Üniversite Öğrencilerinin Ebeveyn Yabancılaştırma Deneyimlerini Bağlanma Stilleri Üzerinden Keşfetmek: Bir Karma Yöntem Araştırması

Abstract

Although the parental alienation syndrome, whose origins date back to before Christ, was addressed in the tragedy of Medea, its existence is still the subject of intense debate. Many studies on the subject have established that parental alienation is known as the intentional or unintentional use of the common child as a weapon against the target parent due to the negative feelings of the alienating parent towards the target parent and the removal of the child from the target parent. The quantitative research phase of this study, which was designed as a mixed design, it was aimed to determine the predictive power of parental alienation experience in the process of developing the attachment style, that guides the individual in their relationships with all individuals. In the study in which 821 university students participated, Baker Strategy Questionnaire, Inventory of Experiences in Close Relationships-II and Three Dimensional Attachment Scale were used and analysed by simple linear regression analysis. In the qualitative research step, in order to explore the effects of parental alienation, the thoughts of 11 participants during and after the experience process were obtained through semi-structured interview forms and analysed with MAXQDA 24 software. As a result of the study, the existence of the effect of parental alienation on the development of anxious attachment and avoidant attachment styles of individuals who were exposed to parental alienation was determined, and it was revealed that the experienced individuals encountered the most intense defamatory behaviour towards the target parent by the alienating parent during the experience process, and after the experience, they discovered the truth and felt intense anger towards their alienating parents and felt sorry for themselves because of their own experiences. In addition, as a result of experiencing parental alienation, the existence of its effect on personal development, its negative reflection on romantic relationships and changes in the view of their parents were determined. Following the study, it is suggested that it would be beneficial for individuals who believe that they have experienced parental alienation to seek counselling from a clinical social worker who is familiar with parental alienation in order to eliminate the negative effects that have occurred and may occur. In addition, it is recommended that both social workers working in the field of forensic social workers and social workers working in the field of clinical social work; prosecutors, judges, lawyers and other professionals working in the justice system should receive the necessary training on the importance of parental alienation and its application and decisions based on the principle of the best interests of the individual and that university departments and academics should play a leading role in this regard.