Dehumanization (dehumanize) is defined as “to deprive (someone or something) of human qualities, personality, or dignity: a: to subject (someone, such as a prisoner) to inhuman or degrading conditions or treatment
b: to address or portray (someone) in a way that obscures or demeans that person’s humanity or individuality.”

Simply put, dehumanization is seeing others as less than human.

In Parental Alienation (PA), the process of dehumanization is directed toward the targeted, or rejected, parent. This parent, once beloved by the child or children, is now hated, ridiculed, and rejected by them. How this process occurs is deeply troubling and due to the systematic brainwashing efforts of the alienating, or favored parent, with the intent to destroy the relationship between the children and the once loved parent.

I first learned about the process of dehumanization from my life long study of WW2. Most people interested in this terrible time in world affairs learns the Nazi Party embarked on a long process of dehumanizing the Jews, a critical stepping stone on their diabolical journey of trying to murder all Jews in Europe; the success of the “Final Solution” relied upon this dehumanizing element.

How this dehumanizing process was partially realized was the relentless propaganda efforts the Nazi’s employed through the media to portray the Jews as subhumans, vermin, dangers to society, dirty, greedy, money lovers, licentious, etc.

Jews portrayed as vermin.

A fundamental principle of dehumanization is before an individual or group of people can be destroyed, they must first be viewed as less than human, unworthy of dignity and respect, degraded in the eyes of the dehumanizers to something less than human and worthy of destruction. Hate is a main weapon in these dehumanizing efforts, because no one can destroy someone who is loved and cherished.

Dehumanization is seeing others as less than human.

In cases of parental alienation, the alienating parent often employs various dehumanizing tactics and strategies to turn the children against the targeted parent. These tactics aim to undermine the relationship between the child and the targeted parent, portraying the latter as unworthy of respect, dangerous, or unloving. Here are some common dehumanizing tactics used by the alienating parent:

1. Vilification:

• The alienating parent (AP) consistently portrays the targeted parent as bad, untrustworthy, or harmful—even dangerous. This can include accusations of abuse, neglect, or incompetence without evidence. Such portrayals can lead the child to fear or resent the targeted parent.

2. Erasure:

• The AP may attempt to erase the targeted parent from the child’s life by withholding contact, hiding correspondence, or in extreme cases, changing the child’s surname. They might also exclude the targeted parent from important events and decisions, making them feel irrelevant and detached from their child’s life.

3. Gaslighting:

• This involves manipulating the child into questioning their own memories or perceptions about the targeted parent. The AP may reinterpret past events to paint the targeted parent in a negative light or convince the child that positive experiences with the targeted parent never happened.

4. False Allegations:

• The AP might make false allegations of abuse (both physical and/or sexual) or neglect against the targeted parent, leading to legal battles and further estrangement. These allegations can be psychologically damaging to both the targeted parent and the child.

5. Emotional Manipulation:

• The AP can manipulate the child’s emotions by showing distress or anger whenever the child expresses positive feelings towards the targeted parent. This manipulation makes the child feel guilty or disloyal for loving the targeted parent.

6. Limiting Communication:

• The AP may limit or monitor communication between the child and the targeted parent. This includes intercepting phone calls, reading emails or messages, and preventing in-person visits.

7. Cultivating Dependence:

• By creating an environment where the child feels overly dependent on the AP for emotional or financial support, the child may feel compelled to align with the AP’s negative views of the targeted parent.

8. Rewarding Rejection:

• The alienating parent might reward the child for rejecting the targeted parent, either through praise, gifts, special privileges, or through overly generous financial assistance. This reinforces the behavior and makes reconciliation more difficult and the child more dependent on the continual largesse of the AP.

These dehumanizing strategies not only harm the relationship between the child and the targeted parent but also have long-term psychological effects on the child. The child may develop issues with trust, self-esteem, and future relationships as a result of being manipulated into rejecting a parent.

In one of my prior blog posts, I used the following paragraph from the article “Parental Alienation Syndrome: How to detect it an what to do about it” to highlight the fact that children do not naturally, of their own accord, suddenly wake up one morning and turn from loving one of their parents in one breath and then, in the next, to hating them:

“…Children do not naturally lose interest in and become distant from their nonresidential parent simply by virtue of the absence of that parent. Also, healthy and established parental relationships do not erode naturally of their own accord. They must be attacked. Therefore, any dramatic change in this area is virtually always an indicator of an alienation process that has had some success in the past.”

But perhaps the greatest harm inflicted upon the child by the AP’s unconscionable tactics is creating hatred in the child against the other parent. I wrote about this here, here, here, here, and here. It is at this point—at least— where the behavior of the AP might cross a boundary into possible criminal behavior against the child or children.

What was one of the results of the Nazi propaganda machine of dehumanization against the Jews? The Jews were relentlessly persecuted and six million lost their lives in the Holocaust in some of the most heinous and unspeakable ways. The process of turning one segment of society (non-Jewish Germans) against another segment of the same society (Jewish Germans) begins with dehumanization.

This dehumanization process often begins with a concerted effort aimed at demeaning the victim in the eyes of the population (see, for example, this article). The linked article states, “Perpetrators of mass violence often appear to deny the humanity of their victims” and “…to conceive of their victims as insensate hordes and mindless barbarians…they often portrayed the Jews as insidious and cunning agents of malevolence…”

There are distinct similarities between how the Nazi’s brainwashed the general population of the German people to hate and fear the Jews and how alienating parents brainwash their children to hate and fear the rejected parent. Let me share with you one vignette from my own situation to support this belief:

My youngest daughter, Amie (not her real name), was a bubbly, fun loving and sometimes mischievous little girl who was a source of joy in my life and family. We had a close, loving relationship, and I enjoyed her curious and inquisitive mind, recognizing at an early age her creative and intelligent manner of thinking.

