ISSUES IN FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
Psychotherapy with Children of Divorce

1. More often than not, custodial parents serve as gatekeepers for their children's health care. When children of divorce venture into therapy, therefore, the custodial parent typically selects a therapist for them.
   
   
2. As gatekeepers, custodial parents can influence decisions therapists make regarding who participates in therapy. Therapists who respond to the influence of custodians, and exclude non-custodians from treatment for children of divorce, often commit serious errors.
   
   
3. These therapists frequently fail to discriminate between the characteristics attributed to non-custodial parents by custodians, and how those non-custodians actually relate to their children.
   
   
4. These failures of discrimination can lead psychotherapists to abandon even the appearance of objectivity and appoint themselves as advocates for custodial parents.
   
   
5. As loyal advocates, therapists respond more to the agenda of custodial parents than to the welfare of the children they are treating.
   
   
6. Advocate therapists too often disregard their lack of contact with non-custodial parents; and while ignoring the limited information available to them, they make recommendations to courts that divisively disrupt the relationships between non-custodial parents and their children.
   
   
7. These disruptions range from recommending reductions or suspensions in visitation, to inappropriate validating allegations of physical or sexual abuse directed at non-custodial parents.
   
   
8. These misguided attempts at therapy too often deteriorate into counterproductive outcomes. Treatment leads to increased distress for children because it polarizes the parental conflicts responsible for that distress.
   
   
9. Effective psychotherapy for children of divorce reduces the frequency and intensity of conflicts between their parents. "Advocate therapists," however, too often accomplish little more than to increase the frequency and intensity of those conflicts.

If you want to learn more about the problems related to psychotherapy for children of divorce, you may want to order any, or all, of the following articles authored by Dr. Campbell.

Psychotherapy with children of divorce: The pitfalls of triangulated relationships. Psychotherapy, 1992, 29, 646-652. (Order article #8, Cost $10.00).

Promoting play therapy: Marketing dream or empirical nightmare? Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, 1992, 4, 111-117. (Order article #3, Cost $10.00).

False allegations of sexual abuse and the persuasiveness of play therapy. Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, 1992, 4, 118-124. (Order article #4, Cost $10.00).

Beware The Talking Cure: Psychotherapy May Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health. Social Issues Resources Series (SIRS), Upton Books, Boca Raton, FL., September 1994. Order from Amazon.com.

© 2005 Dr. Terence W. Campbell, Ph.D.