Children of divorce and separation need their parents to be able to continue to provide healthy mirroring across their developmental stages. Unfortunately for some children, the mirroring they receive is distorted, leading to maladapations in their behaviours as they strive to cope with the changing landscape of their lives. Children who are strongly aligned to a parent and rejecting of the other, are demonstrating that they are no longer able to make adaptations, meaning that they can no longer continue to relate to one of their parent at all. Captured in the distorted mirror of the influencing parent’s intra-psychic world, these children disappear into alignment and rejection, which at its heart, is an alienation of the self from the self, a condition which is well recognised in the psychoanlytical literature.
“Philosophers of all times have stressed the pivotal significance of being ourselves and the despair attendant on feeling barred from its approximation… “What other significance can our existence have than to be ourselves fully and completely?”
Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis
Contemporary literature also gives clear explanations of the meaning of self alienation, with Fonagy and others referring the ‘alien self’ in their work on attachment, mentalisation and borderline personality disorder. In clinical work with children of divorce and separation who align and reject, it is clear that the behavioural presentation in the child, is a defensive splitting which produces a false self which is aligned with the inter-psychic world of the influencing parent.
The work being done at the Family Separation Clinic is in treatment of children affected by self alienation in circumstances where this arises in divorce and separation. The impact on parents, of this presentation in the child, which is flagged by the child’s demonstration of the primitive defences of denial, splitting and projection, is profound, and leads to lengthy and deeply destructive struggles, which render the child devoid of healthy mirroring during a time when they are maladapting their attachment behaviours in order to survive. This often occurs during the most significant developmental periods of childhood, leading to the loss of capacity for achieving integration in self and relationship with others.
To treat such dynamics, a therapist must have a depth understanding of the way in which primitive defences fracture family relationships, and an ability to work in a counter intuitive manner. Counter intuition means thinking about things in the opposite way to how therapy is usually delivered. For example, in ordinary therapy, patients are expected to uncover their deeper disturbances in the therapy room. In children who align and reject, it is impossible for uncovering to occur, unless protection is in place, in fact what usually happens if ordinary therapy is provided, is that the child entrenches the alignment and rejection dynamic by deepening the split within. The signs that the split within is deepened, is seen in the child’s adamant refusal, ‘forgetting’ of events, escalation of aggression or allegations.
Rather than talking in therapy, a child who is suffering self alienation, must be helped to do something, that something is encounter the split off part of self in the form of the identification with the rejected parent, this enables integration of self. To enable the child to integrate the self rather than try to encourage uncovering by talking, proximity to the denied and split off object relationship with the rejected parent, has to occur in a safe space. The safe space has to be protected from exposure to the parent the child is aligned to and the therapist has to be willing to hold material which is uncovered and behaviours which are displayed in this space, safely away from that parent. The role of the therapist in such work is to be able to provide the conditions in which the child can re-integrate split off parts of self in order to recover integration, in such circumstances, the false or alien self which is seen in the child when they are rejecting a parent due to alignment, disappears.
In my work with children who align and reject, I focus upon the integration of the child’s self as part of the therapeutic treatment which is delivered when a child is found by the Court to be alienated. In doing so, I work first to create the safe space needed through building a team around a child which is entirely focused upon holding the boundary of protection. The next stage is to train the parent in the rejected position, in therapeutic parenting skills to enable a safe container for the child to reconnect to. Stabilising rejected parents, who are often suffering from reactive splitting and C-PTSD due to the behaviours of their child and their anxiety about the harm which is being caused, is the major task.
Holding up a Healthy Mirror – Only Live Delivery for 2023 – Begins March 14th at 8am UK time (timing is suitable for parents in Europe, Australia/New Zealand)
Last year I delivered Holding up a Healthy Mirror to over three hundred parents from all around the world. What I discovered during delivery, is that the health, knowledge and willingness of rejected parents to take up the skills of mentalising and use them effectively, demonstrates that children with a healthy parent in the rejected position, do incredibly well on reconnection, rebuilding not only the relationship with a parent but integrating a sense of self which is not longer divided.
When trained, parents can use therapeutic parenting skills on a continuous basis, moving back to ordinary parenting when the child is integrated and using therapeutic parenting skills again if the child becomes dysregulated and begins to show signs of splitting.
I received more reports of reconnection, rebuilding and return of children to normal relational space during Christmas 2022, than at any time in my work over the past decade, leading me to understand more clearly, the power of this approach to helping parents to help their children.
