Analysis of SB 1372 hearing

A clinical psychologist agrees with me on parental alienation.

Christine Patton was one of several witnesses to testify in favor of SB 1372

On February 12, 2024, the Arizona Senate Transportation, Technology, and Missing Children Committee held a remarkable hearing for testimony on several child custody bills, including SB 1372.

SB 1372 would ban reunification therapy, a Nazi like pseudo-therapy which forces kids to go with strangers, demands they accept their abusive parent, while force feeding them with psychobabble for approximately four days.

I interviewed Tori Nielsen about her experience in this camp.

Tori spoke about fifteen minutes into the hearing, and she followed her mom, Angie Nielsen, who spoke starting approximately twelve minutes in.

One thing which made this hearing remarkable was that it was entirely one sided. Each witness and each lawmaker strongly opposed reunification therapy and was strongly in favor of the bill.

The Arizona Mirror noted one lawmaker- Sen. Christine Marsh, a Phoenix Democrat- voted against it but only to get some changes into the bill before it became final.

The Mirror noted that Marsh is, “looking forward to supporting the legislation once some of her concerns about the wording of the bill are addressed.”

While there was a wide breadth of testimony, I wanted to focus on the testimony of Christine Patton, a Ph.D who works as a Program Director at Arizona Youth & Family Services, Inc., according to her LinkedIn profile.

Her Ph.D. is important for this discussion.

Proponents of parental alienation will argue that I am not qualified to make the assessments of parental alienation that I make because I don’t have enough letters behind my name.

No such argument can be made about Ms. Patton, who begins approximately twenty-eight minutes into the hearing.

“There’s no evidence to support this kind of treatment. There’s no research or evidence of the effectiveness of family reunification camps. I think that’s another reason why I have not heard of them (reunification camps prior to recently). There’s no validity to parental alienation theory as well. If there was empirical evidence, I would have knowledge because as a scientist practitioner that is what I am trained in.” She said.

There it is. Someone with the appropriate training, education, and experience saying the same thing.

She’s not the only one. In 2021, Megan Fox of PJ Media interviewed Professor Sam Vaknin, who studies, among other things, personality disorders like narcissism and psychopathy.

When the subject of parental alienation came up, here is his response.

And the second thing, there is no such thing as parental alienation syndrome.

Syndrome is a very well-defined thing in clinical psychology. It's a set of traits, behaviors, effects, emotions, and cognitions, which go together coherently all the time and lead to behavioral outcomes, and etc, etc.

Parental alienation is not a syndrome. There are parents who turn their children against the other parents. That happens, of course. But it's not a syndrome. It's a behavior. It's a choice. I don't know what to call it, but syndrome is not.

So, it's total nonsense.

Professor Viknan speaks approximately fifty-eight minutes in.

Professor Vaknin helped to make the point which I make repeatedly. Parental alienation is whatever each person wants it to be, and that’s not real when it comes to psychology.

As he points out, syndrome is, “a set of traits, behaviors, effects, emotions, and cognitions, which go together coherently all the time and lead to behavioral outcomes.”

None of that happens when a quack diagnoses parental alienation. In such a case, any set of behaviors and outcomes can lead to a diagnosis of parental alienation.

Parents do all sorts of bad things- bad mouth the other parent, keep children away, etc,- but parental alienation is bogus because it has no psychological standards.

It’s as real as gold unicorns.

I’m not saying this; people with the proper training and experience are saying it. In fact, most of the larger psychological community agree with Professor Viknan and Ms. Patton.

The only ones pushing parental alienation are those who profit from it.