ABSTRACT
When families are in conflict, high levels of emotional activity such as anger, fear, loss and grief in the adults involved can affect children and young people in the family, particularly as a result of conscious and unconscious adult emotional pressure and manipulation. An aspect of this is when one parent uses their power over a child to excommunicate the other parent. This is sometimes called parental alienation. This terminology arises from the work of Richard Gardner, who developed the notion of Parental Alienation Syndrome. What lies behind the label parental alienation, the journey and implications of that phenomenon are explored. A consideration of the limitations of the UK court system reveals the lonely predicament of the child. This paper considers how psychotherapists may help young people to make sense of their experience of being caught up in destructive family narratives by claiming their own understanding and narrative.