About this course:
Children who hyper align with a parent and reject the other in divorce and separation are usually in the age group 8-14 years. This is because this age group is in a stage in which their sense of self and personality is under development and the ego is not strong enough to regulate the anxieties which are generated by the experience of attachment disruption in family separation.
What we know about children who experience these difficulties, is that they can be helped when one of their parents is able to understand their experience and in response, hold up a healthy mirror. When the holding of this mirror is consistent, the child who has suffered from induced psychological splitting which is demonstrated by aligning themselves with one parent and rejecting the other, can experience an integrated sense of self which assists in recovery.
In order to hold up a healthy mirror, the parent in the rejected position must first address the reactive splitting that they are likely to have suffered. Reactive splitting, which occurs when the child rejects, (often accompanied by false allegations), can cause a parent to feel natural reactions such as anger, bewilderment and shame. These feelings, which are normal in the circumstances, can become blocks and barriers to the child’s recovery as the parent refutes the allegations and shows the child their reactive feelings. In these circumstances, the child withdraws further, struggling with their own guilt and shame and begins to split off their feelings further.
Restoring health to rejected parents begins with an understanding of what has happened internally and how that has become entangled with the child’s own splitting reactions. When parents are able to map this splitting across the family system, their own reactive splitting can integrate and they can begin the work of developing the healthy mirror needed by the child.
Parents who have healed reactive splitting can then learn to apply the skills of therapeutic parenting. This is an approach to parenting children who are suffering from attachment disorder due to being emotionally and psychologically harmed. Alienated children with therapeutic parents, are shown in evaluation, to be able to recover quickly from the underlying harms which have caused their rejecting behaviours.
On this course you will learn:
- What psychological splitting is, how it occurs and why
- How to identify your own reactive splitting
- How to integrate split thinking in a fractured landscape
- How to build integrated thinking strategies
- What to embrace and what to avoid when rebuilding health in the face of alienation
- How to build the healthy mirror your child needs
- Mentalisation strategies for mirroring health
- The power and importance of consistent mirroring
- How other parents have used integrated mirroring to bring their children back to health
- Therapeutic parenting – an integrated skills set
- Building a consistent communications strategy for recovering your children
- Working with the counter intuitive approach necessary to enable alienated children to withdraw their projections
- Staying healthy amidst the chaos caused by psychological splitting
Based upon successful work with many families around the world, Karen Woodall will share with you the deep knowledge of how to recover children from the nightmare landscape of psychological splitting. Karen has helped families to rebuild health and wellbeing with children of all ages and has developed a structural approach to working with alienation which is easily translated into strategies which can be used by parents.
‘I have worked with Karen Woodall for two years now and both of my children are back in our lives and thriving. One of my children was alienated from me for ten years and she is clearly suffering the impact of that. With Karen’s guidance, I am working to address her attachment difficulties, which I now understand and recognise. Karen’s guidance works, it helps children to come home and then heal. It has been invaluable to me to do this work and understand and feel skilled as parent again.’
Emma, Mum to two children aged 16 and 19.
‘My children are both in their thirties and I despaired of ever seeing them again. I have worked with Karen for six months and am delighted to say that I seeing them both regularly now. Working with therapeutic parenting skills, I have begun to understand how they have been affected and I can help them with confidence and see the difference it makes. I am recovering a sense that I can do something about this nightmare and that makes all the difference in my life’
Jack. Dad to two adult children aged 32 and 37.
Purchase of tickets to this course offers access to the recordings by all participants for up to one month.
IMPORTANT:
- This webinar will be held on Zoom.
- To gain access, you must provide a valid email address along with your name and PayPal order reference number (you will receive this by email from PayPal after you have made payment).
Karen Woodall 
101 DEFENSES: How the Mind Shields Itself | Jerome S.Blackman, M.D., F.A.P.A.
33. Identification with Parents’ Unconscious or Conscious Wishes/Fantasies
(Johnson & Szurek, 1952)
Instead of doing as your parents say, you act the way they told you not to. They
then see their (sometimes warded off) corrupt wishes in you and secretly get a
kick out of your misbehavior. When they criticize you (instead of themselves),
your guilt is relieved, and you keep acting up.
Johnson and Szurek first described this interesting defense in teenagers, and
various forms of “acting out” and “acting in” have been elaborated on quite a bit
since then (Rexford, 1978; Paniagua, 1997).
