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Abstract
Contemporary theory asserts that children become triangulated into their parents' conflicts due to alienation, estrangement, and enmeshment. These dynamics account for some children's alliance with one parent and rejection of the other. The present article suggests that the child's innate need to adapt and the caregivers' corresponding needs for confirmation together create an additional dynamic that must be considered as part of any family system evaluation. The “chameleon child” engages in necessary and natural short-term adaptive behaviors at unknown developmental costs. An observational protocol is described with which evaluators can begin to distinguish among these dynamics. Case illustrations are provided.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to the many children encountered in psychotherapy and in court-ordered evaluations whose experience continues to be the best teacher. The case illustrations provided herein are anonymous recreations of their real experiences.
Notes
“ … legal and mental health practitioners have noted that pure or ‘clean’ cases of child alienation and realistic estrangement (those that only include alienating behavior on the part of the favored parent or abuse/neglect on the part of the rejected parent, respectively) are less common than the mixed or ‘hybrid’ cases, which have varying degrees of enmeshment and boundary diffusion between the aligned parent and the child and some degree of ineptness by the rejected parent ….” (Fidler & Bala, Citation2010, p. 15).
Meier (2010, p. 243) does recognize alienation as it exists as part of an abusive parent's mistreatment of the child, “ … often intentionally destroy[ing] the child's relationship with his or her protective and caring mother.”
The child's capacity for adaptation is both a recurrent popular theme and illustrated by extremes in literature. The Tarzan story (Burroughs, Citation1914) of a boy who adapts to life among apes may be most well-known. Cannon's (Citation1993) eloquent contemporary children's story, “Stellaluna” about a bat who must adapt to being raised among birds may be the current generation's prototype of the same.
“If one parent has primary contact with the child, the child can be forced to dissociate his or her awareness of the good aspects of the other parent in order to maintain the bond with the primary caregiver. If both parents are involved in the child's life, the child may continue to switch between the two points of view, each time dissociating awareness of the good qualities of the other parent” (Miller, Citation2001, abstract).
“Dissociative symptoms may include a child entering trance-like states, showing forgetfulness for past or current behavior, having fluctuating behavior including rapid regressions, rage reactions, beliefs in vivid imaginary friends or divided identities, and symptoms of depersonalization and derealization … dissociative symptoms are complex adaptations that evolve into learned habits that are then reinforced in environments in which parent-child interaction patterns continue to promote and reinforce maladaptive functioning” (Silberg, Citation2004, p. 487).
“Q: If you had a wish for yourself and your family, what would your wish be?” Frances (12): “[That] there was two of me, then I could be with mum and I could be with dad at the same time and I could see my friends” (Smart, Citation2002, p. 316).
“Rashomon” is a 1950s Japanese movie in which four witnesses provide very different accounts of the identical crime (Kurosawa & Akutagawa, Citation1950). The “Rashomon Effect” refers to a divergence of perspectives, highlighting differences due to observer needs and motives.