Commentary on Entrenched Postseparation Parenting Disputes: The Role of Interparental Hatred

• Published date: 01 July 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12290
• Date: 01 July 2017
• Author: Janet R. Johnston

COMMENTARY ON ENTRENCHED POSTSEPARATION PARENTING

DISPUTES: THE ROLE OF INTERPARENTAL HATRED

Janet R. Johnston

This Comment on Smyth and Moloney’s article discusses the historical context and earlier work on the role of interparental

hate in high-conflict divorce. A seminal line of clinical research on the core psychological dynamicsof entrenched postdivorce

disputes over children is identified and traced through three main research programs in California, Israel, and Australia. The

importance of assessing hate as a risk factor in working with separated and divorced families is discussed, along with cautions

about its misuse.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Expands on the role of hate in high-conflict divorce

Points to classic literature that illustrates how to identify and work with the more pernicious forms of interparental hate

in contexts of client counseling, mediation, advocacy, and decisionmaking

Keywords: Core Psychological Dynamics; High-Conflict Divorce; Interparental Hate; Love–Hate Relationships;

Narcissistic Vulnerability; and Splitting.

In writing their article, Bruce Smyth and Lawrie Moloney (2017) have breathed new life into a

seminal line of work on the core psychological dynamics that contribute to intractable high-conflict

divorce and disputes over children. The authors focus on interparental relationships characterized by

one or both partner’s entrenched hatred, which they imply is distinctive from reactive hate in that the

sentiments for the ex-partner are extreme, irrational, obsessive, persistent, and especially pernicious

in nature. They argue that some individuals become consumed with entrenched hatred toward their

ex-mate after separation and hold fixed, irrational beliefs that fuel their obsessive intent on revenge

that is ultimately self-destructive in nature. The authors make it clear that only a subset of high-

conflict divorce involve this dynamic.

High-conflict cases in family court have demanded and received inordinate attention over several

decades, consuming a major portion of the court’s limited resources, while challenging and frustrat-

ing the multidisciplinary professionals who work with them. An extensive and rich history of dis-

course and a growing body of research about the motivations for their behavior, effects on children,

and modes of intervention have been devoted to high-conflict cases within scholarly publications,

professional trainings, and conferences. It is important to place Smyth & Moloney’s article within

the context of earlier work on the subject—acknowledging that the historical context that I offer is, in

part, from my perspective as a participant observer.

Classic literature and operatic tragedies are replete with epic sagas about unrequited romantic love

and sexual passion transformed into a state of brooding, obsessive, and destructive hatred upon ter-

mination of the coupling. Both men and women can feel abandoned, betrayed, and intolerably

shamed by the rejection inherent in separation from a loved one. Note the often-cited misquotation

of William Congreve “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Such men have been featured in

Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Maddening Crowd, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Andrew

Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, and Georges Bizet’s Carmen, to name a few. Legends of

Greek gods, Jason and Medea, and contemporary biographies like Until the Twelfth of Never

(Stumbo, 1993) have chartered the course of these tormented relationships.

Correspondence: johnston527@sbcglobal.net

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 55 No. 3, July 2017 424–429

V

C2017 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts