.2023.04.01 DP.IDD-DIxACS.docx

 Approximately 10% of post-divorce custody cases become extended high conflict custody litigation in the family courts. Coincidentally, research suggests that approximately 10% of the population has narcissistic-borderline-dark personality pathology. Both narcissistic and borderline personalities use virtuous victim narratives to manipulate others for self-serving agendas and decompensate into encapsulated persecutory delusions under stress, and these delusions can then be imposed on the child through manipulative parental psychological control. If not accurately diagnosed, the child’s persecutory delusions induced by the narcissistic-borderline-dark personality parent can mislead the court into making damaging decisions. Relying on the established professional knowledge from attachment, personality disorder pathology, and family systems therapy, Childress (2015) identified a set of three diagnostic indicators (DI) and 12 associated clinical signs (ACS) that are predicted to reliably identify psychological child abuse by a narcissistic-borderline-dark personality parent who is creating a shared persecutory delusion and factitiously imposed attachment pathology in the child. The three DI are predicted to always be present, while the 12 ACS are predicted to often be present as symptom indicators. This study examined the prevalence of the 12 ACS in a data set drawn from high conflict custody litigation. At least five ACS were evident in every family, and 41 of the 46 families had nine or more ACS. The prevalence rates for each individual ACS ranged from 30% to 100%, with nine ACS present in over 80% of the families. Further research using clinical interviews rather than archival data to identify the DI and ACS is recommended.