Amy J. L. Baker, Ph.D.’s book Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind is based on a series of confidential research interviews with individuals who believe that they were child victims of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). The book provides an adult’s perspective and voice to the experience of being manipulated as a child by one parent to turn against the other. Explaining the process and the meaning of the alienation for them, the interview subjects take the reader inside the world of PAS and demonstrate its life-long impact. This book is truly insightful. I have it.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is a specific subcategory of Parental Alienation that results from a combination of (1) parental programming or “brainwashing” and (2) the child’s own contributions, and it is almost exclusively seen in the context of bitter child-custody disputes.
As Dr. Richard Gardner put it, Parental Alienation Syndrome is a disorder made up of a combination of two contributing factors, (1) programming (”brainwashing”) of the child by one parent to denigrate the other parent, and (2) self-created contributions by the child in support of the alienating parent’s campaign of denigration against the alienated parent.

Dr. Amy J. L. Baker has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has over 15 years experience conducting research in parent-child relationships and children’s well-being. She is the author of Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind. She has authored over 45 peer-reviewed publications.