ship) [8,42].
These losses are forms of ambiguous loss because they
occur without certainty or resolution [43]. Ambiguous
loss appears in two forms: (1) when a loved one is
physically present but psychologically absent; and (2)
when a loved one is physically absent but psychological
present [43]. For alienated children, the alienated
parent is often physically absent but psychologically
present, while the alienating parent is physically pre-
sent, but psychologically absent because they are often
preoccupied with their own psychological needs instead
of the child’s [19,44]. This ambiguous loss gives rise to
disenfranchised grief, which is an experience of loss that
cannot be publicly mourned and is unacknowledged or
unaccepted by others [45]. Alienated children are not
allowed to experience nor express their pervasive sense
of loss of the alienated parent-child relationship [19,46].
Although it may appear the alienated child has chosen to
reject their parent, the rejection is not their choice, but
rather a consequence of the alienating parent’s PABs
[38]. Consequently, adults who were alienated from a
Parental alienation and loss Harman et al. 9
www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Psychology 2022, 43:7–12
builds on rich descriptions from clinicians as well as
those personally affected by PA [11]. Alienating parents
are more likely to have substantiated findings of other
forms of maltreatment (e.g., neglect) against them than
alienated parents [13]. Moreover, the use of PABs can be
considered a form of family violence because of how
significant the negative impact is on the entire family
system [14].
Corruption of reality
Parental alienating behaviors alter the child’s beliefs,
perceptions, and memories of the alienated parent
[15e17]. This corruption of reality is accomplished
through systematic reframing of the other parent’s in-
tentions such that even innocuous behaviors are recast
as indicators of untrustworthiness. Because there is
often a grain of truth, the child does not feel manipu-
lated. Gradually, the alienating parent erodes the
child’s critical thinking skills and ability to trust
themself, which results in internal working models of
the self and others as unsafe and unloving [18] and
leads to feelings of disconnection from internal and
external experiences [19]. The child’s sense of
disconnection and inauthentic reality are reinforced
when alienated parents repeat their false narratives to
third parties as part of their alienation campaign [20].
It is the corruption of the child’s reality that triggers a
cascade of profound losses the child then experiences,
as illustrated in Figure 1.
Cascade of losses
Loss of individual self
Because the alienated parent is presented as unsafe,
unloving, and unavailable, the child feels compelled to
reject any association with that parent, including aspects
of their own self. Simultaneously, the alienating parent
uses emotional manipulation strategies to create an
unhealthy cohesion between themselves and the child
[22], which produces an “us” (alienated parent-child
relationship) against “them” (alienated parent and
associated parties) mentality [23]. These PABs include
making the child feel guilty for expressing positive
feelings toward the alienated parent [21,22], and
alliance-building strategies designed to cultivate
dependence on the alienating parent [2]. Consequently,
the child becomes unable to express personal initiative
and loses the opportunity to develop an autonomous
identity [22,24].
Loss of childhood and innocence
Adults alienated as children describe experiencing a loss
of childhood because they lost experiences necessary for
adaptive psychosocial development [15,19,25] due to
spending excessive time and energy focusing on and
prioritizing the alienating parent’s needs [26]. Through
processes such as adultification and parentification [20],
the alienating parent provides the child with inappro-
priate adult information (e.g., court matters) [27] and
encourages the child to feel entitled to make adult de-
cisions (e.g., the parenting schedule) [21]. Likewise,
infantilization occurs when the alienating parent treats
the child as though they are much younger than they are
[20] by preventing them from engaging in experiences
that foster autonomy and self-sufficiency, such as play-
ing with same-aged peers and focusing on educational
and recreational activities. Adults who later perceive the
alienating parent as being responsible for the loss of
their childhood also experience a loss of innocence about
the nature of that relationship [19].
Loss of a “good enough” parent
By manipulating the child to believe the alienated
parent never loved or wanted them, abandoned them, or
is dangerous, the alienated parent corrupts the child’s
previously healthy attachment to the alienated parent
[23]. Over time, the child internalizes these negative
beliefs and harbors feelings of hurt, anger, and resent-
ment [23]. The child comes to deny any positive feel-
ings they previously had toward the alienated parent and
perceives them as being “all bad” compared with the
alienating parent as being “all good” [28,29]. Eventually
they resist and/or refuse contact with the alienated
parent, who was by definition “good enough” [1].
Loss of extended family
Extended family members provide children with love,
acceptance, nurturance, and other forms of psychosocial
support throughout their lives [20] and provide human
Figure 1
Current Opinion in Psychology
Losses experienced by the alienated child.
8 Separation, Social Isolation, and Loss
Current Opinion in Psychology 2022, 43:7–12 www.sciencedirect.com
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MISSIR SEM BÖRN UPPLIFA VIÐ ÚTILOKUN FRÁ FORELDRI JENNIFER J. HARMAN O.FL.