You heard that one?
Yes.
Recording in progress.
Hello.
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Hello, Emily. Thank you.
What would you like to discuss today?
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Well, I know you virtually I suppose you I don't know me but I've watched a lot of your videos I'm very interested in your videos and your topics I love your videos on narcissism and especially I love your therapeutic and all your creative solutions and a lot of the development that you've done in narcissism, because I am the creator and co-founder of the Parental Alienation Canada Facebook group, where we kind of have organized to do our own support and education for this abuse epidemic of children in the Canada's family courts, and this is of course, across the Western world as well.
But a lot of the alienating parents, I feel like some of the severe alienators actually show a lot of the symptoms.
And your work is quite comprehensive because you actually cover parental alienation and you have a lot of intellectual integrity, I believe, and honesty to actually admit to this kind of abuse of the children and also show how it's related.
Sometimes it can be related to an alienator parent that is actually using the child as a weapon and it's part of the illness that they have right so I'm very interested in your past work and I'm also interested in your research and your rehabilitation and so that's why I was really grateful that I could speak to you today.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Yes. So what do you think, like in your realm, in your research realm and in your connections, and I know you're connected in academia, what do you think is the current state of acknowledgement of parental alienation? Like, do you think that, like, there's been submissions that the PA-SG wants to make to the DSM, but it's been rejected and I feel that it's been rejected for political reasons.
And so what the parental alienation study group is they're not calling it a syndrome, but they're actually calling it a parental in a relationship problem and that's their submission. And I feel that there's been a lot of political blocks to submit this to the DSM.
Do you have any comments about that?
Well, parental alienation is shorthand for a manipulative behavior, which is common among parents. And is linked, various studies have linked it to what we call dark personalities.
Not necessarily people diagnosed with full-fledged narcissistic personality disorder, but people who have dark personalities. There are subclinical narcissists, subclinical psychopaths, Machiavellian, very manipulative, and so and so forth.
However, it's a behavior. It's not a syndrome. And I think one of the reasons that there is this aversion to including it in diagnostic manuals and teaching it in universities is that initially it was presented as a syndrome and of course it's not a syndrome there's a very clear definition of what constitutes a syndrome.
It is however a Machiavellian manipulative behavior it's well documented. There's no, I don't think there's any way to dispute its existence, except if you are seriously compromised by political correctness or worse.
Okay, that's good to know.
And so is there any reference, you said it's documented, do you mean it's documented, is there anything in the dark personality disorder that this is documented? Like, is this documented in, for example, in narcissism research?
Well, yes. There's quite a lot of literature on this type of behavior.
One of the main problems, the predicament that we find ourselves in, is that the parent who is doing the alienating, the parent who is militating against the other parent, they don't perceive their behavior as abusive or non-normative.
Abusers don't perceive their behavior as abuse. They are fully egosyntonic. In other words, they feel comfortable with what they're doing. They regard their child automatically and unconsciously as an extension of themselves, not as a separate, autonomous, independent entity, individual.
So there's a problem with separation, individuation, as we call it in clinical literature.
And because the abuser perceives the child as a mere extension, another organ, another arm, another leg or whatever, then this precludes the possibility of abuse in the abuser's mind.
Because what is this? Self abuse? The child is a part of me. The child is me. I'm not abusing myself.
So this is the second problem.
The third problem is that the vast majority of alienating parents are prone to conspiratorial thinking. This is known as conspiracism.
They're prone to paranoid ideation. They create a cult, a cult of two or cult of three, a cult of the abuser and his children.
And within this cult, there is an external enemy. All cults have an external enemy. Cults are constructed around the principle of we versus them. Othering, the other.
So the parent who is not a member of the cult, let's call it the external parent.
We usually call the targeted parent, targeted parent.
The targeted parent would be the enemy. He would fulfill the role of the external threat to the integrity and longevity and functionality of the cult.
Now this has been described in studies by Anthony and Robbins. They call it destructive cult disorder. And some of their writings refer actually to parental alienation. They don't use the word.
So Anthony Robbins in the 70s already, in the 80s, Hassan, others.
In the studies of cults, there is a lot of discussion of family cults or cult-like families.
And in there, you're beginning to see the coalitions that abusive parents create with children against the other parent.
These coalitions are an integral part of the relationship management.
In other words, the abuser manages his relationship with a non-abusive partner by leveraging the children.
And the children are not only assets, not only assets, and they're not only pawns on the chessboard, but the children become a form of signaling. So they become signals. The children symbolize communication, become communication, become elements in the communication.
