Family Disappeared

Dr. Bernet Talks About The Intricacies Of Parental Alienation Part 2 - Episode 85

• Lawrence Joss

Share episode

In this episode of the Family Disappeared podcast, Lawrence Joss continues the conversation with Dr. William Bernet, focusing on the innovative resources and strategies being developed to address parental alienation. They discuss a new book aimed at educating judges and mental health professionals, the importance of the Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG), and the need for accurate information in the field. Dr. Bernet shares insights on the challenges faced by mental health professionals and advocates for awareness of misinformation surrounding parental alienation. The episode concludes with a hopeful story of reunification between a parent and child, emphasizing the potential for positive outcomes in challenging situations.

Key Takeaways

  • The new book on parental alienation will be concise and free.  Its title will be "Parental Alienation Theory: official synopsis".
  • Innovative testing is being integrated into evaluations for parental alienation.
  • The PASG aims to educate and support professionals and families.
  • Misinformation about parental alienation is prevalent and harmful.
  • Mental health professionals need to seek out education on parental alienation.
  • Early intervention can lead to positive outcomes for families.
  • The importance of community support in dealing with parental alienation.
  • Adversarial collaboration can help resolve disagreements in the field.
  • The new book will be available in multiple languages.
  • Staying in touch with children can lead to reunification after alienation.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Parental Alienation and New Resources

03:03 Innovative Testing and Evaluation in Parental Alienation

10:20 The Launch of a Groundbreaking Book

15:16 Understanding the Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG)

18:11 Advice for Mental Health Professionals

22:58 Misinformation and Advocacy in Parental Alienation

25:29 Positive Outcomes and Hopeful Stories

Know more about Dr. Bernet and PASG here:

https://www.pasg.info/

Book title "Parental Alienation Theory: official synopsis"

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:

Something to be aware of, I think, is the misinformation that occurs in the literature and websites and on social media about alienation. By misinformation I mean false statements, and I think people need to read up on this too, because if you're going to be an advocate on behalf of parental alienation and you're going to study it and what it is, you also have to have some awareness of what's being said. That's untrue.

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.

Speaker 3:

Disappeared podcast. Hi, my name is Laurence Doss and welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. Today we have part two with Dr William Burnett. If you haven't listened to part one, I'd highly suggest doing that first. This is just a continuation of the conversation and some really cool stuff in store today. Dr Burnett talks about the new book that's coming out and how it's going to be distributed and how it's potentially the start of a game changer to really help educate people. And the beautiful part of the technology and he'll share this all in the conversation today is that it's going to be free and accessible to everyone and anyone, which I think is super cool, because everything usually focuses around money and how much it costs. And for professionals that have their own personal technology that they're going to be sharing with everyone in a useful way for free is just fantastic. You do not hear that very often.

Speaker 3:

If you're new to the community, welcome. Please check the show notes. There's a bunch of great stuff. There's Dr Burnett's information down there. There's links to the free 12-step support group meeting, which is Parental Alienation Anonymous. Come by, check out the meetings, save my life. Great place to have community. And if a 12-step community doesn't feel appropriate to you try it anyway and if it still doesn't feel appropriate, any support group, any kind of community is going to be paramount as you struggle along with this stuff, because it's lonely and isolating and even our own families at times don't necessarily fully grasp it and can't necessarily fully show up to support us because they're so emotionally involved.

Speaker 3:

And yeah email me at familydisappeared at gmailcom. Love to hear what you have to say. Please comment like share. We are a 501c3 nonprofit, so click on the link below and help support what we're bringing to you for free. I'd really appreciate that. And with that let's jump into the show.

Speaker 3:

I don't know about you, but there's so much information out there and as I'm going along my parental alienation journey, at times I can take in information, I can read books, and at other times I just feel overwhelmed and underwater. You know, and having the conversation with Dr Burnett today and hearing all the different resources that are out there and the new book that's coming out and stuff sounds wonderful and it's great information to have and I really like that. There's people doing work out there that I can't necessarily see yet and you know, when I was struggling along with this and talking to professionals and talking to therapists, I was running into people that had no idea, that couldn't identify what was going on, and I didn't have the language and there wasn't necessarily the research out to educate stakeholders. And I think, more than anything is to advocate for myself, saying this is what's happening, this is what's going on, this is what I need support with, but in a useful way, not in an aggressive way. So I'm just feeling nostalgic as I'm finishing up the interview with Dr Burnett and taping this little end part to the show.