But things began to change once my wife divorced me for the second time. We had been living in Rio Rico where I spent approximately seven years building our home. Soon after the house was completely finished, we separated and eventually divorced.

I moved back to Tucson and bought a townhouse on the northwest side of town. Interestingly, my ex also bought a townhouse in the same complex and we lived on the same street. This made things much easier for all of us when it came time to drop our kids off at each other’s house and worked out as well as can be expected.

I will never forget two situations which happened at my house, seared permanently into my memory which perfectly exemplifies the destructive forces often unleashed when a family disintegrates from divorce.

Aimie was over at my house one afternoon for my parenting time with her. She was around seven years old at this time and carried around a blanket with her all the time in the house. She had done the same thing when we were living in our house in Rio Rico. She carried this blanket with her so often it became somewhat ragged in places.

I was on the sofa, absorbed in going through my snail mail. Aimie was puttering around the house and was carrying her ever present blanket, holding a picture book in her hand. She jumped up on the sofa and sat next to me, scrunching and cuddling up as close as she could to my left side. She layed her head contentedly against my side and, sucking her thumb, started to thumb through the pages of her book.

It was one of those precious father/daughter moments and I took my left arm and wrapped it around her tiny shoulders, gently hugging her. Here she was, quietly reading her book with her blanket and there I was going through my mail. This precious memory is seared in my subconscious and I will always remember it as a special time with my beloved daughter.

Fast forward perhaps a year or so, for the second example. Here was the same Aimie, but now about eight years old. This time she was sitting on the overstuffed leather chair across from the aforementioned couch, her eyes flashing with hatred, rage etched in her little face.

“I hate you!” she seethed at me as I stood dumbfounded in front of her, trying to comprehend what had happened to this little girl of mine to erupt in such dark and unexpected ill feelings towards me. The absolute disrespect in her face and language against me was astounding.

I sent her to her room to calm down and let the emotions of the moment lower in intensity; I was so shocked and hurt by this unexpected outburst from her and could not understand what was happening to cause her to act in such a way.

Later, when I went in to check on her, the window was open and the screen was bent: Aimie had run away, at eight or nine years old, the first time she did this. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life with my children and tapped into a primal fear from my own troubled teenage years when I had run away from my abusive stepfather.

An irrational panic instantly took over me as my mind raced to figure out what just happened. Where did she go? Was she safe? And fear of her being abducted by some child predator filled my mind and only added to my fear and panic. I go into more detail about this story here.

I’ve forgotten what I did next as my memory has blocked this horrible situation from remembering all the details. I think I called the police, but I’m not certain. What I do know is I was lost in fear and panic for the safety of Aimie and could not rationalize or understand what drove her to do such an unexpected and dangerous thing.

What happened between those two events, when Aimie jumped up on the sofa and burrowed in next to me to when she sat on the overstuffed chair with hate and rage in her eyes? What caused such a drastic change in her?

Though I don’t know the details of these questions, I can only suspect one main reason: she was being brainwashed by her vindictive mother who used, among other things, a campaign of dehumanization against me that slowly but surely worked its poison into the innocent heart and soul of Aimie until she was consumed with hatred towards me.

I have not seen Aimie in twenty years. Twenty years. I have corresponded with her perhaps a half dozen times via email…that’s it. No phone calls, text messages, visits—no contact but through a handful of emails back and forth. And none of these emails Aimie responded to were positive.

Interestingly but sadly, Aimie refuses in these emails to call me “Dad.” She won’t even refer to me by my first name. So non-human do I appear in her eyes that she will not acknowledge my existence by calling me by my first name. This is a perfect example of a process of dehumanization that has been successfully wrought in her life.

What is one of the end results of dehumanization? Murder. We saw this in the Holocaust. Tell a nation of Germans long enough that Jews are dangerous scum and vermin who are out to destroy your nation and it is not too many steps from rounding up as many Jews as you can and mass murdering them: men, women, children—even babies in their mother’s arms.

The same thing happened in the Rwanda Genocide. Approximately 1 million Tutsi were murdered in just several months time, many of them by merciless whacks from machetes.

Why I mention this is because of how I felt after this situation with Aimie. As I explained in my other blog post linked above, she was so bizarre and intense I felt unsafe around her at night when I went to bed. I hid my guns from her—an eight or nine year old!—and locked my bedroom door because I thought she might do something crazy and shoot or stab me while I was sleeping. I know this might sound paranoid and extreme, but I felt she was capable of this because of her hateful demeanor towards me.

But of course these feelings of Aimie were not of her own doing. As I mentioned above, I believe her mother was the one primarily responsible for instilling this kind of hatred and malice into our daughter. These hostile feelings and attitude were something foreign and outside of her usual bubbly, carefree nature.

And we know that some children do murder a parent or even both of their parents. Certainly such a horrific crime committed by an eight or nine year old little girl would certainly be an outlier, but still possible. And again, this is what hatred can, and often does, lead to.

I have not communicated with Aimie for almost three years now. In my last email exchange with her, she once again made it more than clear of her hatred for me and that she wants nothing to do with me. I have honored her demands.

Perhaps with time, reflection, and increasing wisdom, Aimie will come to her senses. I’m hopeful she will see how she was brainwashed, lied to, and manipulated by her mother—and no doubt others—to turn against me. But it is so incredibly tragic what has happened to all three of my daughters, and this evil process of dehumanization has taken its toll on each of them.