Family Disappeared

Dr. Bernet Talks About The Intricacies Of Parental Alienation Part 1 - Episode 84

• Lawrence Joss

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In this episode of the Family Disappeared podcast, host Lawrence Joss interviews Dr. Bill Bernet, a child psychiatrist and forensic psychiatrist with extensive experience in parental alienation. They discuss the historical context of parental alienation, the role of Richard Gardner in defining the term, and the challenges faced in the court system. Dr. Bernet shares insights on the polarization within the family law community and highlights collaborative efforts to bridge divides. The conversation also touches on innovative strategies for early intervention and the significance of the PARQ test in assessing parental alienation.

Key Takeaways

  • Parental alienation was not widely recognized in the early days.
  • Dr. Bill Bernet has been involved in parental alienation for decades.
  • Richard Gardner introduced the term parental alienation syndrome in 1985.
  • Many therapists still struggle to identify parental alienation.
  • Judges have varying levels of understanding about parental alienation.
  • Polarization exists between domestic violence advocates and parental alienation proponents.
  • Early intervention is crucial for addressing mild cases of parental alienation.
  • The PARQ test shows a 99% accuracy in identifying alienated children.
  • Collaboration between different advocacy groups is essential for progress.
  • The focus should always be on the well-being of the children involved.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Parental Alienation

02:57 Dr. Bill Bernet's Journey in Parental Alienation

05:55 Understanding Parental Alienation: Historical Context

09:08 The Role of Richard Gardner in Defining Parental Alienation

11:51 Navigating the Court System: Challenges and Strategies

14:56 Polarization in the Family Law Community

18:07 Collaborative Efforts: Bridging Divides

21:08 Future Directions in Parental Alienation Research

23:53 Innovative Strategies for Early Intervention

26:54 The PARQ Test: A Breakthrough in Assessment

29:48 Conclusion and Reflections on the Journey

Know more about Dr. Bernet and PASG here:

https://www.pasg.info/

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:

Email-      familydisappeared@gmail.com

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss

(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

Please donate to support PAA programs:

https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXS

This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com

Speaker 1:

I think this conflict that I'm describing is going to continue because people are very set in their ways the DV people and the PA people. I'm sad that it turns out that way, but I think we need to still work on resolving that. I think that there will be advances in the field. I think there'll be more research, especially around what to do around the interventions. That's one of the big areas of debate, and so my opinion is that if there are people who agree that parental alienation is a problem but disagree about what to do, they should try to do some kind of research.

Speaker 2:

There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater. Those days are the inspiration for this podcast. This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us. Healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically is paramount to this journey. From this place of grounding we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships. We can engage people from an integrated and resourced place. This is a journey of coming home to ourselves. In today's episode we'll start to explore some of these issues. Let's begin the healing journey today. Welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast.

Speaker 3:

Hi, my name is Lawrence Joss and welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast. Today we have a really cool guest that has been around in the parental alienation field for a really, really long time and it is Dr Bill Burnett, and we're going to be just talking about his experiences within parental alienation in the early days, before there was any terminology, what that looked like, and he also is going to share some really cool technology about new stuff that's happening in the field and some things that are happening behind the scenes that he happens to have access to and be available to. So it's really exciting to hear some of the things that are working in the background that potentially in the years to come, can really have a significant effect on what's happening in our community. And if you're new to the show, welcome to the show. We have a bunch of podcasts we've already taped with all different kinds of subjects and some have panels of parents, some are about lawyers, some therapy, some other stuff. So there's a bunch of great stuff to listen to, and we're also a 501c3 nonprofit. We'd love your support if you're available for that, so we can continue to bring everything to you free, and we also have a free 12-step meeting Parental Alienation Anonymous, where there's 15, 16, 17 meetings, something like that, online every week. An incredibly loving community. So if you're looking for some support which, if you're struggling with this and you're anything like me, like I needed support, and I'm so glad that I found the community to walk this path with, because it was super lonely by myself and a bunch of other resources in the show notes all of Dr Burnett's stuff will be in the show notes too, so check that out and please like share, comment. Let us know if we're getting it right, getting it close, if there's other guests or thoughts you want to share with us. My email address is familydisappeared at gmailcom. Love, love to hear from you and with that let's jump into the show.

