13. The Kidnapping of the Self:
A Self-Psychological Approach to the Understanding and Treatment of Alienation in High Conflict Divorce
Presenters:
Shelley A. Rooney, PhD
Todd F. Walker, PsyDChair:
Jule P. Miller, III, MD
Self Psychology Page | 21th Conference Program
"I hate you, Daddy! I will never go to your house!" What accounts for such vehement refusal and eventual alienation from one parent? In divorce, the emerging reality of the child derives from the shattering of the intact family and the struggle to establish a new beginning of self-selfobject connections with parents whose own self-stability is temporarily compromised. One of the distinguishing characteristics of high conflict divorce is that the parents’ selfobject needs chronically supercede parental empathy for the needs of the child. A new alliance is formed between the child and one parent. Such an alliance, inherent in high conflict divorce, requires the child to view, and perhaps ultimately experience, the alienated parent in the same way as the alienating parent does, thereby, causing the psychological loss of that parent. Assuming an empathic vantage point requires that the therapist appreciate the embeddedness of self-experiences in the parent-child dyads and in the larger inter-subjective field.