So it's a lot more complex than one parent telling the kid that the other parent is bad and should be avoided or whatever.
It's a lot more complex because it integrates seamlessly with the psychopathology of the abusive parent, with cult dynamics in the family, with coalition building in the family, the family system, coalition building in the family, with various dynamics between the parents that have nothing to do with the children, but where the children are used in order, for example, to communicate with each other, and so on so forth.
So it's a highly, it's a multi-storied, multi-layered phenomenon.
And I have the feeling, the little that I've read, I'm far from being an expert on this, but the little that I've read, I have the feeling that a lot is being reduced to caricature or to two-dimensional kind of cardboard cutouts, you know.
And there's a lot of demonizing going on. This is like all good side and all bad side. This is known as splitting.
It's a splitting defense. The targeted parent is all good, the alienating parent is all bad, parental alienation is all bad.
So this has been reduced to a morality play. In other words, it's been reduced to a morality play, where it's good versus evil.
And it's not helpful, it's also not accurate, but it happens also to not be helpful.
I think when we demonize one of the parties we tend to ignore a lot of pertinent, relevant information, which could be used to modify behavior, to alter, to change positions, to help the child who is caught in this crossfire, and so on so forth.
And when we don't do this, when everything is black and white and caricature style, it's a problem.
We must realize that the child is a hostage, is a hostage of the alienating parent.
The dysfunctional household is the equivalent of a kidnapping situation, a hijack situation.
There's a question of power asymmetry. There's a question of catastrophizing.
The child believes that should it be abandoned, it might die, especially young children, very young children. So abandonment is equated with survival, or avoiding abandonment is equated with survival.
And it creates the equivalent of a Stockholm syndrome within the family, where the child tries to carry favor, ingratiate itself, and gratify the alienating parent because of the power asymmetry and because of the looming, always present, ambient, atmospheric fear of abandonment and, you know, because the alienating parent's hidden messages, the world is divided, you're either with me or against me. And if you're not with me, you're my enemy. And if you're my enemy, I'm going to treat you as such.
So the first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to cut you off.
No child can contemplate this. This is seriously terrifying.
And so children, there's learned helplessness involved. The child becomes increasingly more helpless.
The child internalizes the oppression, identifies with the aggressor, and collaborates, colludes with the aggressive, alienating, abusive parent against a loving parent.
Another thing we should take into account, when a child is confronted by an abusive parent and a non-abusive parent the child will always choose the side of the abusive parent.
Why is that?
Because the non-abusive parent is taken for granted. The non-abusive parent doesn't need to be placated or mollified or, you know, the child doesn't need to supplicate, doesn't need to beg the non-abusive parent for anything.
The non-abusive parent, for example, is loving unconditionally, more or less.
And so the child takes the non-abusive parent for granted. The child says, there's no risk and no danger there.
I must focus my resources on the source of danger. I must minimize the danger and manage it some.
Similarly, in global affairs, we don't pay attention to Switzerland, but we pay a lot of attention to Russia and Iran, because, you know, we don't need to worry about Switzerland. It's not going to attack us with nuclear weapons, but Russia might.
So the child always chooses the abusive parent's side, at least initially until in adolescence, these changes.
But initially, the child chooses the abusive parent's side, and what the child does, he creates coalitions, a coalition with the abusive parent against the loving parent, against the other parent.
Because this way, the child guarantees the abusive parent's presence, favor, and the child reduces its own anxiety by making sure that abuse is somehow controlled or mitigated.
Collaboration and collusion somehow will mitigate or control the abuse.
One last thing is that what is known as moral defense, moral defense or primitive superego, the child convinces itself that it is bad.
The child tells itself I'm bad. I'm being mistreated by my father or my mother because I deserve it. I had it coming. My punishment is justified. Mother is all good, father is all good. I need to believe in this because the alternative is horrifying and terrifying. So I need to believe that mother and father are all good and that means that I'm all bad. Otherwise, why are they mistreating me? Why are they punishing me?
And so in the process of alienation, the child perceives itself as all bad, and therefore there is a moral imposition on the child to somehow make amends to the abusive parent.
The parent is abusing me because I did something wrong, because I'm bad, I'm unworthy, I'm inadequate, so I need to somehow collaborate with the abusive parent because I owe him that. I owe the abusive parent that because I'm bad. I'm a bad boy.
And this is called the moral defense. It was first described by a psychologist called Fairbairn.
So I really touched upon very few points. I'm trying to demonstrate to you how much deeper this goes.
There are other points which I haven't mentioned.
