While Gardner was volunteering at Columbia in the 1980s, he formed some opinions and made some personal observations that, together, he decided to call "parental alienation syndrome

EXCERPT:
But I digress. While Gardner was volunteering at Columbia in the 1980s, he formed some opinions and made some personal observations that, together, he decided to call "parental alienation syndrome." He defined PAS as a condition arising from one parent's (mostly mothers, he said) "programming" of the child to wage an unreasonable "campaign of denigration against" the other parent (most of the time, the father, according to Gardner). PAS, he said, arises most often during child custody disputes, usually involves false allegations of child sexual abuse as part of the programmer parent's attempt to turn the child against the other parent, and causes "enormous grief" in the alienated parent.

Sick Joke or Sick Reality?

Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy
May 17, 2007
http://www.now.org/news/note/051707.html