The influence of parental alienation on the mental condition of children and adolescents in Poland in the case of a family breakdown

Abstract

The author has presented the main causes of parental alienation in Poland, including the personal cause connected with one parent’s dysfunction or parental immaturity. Such a parent, an alienator, frequently with the help of his/her family or other parties, manipulates the child’s whole mental structure, above all his/her emotions, feelings, needs and fears in order to portray the other parent as somewhat of a “threat” to the child, which distorts in a harmful way the child’s psychological and emotional world. Apart from the most frequently used psychological manipulation and with the same view in mind, the alienating parent restricts or prevents any contact between the child and the other parent and all the family of the latter so that he/she can become “the main world” in the child’s life, ensuring him/her “the safest and happiest life”, which instills in the child both subordination and dependence on the alienating parent. Such an influence results in disturbances of Polish children and adolescents’ emotional and psychological development, oftentimes leading to self-harm, especially in the case of older children, and in extreme cases to an attempted suicide on the part of either the child or the rejected parent. Also the Polish system of family law supports the phenomenon of parental alienation, which has been confirmed by an analysis of the provisions of law, as well as by the family court itself in one of its rulings.