Parental Alienation Syndrome vs. Parental Alienation: Which Diagnosis Should Evaluators Use in Child-Custody Disputes?

Children who have been programmed by one parent to be alienated from the other parent are commonly seen in the context of child-custody disputes. Such programming is designed to strengthen the position of the programming parent in a court of law. Many evaluators use the term parental alienation syndrome (PAS) to refer to the disorder engendered in such children. In contrast, there are evaluators who recognize the disorder, but prefer to use the term parental alienation (PA). The purpose of this article is to elucidate the sources of this controversy and to delineate the advantages and disadvantages of using either term in the context of child-custody disputes, especially in evaluators’ reports and testimony in courts of law. The author concludes that families are best served when the more specific term parental alienation syndrome is used rather than the more general term parental alienation.