Why the Categorical Rejection of Parent Child Alienation Sits Uneasily with Systemic Thinking
One of the more curious developments in contemporary psychotherapy has been the emergence of professional bodies and practitioners who publicly assert that parental alienation does not exist.
While the language varies, the underlying position is often clear:
- parental alienation is not a valid concept
- children’s rejection of a parent is always explained by other factors
- the term itself should be avoided or abandoned
This position raises an important question for systemic practitioners. Not whether every allegation of parental alienation is true. Not whether parental alienation has sometimes been misused in family law proceedings. Not whether children reject parents for multiple reasons.
Most systemic therapists would readily agree with all three of these points. The more interesting question is this:
Can a systemic practitioner consistently maintain that a relational process does not exist simply because it is complex, contested, or vulnerable to misuse?
I would argue that the answer is no.
The Foundations of Systemic Thinking
Systemic psychotherapy emerged from a rejection of simple linear explanations. Rather than locating problems solely within individuals, systemic thinkers became interested in:
- patterns
- relationships
- feedback loops
- alliances
- coalitions
- triangulation
- family myths
- family scripts
- emotional processes operating between people
The central question was never:
“Who is the problem?”
The central question was:
“What is happening within the relationship system?”
Systemic therapists routinely explore phenomena that cannot be directly observed or measured in isolation.
For example:
- emotional cut off
- parentification
- triangulation
- enmeshment
- loyalty conflicts
- coalition building
- family myths
- scapegoating
None of these are physical entities. They are relational processes inferred from patterns of behaviour. Parental alienation belongs within the same conceptual family.
Alienation Is a Relational Process
At its most basic level, parental alienation refers to a process whereby a child becomes aligned against one parent in a manner that is disproportionate to that parent’s actual behaviour.
Whether one prefers the terms:
- parental alienation
- alienating behaviours
- parent child contact refusal
- unjustified rejection
- relationship refusal
the underlying observation remains the same.
Children can become involved in relational dynamics that result in the deterioration or destruction of a previously meaningful parent child relationship. The question is not whether this happens. The question is how it happens. From a systemic perspective, this should be a subject of curiosity rather than denial.
What Would Systemic Theory Predict?
If systemic theory is correct, we would expect that children could become influenced by:
- loyalty conflicts
- family narratives
- coalitions
- triangulation
- emotional dependency
- family myths
- intergenerational scripts
- attachment pressures
In other words, systemic theory itself predicts that some children may become psychologically organised around one parent against the other. This does not require brainwashing. It does not require manipulation in every case. It does not require malicious intent. It simply requires relational influence. The existence of such influence is foundational to systemic thinking.
The Contradiction
This creates an intellectual difficulty. Many of the same practitioners who accept concepts such as:
- triangulation
- coalition formation
- emotional cut off
- parentification
- loyalty binds
simultaneously reject the possibility that these processes could contribute to the rejection of a parent. Yet the latter may simply represent a potential outcome of the former.
If a therapist accepts that a child can be triangulated, parentified, caught in a loyalty conflict, recruited into a coalition, exposed to family myths, and influenced by emotional pressures, on what systemic basis can they then conclude that these processes can never contribute to the rejection of a parent? The position becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.
Family Scripts and Inherited Narratives
John Byng Hall’s work on family scripts offers another example. Families often transmit narratives across generations. Stories about trust, betrayal, abandonment, loyalty, and victimhood may become embedded within family identity. Systemic therapists routinely explore how inherited narratives influence current relationships.
Why then should a therapist reject the possibility that such narratives could influence a child’s perception of a parent after separation? Doing so appears inconsistent with the very theories we teach.
The Problem with Absolutist Positions
Perhaps the greatest challenge is not disagreement itself. Systemic practitioners should welcome disagreement. The challenge arises when complexity is replaced by certainty. The claim that every allegation of parental alienation is true would be absurd. Equally problematic is the claim that parental alienation never occurs.
Both positions abandon systemic curiosity. Both replace inquiry with ideology. Systemic thinking invites us to tolerate uncertainty. It asks us to investigate rather than assume.
It encourages us to ask:
- What is happening in this family?
- What are the competing hypotheses?
- What evidence supports each explanation?
- What relational processes are operating?
These questions become impossible when one explanation has been excluded before the assessment has even begun.
The Risk for Children
The greatest concern is not theoretical. It is clinical. When professionals decide in advance that alienating processes cannot occur, they risk overlooking significant relational dynamics that may be contributing to a child’s difficulties.
A child may be experiencing:
- loyalty conflicts
- emotional burden
- coalition pressure
- parentification
- exposure to negative narratives
- anxiety about loving both parents
If professionals cannot see these dynamics, they cannot address them. The child remains trapped within the system.
Conclusion
The debate about parental alienation is often portrayed as a dispute about terminology. In reality, it is a deeper debate about how we understand relationships. Systemic psychotherapy has traditionally encouraged practitioners to look beyond individual pathology and examine relational processes.
For decades we have taught concepts such as triangulation, coalitions, family myths, emotional cut off, parentification, loyalty conflicts, and family scripts. To acknowledge these processes while simultaneously denying the possibility that they may contribute to a child’s rejection of a parent appears difficult to reconcile with the foundations of systemic thought.
The question is not whether every rejected parent has been alienated. Clearly they have not. The question is whether systemic practitioners remain willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads. A genuinely systemic position is not one of belief or disbelief. It is one of curiosity. And curiosity begins by remaining open to the possibility that relational processes, including alienating processes, can and do occur within some family systems.