Persecutory Delusion
Diagnosis is a pattern-match of symptoms to diagnostic criteria. The pathology of concern in the family courts surrounding child custody conflict is a possible shared (induced) persecutory thought disorder created in the child from the pathogenic parenting of an allied narcissistic-borderline-dark personality parent. The definition of a persecutory delusion is provided by the American Psychiatric Association:
From the APA: “Persecutory Type: delusions that the person (or someone to whom the person is close) is being malevolently treated in some way.” (American Psychiatric Association, 2000)
Google malevolent: having or showing a wish to do evil.
Writing in the journal, Family Court Review, Walters and Friedlander (2016) describe the shared persecutory delusion that is often present in the family courts surrounding child custody conflict and attachment pathology displayed by the child:
From Walters & Friedlander: “In some RRD families [resist-refuse dynamic], a parent’s underlying encapsulated delusion about the other parent is at the root of the intractability (cf. Johnston & Campbell, 1988, p. 53ff; Childress, 2013). An encapsulated delusion is a fixed, circumscribed belief that persists over time and is not altered by evidence of the inaccuracy of the belief.” (Walters & Friedlander, 2016, p. 426)
From Walters & Friedlander: “When alienation is the predominant factor in the RRD [resist-refuse dynamic}, the theme of the favored parent’s fixed delusion often is that the rejected parent is sexually, physically, and/or emotionally abusing the child. The child may come to share the parent’s encapsulated delusion and to regard the beliefs as his/her own (cf. Childress, 2013).” (Walters & Friedlander, 2016, p. 426).
Based on the nature and severity of the attachment pathology in the family courts, I recommend that a proper assessment for a possible shared (induced) persecutory delusion be conducted with families in high-conflict custody litigation that will return an accurate diagnosis regarding the nature of the pathology in the family, to then guide the development of an effective treatment plan to fix the pathology in the family.
The concern is that the allied parent is psychologically controlling and manipulating the child into creating a false pathology,
From Barber & Harmon: “Psychological control refers to parental behaviors that are intrusive and manipulative of children’s thoughts, feelings, and attachment to parents. These behaviors appear to be associated with disturbances in the psychoemotional boundaries between the child and parent, and hence with the development of an independent sense of self and identity.” (Barber & Harmon, 2002, p. 15)
From Soenens and Vansteenkiste: “Psychological control can be expressed through a variety of parental tactics, including (a) guilt-induction, which refers to the use of guilt inducing strategies to pressure children to comply with a parental request; (b) contingent love or love withdrawal, where parents make their attention, interest, care, and love contingent upon the children’s attainment of parental standards; (c) instilling anxiety, which refers to the induction of anxiety to make children comply with parental requests; and (d) invalidation of the child’s perspective, which pertains to parental constraining of the child’s spontaneous expression of thoughts and feelings.” (Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010, p. 75)
Participation in Child Abuse
One of the prominent professional dangers of misdiagnosing a shared persecutory delusion is that if the mental health professional and/or the Court misdiagnoses the pathology of a shared persecutory delusion and believes the shared delusion as if it was true, then the mental health professional and/or the Court become part of the shared delusion, they become part of the pathology. When that pathology is the psychological abuse of the child by an allied pathological parent, then the mental health professional and/or the Court become participants in the parent’s psychological abuse of the child by validating to the child that the child’s false (delusional) beliefs are true when they are, in fact, symptoms of an induced persecutory delusion.
The Court’s decision-making will be much enhanced by an accurate diagnosis of the problem returned by mental health services BEFORE making custody decisions influenced by the child’s pathology.
Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857
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