The process of what we today call 'Parental Alienation' is mislabeled as it describes a mere symptom of what is actually happening.
The alienation is described as a process of one parent's behavior, in front of the child, so that the child rejects the other parent. The behavior might be direct, like e.g. badmouthing the other parent, or subtle and psychologically manipulative that the child picks up on. Whatever the process, the end result is that the Child rejects the targeted parent.
The label "Parental Alienation" is however wrong because it describes a symptom and not motivation of this process and as such it makes things worse as it creates more fragmentation between those who believe that it exists, those that deny it, and then it also gets exploited for the benefit of those, who actually engage in it.
The devil is in the detail, and the detail is deeply psychological or spiritual depending which path you take. But either is painful to recognize yet very important process to understand, and deeply understand in order to attempt to solve a problem of abuse and alienation.
Paradigm
We all see the world through a Paradigm. A metaphorical glasses, if you will. Every human being succumbs to its own Paradigm. Seeing and knowing one's own paradigm is incredibly painful and difficult process. See Paradigm Blindness about this. Paradigm initially always rejects itself. Conscious mind and logic protect and justify it. If one can't escape his or her own paradigm, it's hard to have a conversation with such a person as he/she will reject anything that doesn't fit the paradigm. This applies to everyone.
More about a Paradigm here.
There are however three paradigms in human population that are highly malevolent and highly forceful. These are Dark Triad, Vulnerable Dark Triad, and Dark Tetrad. For simplicity, and this is NOT simple by any means, let's lump them all into one category: Narcissists.
Narcissistic Paradigm, among other things, sees itself elevated and better than others, it NEEDS narcissistic supply, and it cannot feel empathy. Its existence is evil in itself and it infects humans ,trans-generationally (what we call parental alienation). It denies that it is malevolent itself and projects that onto its target.
There are other paradigms, like a Codependent Paradigm that literally feeds the narcissistic paradigm.
Narcissistic Paradigm is highly exploitive and manipulative. People with this paradigm are highly intelligent and thus climb the political, corporate, legal, religious, or academic ladders in pursuit of their narcissistic supplies. They are very successful and can create whole Narcissistic Pyramid.
The paradigm, once it latches onto a target, becomes psychotically delusional about that target. It will see it as all bad, and it will project everything onto that target. The paradigm desperately needs this target and derives its narcissistic supply from. It becomes a source of its life. Like a vampire seeking blood.
If the target detaches from the narcissist, the injury is so great that the paradigm has to destroy the target. Within its psychosis, it creates a very effective and manipulative "shared persecutory delusion" about the target. The problem is that to the outside world, including professionals, the narcissist looks like a victim and the victim looks like an abuser - that's why it is called "shared delusion". These people become Flying Monkeys. Exactly what the paradigm wants. It is malevolently manipulative and very effective.
Some psychological theories established that paradigms (all paradigms) replicate trans-generationally.
Back to parental alienation: The paradigm needs a child to replicate itself. It will do anything to have the children by its side. And once it has them, the paradigm teaches the child the delusion about the targeted parent and the Child's brain learns. It's dangerous for the Child not to align. Stockholm syndrome explains this.
If you do not want to call it 'paradigm', then call it 'brain programming', or 'neural pathway', or 'energy', or 'evil'. It doesn't matter what we call it but it replicates itself and we know that. We know what abused children turn into. The codependents or the abusers. The replication process works.
The paradigm sees its target as weak, bad, "deserves abuse" and an object of source of supply. The Child observes, feels the rigidity, and picks up on the same paradigm. The paradigm trans-generationally replicates. It spawns.
The source of the supply (targeted parent) usually fights back. This however actually enables the paradigm to get what it needs. The paradigm NEEDS the reaction of the targeted parent's paradigm in order to infect the child. If there is no targeted person, or the target doesn't react (heals), there is nothing to teach. The fighters of abusers, the codependents, play a crucial role in the paradigm replication. They are part of the problem and stuck in their own Codependent Paradigm.
Labeling this process "Parental Alienation" (which IS happening) is ineffective as it labels the symptom, and not its intent. And since it is a mis-label, it fragments people into groups who believe in it and who don't. It creates fights. It creates exactly what the paradigm wants, so it can continue its own mission.
Metaphysical Leap
You have certainly noticed that we separated the behavior (paradigm's process) from the person. And we refer to the paradigm as 'it' and as if it was doing its own thing, without a volition of the person. This is a huge leap for many people. The devil is in the detail and one has to go to the rabbit hole to understand it.
If you however reject this premise, you will be stuck in your own paradigm that tells you that malevolent people know and do everything as they want and have control over it and thus choose it and you will want to restrain and punish them. It doesn't work. It never had. Look at Gulag Archipelago, look at leftist or rightist ideologies throughout the history of the world and consequences of such. The problem is way bigger than we think.
We at We Have Had Enough believe that the above framework is more efficient, and on a deeper level, addressing actual motives of people, and framework better suited to address this problem.
We MUST UNITE against our common enemy.
Psychologically Speaking
Here are some narratives of the above in psychological terms. Italicized comments are ours.
"Judicial and/or non-clinical determinations as to the legitimacy of abuse allegations have shown to be confounded by the presence of dark personality parents who are prone to (1) be manipulative, vengeful, deceitful, and willing to weaponize others, including their own children, to fulfill self-serving agendas; (2) develop non-bizarre (meaning believable) encapsulated persecutory delusions (target parent is very bad) when experiencing interpersonal stress; and (3) engage in false virtuous victim signaling (making itself the victim needing help from the abuse) to obtain otherwise unwarranted resources and assistance for themselves while creating a belief in others (that's why shared delusion) that the alleged perpetrator must be punished harshly (The victim that is). Additionally, children who become triangulated by a delusional dark personality parent into an enmeshed cross-generational coalition (this is the paradigm replication through generational abuse) against the other parent are highly likely to adopt (read replicate) the pathological parent’s delusional beliefs (read paradigm), creating an induced (read replicated) delusional disorder."
"The paradoxical finding that the more punishment a juvenile receives the stronger becomes its attachment to the punishing figure (The more abuse = more efficient replication), very difficult to explain on any other theory, is compatible with the view that the function of attachment behavior is protection from predators (Which the predatory paradigm exploits). (Bowlby, 1969, p. 227)"
"This violation of boundaries across generations represents the trans-generational transmission (aka replication) of the parent’s own attachment trauma (paradigm) to subsequent generations via distorted parenting practices (trauma) created by unresolved trauma (Prager, 2003)"
"Notably, when one parent-child relationship is characterized by enmeshment, the other parent-child relationship is often characterized by disengagement (alienation) (Kerig, 2005 Minuchin, 1974)."