Stan Korosi

™ A public social and policy reform project seeking recognition, accountability and repair for relational harm. OUR PRINCIPLES

1 Family relationships are social infrastructure. Safe and meaningful family relationships are not merely private interests. They are a public good.

2 Family relationships have continuity across family configurations. Separation and family restructuring change relationships. They should not unnecessarily erase them.

3 Relational harm is real harm. The avoidable destruction, obstruction or severance of meaningful family relationships—including alienation and harmful family estrangement—can damage identity, belonging, memory, continuity and intergenerational connection.

4 Evidence requires equity and integrity. Claims of alienation, abuse, coercive control and relational harm should be assessed through consistent evidentiary standards, without prejudging credibility or assigning evidentiary weight by category alone.

5 Institutions must be accountable for avoidable relational harm. Courts, governments and professional systems should be accountable when their actions, assumptions, delays or failures contribute to unnecessary relational destruction.

Recognition is the first step. Collective action turns recognition into reform.

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Clinical observations by a child psychiatrist in 1985 of children, rejecting parents, whom they previously loved, on unreasonable and frivolous, if not dangerous fabrications, have led to the established and growing field of Parental Alienation (PA) and Parental Alienation behaviours (PABs). This field is part of the core business of Family Courts and related jurisdictions of resolving parent-child contact problems and addressing resist-refusal dynamics.

The 1980s were a time of tectonic shifts in social values about family and kinship expectations, building on the social upheavals and reorganisations of the 1960s-70s. The conceptualisation of PA occurred at the junction of these profound changes and a shift toward social and relational power in the form of power relations. Society and families changed from institutions to voluntary, at-will narrative networks that became vulnerable to deconstruction by the same narrative means that created them.

Societies in developed democracies also became increasingly aware of the adverse impacts of institutionalised violence against women structured into social institutions. The loosening of social constraints and disconnections between access to social resources and fulfilling aspirations led to social alienation in society and families, expressed in lethal cults, other extreme social and economic presentations and PA in the 1980s and 90s.

Out of this chaotic mix came PA, together with more advanced social and political dialogue about institutional violence and abuse. Family Law is struggling to keep up. This presentation is about how parental alienation stands today.

From the beginning in the 1980s, parental alienation was a clinical presentation. Its strongest detractors began in the 1960s-70s gendered violence movement, which was and remains a political concept. Following these different pathways, proponents of parental alienation theory continue the evidence-based campaign for recognition as a form of non-gendered coercive controlling family violence and assessable mental health conditions.

Yet, its extreme detractors use political means to successfully advocate for structural changes, policies and legislation that defeat the concept and prevent remediations. Is a pivot required to orient the parental alienation field towards public policy?

Australia and the USA achieved the same political outcome of undermining the family and family relationships using different means. Australia's 2024 Family Law reforms annul the significance of a child's relationship with both parents. In the USA and Canada, Kayden's, Picqui's, and Kyra's Laws "ban the solution, rather than

the problem", prohibiting remediation of alienated parent-child relationships on allegations alone. These changes prioritise child safety above the children's families.

The changes in the USA and Australia used targeted political and public campaigns to construct a dominant social dialogue about violence against women and children. They disguise the real purpose to radically dismantle and alter the nature and structure of families and the State's role in children's lives. Parental alienating behaviours exploit power and relationships and are a political tool to fulfil this purpose.

This presentation discusses how parental alienation theory and practice counters such covert strategies and how policy advocacy can achieve family-oriented political outcomes.

Recent sociological research situates parental alienation as an alienating social

process in families, reflecting a broader alienating society. Such alienating social

processes use vilifying and stigmatising narratives to coerce children into excluding the

targeted parent and cancelling their identity while appearing to normalise such processes

in family culture and history. Parental alienation was first formulated in the 1980s at the

same time as profound changes in society, life, and work. These tectonic shifts changed

the family from a solid institutional structure to a fluid discourse about family

relationships and configurations. Situating parental alienation as an alienation discourse

abusing power in relational narratives responds to how the contemporary discursive

family is vulnerable to an alienating parent dominating the perception of reality

(“perspecticide”) and cancelling parents’ and children’s identity (“identicide”).

Formulating parental alienation as a social and political issue could lead to new

dialogues about the social and public health implications not addressed in the current

discourse about parental alienation as a psychological dysfunction and a legal dispute.

It may lead to de-alienation strategies and public policies for structural changes

addressing the social and institutional perpetuation of parental alienation.

Recent sociological research situates social alienation as a clinical concern in families due to the harm it causes children. Social alienation in families presents as parental alienation. Its behaviours coerce children into cancelling a family member’s identity leading to their unwarranted rejection. Rejected family members may present with hallmark social and psychological sequelae of an alienating family. Sociological research proposes that alienation in the family is a structuring discourse reflecting broader societal alienation. A sociological view of parental alienation offers a structural perspective on social alienation in the family and its implications for public health policy not addressed in the current psychological and legal discourse.

Final thesis presentation summary of research into parental alienation as a social issue and sociological phenomenon. Parental alienation is a discursive abuse of power manifesting as an alienation discourse. The alienation discourse constructs alienation narratives that communicate stigmatisation and exclusionary actions and structures socially alienating conditions in family and social settings. The research proposes a sociological definition of parental alienation to augment psychological and legal descriptions. It also presents de-alienation strategies involving counter-narratives to address alienating relationships and settings.

Abstract

Severe cases of parental alienation present unique challenges when attempting family court ordered reunification between alienated children and the parents whom they have rejected. Children who reject a parent after divorce, who refuse or resist contact with a parent, or whose contact with a parent is characterised either by extreme withdrawal or gross contempt, represent one of the greatest challenges facing courts, separated/divorced families, and the professionals who serve them. FBAC was designed to help families whom family courts and therapists have traditionally viewed as beyond help. In such contexts, the relationship between the alienated child and their favoured/alienating parent is refractory to both conventional and modified family therapies. The presenters will outline the FBAC program as an innovative educational and experiential program that helps unreasonably alienated children and adolescents adjust to living with a parent they claim to hate or fear. The FBAC program operates successfully in the U. S. A, Canada, South Africa and now in Australia. The presenters will explain the key success factors of FBAC; how a team of two professionals, over four consecutive days, under the authority of the family court, facilitate what the participants need to restore a normal relationship.