Speaker 3:

You hear people talk about parental alienation a lot and they call it counterintuitive, and this comes up in the conversation today with Dr Burnett. And counterintuitive if that word doesn't necessarily make sense to you, is where I'm looking at one thing and I'm thinking it's the sun shining on me, but it's really just a reflection of something else shining on me, off a mirror or something, and that analogy might get lost in translation, but anyway, in the early days I was watching these things happen in my family system and I couldn't understand them or fully get a grasp on what was going on. So I just kept trying to be a really good person, do the right thing, do these different things, and hoping that whatever was happening would resolve itself. And the thing that I wish I would have done was take a step back, get some more resources, talk to some other professionals or community that are actually dealing with this kind of stuff, and they would have reflected back a more normal reality to me, because the reflections are so distortive and that's why it's so counterintuitive on what you need to do and you're always getting stuck and it's kind of like glitchy, like not really getting great internet connection.

Speaker 3:

I don't know. That's the thought that's coming up for me before we jump into this. So I like it, don't like it, you like it, we like. I'm not really sure what I'm saying at this point, but anyway, let's see what Dr Bill Burnett has to say. So it's my pleasure to introduce to the community Dr William Burnett. Dr Burnett, if you can just give a quick introduction to the community of who you are and your relationship to the PA community.

Speaker 1:

Sure. So I'm in Nashville, tennessee, which is where Vanderbilt University is, and I'm a child psychiatrist and a forensic psychiatrist, and over the years I've created more of an interest in parental alienation. That came about because I used to do custody evaluations. By doing custody evaluations, I was introduced to parental alienation.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for that, doctor, and it's such an interesting field to get in. And what I heard you say is, as you're in the custody arena and you're listening to what's going on and the conflicts that are arising, you start to see this idea of parental alienation or some kind of effect happening. Back when you first started noticing this, was the word parental alienation out there. Was it something that was commonly spoken about?

Speaker 1:

Not very much. When I first encountered it I didn't know what it was. It seemed strange, the particular conflict between a mom and a dad. It just didn't seem quite right the way it played out. This was back in the 1990s and about the same time I was involved with developing some guidelines for child psychiatrists and Richard Gardner was involved with that project also. So that was one way that I was introduced to him and to parental alienation. But most people being naive in the beginning, if you happen to see it, it looks sort of puzzling.

Speaker 3:

If you see a case of PA but you don't really don't understand what's happening, yeah, and it's interesting that you say that, because in the therapeutic field, there's a lot of people that can identify it and then there's a lot of therapists and people that don't even know that it exists. So what you saw in the 19s, in 2025, therapists are seeing this play out still and saying this is kind of weird, and they're trying to figure out what it is in real time. That still happened, correct?

Speaker 1:

Well, sure, and therapists who doesn't have any previous experience or doesn't really know what it is, they're going to get fooled and they're going to get misled, because the natural tendency of a therapist is to believe the person who comes to see you. In other words, if a parent brings a child to see you and is concerned about a particular thing that's happening in their family, usually the inclination is just to take it and face value and to believe that what the parent is saying is true and what the child is saying is true. And it might not be. If it's a case of parental alienation, it might be that you really need to hear the opinion or the viewpoints of both parents to really understand what's happening.

Speaker 3:

And like we're talking like a 35 year span since you first became interested in this and therapists are still having a difficult time at times identifying this. Like what has changed? Has the arc changed? I know there's a lot more information and publications and journals and stuff out there, but why are we still so stuck with the professionals not necessarily just even having a point of reference of this?