For example, the child's tendency to humanize the abusive parent and dehumanize the targeted parent.
It's a natural reaction.
When you find yourself trapped between an aggressive, dangerous party, any party, and a benevolent, loving, helpful, compassionate, empathic party, you would tend to demonize the empathic party and humanize the abusive party.
This is the foundation of the concept of Stockholm syndrome, where allegedly hostages demonize the police and humanize their kidnappers.
And this is what children do.
And children do that because the abusive parent is telling them the targeted parent is bad. It's corrupt, it's evil, is dangerous.
And so the child, this creates in the child a dissonance. A dissonance.
On the one hand, the child knows that it's not true, the other parent is loving and compassion and so on, and on the other hand, the child knows that if he were to not comply with the abusive parent's expectations, there would be a hell of a price to pay.
So the resolution of the cognitive dissonance is essentially a fantasy. We call it a fantasy defense.
The child creates a fantasy where the abusive parent is the good party. And the messages emanating from the abusive parent could be trusted 100% unthinkingly.
And so if the message says the targeted parent is a devil, is demonic, is horrible, is abusive, is danger, then okay, so be it.
That's another dynamic, it's resolution of cognitive dissonance.
There are multiple other dynamics. We don't have the time for that.
Parental alienation is a very, very, very deep phenomenon.
Unfortunately, most people touch the surface only. They touch the phenomenology, they touch the how it looks, they're like observers, they observe the process, but very few people go into the etiology, what made this process happen and what made it possible.
Because if you stop to think of it, it's strange. Why would the child collaborate with this?
And so this is why, because of all the dynamics I mentioned and many others have a bit.
So I also wanted to ask you about some of the developmental problem, because obviously if a child is so young and they're exposed to this and it's part of their developmental years, what do you think of some of the consequences for children long-term if they are in the situation?
And it's part of their, when they're developing, like how would this impact them long-term?
As I said, the child is overwhelmingly likely to collude with the abusive, alienating parent against the targeted parent.
For the reasons that I mentioned and for other reasons that I have not mentioned, overwhelmingly likely.
The targeted parent must have patience and wait, wait it out, because equally overwhelming, this position is reversed in adolescence.
So if the child is exposed to this kind of influence in the formative years, there's likely to be a backlash and a kind of, we call it reactance. There's likely to be a reversal of this position in adolescence.
Adolescents anyhow are rebellious and defiant, you know, a bit psychopathic. So there's likely to be a reversal in adolescence, and in the vast majority of cases, the child then rebels against the abusive parent, sees the abusive parent for what he or she is, and teams up with a targeted parent.
This is the majority of cases.
There's a small minority of children that when they've reached adolescents, they cut both parents off. They become very angry at both parents. They're angry at the abusive alienating parent on the one hand. That's understandable.
But they're also angry at the targeted parent for having acquiesced in the game, for not having stood up to the abusive and alienating parent, for not having protected the child.
So they tend to blame the targeted parent and they become adolescents so there is a percentage about 10% who cut off both parents and usually this is for life and about 80 plus percent they reverse the position they team up with the targeted parent against the abusive parent.
And there's an unfortunate minority of about 10% who stay attached to the abusive parent.
They are totally brainwashed. The clinical term is in training, so they've been in training. They're totally brainwashed. They've adopted the abusive parents' worldview, values, beliefs. They become also conspiratorial, paranoid, and so forth. They create a shared psychosis or a shared fantasy with the abusive alienating parent, never to emerge. It becomes a bubble, the equivalent of a lifelong cult.
Even when the abusive parent dies, passes away, the offspring of the abusive parent maintains what we call an introject, maintains an internal voice that represents the abusive parent in the child's mind and talks to the child and manipulates the child and controls the child from inside.
So the impact on about 10% of the children is disastrous and lifelong.
And certain percentages of these children are likely to react with personality disorders, such as narcissistic personality disorder, to some extent, antisocial personality disorder, and so on.
If the child is biologically predisposed, if it has the right genetic heritage and so on and so forth, then some of these children would become borderline, would develop borderline personality, so paranoid personality disorders, schizoid personality disorder, mood disorders, very common.
So about 10 to 15% of these children will be impacted for life and develop severe mental health disorder.
And the rest, as I said, would choose the targeted parent or cut off both parents as a sign of protest or anger, externalizing anger.
Okay, that's really, it was very interesting.
We usually call it enmeshment. Is that a term in psychology that people use?
We use when the child adopts the, I don't know what the psychosis of the parent and their worldview is, you know, because of their development, that we usually call that in measurement? Is that a term from psychology as well?
