Parental Alienation and other forms of abuse seem to be handed down to our children and their children, meaning that it is generational. If every person takes a look back at their own family tree they will most likely see a pattern that was carried from their family.  For most of us we are facing or know someone who is facing parental alienation.

In my own family generational abuse has been passed down to me and it was very difficult to break the cycle. This is not the legacy we want for our children or family.  There are many stages of emotion when we really look at all the aspects not often talked about. In many situations we are forced into positions to hand a negative legacy to our children. Parental Alienation is a form of abuse and shatters any form of meaningful parenting to the child.

Education is always a key resource to understanding the parenting issues and how parental alienation is allowed to permeate into the family. In my opinion many parents look at the basics of alienation and are still confused by the mental and physical components surrounding their current situations.  There is more to be learned that goes deeper into understanding our children and their interaction with the Alienating Parent and the Target Parent. The subject before you is a revelation into the foundation of the alienator and their behavior patterns.

Parental Alienation has many factors that lead up to the outcome we have seen in our families. In my future blogs I will take this subject to a new level and also reflect back into my experience of breaking this cycle of abuse. Below is an article that shares how the abuse is carried from the parent to the child. These behaviors conforming the child to be co dependant and form habits that are considered risk factors. This is a trait that is then carried down to their children and forms criteria for generational abuse.

http://www.envf.port.ac.uk/illustration/IMAGES/vlsh/codepend/cycle.htm

Multi-generational cycle of abuse

While the roots of codependence are in the childhood experiences of abuse, it is the shame core that perpetuates the disease from generation to generation. Whenever the shame core gives its message of being ‘less than’ to a person, that person is automatically thinking, feeling and behaving as a codependent. A shame attack envelopes a parent and results in abuse to a child thus inducing the parent’s shame into the child. That child grows up and has the same problems as the parent. So the shame-based parent creates a shame-based child who grows up and begets another child who is set up to be shame-based. And the process goes on and on. And to make matters more complex and serious, when a child has two shame-based parents, he or she gets a double load. I think that’s why succeeding generations are getting more and more anxious and stressed as they experience compounded symptoms of codependence.”

Facing Codependence. Pia Mellody with Andrea Wells Miller and J. Keith Miller.Harper Collins 1989.

The initial site created used the marshmallow metaphor explored during BA and was a small interactive site effectively animating the potential behaviour these marshmallows might express in their relation to one another, and particularly the effects of the boundaries each had in relation to the others. The underlying theme was ‘rejection – protection – projection’ the cyclical phenomenon of abusive relationships and tied to the idea of ‘those have most power to hurt us that we love’

There are other components in the patterns of abuse on the site above. I have included these issues as they pertain to abuse and parental alienation. Keep in mind while reading these studies that both genders can experience abuse. I have included the definition of the Double Bind Theory below,

• A psychological impasse created when contradictory demands are made of an individual, such as a child or an employee, so that no matter which directive is followed, the response will be construed as incorrect.
• A situation in which a person must choose between equally unsatisfactory alternatives; a punishing and inescapable dilemma.Core theories which help to explain and contextualise what is happening when relationships are abusive arise from research into dysfunctional communicational patterns in the family. The main areas for research into the phenomenon of domestic violence and the abuse of power, and attempts to find a description for what is happening within the abusive relationship have yielded primarily, for the author, the Double Bind theory.

The model for Double-Bind theory was formulated during the 1950’s and published in 1956 as, ‘Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia’, by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, Don Jackson, Jay Haley and John Weakland. The paper outlined a communicational theory on the origin and nature of schizophrenia and was based, as stated in the introduction, upon their research into ‘formulating and testing a broad systemic view of the nature, etiology and therapy of schizophrenia.’

Sluzki and Ransom write of the double bind:
“Double Bind is one of the revolutionary ideas of the twentieth century. While the notion arose originally from efforts to understand a specific problem – the etiology of schizophrenia – its scope is much wider…(it) has equally enriched psychiatry, psychology, sociology, linguistics and other related fields within the vast domain of the behavioural sciences.”

But they continue with a warning:

“Over the years the logical beauty of the concept has created an illusion of concreteness: it gives the impression of being a handy notion that can be plugged into many different models. But this under standing has led to many intellectual dead ends.”

Haley later writes that although the paper highlighted schizophrenia, it was also an argument for studying levels of communication within a broader range of human activity. He cites psychotherapy, play, humour, ritual, poetry, fiction and hypnosis.

As a model for levels of communication I would propose that Double Bind theory would apply equally well to problems people have in their communication patterns within relationships which become abusive. It will remain to be seen whether the application of this theory will lead to an intellectual dead end when applied to this phenomenon, but I would hasten to add that when applied to the visual description already posed the theory could be used fortuitously.

Reflections upon the theory and further research into the model have been undertaken. In 1975 Gina Abeles wrote a doctoral dissertation reviewing the research to date and a paper, ‘Researching the Unresearchable: Experimentation on the Double Bind’, based upon that was published in 1976

“The Double Bind theory is about relationships, and what happens when important basic relationships are chronically subjected to invalidation through paradoxical interaction.”