Speaker 1:

Well, I think parental alienation is better known than it was 20, 30 years ago. It's much better known, but there's still work to be done. There are still conferences to make presentations, and I think we've made a lot of headway, but really not at the end point, because, you're right, there are many child psychiatrists who don't understand what parental alienation is. So we need to keep up the education.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a fascinating process. I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday and he was talking to his therapist about parental alienation and they had no point of reference. And like six months in, his therapist is now sharing it with other therapists as just part of a discussion and talking about his case, which I find wonderful and great and scary all at the same time. And you mentioned a Dr Gardner like that's one of the first places that you started hearing the terminology parental alienation. Can you share a little bit about Dr Gardner and the word parental alienation and where it came from, in case the audience out there doesn't know?

Speaker 1:

Richard Gardner was a child psychiatrist whose office was in New Jersey. He was affiliated with Columbia University Department of Psychiatry where he was a professor. But he saw many, many children and families and he did lots of custody evaluations and he observed this phenomenon that there are situations where the child absolutely refuses to see one of the parents and he notices that the preferred parent, the favored parent, seems to be influencing the child to have a negative opinion about the rejected parent, and he described this in a really important article that was published in 1985. So that's where he introduced the term parental alienation syndrome.

Speaker 1:

But if you go back and look at his writing, even before that, even in the 1970s, he was writing books and articles having to do with divorce and children whose parents were divorced, and even back then he was describing parental alienation and he didn't call it that, he didn't really have a name for it, but it is interesting that he was observing it and describing it even in the 1970s. But it was in 1985 that he introduced the term PAS or parental alienation syndrome. The word syndrome became a point of dispute and a lot of people wanted to argue about whether or not it's a syndrome. So most of us don't use that word anymore. Most of us simply call it parental alienation, and we don't use the word syndrome because we don't want to get into a big argument about that word if we go to court.

Speaker 3:

That makes a lot of sense, and even the word parental alienation is very provocative and sometimes very divisive. How do you find the evolution of using the word parental alienation within the court system, within any kind of communication that you're having? What does that look like for you currently?

Speaker 1:

Well, in my own experience, most judges know about it, they've heard about it. If I come and testify, they find it interesting and they might ask a few questions. But I had one judge who where I testified and the judge said oh, dr Burnett, you really don't have to tell me anything more about that. He said I've been a judge for 30 years and I know more about this than you do. And maybe he did. He actually ended up following the recommendations that we made to the court. So most judges seem to understand it and there's more and more education of judges too. That I've done and other psychiatrists and psychologists have done. That I've done and other psychiatrists and psychologists have done.

Speaker 1:

I'll tell you what's important to know that some judges don't like the word, the name parental alienation and they don't like for the expert to give a diagnosis because they don't want the expert to give the final answer. They want the court to make the determination about whether or not alienation is present. So some judges don't like it if the expert actually says this identifying term or the diagnosis parental alienation. But that's not a problem.

Speaker 1:

One should do it in testifying in court is describe the behaviors. You can describe how the child is behaving, how the child reacts to this parent and to the other parent, and if the child refuses to have a relationship with the second parent you know, describe that in some detail and describe what the alienating parent has been doing. You can describe what these activities are, what we call alienating behaviors. You can list them and describe them and then let the judge figure out that this parent A, the alienating parent, is causing the child to reject parent B. It's easy for the judge to figure that out if, simply, given the behaviors that the people are manifesting, yeah, so what I'm hearing you say?

Speaker 3:

it's really important to frame what's happening, how it's happening, where it's happening. And the word parental alienation is not necessary at times. It's not even useful at times. Is that accurate to say?

Speaker 1:

It really depends on the court. Some judges find it perfectly fine and they're comfortable with the term parental alienation. Other judges feel that it's imposing on their own area of expertise and they don't want the expert to give the diagnosis, and so it's easy to get around it. Usually the attorney knows the point of view of the judge, and so usually you can frame things the way the judge wants. You know, this is not unusual In doing custody evaluations. Some judges will say yes, dr Burnett, I want you to tell me your opinion. What do you think should happen in this evaluation? Should the child live with one parent or the other, or go back and forth? Or what the other judges will say? This is the opposite. Yes, I want you to testify, but don't tell me what to do. I'm not interested in your conclusion or your opinion. I just want the information that you've collected. So courts have different ways of approaching the very same task, and the expert needs to accommodate to some extent to what the judge is looking for.