It is a term in clinical psychology, however, it's often misuse. We make a distinction between a shared fantasy, used to be called a shared psychosis or shared psychotic disorder. We no longer use this. And before that, it was called folie à deux in French.
Today it's called a shared fantasy. It's based on the work of a guy psychoanalyst by the name of Sander in 1989.
So there's this. And there is enmeshment. Enmeshment involves two processes. They are known as symbiosis and merger fusion.
If I have to kind of use layman's terms enmeshment, merger fusion symbiosis, they are like shared fantasy on steroids. It's like comparing the common cold with pneumonia, more or less.
But the vast majority of people don't reach this stage. They don't end up enmeshed.
Enmeshment means the total suspension of one's identity, one's internal psychological processes, and one's sense of self, where everything is outsourced. Everything absolutely comes from the outside.
So regulation of emotions and moods comes from the outside. Cognitions, thoughts are borrowed from the outside. Reality testing is conducted via someone in the outside.
So this kind of person is going to ask, is it real? Did you see it too? Do you think it happened?
It's like they live, they experience reality through the agency of another person.
In short, enmeshment, merger, fusion, symbiosis, we use these terms interchangeably, involves a complete suspension of separate existence and identity, internal processes, including critical processes, such as cognition and emotion, and what we used to call ego functions, like reality testing.
I call it an outsourcing of the self. It's like you outsource yourself. You live through someone else's mind. You allow a hostile takeover, someone else. Someone else takes over your mind.
Shared fantasy is similar, but very far from it.
In shared fantasy, there's still a sense of identity. There is still separateness. There is still the ability to some extent to tell apart, reality and fantasy. There is a recognition of the separateness of the other person involved in the shared fantasy and the externality of that person. There is no outsourcing of all functions, but only some of them.
So it's an attenuated case of enmeshment, and it is by far the most common outcome.
Enmeshment is very rare. By far, the most common outcome enmeshment is very rare. It's by far the most common outcome.
So a more appropriate term would be the shared fantasy. It's a fantasy defense.
In a fantasy defense, both parties develop a scenario of the future that incorporates interactions between them, current interactions, present interactions, a history of the relationship, and an image of the other, a theory about the other. We call it a theory of mind, a theory about the other.
And then there's a collusion, a synergy of all these elements, in order usually to realize goals which are counterfactual or fantastic and to fend off an external enemy. External enemy is always there, one way or another.
So if you're in a shared fantasy with a narcissist and your mother tells you, open your eyes, this guy is bad for you. And you're in the shared fantasy, your mother will have become an enemy. And from that moment on you and the narcissists would attack your mother all the time, would cast her as the enemy.
Same happens in alienation, parental alienation. The alienating parent creates a shared fantasy with a child, and children are, of course, much more susceptible and vulnerable to a shared fantasy.
And then there's this external monster or enemy, which is the targeted parent. And there is an image of the abusive parent, which is totally counterfactual and fantastic, as benevolent and benign and loving and so on. And there's an image of the child as dependent and helpless and needy and so abandonment would be a major disaster. Child catastrophizes and so on.
And then there's a sharing of a narrative. The narrative incorporates beliefs, values, a story, of course, kind of story, and the narrative fulfills two functions.
It keeps the shared fantasy together. It's the glue that holds the shared fantasy together. In other words, it creates what we call cohesion.
And the narrative legitimizes attacks on the external enemy, legitimizes confronting the external enemy and somehow trying to overcome the external enemy.
And of course what I've just described is common not only in parental alienation but for example in politics that's what happens in politics exactly.
Yeah, that was really helpful because you put something that, you know, this parental alienation, and it's often denied by, you know, for whatever reason, but you explained it in a way that fits with many other situations, like cult like situations and things that are more accepted in the mainstream.
And you really broke down a lot of what the child is thinking and the psychology and it's really interesting what you said about theshared fantasy and that that children may start to react in their adolescence and start to rebel i guess find ways of rebelling.
So it's not necessarily because the child has become wiser or more knowledgeable or anything. There is an impulse to challenge authority. We call it contumaciousness. There's this impulse to criticize, to challenge authority, to verify things. It's a period of experimentation. Erickson called it moratorium, the moratorium period. It's when the child doesn't have an identity and experiments with all kinds of identities.
Now, the abusive parent, the alienating parent, is rigid. It's a rigid person.