Speaker 3:

So I don't know. That's what's up for me. Let's just jump in and hear the second part of the show. I hope you enjoy the ride. 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?

Speaker 1:

All that's happening not as much as we would like, but I do want to clarify that you can't use this test all by itself. In other words, this isn't a test for parental alienation. It should be part of an evaluation. You know, a comprehensive evaluation in which you might do this test and you might do some other tests. I mention that because parents hear about this and they write me an email and they say please do this test on my child so that I can know whether he's alienated or not, and we don't want that to happen. It needs to be part of an evaluation, but it is being used. More and more people are contacting the doctor who wrote the test and who sells it, who's at the University of Connecticut, and more and more people are studying it and it's been used in court. I know it's been testified in court both the United States and in England, united Kingdom, so I know it's being used. Perhaps it should be better known, but anyway, that's an example of an innovative type of research that I think advances the field.

Speaker 3:

I love that. I had never heard of that before. I heard you talking about it on a different interview. But actually you explaining it to me sounds fantastic and I like that you're quantifying that. It's not the test. It is part of the whole intake process and the whole evaluation, which is incredibly important. But to get this innovative technology out to therapists and psychiatrists and whoever else the stakeholders are, that's innovative. Like I love that. That's one of the few innovative things I've really heard about in a while in the field, you know. So that's really exciting. Thank you for that work. And if we were just going to take like a best case scenario or like your idea of a fantasy for the court over the next 5, 10, 15 years, that would really change the way that the cases are managed or held or run or even the whole process. Like, is there anything that you could see over in the court in the next several years that you think would make a huge difference and be useful?

Speaker 1:

Well, I mentioned, of course, the early recognition thing, where judges would identify it and instruct parents what to do before it gets worse. There's another thing that we hope to get off the ground, which I hope will be helpful in educating judges and attorneys and psychologists, is we have a new book coming out. This book project is unusual. I think it'll be out maybe in May or June this 2025. What's unusual about it? It's not one of these great big books. There are a number of books on parental alienation that are 400, 500 pages long. People don't read a judge is never going to read a 400-page book so we're creating a book that we hope is only going to be about 100 pages. That has all the most important points in it, like what is PA, what are the definitions, what's mild, moderate, severe, what are the interventions and so on, and it doesn't have any frills. It only has the basic information, beautifully organized, with no frills. There are no vignettes, there's no extra information, there's no sidebars. There's only the basic information. It's being published by a good publisher that we've used before, but we're doing something unusual. We're making it available for free that the book is going to be created both in a hard copy that's for sale in bookstores. But there's going to be a PDF of this 100-page book that we're going to post on our website and on many other websites and it's going to be available for free and we're going to send it. We're going to send the link to attorneys and judges and many, many other people, and we hope to distribute this very widely, because we want this book to be the most widely read book ever published on parental alienation. Because it's short you can read it in two hours if you're a judge, or even less if you only read the most important parts and so this project is unusual because we're distributing a valuable resource for free. Now we're also going to distribute hard copies, like if we have a conference. We have a conference coming up in Toronto in a few months and we're going to distribute a free copy of the hard copy to everybody who comes to the conference and it's going to be translated into several other languages, including Japanese, dutch and French and so on, and Spanish. So that's my point why do we distribute a readable short treatise that has the basic information?

Speaker 1:

Now there's one more step to this. I talked a few minutes ago about the polarization, and the way to overcome polarization is to attempt to have projects together, and there's a name for this. There's a fancy name called adversarial collaboration. Adversarial means two people with different opinions get together and try to resolve disagreements by working together. We're using this book for that purpose. In other words, we're announcing that we hope that people who might disagree with some parts of this book to let us know, because this is only the first edition.

Speaker 1:

We plan to have a new edition in a few years in which we incorporate different opinions and we try to boil it down to see if we can agree on some kind of consensus, like is there a consensus on the definition of alienation?

Speaker 1:

What are the criteria for diagnosing alienation? Can we reach a consensus on that? How to tell alienation from other reasons that children, other problems that children? So my point is I mean I'm sort of advertising this book here, but it's a very unusual project because we're going to distribute it for free very, very widely and we're going to actively invite other people to participate so that it will gradually represent the views of almost everybody. Now it won't represent the views of 100%, because there's always going to be some people who are so misinformed and so far off in some other stadium that they won't agree on anything, but I think that most scholars will find a way to support this project, and so, even in doing it, we've already started in getting various people involved in helping us with this, so that it will come across as a joint project of many different people.

Speaker 3:

Well, let me just make a couple of comments on what you just shared. Like, again, the innovative technology about creating a book that's really succinct, available and digestible to folks and then making the ebook or the PDF available for free so it's actually accessible, I think is technology in itself, and it's innovative because so much of what's happening in this arena is around money and generating income and people making money and people not having money so they don't have access to resources. So I love that you're making this for free and making it accessible, and then you're also calling in the counterparts, so hopefully you can address both sides of the coin and everyone can feel heard and seen not necessarily 100%, but at least everyone has a seat at the table while the meal's being cooked. So I think that is incredible. And is there a name to this book yet?

Speaker 1:

Yes, this has happened very quickly. You know, this idea was created only a few months ago and I recruited 15 people to help me. So there are 15 authors of this book and it's almost done. I hope to finish it up in a couple of weeks and send it to the publisher.

Speaker 1:

But anyway, the name of it is Parental Alienation Theory colon Official Synopsis. So why is it official? The people who are writing this are all officers of my organization, the Parental Alienation Study Group. The 15 authors have all been on the board of directors of PASG and so we're saying that this is an official document of this organization, PASG, and it's written not just by 10 or 15 people at random, but every one of us have been on the board of directors. So we have an investment both in the organization and in this product. So I think official is a pretty good word. Some people might say it's a little bit haughty or pretentious to say that, but my point is nobody else has done this. No other organization has attempted to write a consensus statement regarding parental alienation theory and the other part it was called the official synopsis.

Speaker 1:

So what's a synopsis? It's brief. It's not every single article that has ever been written, it's a summary and it's putting all this down. Actually, the actual text part is about 70 pages and then the other 25 pages are references that you can look at if you want to, but you don't need to. But the actual part that a person would read is 75 or 80 pages, so that's why we call it an synopsis. We really hope that it's digestible, Incidentally. So what's a theory? The first part of it was parental alienation theory. So a theory in this sense does not mean something that's hypothetical. A theory means something that's an established body of knowledge, like the theory of gravitation is something that people believe in. They believe it really exists, and most people would say that the theory of evolution is something that really happens. So we're calling this parental alienation theory in the sense of these are the basic principles that are generally adopted by practitioners. So anyway, that's the book and we hope that it will have an influence as things progress over the next few years.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I look forward to getting released and would love to promote it to all the community members and all the people that are listening to all our different social media channels on the podcast. I think that's just a wonderful way to share with the community and make it accessible to everyone. So that is fantastic, and there's a lot of people that are listening out there that don't know what PASG is. Could you just give us like a two or three minute explanation of what PASG is and how it started and what the purpose is?

Speaker 1:

So that's our group. It's called Parental Alienation Study Group and it was founded about 15 years ago. This was back when the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, was being rewritten into DSM-5. So when that was happening, a group of us got together and wanted to get parental alienation in DSM-5. And that group became the start of PASG. And then we gradually grew, we created a website and we have conferences. They're big conferences. They happen in different countries. The one that's coming up in September is in Toronto, Canada.

Speaker 1:

So the PASG has people from all backgrounds. We have practitioners who are psychologists and attorneys and a few judges, but we also have parents, alienated parents and grandparents, and now we're getting more and more children who previously had been alienated In other words, they're called adult children of parental alienation and we have projects together. We write books. The books have been phenomenal. You know, on our website we have a list of books and of those members, more than 100 books have been written and published by those members. I mean that's pretty amazing. Ironically, none of those books do what we hope this new book will do, which will be a succinct, readable synopsis of this problem. So we hope that we can add one more book to the website. But anyway, that's what PASG is. People are welcome to join you. Go to the website.

Speaker 3:

We'll put a link in the show notes for all the different things that you're sharing, so people can have access to it and everything like that in just a click.

Speaker 1:

It's easy to do. It's pasginfo, and then you know, you go and it says membership and so on, and there are no dues, there are no finances involved. You're welcome to come and participate in PASG.

Speaker 3:

That's wonderful, that's all wonderful stuff Great technology that the thought leaders are getting together and helping drive this conversation forward. And just digressing a little bit, like what advice would you give to mental health professionals who are new to working with cases of parental alienation or just hearing about it or someone's bringing up someone coming to these topics? What would you say to them?

Speaker 1:

in a really succinct way, Well, you got to study a bit, you got to learn about it, because it's not something you get taught in graduate school. That's the unfortunate thing is, you can go through psychology school or social work school and never learn about parental alienation. So if you do come across the idea or a case or a relative of yours, you should start reading up on it. There are dozens of videos. If you go to YouTube and search for Alienation, there are zillions of YouTubes by parents and also by doctors and attorneys. And you need to go to conferences. If you really want to get interested, you should join organizations like PASG or go to conferences and you should certainly talk to people.

Speaker 1:

You should talk to your colleagues and compare notes, because if you're just doing this all by yourself, none of it makes sense. It doesn't make sense that a kid is going to come in and say I never want to see daddy again and then you have a discussion and you say well, okay, well, what about it? Why don't you ever want to see daddy again? The kid says I don't like the way he decorated my room and therefore I'm going to stay with mommy and I'm never going to see daddy again. My point is that you hear this stuff and it doesn't make any sense unless you try to understand where did that come from? Because that's an actual I'm telling you.

Speaker 1:

It's something that actually had happened an evaluation that I did you, something I actually had happen, an evaluation that I did. So you have to, you know, check with other professionals, get some supervision, compare notes, come to a conference, read up, but simply don't take everything literally that your child or a parent might tell you.

Speaker 3:

And do you see something changing with graduate school or continuing education and stuff like that, specifically around parental alienation, where it's part of the regular standard curriculum?

Speaker 1:

That's happening especially in psychology A number of psychologists who themselves have research projects. They have students who engage with them in this research. That happens in Australia, in the United States, in the United Kingdom. That's one way that the information is proliferating through research with students it's also being taught. I helped a program in Louisiana develop a curriculum for how to incorporate and so you don't usually have a course on parental alienation. You have a course on divorce, you know, for social workers, or perhaps one part of that is high conflict divorce and one part of that might be parental alienation. So you have to plug the parental alienation into some broader topic and people find that helpful. So I think it is growing and I think it's growing in law schools also. So I think we're headed down the right track, but there just needs to be more education.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and it's good to hear that that stuff's happening and at a certain point, hopefully, it hits a critical mass and it starts to become something that's just part of the curriculums and the trainings and the law schools and stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

Incidentally, the people who write guidelines like AFCC. I mentioned that organization. There's a whole guideline for how to do a custody evaluation and that says you should think about parental alienation.

Speaker 1:

But also the APA, the American Psychological Association, has a whole guideline for how to do a custody evaluation, and that says the same thing. You should think about parental alienation. And one more, the Child Psychiatry Organization where I helped write the guideline, and that says the same thing. So these organizations are helping to spread the word because their official guidelines say this is something you need to think about.

Speaker 3:

So those are pretty big organizations. You would think most therapists and psychologists are using their frameworks, but it doesn't seem like that's necessarily happening, because they can't identify it to start with.

Speaker 1:

That's right. They need to read their guidelines of their own organizations.

Speaker 3:

Bill, as we're getting closer to the end of the podcast, is there something you feel like is really relevant to talk about that we haven't spoke about, or something else that you'd like to share with the community that, again, that you feel is relevant or useful to anyone out there that's struggling in the middle of the fight with this stuff?

Speaker 1:

Well, something to be aware of, I think, is the misinformation that occurs in the literature and websites and on social media about alienation. By misinformation I mean false statements, and I think people need to read up on this too, because if you're going to be an advocate on behalf of parental alienation and you're going to study it and what it is, you also have to have some awareness of what's being said. That's untrue and some of these untruths are blatant lies about misinformation about parental alienation. This is an example. I mean people will say that Richard Gardner, who we mentioned a few minutes ago, that Richard Gardner was a pedophile. That's a horrible thing to say.

Speaker 1:

It's a lie and people like to promote that idea as a way to attack alienation. Or people say that over and over again. People say no professional organization in the United States has endorsed or accepted the concept of parental alienation. That's not true either. I just told you about the APA, the American Psychological Association, the AFCC, the Child Psychiatry. They all talk about alienation in their official documents, but that's stated over and over again and that's wrong.

Speaker 1:

Or one more is people say it over and over again oh, it's not acceptable in court. Well it is. It's been testified in court hundreds and hundreds of times in the United States and also in Canada and in other places. So that's just a final word. It's a little bit of a negative tone to this, which is about false statements, is that if you're going to be a proponent or an advocate of alienation, you have to not only know what's true look at our book when it comes out in a couple of months but you also need to be aware that a lot of what's published is incorrect, and you try to stay tuned in to both sides of that.

