L'alienazione Parentale: Sindrome psicopatologica o triangolazione familiare disfunzionale?

[Autom. eng. transl.] In clinical and psycho-juridical practice related to the evaluation and intervention in highly conflicting situations of separation and divorce it is increasingly common to find situations in which a child shows an active refusal towards a parent, until a complete and prolonged interruption of any attendance. And always more frequently these situations are identified by psychosocial and judicial operators with the "Parental Alienation Syndrome" (or PAS) proposed by Gardner (1992, 1998). In the specialist literature, as is well known, Gardner's proposal is much debated and often disputed, both with regard to the etiological aspects and the reliability of the identifying criteria (Bruch, 2001; Warshak, 2002), and even with respect to the validity of the proposed construct and its psychodiagnostic usability (Kelly & Johnston, 2001; O'Leary & Moerk, 1999). The proposed contribution will discuss the adequacy and clinical usability of the diagnostic hypothesis proposed by Gardner with respect to the relational perspective that identifies parental alienation as a result of seriously dysfunctional family triangulations, starting from the illustration of some clinical cases encountered at Internal Child Custody Evaluation procedures.