Declarations of Codependence

...4. Offer salvation...

...In her se- quel she is more catholic still: codepen- dency "is about the ways we have been affected by other people and our pasts...

...Anne Wilson Schaef, author of Co-Dependence, Women's Reality, and The Addictive Organization, is the main proponent of this sociological addendum to codependency theory...

...Those Who Identify were said to come from dysfunctional, albeit not alcoholic, homes, and were held to be equally in need of Recovery...

...The authors specializing in ACOA issues estimate the number of ACOAS in the United States to be between 28 and 34 million...

...Not only individuals, but organizations, institutions, and society itself can suffer from the disease...

...We are told the terrifying tale of Ann, who "could not once remember sitting in her father's lap" (this is not to be confused with homes in which there is too much sitting on one's father's lap...

...In his The Shrinking of America: Myths of Psychological Change, Zilbergeld—a Berkeley-based clinical psychologist who has participated in his own fair share of orthodox and unorthodox therapies—describes the unfortunate consequences for individuals and society when the psychological model is applied with reckless abandon...

...The Recovery industry has been quick to develop an alarming set of statistics regarding the numbers of Americans who are, not to put too fine a point on it, a mighty long way from Wellness...

...The dopamine "that floods the system makes codependents high—and leaves them craving more...

...She also recollects that "her children were still very much on my mind," a phenomenon she had associated with being a parent before she discovered this was a classic sign of codependent "caretaking" behavior...

...In Love Is a Choice: Recovery for Codependent Relationships, a trio of doomsaying authors sound the ominous tones...

...This term derives from the immensely popular Adult Children of Alcoholics movement which took hold in the early 1980s, pioneered by Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, Janet Woititz, Richard J. Ackerman, Timmen L. Cermak, and others...

...people who were suffering from newfangled "process addictions"—eating disorders, sex addiction, workaholism, rushaholism, care-aholism, negaholism, rigid religious beliefs—people who felt they hadn't received enough love or attention as children...

...People who didn't come from alcoholic homes liked the idea that their current unhappiness could be laid at the feet of their folks, who, while they might not actually have abused alcohol or drugs, were sufficiently obnoxious in other respects as to cripple their children emotionally and, well, keep them from being all that they could be...

...people who felt a general sense of malaise or spiritual emptiness...

...W hen People magazine recently proclaimed that "codependencyis an emotional condition that affects tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans," it underscored just how far the term codependent has shifted from its original limited meanings: one who was married or related to an addict and therefore was affected by his behavior and in unintended ways was complicit in the addiction...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1990 23...

...The trend shows little signs of abating...

...Adults who had been raised by an alcoholic parent were encouraged to acknowledge the degree to which their unstable upbringing might have affected their ability to form healthy and lasting attachments in adult life...

...There are canoe trips specifically designed for adult children, as well as a summer camp designed to bring out the Inner Child within the adult child...

...The disease of codepen- dency itself is routinely claimed to af- flict 96 percent of the U.S...

...As psychologist Bernie Zilbergeld observed a few years ago, an entire industry has arisen devoted to treating those who are suffering from "emotional influenza"—that widespread habit of turning one's happiness over and over in one's hands until, quite naturally, it is found wanting...

...It turns out she had confused her symptoms with normalcy...

...In GodDependency, Lynne Bundeson harkens back to the time when she wasn't even aware she had the disease...

...Codependency is many things," she stated in Codependent No More...

...population —indeed, one prominent author on co- dependency offers the chilling observa- tion that the number of codependents in the U.S...

...Recovery fiction could become a whole new market...

...Let's get real: odds are, you came from a dysfunc- tional home...

...Naturally, there are calendars, mugs, and T-shirts...

...doubting the appropriateness of feeling devotion toward people or institutions for which you have genuine respect...

...actually exceeds the total population...

...Finally, she often felt that her work "was not being valued as it should be...

...This sits just fine with Melody Beattie, the most prominent proponent of codependency theory and author of the 1987 bestselling Co- dependent No More and the 1989 follow-up bestseller, Beyond Code- pendency...

...In con- trast, the latest definitions of co- dependency are so broad as to be all- encompassing...

...Dennis Wholey's Becoming Your Own Parent recounts the shocking story of a codependent television producer, who actually "reduced her self-worth" by working jobs with long hours and low pay...

...Let's not get hung up on definitions: "Whatever codependency is," she notes, "it's a problem, and re- covering from it feels better than not...

...A peculiar thing then happened...

...There are also significant stirrings within the hard-science wing of the Recovery movement...

