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Introduction of myself

joep-malieveld-gesneden(used for Bratislava presentation 2017)
My name is Joep Zander. I’m a pedagogue which means that I have an academic education to teach child upbringing, particularly from a sociological perspective. Besides that, I am an artist too and a father of 2 children.
A substantial part of my life was devoted to make clear that Parental Alienation Syndrome (also known as PAS) is a truly existent phenomenon. That’s why I wrote books on the subject, such as the compelling case study Mother-Child-Father (Moeder-Kind-Vader, een drieluik over ouderverstoting), a trilogy about parental alienation in which study I unraveled the position of the targeted parent,the programming parent and the child. I wrote scientific and popular articles on the subject, began a PHD trajectory and conducted intensive research on the subject matter. In total, I wrote 4 books on Fatherhood and Parental Alienation. I was part of the international group that founded the Langeac Declaration on Equal Parenting.
As an Artist, I used my creative possibilities to express the feelings of suppression into the Dutch Senate where my paintings were part of a debate. I made the vaderdagtrofee m/v, Fatherhood trophy for good fathering practices.
Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) was introduced in the Netherlands in 1999 with a book edited by me and a speech of Gardner in our city Breda.
I have a daughter for whom I cared as far as the child-protection services and judges allowed me to. In my view it was not only the mother who blocked that but the judicial that pressed to start a fight and making it worse with their own disqualifications. Most parents are forced to start a fight because it is the only way to assure that one stays in touch which the child. And this conduct is also the way that in the given juridical practice will assure that the other parent will be excluded.
Part of my motivation came from my position as rejected parent, father for 20 years. During this time, I learned in what way society treats fathers in particular and parents in general. Judges, social workers, and scientists give parents the blame for their failure without reflecting on their own role and practices in stigmatizing fathers or parents
As a PAS scholar and pedagogue, I saw a challenge to unravel the whole issue from a scientific point of view. It is often brought against me that I cannot practice objective science in this field. It is my opinion that it is often the opposite. One simply cannot unravel this matter without departing from the subjective experience of victims and perpetrators of PAS, which then inevitably leads to a cognitive distance between what a scientists experiences when engaged in the subject matter (Subjective) and what he ought to experience (Objective). This might give raise to some cognitive dissonance and even mental breakdowns in case the scientist is not used to cope with such differences. This is particularly difficult for the inexperienced scientists who engages in this subject.