And by the way, many of them are highly moralistic. That's the irony. Many of them consider themselves to be highly moralistic. Their morality, their code of conduct, there is so rich. many of them consider themselves to be highly moralistic. Their morality, their code of conduct, there is so rigid that it demonizes other people. It de-negetamizes other people. Their expectations are so unrealistic that they set other people up for failure. And that is of course intentional. It's a sadistic element in the alienating parent. And so when the adolescent dares to ask a question, to express an opinion, which is a demonstration of autonomy, demonstration of independence, if to express an opinion, which is a demonstration of autonomy, demonstration of independence. If you express an opinion of your own, it means there is own, there is a self there. There's something.
So if a child dares to disagree, to criticize, to suggest an alternative, to give advice, and so on. These challenges the alienating parent's rigid view of the world, the child's role in place in the world, who is superior, who is inferior, the power matrix and asymmetry, the relationship, and the alienating parent feels betrayed, the strong sense of betrayal. This creates a dynamic where the alienating parent becomes much more punitive and externalizes disappointment as a sadistic tool to put the child down. And this actually aggravates the situation because the child becomes even more defined and more contributions and more.
So there's a virtuous cycle there, which actually pushes the child away. Now the vast majority of children, when they're pushed away, they look to the other parent. Suddenly, they begin to see the other parents' point of view. They learn the other parent's history or what really has happened. Their eyes open, they become more critical. They develop critical thinking and so on so forth. And it ends well in about 80% of the cases. And but the irony is that it is the alienating parent that uses alienating tools to alienate the child from himself. The alienating parent actually ends up alienating the child from himself, from the alienating parent.
Because the alienating parent becomes punitive and becomes demanding it becomes disoppressed disappointment and defines and verbalizes expectations that can never be met and standards that can ever be met and because the alienating parent generates these ambience, the alienating parents ends up alienating the child. The alienating parents' modus of a randy alienation is not something the alienating, alienation. It's not something the alienating parent has invented in the middle of a night in a cunning and skimming way. It's an expression of his or her personality. It's an inalienable part of who the alienating parent is. So when the alienating parent is faced with stress, with frustration, with, you know, he reacts with alienation. Alienation is the way the alienating parent copes with dissonance, with tension, with anxiety, with stress, with conflict. That's how alienating parents cope with all these things. They alienate. So first, the alienate one parent, and then they alienate themselves from the child. And then they alienate the child. And they may go on to alienate the judge and the evaluator, the custodians, and the lawyers. They alienate. That's what they do. That's who they are.
And there is this perception in the literature, the little that I read, again I'm not an expert, I want to emphasize, there is this perception that I've come across that actually it's a kind of scheming, cunning monster who sits around and is in his more reality, more reality infinite genius, comes up with all what kinds of stratagems, and that's entirely untrue.
Alienation is reflexive, it's instinctual, it's who the person is. It's a great definition of who the person is. It's the profile, psychological profile of that person.
He is probably alienated from himself as well or from herself.
The alienating parent is probably first and foremost alienated from himself or from herself, a process known as estrangement. That's a clinical term.
So what do you mean by someone, an alienator, being alienated from himself? Can you explain what that means?
If you don't have a cohesive, coherent core, because you have, for example, problems with memory, memory gaps, or because your upbringing was in some way abusive or traumatizing and you failed to create a functioning self, constellated, integrated self, or because you are a very aggressive person. You manage everything via aggression. You believe in the potency of aggression. You believe that aggression is a great relationship management tool, and you externalize aggression, and there are numerous transformations of aggression that define who you are.
In these cases, in many other types of cases, you cannot be a good friend to yourself, either because the self is missing, or because the only way you know to relate to people, to objects. We call them objects. In psychology, they are called objects. Object is any human being. Your self-included.
So we have self-object relation, where the object is you, and we have other object relations, which other people.
So if the only way you relate to objects, any object, is aggression, then you're going to be aggressive towards yourself as well.
If the only way you relate to people is contempt, you hold them in contempt because you think you're superior or whatever, you're going to hold yourself in contempt.
Now we know, for example, that a majority of narcissists are actually covert narcissists. They're narcissists with a sense of inferiority and narcissists who self-reject and self-hate and they're self-destructive, and they're self-harming in many ways.
So there is a style, we call it a personality style, and this style is applied to objects, to other people outside, and to yourself.
So if your dominant style is alienating people or creating coalitions and cults against people, or conspiring and undermining and sabotaging, and if you're this kind of person, subterfuges, and I don't know what, then you're going to use it with other people, and you're going to use it with yourself.
