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Abstract This article analyses the dynamics and psychological processes underlying judicialized conflicts that are known as parental alienation, examining three case studies in the light of psychoanalysis. The litigation experienced by the child reflects their embarrassments with the Other in their search for answers to their enigmas and affections, amid guerrilla warfare between those who occupy parental roles. The study pinpoints the pathways required to understand parental alienation: in a socio-historical journey through how parental and marital ties are conceived and recreated; in a passage through the grief that the subjects suffer during family reconstitution; and through a rereading of the phenomenon focused on the uniqueness of the symptom. We are hopeful that it will support a more critical and skilled praxis for those who work in the judiciary.