In Wagner’s (1870) opera, Die Walküre, the god Wotan commands his
favorite divine daughter, Brünnhilde, to cause the death of Siegmund, his
beloved half-human illegitimate son. Wotan has been forced into this
decision as a punishment by his wife, Fricka, because he had raised
Siegmund to be rebellious and incestuous (Siegmund has just had sex with
his married twin sister, Sieglinde). However, Brünnhilde senses that Wotan
would have preferred for Siegmund to live, if it were not for Fricka’s
threat of punishment. Brünnhilde therefore proceeds to try to save
Siegmund in battle. Because of her “acting out,” Wotan punishes her with
loss of divinity and with sleep until awakened by any man.
Brünnhilde identified with her father’s wishes, which he had been forced to give
up due to (externalized) punishment. She acts out the father’s suppressed wishes,
and then he punishes her, instead of him being punished by his wife.
Interestingly, Brünnhilde points these dynamics out to Wotan before he
consummates her punishment. He acknowledges the correctness of her
interpretation, and then punishes her less severely.
34. Identification with the Ideal Image or Object (Carlson, 1977)
You pattern yourself after someone you think is great. (The person is either great
or a projection of your own imagined omnipotence.)
Blos (1979) found that career choices in males are influenced by the
separation of late adolescent boys from their (normatively) loved father. The
transient depressive affect produced by this symbolic loss leads boys to use this
identification defensively. They will then tend to incorporate into their ego ideals
the aspects of the fathers’ value systems that they had (at least partly) rejected
during mid-adolescence.
This defense is also implicated in people drawn to cults. They model
themselves after the leader in order to avoid facing a variety of unpleasant
affects.
35. Identification with the Aggressor (A.Freud, 1936)
After the fact. You act abusive toward a person because someone has been
abusive to you. This shields you from feeling angry. If your abusiveness is
chronic and generalized, you are a sadistic character, a bully (83).11
Tip 1.
Look for this defense after you’ve been on vacation or otherwise been
out of the office, or even if you’ve just been a few minutes late. The people
in treatment with you may now miss a session or be late themselves. If and
when they do, you can attempt to show them this defense as a guard against
shame over missing you, or as a guard against their anger at you for
leaving them (which may be based on transference).
Tip 2.
If you are a teacher who notices bullying behavior in a child, you have to
worry that the kid may be experiencing physical or emotional abuse at home.
Before the fact. You anticipate hostility and get hostile first. This is a
tremendous problem with children who have been physically abused, discovered
by the authorities, and then placed in a foster home. Such children may use a
large number of defenses, but attacking the new caretaker before they get
attacked is often one of the problems.
On the other hand, children normally identify with the aggressor to resolve
anxiety produced by projection of competitive hostility onto parents, who
become the “aggressors” during disciplinary activities. The children’s absorption
of their parents’ attitudes aids in superego formation (Sandler, 1960).
For example, when my son was 4 years old, I instructed him not to take
drinks into the family room, because he’d had some spills on the carpeting.
Later, when I carried a cup of coffee into the family room to join him in
playing blocks, he said, “Daddy, no drinks in here! Put your drink back in
the kitchen.”
36. Identification with the Victim (MacGregor, 1991)
You act like someone else by allowing yourself to be hurt or by getting yourself
hurt. You do this as a rescue wish or to fight off your own anger or guilt.
Mr. S, a 35-year-old assistant pastor, was constantly allowing himself to be
bullied by the minister of the church. Analysis revealed that Mr. S seemed
to be behaving similarly to a younger brother who had been the main target
of his father’s raging corporal punishment. Mr. S’s mother had protected Mr. S.
Mr. S’s guilt over his competitive feelings toward his brother and his guilt over his
murderous rage toward his abusive father caused him to allow himself to be
victimized currently by the minister, who had taken on the unconscious
transference significance of his father. At other times, the assistant pastor
provoked punishment from the minister—the defense of masochistic
provocation. (See also Freud, 1919, 1923.)
In other words, Mr. S had identified with his brother in allowing himself to be
unfairly punished. He did this mainly to relieve intense guilt.
42 101 DEFENSES
37. Identification with the Lost Object (Freud 1917; Volkan, 1987a)
So you won’t feel the pain of grief, you pick up some attributes of the lost loved
one. If you also keep souvenirs and never grieve, you’ve got “established
pathological mourning” (Volkan, 1987a).
The same clergyman (as in #36, above) revered his “saintly” mother, who
had died from cancer when he was 17. He had never grieved over her loss.
Instead, he took punishment the way he had seen her suffer at the hands of
his father; that is, he used identification with the lost object as well. He
became saintly and took punishment to keep his mother symbolically
“alive” (i.e., to not grieve over her loss).
38. Identification with the Introject (Sandler, 1960)
In latency, after you form an image of someone, you wind up making that image
part of your superego.
