Challenging Codependency

Co-dependency is defined in various ways; essentially it refers to a person's overfocus on the behaviour and feelings of others. It began with, but is not confined to people involved with practising alcoholics. The authors assembled by Marguerite Babcock and Christine McKay in Challenging Codependency argue that the label is harmful to women, and what it really describes, but does not address in any politically effective way, is the social, economic and political oppression of women. In the essay "Codependency and the Myth of Recovery: A Feminist Scrutiny," Kay Hagan sums up the anthology's central point: codependency "is a euphemism for the practice of dominance and subordination" and the concept locates the origin of personal problems in individual experience rather than in social relations. In other words, power-over attitudes of gender, class, sexuality and race make people sick. That our symptoms are then decontextualized makes us crazy.

This anthology examines codependency's focus "on women's alleged pathology rather than on the dynamics of sexism." The more ludicrous ideas about addiction and dependency are exposed in this collection of reprinted articles, such as the belief that alcoholism would dwindle away were it not for enablers. That women have been sold a bill of goods is the message of this work, which argues convincingly that the social construction of codependency as a disease "has provided a virtually endless supply of new clients for the substance abuse industry."

COPYRIGHT 1996 Herizons Magazine, Inc.