Speaker 3:

That's a wonderful piece of advice and I'm actually going to want to wrap the show up on a little bit different note. I'm hoping you have a story you can share of a really positive outcome and you know like, because I know that this is a struggle and this is an uphill battle but there's a lot of people that are able to work through the early interventions, get their families back. There's a lot of people in later places and in severe that also do get their children back and it is super challenging. But I'd love you to maybe share a quick story to wrap up the show, if you're okay with that, just about a positive interaction you had.

Speaker 1:

Well, I've had cases where things turned out fine. I've had parents come to me and tell me that after a certain number of years the child got in touch with them. I'll give you a real quick vignette, which is simply what a mother related to me. Her son was alienated from her for years by the dad. The dad was a very powerful, rich businessman, and when the kid wanted to go to college, the dad said good, I want you to major in business so that you can take over my business. And the boy did that for a year. But he was totally uninterested and he said I don't do this anymore, I'm going to major in something else. I'm going to I forget what it was. I'm going to major in biology or something. And the dad says, well, too bad, no more college for you. The dad cut him off.

Speaker 1:

So the boy went to work and tried to make enough money to pay for college. That didn't quite work, and so it occurred to him. He says, hey, I have a mom out there who I have not spoken to for six or seven years, and sure enough, he calls her up and she's delighted. I mean, it's wonderful. If that happens. You shouldn't go overboard, but you should just say hey, you know, great, I'm glad to hear from you. Come on over and you need help with college. Yeah, let's talk about it, and so on. And that's what happened with this lady. She was going to write a book about that and I'm not sure if she ever did, but it was a wonderful story. But I don't want to present this as a kid being greedy and taking advantage of his mother.

Speaker 1:

What I think it is more that what happens, that when children grow up and they move out of the home where the alienation happened and they go to college, or sometimes they get involved in a girlfriend or something or some another person that they get disconnected a bit from the alienating parent that dawns on them. I have another parent. I wonder whatever happened to that other parent. You know, maybe I'll call them up and they do that, and sometimes that leads to reunification. So that's a positive thing that does happen sometimes. I think it's a nice thing to hope for and to certainly do what you can to stay in touch.

Speaker 3:

Fantastic and Doctor, thank you for coming out and sharing a couple minutes with us and sharing some of your innovative technology, the book, a bunch of exciting things that are happening in the world that we're super grateful to know about, and again, I really appreciate your time and your wisdom.

Speaker 1:

Good, y'all take care.

Speaker 3:

I'm going to give a hoof. It's funny Some interviews I feel rejuvenated and hopeful and some interviews I feel educated and overstimulated. And yeah, this kind of interview is super interesting and talking about stuff that I don't know is available, and also hearing about some of the technology that's out there, and also I feel a little depleted. Maybe this is a 35-year journey that Dr Burnett's been on and we're seeing a lot of changes and stuff, but we're just barely touching the surface and maybe all this work that's getting done is building momentum and inertia and we'll hit that tipping point where it makes a substantial difference for so many people. Now, that's really what the hope is of this podcast. Is that's really about the community and helping the next person and the first person in. You know, and as we help the newer people and as there's more earlier interventions, then the people that are a bit further behind start to get caught up in that inertia too, and then there's interventions for them and then the severe people. So it's a really interesting idea that we support and provide and hold up newer folks to this. So this happens less often. There's more documentation, there's more research and then it starts to propel into people that are a little bit further along in the process, and that's what my thought is.

Speaker 3:

Today I really enjoyed the interview and I feel tired and, as I was saying, a little depleted, and again love to hear from you. Familydisappeared at gmailcom. Recommendations for guests, ideas, topics, misses, maybe something really wonderful that we shared in the show? And yeah, and please like, share on social media comment. Would love to hear from you and that's all that I got for the day. Yeah, in case no one said it yet today, I love you. I hope you're having a beautiful day. I'm feeling like I need a little love, so maybe I'll just listen to this part over and over a couple of times, just me telling me that I love me, I love you or love something you know, whatever it doesn't matter, just feeling a little bit need for some love and with that, I hope you have a beautiful day and I will see you around the neighborhood. Bye-bye.

Speaker 2:

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