Is an alienated child mentally kidnapped?

Psychologist Margaret Thaler Singer, who studied more than 3,000 cult and sect members over her career, described six conditions needed to create a "thought-reform" process — conditions that parallel severe parental alienation:

1. Keep the person unaware that there is an agenda to control or change them
2. Control time and physical environment (contacts, information)
3. Create a sense of powerlessness, fear, and dependency
4. Suppress old behavior and attitudes
5. Instill new behavior and attitudes
6. Put forth a closed system of logic

Discussing parental alienation, Stanley S. Clawar and Brynn V. Rivlin describe how, in a closed system of logic as seen in severe cases, the child’s life history is remade into a black-and-white world where one parent is perceived as good throughout and the other as bad throughout — a thought-reform process several researchers summarize as brainwashing.

Sources: Singer, M. T. (2003). Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight against Their Hidden Menace. · Clawar, S. S., Rivlin, B. V. (1991, rev. 2013). Children Held Hostage: Dealing with Programmed and Brainwashed Children.