How to document that the PAS exists:

I have been asked by several of my friends on Facebook as to how to go about persuading their attorney, CPS, the lawyer for the child, and the judge that the PAS is emotional child abuse.

The first problem is the naysayers, primarily including so many mental health professionals, who deny its existence: you can't get to the step of asserting ...that the PAS is a form of child abuse if there is no recognition of it as a syndrome. That is why it is so important to have the PAS accepted into the DSM 5, the manual by which mental health professionals diagnose for mental illness. I am on the PAS working group made up of mental health clinicians and attorneys worldwide, headed by child psychiatrist, William Bernet, and we are inundating the DSM -5 task force with documentation in support of its acceptance. (Anyone who wishes to submit documentation to the task force, contact me for the names and addresses of the psychiatrists on the DSM task force.)

Further complicating this issue is the lack of uniformity among the states as to whether or not PAS garners enough scientific support for its existence. The standard of proof is on two levels: one is the Frey test, which is the lower standard, and PAS has been accepted in many jurisdictions as in Florida and Pennsylvania on that basis. (Those who live in those jurisdictions, you cannot get too excited; unfortunately, the appropriate remedy for the PAS once accepted and established is frequently not applied. Just read the saga in my book, entitled "A Tale of Two States.") The higher standard, the Daubert, test, is rarely met but not just by the PAS; by many other issues that are presented before the court do not meet that test. Nevertheless, the naysayers invoke the daubert test to allow the PAS

And finally, the ultimate issue is the biases and ignorance of the judge presiding on the case.

When I testify on an alienation case, I generally avoid using the word syndrome but instead comment on parental alienation. Some judges even object to this label as they claim that I am implying a syndrome. The attorney for the alienated parent generally has a handle on the predilections of the judge, so when the attorney preps me, I know how far I could go with terminology. 

NEVERTHELESS, in all of these cases, the judges cannot dispute the description of the characteristic interactional patterns that occurs in the PAS family: the cross-generational alliance between the alienating parent and the child to the deprecation and rejection of the of the parent. BY DESCRIBING AN OBSERVABLE BEHAVIOR, IS AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO DOCUMENT FOR ALIENATION WITHOUT ASCRIBING A LABEL.

The following are excerpts from my book as how I addressed documenting this interactional pattern as well as the extensive scientific support existence of the PAS the practices of PAS aware mental health professionals and matrimonial attorneys.

It was actually in the 1950's that the psychiatrists who subsequently founded the various schools of family systems therapy who began to identify a cross-generational coalition which they had observed occurring when their hospitalized psychiatric patients were visiting with their families. These psychiatrists subsequently labeled this interaction as the perverse or pathological triangle, and they defined it as a dysfunctional cross-generational coalition between a parent who had requested the allegiance of the psychiatric patient in that parent's dispute with the other parent. Intervening to remedy this devastating consequence to their patients, these psychiatrists made the facilitation of healthy family interactional patterns as the focus of their treatment.

Empirical evidence for Gardner's diagnosis of the PAS is further supported in a 12 year study of 700 families, published by the American Bar Association section of Florida Family Law.. This exhaustive study lends considerable credibility to Gardner's diagnosis of the PAS based on the universality of his eight characteristic symptoms, which were observed in the children. The study further concluded that, in divorce situations, parental alienation, the programming of a child against the other parent, occurs regularly, 60% of the time, and sporadically another 20% (Clawar & Rivlin, 1991, pp. 174-180). 
Many other forensic evaluators and therapists throughout the world have utilized Gardner's criteria to assess for the presence of the PAS in their cases, and they, too, have
observed the repetitiveness and universality of his eight characteristic symptoms whenever there is an unjustified humiliation and rejection of a parent. A fraction of the esteemed therapists, evaluators, and attorneys who have experienced the PAS in their practices are referenced in this book.
Gardner (2002) disputes their contention that the PAS lacks widespread support in the scientific community. He asserted, to the contrary, that it has past the Frey test in a court of law in Florida and in other legal jurisdictions; that it has been recognized in numerous peer reviewed writings, which he cites in his rebuttal; and that it has been replicated by numerous professionals world-wide through observations in their practices (pp. 6-10). Gardner (2002) disputed their argument that the PAS cannot be considered a syndrome because it had not been accepted into in the DSM-IV, the latest edition. He emphasized that it takes many years for a syndrome to be accepted, and the PAS was only in the nascent stages of its documentation when the DSM-IV was published in 1994. As he pointed out, it took Asperger's syndrome 37 years for acceptance into the DSM after its symptoms were first noted, and Tourette's syndrome took 95 years (pp. 193-195).
I also leave it primarily to Warshak (2001) in his very thorough and persuasive article entitled, "Current Controversies Regarding Parental Alienation Syndrome," to rebut further the non-systems objections to the syndrome label of Johnston, Kelly and others. He very ably disputes the assertions that the PAS has not been significantly substantiated and corroborated by mental health professionals through their clinical observations in their practices, that it has not been meaningfully documented in peer-reviewed literature, and that there has not been adequate scientific foundation to rise to the level of a syndrome (pp. 36-43). Please refer to this article for his extensive review of professional corroboration for the existence of the PAS.