Speaker 3:

That's super useful information. Yeah, I really enjoy that and as your experience and time in studying parental alienation and being an expert witness and helping folks out, like, what have you observed in this arc of this 35 years, have there been some major shifts or changes in recognition or major shifts or changes in presentation or anything like that?

Speaker 1:

Well, I think there's more conflict, or what we call polarization, within the community, the family law community, and what I mean is there are a lot of people who don't like the concept of parental alienation and they object to it, and sometimes advocates identify as domestic violence advocates. There's kind of a conflict between the domestic violence community and the parental alienation community and at times that gets quite intense. But just to skip to the end of the story, there's no really point in having this polarization. There are so many things that we agree on. For instance, we agree that domestic violence is real, but in fact sometimes there are false allegations of domestic violence and I think most people would agree that parental alienation is real, even though at times there are false misrepresentations of parental alienation. So I think we need to work together to try to figure out you know, how to tell the difference. How do you tell the difference between a true allegation and a made-up allegation? That's what we need to try to figure out.

Speaker 1:

But this conflict has grown sadly, and I think it's partly because parental alienation is better known. I think the general awareness of parental alienation has gotten the other side worried and so they escalate their arguments against parental alienation. I think it's sad that we're in that state. It's called polarization. It's not healthy for anybody, especially for the families and the children, to have this fight going on, for anybody, especially for the families and the children, to have this fight going on. And so I think we need to work together and try to overcome this and try to all have I guess you would call it a consensus.

Speaker 3:

We need a consensus about what parental alienation is and what to do about it, and do you see groups from both sides working together? I know that there's this polarization, but is there also this intersectionality where there's groups actually working together to come up with useful ways to navigate the complexities of both issues?

Speaker 1:

Well, yes, a really important player in this is AFCC, which is the Association for Family and Conciliation Courts. It's kind of a weird name Family and Conciliation Courts but that's been their name for 30 or 40 years, and so AFCC is a big organization. It's an international group of people who are interested in family law, so it includes judges and attorneys and psychologists and psychiatrists and social workers and different kinds of advocates and guardians of item and so on. So AFCC has actively attempted to create dialogue around issues where there's polarization, and recently, in the last year or so, afcc started a project called the Peace Talks, and the Peace Talks involve a group of six or seven people who come from different perspectives. Some of them are more interested in parental alienation, some of them are more interested in domestic violence.

Speaker 1:

I'm part of this committee, so I know what's going on about it. There's a judge, there's an attorney, there's a couple of psychologists and so on, and so we've had discussions about you know, we try to listen to each other and we try to understand where everybody's coming from and we try to see if there are areas that we agree on. In other words, we try to create bridges around different opinions, and so we've made presentations at the AFCC meeting last year. There are two of them actually. This group made presentations about this process of listening to each other and trying to find common ground. So, yes, there is some work going on in this and the backlash that they receive and the burnout and everything like that.

Speaker 3:

So there's actually something pushing this conversation forward sounds wonderful and potentially healing. What do you see the arc of in the next 5, 10, 15 years Like? What changes do you see potentially happening in the court systems and the mental health? Community Like do you see anything arising or momentum getting gained in anything different? Community like do you?

Speaker 1:

see anything arising or momentum getting gained in anything different. I think this conflict that I'm describing is going to continue because people are very set in their ways the DV people and the PA people. I'm sad that it turns out that way, but I think we need to still work on resolving that. I think that there will be advances in the field. I think there'll be more research maybe, especially around what to do around the interventions. That's one of the big areas of debate, and so my opinion is that if there are people who agree that parental alienation is a problem but disagree about what to do, they should try to do some kind of research, in other words, what kind of intervention or what kind of reunification process seems to work the best.

