Citation

Neustein A, Lesher M. J. Child Custod. 2009; 6(3-4): 322-325.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15379410903084715

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Comments on the approach by Elizabeth Ellis (see record 2008-02461-003), who proposed a three-step process for evaluating children for parental alienation syndrome (PAS). The current author suggests that critics of PAS theory have debunked its flawed assumptions, its self-serving methodology, and its inadequacy to assess allegations of child sexual abuse. Ellis, a defender of PAS theory, concedes the most damning of the objections, yet contends that the theory may be salvaged by standardizing the methods by which evaluators detect the elusive syndrome behind complaints of abusive behavior by a parent issuing from a sincere, non-pathological child. But, arming PAS evaluators with a refurbished "stepwise "methodology does not cure the fundamental defects of the theory; Ellis’s methods only put a new face on the old evils. In fact, nothing will fit PAS for the professional demands of forensic psychology or for the needs of the family court judges who claim to rely on it. We are left, finally, with the painfully familiar specter of an unworkable methodology that masks two of the family court system’s deepest institutional prejudices: that fathers know best and that family courts are always right. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)