Researching the Unresearchable: Experimentation on the Double Bind. Gina Abeles.
Double Bind. The Foundation of the Communicational Approach to the Family. p116.
Paradoxical interaction, or the expression of two mutually exclusive messages creates ambivalence brought about by choices being available about which either or all partners have mixed feelings. The inability for either or any party to extricate themselves from the situation is central to the continuation of relationships in which there is abuse.

“Such a relationship is ‘untenable’ and would ordinarily be abandoned by both parties…this is not, however, always possible; in such cases we must recognise a quality of dependence in the relationship which, as Weakland (1960) Bateson (1969) and Wynne (1969) have emphasised, is crucial. A child is dependent for his physical and emotional survival upon his relationship with his parents” Ibid P120

Continuing from the themes of double bind and mutual stuck togetherness (Bowen) there began to emerge the theme of duality and the dyadic. Power abuse and the poles of the extremes; inferiority vs superiority, tower-cower, strong weak, big small, consciousness and subconsciousness.

The double-bind theory itself originally formulated in dyadic terms. There was a binder and there was one who was bound, although the reciprocal nature of the bind was acknowledged. The theory implicitly isolated a unit comprising two communicators, with the focus of interest the characteristic type of exchange between them.

As a result, a number of articles qualifying the original double bind theory began to emerge. Weakland was the first to break out of the dyadic mold, with a 1960 essay, ‘The double-bind Hypothesis of Schizophrenia and Three Party Interaction,’ …In 1962 the authors of the original double-bind article offered a critique that downplayed the focus on individual behaviours or single sequences in favor of the theory’s emphasis on circular systems in interpersonal relations.”

Bateson’s contribution was to offer an analogy from game theory for a type of behaviour that had been noticed frequently in families of schizophrenics. No two people could relate without a third becoming involved. This phenomenon Bateson called ‘the infinite dance of shifting coalitions.’

Foundations of family therapy. A conceptual framework for systems change, Lynn Hoffman. Basic Books Inc. 1981
To demonstrate the interaction of three or more people in a double bind Bateson called upon game theory, examining behavioural processes in situations of conflict and where the parties cannot agree.

“Game theory is a method for the study of decision making in situations of conflict. It deals with human processes in which the individual decision-unit is not in complete control of other decision-units entering into the environment. It is addressed to problems involving conflict, cooperation, or both, at many levels. The decision-unit may be an individual, a group, a formal or informal organisation, or a society. The stage may be set to reflect primarily political, psychological, sociological, economic or other aspects of human affairs….The essence of a’ game’ in this conflict is that it involves decision makers with different goals or objectives whose fates are intertwined.’
Game Theory and Related Approaches to Social Behaviour [(ed) Martin Shubik. Wiley, 1964]

The game metaphor, applied to interrelations and communicating, outlines a situation where two subjects with unhealthy boundaries (ie merged or competing) are interacting to win, to be right, (validated). – Unhealthy boundaries (of a codependent) being created by lack of validation or a feeling of being ‘less than’. So codependents playing the ‘game’ each have an interest to win. But in order for one to win the other has to lose, and in this analogy losing means being wrong (invalidated – ‘less than’) – and because there are incomplete boundaries there is no defence against the effect of losing the game. This, it appears, is in part what creates the schizophrenic. Complications occur in the game if more than two people are playing.

“Though the original double-bind described a two person arrangement, Bateson saw a way, through the game metaphor, to translate the concept into a particular kind of family organization. He argued that the untenable predicament of the schizophrenic could arise from having to participate in the interactional equivalent of Von Neumann’s game.

A robot would be insensitive to the fact that every reasonable solution he arrived at was immediately proven wrong. But human beings are not this insensitive. In fact, they have an inflexibility bestowed upon them by their greatest asset, their ability to learn – that is, their ability to acquire automatic responses to habitual problems.

Without this capacity, a person would be forever inventing solutions to each problem as if he were encountering it for the first time. This is why human beings have a commitment to the process of adaptation at the deeper level of habit. Bateson argued that in a system where adaptations are not allowed, as in Von Neumann’s unstable game, it is logical to assume that the individual involved will experience extreme disruption and pain. He will be caught in a perpetual sequence of double-binds, situations in which there is always a penalty for being right.”
Foundations of family therapy. A conceptual framework for systems change, Lynn Hoffman. Basic Books Inc. 1981

It seems viable to incorporate the notions of game theory and games into a visual language to promote healthy ways of relating, and not least because games are played for entertainment, they are fun.
A study of games for children has so far revealed a reflection of damaging values. Games still available and presumably still being played by children include Happy Families, illustrating an inaccurate and stereotyped family unit and way of life, Old Maid, again depicting fixed gender roles but where the emphasis is that men generally have the jobs, and such ‘playground games as ’stone, paper, scissors’ where there are cyclical power relations at play.

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