...This system (also known as the White Male System) "is founded on the belief that it is possible to control ourselves, other people,other systems, other countries, even the universe...

...The addictive society rests on a foundation of compulsive lying, which assumes a myriad of subtle disguises ranging from interpersonal niceness and politeness to institutionalized deception such as the policy of airlines to announce scheduled times of departure—times which are hardly ever close to the truth...

...As people began identifying themselves as Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs, ACAs, CoAs), they began flocking to support groups to share stories and experiences, and to "work a program" designed to free them from destructive ways of thinking and behaving...

...The problem with codependency, according to Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse and her husband, is that "if you don't pathologize it then you can't have a treatment plan...

...Woititz's 1983 Adult Children of Alcoholics, which met with overwhelming and unexpected success, further popularized the concepts and promoted the movement...

...Therapists encourage us to look at and take seriously things which we might otherwise overlook or at least not get worked up about, encourage us to become aware of every nook and cranny of our lives and to make problems out of annoyances and difficulties...

...blaming your imperfections on the nuances of what your parents may have said or done (or didn't say or do...

...It has, in short, a "nonliving orientation...

...In her When Society Becomes an Addict, she claims that "the system in which we live is an addictive system...

...2. Make problems out of difficulties and spread the alarm...

...Wegscheider-Cruse's 1981 Another Chance lay the groundwork, enriching the English language—and particularly its talk shows—with such terms as "enabler" and "caretaker...

...Adult children have their national and regional conferences, support groups, books, motivational tapes, and videos...

...The Cruses are thus promoting the notion, arrived at after extensive research and clinical observation, that codependency is actually a physiological disease whose "target organ is the brain...

...What Zilbergeld said about therapists in general holds true for the counselorsand authors within the Recovery movement: Therapists often lament the low esteem in which people hold themselves and blame religion and parents...

...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1990 An amazing number of people wanted to identify...

...More treatment, at the very least: the Cruses happen to run a residential center especially designed to aid the dopamine-driven...

...By the late 1980s, the phrase "adult child of alcoholics" had given way to the more inclusive "adult child...

...There are treatment centers with names like Koala, AnonAnew, Adult Children Center, Family Passages, and Morningside—The Dawn of Recovery...

...T he original Adult Children of 1 Alcoholics movement focused on creating a paradigm of the alcoholic home, in which every family member was entwined in a web of addiction, conspiracy, and silence...

...While this would certainly be welcome news, there is little evidence to suggest that developing an exquisite sensitivity to the drawbacks of the human condition leads to inner peace, and much to indicate that it is invariably a boon to those in the business of ministering to the unhappy...

...Marion Barry, the indefatigable mayor of Washington, D.C., has brought the issue into the political arena by acknowledging his own substance abuse and by stating he will enroll his entire family in We've Step programs (himself in AA, his wife in AlAnon, and his son in Al-a-Tot...

...People who had ever been involved with an alcoholic or drug addict...

...President...

...The current "codependency" movement is proof positive of Zilbergeld's cynical assessment of the psychological scene...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1990 21 T he challenge of hypochondria, as 1 any hypochondriac worth his salt will tell you, is scrutinizing oneself for symptoms...

...Over 200 million of us are denying our past . . . " states ACOA expert Herbert L. Gravitz, "Perhaps 230 million children of all ages in our country...

...1. Continue the psychologization of life...

...All this was before a friend told her she was suffering from codependency—that "crippling emotional, mental, and physical disease . . . [which] is more contagious than AIDS...

...When Philip Rieff announced the "triumph of the therapeutic" in 1966, he could have had little idea of the extent to which the therapeutic mode of thinking would trickle down...

...The experts caution that even if you weren't aware of anything being wrong in your family, in all probability you were exposed to subtle forms of passive abuse...

...Dr...

...Zilbergeld summarizes the ensuing supply-and-demand cycle in a tidy list: Elizabeth Kristol is an associate editor at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C...

...no longer an infatuation of the intellectual classes, the outlook has been thoroughly democratized through self-help books, support groups, and talk shows...

...There is even a teddy bear specially designed for adult children...

...Through their continual pointing out of places where people are not living up to their potential and are not doing things in the approved therapeutic manner they help produce the problems they inveigh against...

...Today, at a seemingly perverse period in the American experiment, thousands of ordinary people are choosing to diagnose themselves as "codependents" or "adult children...

...F or all that it professes to liberate people from their burdensome upbringings, the Recovery movement manages to introduce a host of oughts and obligations of its own...

...True, she "didn't go out much," but she thought that was because, as she freely acknowledges, "I like to stay at home...

