This is an excerpt of Dr. Richard A. Gardner's article that was posted in the The American Journal of Forensic Psychology, 2001, 19(3):61-106.
Should PAS Children Be Coerced?
"Therapists who work with PAS children must be comfortable with alternative methods of therapy, therapy that involves an authoritarian approach to the treatment. They must be able to say to an alienating parent: "If the children are not dropped off at your ex-spouse’s home by 5:00 p.m. this Friday, I will report this to the court and recommend the sanctions already described in the court order." They must be comfortable working without the traditional confidentiality so necessary to standard treatment. They must be comfortable threatening alienating parents as well as children that there will be consequences if they violate the court-ordered visitation program. Such therapists must be comfortable with confrontational approaches, the purpose of which is to deprogram PAS children. They must recognize that doing what children profess they want may not be in their best interests. What is in their best interests in PAS cases is that the children be forced to visit with the alienated parent. Therapists who are not comfortable with what I call "threat therapy" should not be working with PAS families."
| YouTube - Richard Gardner's Threat Therapy |
Nov 25, 2008 ... This "threat therapy" was part of a much broader theory of Gardner's known in family courts across the United States as "Parental Alienation ...
This "threat therapy" was part of a much broader theory of Gardner's known in family courts across the United States as "Parental Alienation Syndrome". The theory - one of the most insidious pieces of junk science to be given credence by US courts in recent years - holds that any mother who accuses her spouse of abusing the children is lying more or less by definition. She tells these lies to "alienate" the children from their father, a shocking abrogation of parental responsibility for which she deserves to lose all custody rights in favour of the alleged abuser. This is not only tawdry logic, guaranteed from the outset to protect the interests of divorcing fathers, by far Gardner's most enthusiastic constituency, but it has also destroyed the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands, of American families over the past 15 years. In state after state, courts deferred to Gardner's academic credentials and put children in the custody of their alleged abuser, even in cases where police records, medical records and testimony by teachers and social workers supported the mother's accusations. By now, the concept of "parental alienation" has entered case law and swayed thousands of disputes in which Gardner himself played no part. Yet it has no scientific basis whatsoever. It is not recognised by the American Psychiatric Association or any other professional body. The stream of books that Gardner produced on the subject from the late 1980s were all self-published, without the usual peer review process. His method for determining the reliability of sex abuse allegations was denounced by one noted domestic violence expert, Jon Conte of the University of Washington, as "probably the most unscientific piece of garbage I've seen in the field in all my time".
This "threat therapy" was part of a much broader theory of Gardner's known in family courts across the United States as "Parental Alienation Syndrome". ...
EXCERPT | Jun 3, 2008 ... Richard Gardner's Threat Therapy .... Added to queue Parental Alienation Syndromeby mhutchinson7412093 views · Thumbnail 4:47. Add to ... |
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