Wikipedia Denial: “Denial or abnegation (German: Verleugnung, Verneinung) is a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.”

Going forward, you should become familiar with the construct of psychological defenses. They were first identified by Freud and then received subsequent elaboration by others.

At the bottom is denial. This is the symptom currently in evidence by the forensic psychologists. This is a symptom feature of the pathology. It’s a psychologically primitive pathology, so there’s a lot of “primary process” thinking that includes the psychological defense of denial of information they find too distressing.

One defense up from denial at the bottom is projection. That’s where the person takes their own dark material (their “shadow”) and project it onto others, they see themselves, their own motivations when they see others.

Projections always occur to some extent whenever our statement begins “You…” – all the time there will be a portion of projection involved. We don’t know about the other, we only have information from us, and how we organize that information will always influence how we see the out-there.

We can never escape some degree of projection, that’s what Gestalt therapy utilizes. Gestalt therapy understandings for projection and psychological integration are currently contained in the approach of Internal Family Systems Therapy (Schwartz), it’s a good approach.

The psycho-therapeutic question is the extent of the person’s projected material, called their “transference” in psychoanalysis. When their internal projected material becomes too large, it damages their responding to actual reality out there.

When it is severely pathological, the projected internal material loses contact with out there, and the out-there becomes entirely self-generated from the inside of the pathological mind. That’s what we call the symptom of “projection.” As psychotherapists, we use this feature a lot.

“They…” tells us more than you understand. It always tells us something. Sometimes it tells us a lot.

Here, in the family courts, we have a pathological narcissistic-borderline-dark personality parent accusing the other parent of abusing the child. Holy cow – holy cow – holy cow.

BUT… the mental health people in the family courts, they are called “forensic” psychologists, are ignorant like a rock. Because of that, they are not recognizing the severity of the situation (child abuse) and are not responding to protect the child (and parent).

That is bad. So bad. So very-very bad. But they won’t stop. They continue to remain ignorant. They continue to refuse to diagnose the child psychological abuse that is occurring. They continue to collusively participate in the child abuse.

They are in denial regarding the seriousness of the situation and regarding their professional obligations.

There is also parallel process that is incredibly precise in this set of circumstances. Parallel process is when the same pathology (in this case, the collapse of narcissistic personality pathology into a shared persecutory delusion) shows up in the same (parallel) symptoms at two different levels.

When the mental health people start fighting about what the child’s diagnosis is, called “splitting” into a polarized perception, that’s parallel to the splitting symptom in the family, in the parent. Marsha Linehan calls that “staff splitting” – when the mental health people organize into “sides” in conflict about the patient.

It’s time you become familiar with the psychological defenses of denial and projection. The definition of a delusion is a fixed and false belief that is maintained – despite – contrary evidence. No amount of contrary evidence will ever change a delusion because… that’s what makes it a delusion by definition of a delusion – despite contrary evidence.

There is zero point arguing with a delusion. The issue is to identify it first. Everyone has beliefs. Beliefs differ. Sometimes, however, the person’s perceptions contain too much of their own projected inside material and they’ve lost contact with what’s actually out here.

At some point, some people lose entire contact and the world becomes their belief. That’s called a thought disorder, a problem (pathology) in thinking and perception. The assessment for a possible thought disorder is a Mental Status Exam of thought and perception (Martin, 1990).

The key feature is how their minds handle the contrary information, do they process it, does it affect their thoughts and perceptions somehow, or does it just bounce off and fall to the floor unprocessed and unresponded to.

The MSE of thought and perception is a clinical interview approach that is exceedingly linear, it is examining the thinking system, specifically the linear-logical reasoning systems since we’re looking for a possible thought disorder.

In a linear-logical clinical examination of their reasoning systems, the mind with a thought disorder will jump sideways into what’s called “associational thinking” that’s based on connections between emotions.

That’s an intrusion of the emotional system into the logical reasoning system to derail thinking to respond to the emotional content provoked by the thought. For therapeutic purposes, the topic at the point of derailment into associational thinking is the point of the unresolved trauma.

For diagnostic purposes, the derailment of linear-logical reasoning into associational-emotional thinking is the evidence of the thought disorder.

In the family courts with the pathological parent, the type of thought disorder is called a delusion, a fixed and false belief that is maintained despite contrary evidence, and the type of delusion is called a persecutory delusion, a fixed and false beliefs in supposed victimization.

Delusions are psychotic disorders – out of touch with reality. These delusions in the family courts are not schizophrenia-type delusions, the persecutory delusion present in the family courts is of unresolved trauma origin. The unresolved childhood trauma of the pathological parent has created personality pathology in a particular pattern (narcissistic-borderline-dark) that collapses into persecutory delusions under stress.

There are two dangerous pathologies involved – Child Psychological Abuse (DSM-5 V995.51) and Spouse or Partner Abuse, Psychological (DSM-5 V995.82) of the targeted parent by the allied parent using the child as the weapon. Both of these dangerous pathologies (there are three dangerous pathologies, suicide, homicide, and abuse) need a proper risk assessment.

In all – all – cases of severe attachment pathology surrounding court-involved custody conflict, a proper risk assessment needs to be conducted to the appropriate differential diagnosis for each parent.

The ONLY cause of severe attachment pathology is child abuse range parenting by one parent or the other. The only diagnostic question is – which parent is abusing the child?

A child abuse diagnosis should always be returned surrounding severe attachment pathology because that’s the only thing that causes severe attachment pathology. The only question is, which parent?

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857