...the number of just plain adult children is much higher...

...worrying whether your kind impulses are a sign of emotional disease: there can be no more efficient recipe for self-doubt than the wholesale encouragement of attitudes such as these...

...One prominent author offers the chilling observation that the number of codependents in the U.S...

...They are presumably doing so with the expectation that applying new labels to the human condition will lead to a swift and efficacious cure...

...It is a dependency on people— on their moods, behaviors, sickness or well-being, and their love...

...The magazine's evolution has reflected the evolution of the movement: in 1986 Changes was founded as a magazine "for and about adult children of alcoholics," but as the market for Recovery literature shifted, so did the journal, which is now simply "for and about adult children...

...As Bernie Zilbergeld shrewdly noted, in The Shrinking of America, "therapeutic thinking finds us doing at least as many things wrong as churches, parents, and others find, and has at least as many rules for being different...

...Why have one disease when you can have two: according to Recovery experts, a large number of codependents are also—more Recoverese here'adult children...

...Cures of patients who suppose themselves to be glass may easily be performed by pulling a chair upon which they are about to sit from under them, and afterwards showing them a large collection of pieces of glass as the fragments of their bodies...

...the concept has already been pioneered by Erica Jong, with her recently published Any Woman's Blues: A Novel of Obsession...

...actually exceeds the total population...

...Vast dissatisfaction with oneself is one of therapeutic thinking's most important products...

...Changes runs articles like "Let's Get Fiscal...

...the nation's capital has already been deemed codependent, its residents presumably having developed a symbiotic relationship with their elected official...

...Melody Beattie has two new books due out in the coming year, and there are already works dealing withgrandchildren of alcoholics and adult children of adult children...

...These newcomers were gladly welcomed, under the rubric of "Those Who Identify...

...In the case of codependency they are readily found...

...Barbaric as it may seem, in some U.S...

...Even organized religion—which many codependents blame for their current unhappiness (see sidebar)—never intruded itself into as many corners of the psyche as does much of pop psychology...

...The number of people said to grow up in a "dysfunctional" home, and therefore to be at high risk for codependency, is put at anywhere from 100 million to 230 million (an assertion that would seem to put a strain on the prefix "dys2...

...There is little hope that you will escape codependency if your parents didn't get along, since the disease will strike you if your parents have exercised any of the following options: "divorce, separate, fight, or remain together for the sake of the children...

...Love Is a Choice urges its readers to examine their lives for "the lurking presence of addictive agents," such as devotion to an organization or a cause, television, board games, jogging, or golf...

...The rooting out of so-called codependent thought and behavior is the linchpin of the booming Recovery industry, a therapy-cum-publishing phenomenon whose premise is that nearly all of us are riddled with emotional disease and that our only hope of achieving health is by participating in some variation of a Twelve Step support-group program, modeled after the Alcoholics Anonymous treatment developed half a century ago...

...Adult children even have their own magazine...

...Castigating yourself for being affected and influenced by others...

...3. Make it acceptable to have the problem and to be unable to resolve it on one's own...

...It goes like this: the codependent, suffering from "emotional abscesses," engages in behavior which "may block re-uptake of a powerful neurotransmitter called dopamine...

...families there is "no sexual discussion, preparation, or teaching...

...We learn of parents who routinely tell their children, "Later maybe," or, "You kids play outside or something...

...When hugged, this battery-operated Sponsor Bear—named after the sponsors who guide participants through a Twelve Step program—calls out various Recovery phrases of good cheer, such as: "One Day at a Time," "Live and Let Live," "This Too Shall Pass," and "Turn It Over" (this last presumably referring to the Twelve Step admonition to Turn One's Life Over to a Higher Power, as opposed to actually inverting the bear...

...This movement, designed with great specificity for those who were raised by an alcoholic parent, gained wide appeal...

...But counselors themselves are also responsible...

...Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812) Hypochondria is never a pretty sight, and spiritual hypochondria —that fussing and brooding over one's psychic health—is no exception...

...How can you tell if you are suffer- ing from codependency...

...Two hundred and thirty million anything constitute a hefty market sector...

...The Cruses are open to the possibility that the disease might be genetically transmitted...

...Adult Children and Money" as well as interviews with well-known figures like author Joyce Maynard, an adult child of an alcoholic, and Michael Reagan, an adult child of—a common phenomenon, this—a U.S...

...As psychologists, counselors, and social workers construct increasingly narrow definitions of what may be deemed healthy, they foster discontent, guilt, blame, and utopianism in their patients...