You're going to use it first with the other parent, with a targeted parent, but then you're going to use it with your own child. And then you're going to use it with yourself or you have used it already with yourself. This is the only way you know how to relate to the other, and the other is also you because all of us observe ourselves from the outside. All of us have this break between observer and observed.
This is known as introspection, and this is allegedly what sets apart human beings from animals. We are able to look at ourselves, to observe ourselves. And when we do, we become objects. We objectify ourselves. At that moment, if your dominant style is aggression, you will become aggressive towards yourself because you're an object at that moment.
I'm trying to think about what that would look like.
That's a really complicated thing to think about, you know, alienating yourself. I'm still thinking about it.
For example, think about it this way.
When you alienate the child, what do you tell the child? The other parent is a liar, is a dishonest, she's bad for you. Abusive, bad, etc. So when you eliminate yourself, you say the same things about yourself.
You say, I'm bad, I'm unworthy, I'm inadequate, I'm a failure, I'm a loser, I deserve punishment, I'm hateful, and so on.
And this is known as internalized bad object.
Fairbairn says that when the child is confronted with an abusive parent, presumably an alienating parent is abusive because alienating a child is an abusive conduct.
Fairbairn says when you're faced with an abusive parent as a child what you do is you alienate yourself. You say the parent is all good, I'm all bad.
Okay, that makes sense.
I'm evil, I'm a liar, I'm a failure, I deserve punishment, so this isyou alienate, and the clinical term for this is estrangement.
Okay. Another question I have, because I've watched your videos, a lot of them, and I usually, I find them really interesting that you go into a lot of the details and you're, you know, it's not pop, your actual pop psychology you're actually trying to I believe you're trying to help people a lot of time when you break apart some of these details.
One thing that you mentioned that was really interesting to me on one of your videos that I think about a lot is that you talk about almost like a pro-social narcissist.
And they do like to know this narcissists that actually are good at their jobs. They seem to be generally high functioning. And they are also able to have like some social, pro-social situations where they are able to, you know, socialize with some people and actually have normal, you know, normal situations.
But then they also, what makes them a narcissist is that they're somehow having an outgroup, though, like those people over there, they pick their out group, right?
And that's where, you know, the sadistic behavior starts to come in. Andthen when you were talking about this pro-social narcissist I was thinking about some of these alienators that go into this child's school and are actually able to orchestrate getting the whole child's school and hijack all services and social services and even the psychologist and then be able to coordinate all of this and against a targeted parent and it seems like that they can be good at their job and they can hijack all these institutions and all these situations successfully.
And then the outgroup would be the targeted parent.
And so that's what I was thinking about, about your, I'd never heard about anything like a pro-social narcissist. And so that was like really resonated with me and I was, that's one of my favorite videos that you have made actually when you describe this.
Do you have anything, any feedback on that?
I think we need to disambiguate this with your permission.
I mentioned before that many alienating parents, for me, an alienating parent is a variant of an abusive parent.
So many of them are actually morally rigid. They perceive the world in terms of a morality play.
The targeted parent is vilified and demonized in their own mind. I mean, the alienating parent honestly believes that the targeted parent is bad and evil and deserves what she's getting, had it coming.
But would you say that that person is in the out group, though?
So if there's a morality play, and in theplay, you have good versus evil.
Out group and in-group are terms borrowed from the study of cults. The cult is the in-group and everyone else is the out-group. And the out-group, also known as the other. So the out-group is comprised of others.
And the process of relating to the out-group is as othering. And depends on the characteristics and nature of the in-group, the out-group could be perceived as an enemy or a threat, threat that has to be neutralized, enemy that has to be defeated and punished and so on so forth.
In the case of alienation, definitely the in-group is the alienating parent and the children or the child, and the out-group is the targeted parent and the targeted parent is definitely considered an enemy and a threat.
So this is a perfect, perfect cult situation.
However, pro-social communal narcissists, it's not the same as high functioning narcissists.
They could be failures. They could be utterly isolated. They could be schizophrenia. They could be utterly isolated. They could be schizoid.
These are simply narcissists whose grandiosity, whose sense of superiority is derived from their self-imputed morality or conformity or adherence to social mores and norms or pro-social activities like social activism.
We know for example that an inordinate number of social activists are narcissists and psychopaths.
That was one of the most amazing things that you've said about these pro-social narcissists that was so helpful and I really really liked that video. I'm a big fan of that one, definitely.
So that's the narcissist who says my way to being a star, my way to grandiosity, is by conforming to society, collaborating with society, upholding the values of society, or becoming super moral, a guru of some kind, maybe, a social activist.