Speaker 1:

And that's a complicated topic because it depends on whether it's a case of mild or moderate or severe parental alienation. And the biggest controversy is in severe cases, because what we would say is that the parental alienation proponents would say that in really severe cases the child is being abused, that it's child maltreatment for a parent to indoctrinate a child, to be afraid of the other parent without a good reason, and we feel that that's abusive and that we feel that the child needs to be removed from that home if that's what's happening in a severe case. Well, that's something that some people would disagree with. In other words, they would say, oh well, the child is really attached to that parent. Even though it's an unhealthy attachment, the child is strongly attached to that parent and so we should not interrupt it.

Speaker 1:

Well, we don't think that's correct. We think it's the same as physical abuse or sexual abuse, that if the child was being abused, the child should be removed from that home, at least until things can get straightened out. So that's an interesting area of disagreement. So how about research? Is it possible to devise some sort of research project that can address that? Address that? It's hard to do, because it's hard to figure out how to give one family one intervention and another family a different intervention and see which one works. Ideally, that's the kind of research that could be done, and maybe it could be that that's something that needs to get worked out by research and not just by having opinions one way or the other.

Speaker 3:

Sure, and are there any like innovative strategies or initiatives within the Western countries, any kind of country where they're actually doing something that's generating something different besides just reunification therapy and a couple of things that are mostly used Because it seems like they're not necessarily working really well?

Speaker 1:

I think the biggest advance currently has to do with early intervention and those cases are fixable, that what we try to encourage therapists and psychologists and the court is to recognize these cases early, when they're what we would call mild cases of parental alienation, before they progress to more severe cases, because in more mild cases the parents are usually more cooperative and more open to advice and open to instruction.

Speaker 1:

So a court might identify a mild case and the court can simply tell the parents. I want you to shape up, I want you both to strongly support the child's relationship with both of you and don't badmouth each other and don't interfere with each other's parenting time and so on. And judges can tell people that, and so can therapists, so can psychologists, and if the parents are both reasonable people, they'll listen and they'll do a better job as they send the child back and forth between the two parents. So that's really I guess you know you call that the low-hanging fruit that's an area that we seem to understand and that we seem to know what to do about it, and it's fairly easy to identify those cases, and so that's where the work is going on right now.

Speaker 1:

So some psychologists have formed relationships with courts where they talk to the judges and they get along, and the judges are aware of that, and so if the judge sees a case like this, come to his court, he says hey, folks, in the next two weeks I want you to go see Dr So-and-so and he or she is going to work with you about some of these issues that you've been bringing to court, because I want you to work them out that way and not keep coming back to court again. So that is happening in some cities and so that's something we'd like to promote. The cases that are harder are when they really do get to be more severe or extremely severe. Those are really hard, and that's where the disagreements are, which we need to maybe we do need to do research and try to figure out the best approach.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and it's wonderful to hear that there's some initiatives in some states and relationships getting built and that feels like there's more and more conversations around that and there's more literature and there's more people that are actually involved in that process where it is the early intervention and they are getting to the people and the family sooner. And I think that's really what the point of even the podcast is is to help people that are in that stage intervene while they can still do something again with a low hanging fruit, with the least amount of emotional turmoil, I guess you know, and then the other stuff is just going to unfortunately have to get unwound at a much slower pace. And, Bill, like on the research that you've conducted over the years, what would you say is one of the most crucial pieces or parts of the puzzle that you yourself have invested a bunch in time and it feels really important to kind of like talk about here for a couple minutes.

