Building Public Awareness of Alienation: Two Potentially Potent Hooks
Susan Heitler, PhD
Susan Heitler.
To get the word out about a phenomenon like a book or a new product, publicists look first for a “hook.” That is, what current events or common concerns can catch the attention of audiences, enabling the writer to embed in the story information about the main point they want to make?
For instance, many people have experienced “adult sibling alienation,” my term for situations in which, as an elderly parent is aging, one adult sibling tells lies about another in order to obtain control of the parent’s assets, stealing them from the sibling who has in fact been the healthier caretaker of their shared parent.
A second parallel phenomenon happening in today’s world is “citizen alienation,” my term for situations in which unhealthy/tyrannical political leaders tell lies (propaganda) to scare their population into hating a neighboring country, e.g., Russia versus Ukraine, Cuba versus the United States, Hamas Gazans versus Israel.
By writing about adult sibling and/or citizen alienation, the writer gets to explain to a larger audience the phenomenon of parental alienation.