So you could be a successful pro-social analysis or a failed communal narcissist. It's not to do with success or failure.
High functioning narcissists are narcissists who are able to create coalitions, to work in teams, and to guarantee favorable outcomes by acting in a specific environment or on a specific environment.
So they are known as self-efficacious narcissists. They're narcissists who get things done. They could be abrasive, they could be obnoxious, they could be horrible, they could be monstrous, they could be anything but they know to get things done and they don't have to be prosocial or communal they could be overt grandiose narcissists. Some politicians come to mind.
So it's not accurate to conflate the two.
The narcissists, the parents you have mentioned, they are good at leveraging systems. They're good at spotting the vulnerabilities of systems, pushing the right buttons in order to generate self-efficacious behavior from systems.
They know which button to push for the system to act in a way that would promote their goals, their targets, their purpose.
So these would be high functioning, actually.
Now, they don't have to be narcissists, but they're high functioning definitely. They know how to create coalitions.
Of course they applied the very same thing to the child or to the children because they create a system, a cult is a system, a shared fantasy is a system. They create a system and then they leverage the vulnerabilities of never the strength, by the way, only the vulnerabilities.
They leverage the vulnerabilities of the system to secure favorable outcomes as they define them from time to time.
So just to make the distinctions clear.
A typically an alienating parent would be morally rigid, would pretend to be or would really be pro-social and communal.
So an alienating parent is likely to go around and saying that he's a pillar of the community.
That he's a good person.
That he's helpful. That is altruistic. That is charitable. That is, you know, a mentor to many.
The alienating parent needs to support his claim for moral superiority by a panoply of voices. He needs a panoply of voices to say yeah you're right you're the good guy the other parent is a bad guy you're the good guy you're the good guy. The other parent is a bad guy. You're the good guy because you volunteer. You're good guy because you contribute. You're a good guy because you donate. You're good guy because you're empathic. You're this. You're that. You're moral.
So he needs these voices. These voices are his kind of backup. They recharge, these voices recharge him from time.
It's like a battery. Battery runs out. It needs to recharge the battery from time to time.
So many alienating parents would not be perceived as alienating. They would convince other people, and definitely systems, systems such as the courts, and they would convince them that the other party is crazy, evil, narcissistic, psychopathic, I mean, they would switch roles with the targetedparent.
And this is a process known as projection. They would project on the targeted parent, everything that essentially they reject in themselves.
Possessed of such a rigid moral code, they reject big parts of themselves, and they project these parts onto the other parent.
And another technique they use is known as projective identification.
Projective identification is when you force someone to behave in a way that upholds, buttresses, and proves your claims.
So if I say, for example, that you are an abusive person.
So you're an abusive person. And you're not.
But I will provoke you to the point that you will end up abusing and that will have proved that I was right all along you're abusive so this is known as projective identification and they do this a lot alienating parents from what I've seen they do do this a lot.
They trigger and provoke the other parent into behaviors that sustain and affirm and confirm and prove what they've been saying all along.
You see, she's crazy. You see, he's abusing. I told you. I told you she's crazy. Told you he's abusing.
But what goes on under the surface, under the hood? No one knows.
The small pinpricks, the tiny provocations, the passive aggressive speech, which cannot be deconstructed, you know, dog whistling, all these kind of things. And it's very surreptitious, very subterranean, and they're very good at this thing.
Okay, another question, that was really helpful. I'm glad we got to talk about that.
I've been thinking, I think that's one of my favorite videos is the one where you talk about the communal or the pro-social narcissist. It was something I never thought about before.
Have you developed therapies to actually help, because, you know, what we're trying to do here in Canada is we want to have interventions we want to make changes.
There's a Warshak paper that has shown that, well from the PASG they've said that it's not traumatic to remove a child from an alienating parent.
And I would like for these very severe abusers, obviously I want to remove kids from alienators and put them back with the targeted parent.
And the Warshak paper said that it is not traumatic to remove a child from an alienating parent and put them back with a targeted parent.
And actually the child will usually reattach to the targeted parent once they're removed from the cult I guess that you called it.
But that was really interesting what you said that is not quite in measurement because if a child must still have some sort of sense of their self if the child able to adapt what the literature is showing that the child will adapt.
So that's precisely why I think it's wrong to use the term enmeshment because in enmeshment there would be massive trauma that will come in zero adaptation.
So the child is able, it's proven not to be adaptive, not to be traumatic, and the child actually reattaches quite quickly to the targeted parent.
That's a shared fantasy, which is good that the child is able to recover from that.