In pathological adult situations, if people incorporate a deceased but
unconsciously hated loved one’s character traits into their self-image, they may
then turn the unconscious hate on themselves, creating a reactive depression
(Freud, 1917; Volkan, 1987a).
Further, when a therapist’s self-image transiently “absorbs” aspects of a
patient’s (already introjected) image, the therapist can develop
countertransference (what Racker [1953] calls a “concordant identification”).
The therapist has developed a “complementary identification” after
unconsciously adopting the view of a person who has been important to the
patient.
A 30-year-old woman suffering with marital problems and depression
complains that her husband does not speak to her, express love verbally, or
seem interested in her except for sex. If you experience a concordant
identification, you might ask her why she tolerates this. If you’ve
developed a complementary identification (with her husband), you may ask
why she blames her husband for everything.
Tip.
Questioning patients during therapy can be dangerous (Dorpat, 2000).
Try clarifying defenses instead. Or wait for more data if you can’t figure
out what to interpret.
DEFENSES THAT ARISE IN PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT 43
39. Seduction of the Aggressor (Loewenstein, 1957)
When a person is scary to you, you seduce that person sexually or
sycophantically, to prove you are not afraid.
People who seduce the aggressor are probably also using reaction-formation,
inhibition of judgment, counterphobia, and minimization. These defenses can
create havoc in a person’s choice of mate (e.g., a woman who believes she will
reform a “bad boy” through her love for him).
Mr. JE, a 30-year-old plumber’s assistant, was upset with his current
relationship with a woman, and depressed. He reported that his wife had
left him to help her new lover set up pornographic websites. Mr. JE now
was dating a woman who plied her trade as an astrologer and palm reader.
He rationalized that she would not need to engage in these scams if he
married her and supported her. He had already bought her a new computer
and a new refrigerator.
Among the many dynamics involved in Mr. JE’s problems, I advised his
therapist to interpret his seduction of the aggressor mechanism (as well as
Mr. JE’s minimization of his new woman friend’s apparently antisocial
traits). When the therapist did so, Mr. JE responded with relief. Mr. JE
began to see that he picked out troublesome women and then tried to
overcome his fear of them by being “sweet and supportive.”
It would seem self-evident that it’s best for a therapist to avoid unconsciously
employing seduction of the aggressor, but certain people can stimulate this
defense by threatening to leave treatment. They can mobilize the therapist’s
defenses through the use of projective identification where they create anxiety
over object loss in the therapist.
Dr. C presented a case of an adult analysand, Ms. R, at a psychoanalytic
meeting. Ms. R canceled many appointments. Dr. C described how she
found herself looking out the window to see if Ms. R was walking in,
wondering whether Ms. R would show up for her appointments.
In response to a conferee’s question, Dr. C reported that she had not
confronted Ms. R about the missed sessions but had simply charged her for
the appointments. Ms. R had paid without objection.
Based on the past history of the patient, a discussant asked Dr. C if she
had interpreted Ms. R’s attempts to get Dr. C to experience what Ms. R,
herself, had experienced as a child: longing and insecurity regarding a
mother who took care of her financially but was frequently gone on trips.
Dr. C responded that she had not thought of this; she had felt it best to
“contain” Ms. R’s striving for independence. Dr. C did not want the patient
to quit because she felt Ms. R needed the treatment.
My impression was that, by being an understanding “container,” Dr. C had
unconsciously seduced the aggressor (Ms. R) to avoid anxiety over Ms. R possibly
quitting treatment. Dr. C’s anxiety was apparently stimulated by Ms. R’s hostile,
rejecting behavior.
Tip.
When, during consultation or treatment, people try to use you for
something other than psychotherapy, they are often symbolically attacking
you. Be careful not to become accommodating (“nice”) to people who
make outlandish or unrealistic demands, or who miss many appointments.
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I would love to invest in this course however I only have intermittent text messages from my daughter, we never talk and I haven’t seen her for nearly 2 years now so not sure if this would help. Also, I work full time so wondered if this could be watched afterwards or if you would be delivering any other dates with evening times for the UK?
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this course will be available on demand soon Tara so you can purchase it then and watch in your own time. Kind Regards Karen
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Thank you for your reply. Will it help, given that I don’t have a lot of communication with my daughter?
Tara
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Yes it will Tara, it will help you to use focused communications to help her to move towards you and when she does, to heal the attachment maladaptations which cause this problem. Kind Regards Karen
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Hi. I previously reached out to you regarding my daughter and I would really like to book on a course, however, how will the training apply to me when my daughter hardly ever communicates with me? I just don’t see how I can help her when I get maybe one text message every few months.
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