Speaker 1:

Well, I published some research a few years ago which when we started it, we just thought it was kind of an interesting project, but the results really turned out to be very dramatic. And I'm talking about a psychological test called the PARQ, which is P-A-R-Q, which stands for Parental Acceptance Rejection Questionnaire. So this is a fairly simple little questionnaire. It takes a child about 15 or 20 minutes to fill it out and the questionnaire asks the child what are your opinions about mom and what are your opinions about dad? You know you can score this and you can add up a score and very, very low scores are very, very positive and very, very high scores on this questionnaire are very, very negative. So we thought that would be interesting. Let's try this. Let's see how the children respond when you say what's your opinion about mom and dad, and how the alienated children respond as compared to regular children. Well, regular children in intact homes say hey, mom and dad, they're about equal that. About mom, I have some things I like, a few things I don't like, and about dad, there are some things I like and some things I don't like. I don't like. And about dad, there are some things I like and some things I don't like. So that's normal. In our research we did 100 kids who are normal and they all did that. Well, we thought that the alienated kids would do it differently. They thought that they would have a good opinion of one parent and a not so good opinion of the other parent, and so that's what happened. But what happened was it was much more extreme than we thought it would turn out. It was so extreme that in severely alienated children the opinion of parent A, the favored parent, was extremely, extremely low, meaning it totally. In some cases the child said every single thing about this parent is perfect, and for the other parent, the rejected parent, the child said every single thing about this parent is the worst possible. In other words, they did favor one parent and reject the other one. But the results were much more extreme than we had anticipated. And they were so extreme that we were able to create a way of scoring this in which there was a cutoff point and the cutoff point separated the non-alienated children from the severely alienated children with accuracy of 99%. We had a way of doing a test fairly simple. It took the kid 20, 30 minutes to do this. It's on a computer and it's scored by a computer Tester can't control the outcome. The child fills it out and it's scored by a computer and the results were so dramatic that it was possible with 99% accuracy to tell the difference between severely alienated and non-alienated children. So that was really interesting.

Speaker 1:

I think that test should be used by people who are doing child custody evaluations. It's called the PARQ, the P-A-R-Q, and it's been published in a couple of different articles. So that's an example of something that was discovered almost accidentally. We thought something would turn up, but we didn't think it would be so dramatic. You know 99%. Is there any other psychological test that is 99% accurate? Is there a test you can do for schizophrenia that would be 99% accurate in distinguishing the schizophrenic people from other people? That's an unusual degree of accuracy for a psychological test.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that seems like an incredible find that you walk backwards into and my question is has that test been used anywhere? Has it been used in court after the test has been taken? Has anything like that happened? Well, what an interesting conversation. It's great to talk to someone that's been in this field for a really, really long time and has some really pertinent information and is so well seeped in what we were talking about. Like, the amount of information that he has forgotten is more information than I'm ever going to know.

Speaker 3:

So I really appreciate the wisdom and some really super interesting technology talking about the work that's happening in the background and I really appreciate the folks out there that are doing this work. You know, and money is involved and sometimes we get lost in the whole money kind of thing and people do need to make a living and at the same time, they're doing this work. That is needed and is incredibly important. And also the divisive communities comes up quite a bit in the conversation and there's different people in different camps saying, yes, parental alienation, no, parental alienation, and there's this conflict going on and I think finding a bridge is going to be incredibly important and also for us not to get caught up in that conflict and if someone doesn't enjoy the terminology or appreciate it or even want to have anything to do with the terminology, it's really important for me to put the word down and get into the conversation, because it's really about the kids and finding a path forward. So that's really a lie for me right now. As you can tell, I'm just figuring it out as I'm saying it out loud.

Speaker 3:

So thanks for coming out today. I hope you enjoyed the show. I'd love to hear from you. Email me at familydisappeared at gmailcom Comments, ideas, misses and also like share. We really need the engagement from the community so we make sure that we keep delivering what is wanted and what is useful, and it's a lot of talking for me today. Thank you, if no one's told you yet, today I love you. I know it's corny, but anyway I love you. Take it in, take a breath with him. I love you. I took my breath. Have a good day.

Speaker 2:

See you around the neighborhood thanks for taking the time to join me on this episode of Family Disappeared Podcast. Do you know someone who can benefit from what we're discussing on today's episode? If so, please share this podcast with them and anyone else in your community that might be interested in changing their lives. Together we'll continue the exploring, growing and healing journey. I will see you on our next episode. Until then, happy days to all.