Children are very resilient and neuroplasticity in this age is enormous.
But also there's no enmeshment.
In order to enmesh, in order to effect a process of merger, fusion and symbiosis, you need an adult.
I will not go into the reasons why. I have a whole playlist on my YouTube channel. It's titled The Shared Fantasy.
Maybe I could look that up and recommend that then.
So then you will understand once you have listened, and particularly there's a video titled the seven phases of the shared fantasy.
So once you have listened to, for example, this video, seven phases of shared fantasy, you will immediately see that it's not possible to get enmeshed or to merge or to fuse and create symbiotic relation when you're a child.
It's not possible because a certain level of cognition, emotional maturity, certain psychological processes need to exist.
And they develop much, much later. They develop like in late adolescence and so on.
A child, of course, goes through a symbiotic phase with a parent, especially the mother, actually only with the mother. A child goes through a symbiotic phase with the mother, but it's usually pre-verbal, so pre-verbal stage, and there's no memory of it, zero memory of it.
So it's a developmental phase that leaves no traces in effect, conscious traces.
And after that, children develop. And until age, I think, 12, 13, 14, there's a debate. Children are incapable of enmeshment, merger, infusion. They're incapable. They're not a necessary tool, psychological tool.
However, they fit perfectly into what is known as paracosm.
The paracosm is an alternative reality. A full-fledged universe, which is outside this universe.
So, for example, children have imaginary friends, or children convince themselves that they're on another planet, like the small prince, the little prince, or children fit into the alienating parent's shared fantasy.
Because children love stories.
It's a story. It's a narrative.
There's the evil witch, which is the targeted parent. There's the good witch.
This is exactly the Wizard of Oz.
You know, children are capable of fitting themselves into, immersing themselves in narratives which are fantastic and divorced from real.
Yes, but they are not built at all to enmesh or merge or fuse with another human being because they are to start with, they can't comprehend the totality of another European.
They don't interact on, there are multiple levels where they don't interact with another person.
So their brain is not fully developed, their empathy is not fully developed. Their critical faculties, which are required before you merge and fuse with someone else.
For example, merger and fusion require psychological dependency.
And while the child is dependent on adults, this dependency is actually much more physical than psychological.
The child has needs like food and shelter and so on and so forth.
There is a psychological reflection of this dependency, but it's mostly initially about physical needs.
Similarly, empathy.
Children until a certain age, they don't have real empathy. They don't have emotional empathy. They have what we call reflexive empathy.
So the tools are not there, luckily for us.
So a child moves easily with ease from one story to another story. You know, you can see it when you... I mean, have a look at how children watch movies. They transition seamlessly between one narrative and another, one story and another, one fantasy in another, and so on.
And actually, when we as adults watch movies, we regress, we become a lot more infantile.
And we know that because one of the major defenses that we use when we watch a movie is known as dissociation. We dissociate when we watch a movie.
That's the reason that you jump. You have a startled reaction in a horror movie. You have a startled reaction in a horror movie you have a startled reaction in a horror movie because you're in the movie you're not in reality that's why you that's where you jump when there's something happening on the screen and this is a childlike reaction you're regressed when you watch a movie.
Children watch movies all the time. Movies. Everything around them is a movie.
So there's this movie with this adult, happens to be father. And he says that another adult is the monster.
Okay, great. It's like a movie. Like a story.
And then, you know, they're sweet. so it's a great thing the children are resilient they are neuroplastic and that's what they told you at the beginning you know the middle of the conversation i told them the damage is not only 10 15% of children are really damaged for life 85% would not be damaged, luckily.
They could, yeah, they could reattach.
Reattach, change in narrative.
They could become angry and cut both parents off. That's also a narrative. Blame both parents. That's also a narrative.
It's about 10%. The 15% who are damaged, and often unfortunately damage across the lifetime, these 15, we believe, have a genetic, hereditary predisposition to mental illness.
For example, we know for sure that there is a genetic predisposition, hereditary component in borderline personality. So we know this for sure.
Okay. So if you have this, then you're exposed to a high conflict, adverse set of circumstances, divided loyalties, stress, anxiety, tension, your genetic predisposition probably will cause you to develop borderline personality disorder around age 12, which is when it starts.
Okay.
Well, I think that that's the time that I have today before I have to get back to my day job.
So thank you so much. That was amazing. Thank you. I really appreciated the time and I especially really happy to talk to you about the communal I thought that that was one of my favorite one of my favorite topics that you talked about on your thank you for all your information today thank you for having me and it's been a pleasure take care bye.