Abstract

MACIEL, Sérgio Alberto Bittencourt; MENDES, Antônio de Alcântara  and  BARBOSA, Luciana de Paula Gonçalves. A systemic approach to parental alienation assumptions and clinical practice with individuals and families. Nova perspect. sist. [online]. 2021, vol.30, n.69, pp. 62-77. ISSN 0104-7841.  http://dx.doi.org/10.38034/nps.v30i69.611.

After almost twenty years of its implementation in Brazil, one can observe that the parental alienation's assumptions went beyond the Judiciary and have affected therapist's practice. Narratives of parental alienation have become part of clients' and psychotherapists' discourses. Taking that into account, this paper critically and systemically discusses those narratives. A qualitative case study of three clinical vignettes is presented to discuss how the conversational agreements established between psychotherapists and clients in the clinical context can engender, sustain or reframe parental alienation narratives as well as implications of this for the psychotherapeutic process. The discussion indicates that parental alienation allegations are used to classify or explain behaviours that are usually present in marital and parental disagreements that regards to developmental issues and cause suffering. In addition, the professional's position in the dialogical construction of clinical interventions and the notion of observable reality in psychotherapy are questioned.

Keywords : Parental alienation; Conversational processes in therapy; Systemic approach; Clinical psychology.

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