How does the child get involved in PAS?
The targeted parent needs to understand what has happened to what as once an affectionate and loving child who is now unexplainably hostile. Remember Gardner’s definition stated earlier, “the disorder wasn’t only brainwashing or programming by a parent, but was confounded by what he calls self-created contributions by the child in support of the alienating parent’s campaign of denigration against the targeted parent.” It isn’t PAS in the severe form of this disorder, unless the child has crossed over and joined up with the alienating parent. The child shares the alienating parent’s psychosis. How does this happen? At birth, children are totally reliant on a parent, usually the mother, for having all of their needs met. It is part of normal child development to be enmeshed with their primary caregiver, and very young children do not have a separate identity from this caregiver. One of the mother’s roles is to help the child develop as a separate person, therefore, infancy and childhood
