Magazine: Sociological Quarterly, September, 1992
Record: 4
96111412330038025319920901
Title: Discursive formation, life stories, and the emergence of
co-dependency: `Power/knowledge' and the...
Subject(s): BIOGRAPHY; CODEPENDENCY; FOUCAULT, Michel -- Criticism &
interpretation
Source: Sociological Quarterly, 1992, Vol. 33 Issue 3, p337, 28p
Author(s): Rice, John Steadman
Abstract: Argues that research on life stories can be enriched by
treating them as `discursive formations.' Focauldian archaeological
and genealogic concepts; Emergence of co-dependency; Process
addictions; Family systems therapy; Human nature and culture concepts;
Authority in co-dependency.
AN: 9611141233
ISSN: 0038-0253
Full Text Word Count: 13516
Database: Academic Search Elite
DISCURSIVE FORMATION, LIFE STORIES, AND THE EMERGENCE OF
CO-DEPENDENCY: 'POWER/KNOWLEDGE' AND THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY
Following Foucault, this article argues that current research on life
stories can be enriched by treating them as "discursive
formations." The analysis undertakes a streamlined
"archaeology" and "genealogy" to examine the emergence of
co-dependency as one such formation. Various co-dependency
"theorists" illustrate the ways that rules for true statements
in co-dependency discourse contradict those of its
psychological and addictive predecessors. These rules produce a
unique discursive formation and different life stories.
Moreover, Foucault's approach stresses the role of
"power/knowledge" in the construction of the co-dependency
canon, deepening understanding of life stories as forms of both
empowerment and subjection to alternative forms of authority.
Since the mid-1980s, co-dependency[1] has become an increasingly
significant sociocultural phenomenon, attracting perhaps millions of
adherents and accounting for millions of dollars in book sales.
Consider the following:
* During the summer of 1989, the first National Conference on
Co-Dependency was held at the Wyndham Paradise Valley Resort in
Scottsdale, Arizona. Although conference planners anticipated perhaps
800, the event "sold out at 1,800 registrants [and] many people were
turned away for lack of space." Indeed, the "resort had to set up
impromptu food booths all over the hotel" (Krier 1989, p. 21).
* As of July 1990, Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA) meetings numbered
2,088 weekly throughout the U.S. and 64 international meetings were
registered with the CoDA International Service Office.
* Melody Beattie's Codependent No More (1987)[2] was the tenth
best-selling trade paperback in the nation on the Publishers Weekly 18
October 1991 list. It has been on that list 154 weeks.
* John Bradshaw--a co-dependency theorist, management consultant,
family systems therapist, and lecturer--has also been remarkably
prolific and successful. In 1989, Bradshaw On: The Family (1988) and
Healing the Shame That Binds You (1989) were selling a combined total
of about 40,000 copies per month. His most recent book, Homecoming:
Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child (1990) was the eighth
best-selling nonfiction hardcover in the nation on the Publishers
Weekly 9 September 1991 list. It has been on the list 51 weeks.
December 2 and 8, 1990, for 6 hours each day, Bradshaw hosted a new
public television (PBS) program based upon his latest book. The
program, currently in rebroadcast, showcases his newest techniques for
recovery from co-dependency and other psycho-addictive problems.
This partial catalogue underscores co-dependency's rapid incorporation
into contemporary American culture. Yet, for both the theorists and
their critics (e.g., Kaminer 1990; Krier 1989; Kristol 1990;
Streitfeld 1990), defining what, exactly, "co-dependency" is proves
elusive. Only since the First National Conference have theorists
agreed upon a single definition, and even that--as critics quickly
and, often, condescendingly note--remains extremely unspecific: "a
pattern of painful dependence on compulsive behaviors and on approval
from others in an attempt to find safety, self-worth and identity"
(Krier 1989, p. 1).
Rather than use co-dependency theory as foil for yet another display
of critical and theoretical acumen, as do critics who upbraid
theorists for lack of rigor or for circular logic, this study treats
co-dependency as a life story people select as a narrative of their
lives to acquire a new and more satisfying sense of identity (see,
e.g., Bruner 1987; Denzin 1989, 1990a, 1990b; Plummer 1983, 1990a,
1990b). Although co-dependent life stories clearly draw upon both
psychotherapeutic and addictive "canons" (Denzin 1990a), each approach
has different rules for what constitutes a true statement; each
"creates" and requires different kinds of individuals. This suggests
that such groups as CODA, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Adult Children of
Alcoholics (ACoA), and the like, should be understood as "discursive
formations" (Foucault 1972, also 1980a, 1980b, 1984a, 1984b, 1984c,
1984d).
Viewing life stories as discursive formations offers important
advantages: One can carefully distinguish among commitments people
make when they adopt a particular version of life narrative. These
distinctions can be isolated by examining key--albeit often
implicit--rules that structure the kind of story a given discursive
formation allows. These rules have significant implications for how
people understand, structure, and con- duct their social
relationships. Moreover, examining co-dependency as a discursive
formation requires considering the role of "power/knowledge" (Foucault
1980b) in stories' formation.
This analysis comprises two stages. First I examine the major
canon-forming works in the discourse to isolate the rules that
distinguish CoDA life stories from those of adaptational/addictive and
liberation psychotherapy discourses. The primary, but not only, texts
used are by Beattie (1987), Bradshaw (1988), Schaef (1986), and Subby
(1987). This combined (and necessarily attenuated) archaeology and
genealogy yields a clearer portrait of what it means to "become
co-dependent" (cf., Becker 1963; Matza 1969; Rudy 1986). Second I
consider the role of power in life story construction and selection.
This question of "canonical authority" compels caution about following
the path of "theoretical minimalism" (Denzin 1990a) recently
prescribed in life story research.
ARCHAEOLOGY, GENEALOGY, AND DISCURSIVE FORMATION.
A Foucauldian "archaeological" inquiry, in essence, asks what
conditions foster particular statements that come to be taken as true.
The appearance of one statement rather than another is, of course, not
a simple question for Foucault. A statement is not an isolated
"utterance," but "always belongs to a series or a whole. . . . [I]it
is always part of a network of statements" (Foucault 1972, p. 99)
which compose a discursion. Reflexively, the discursive formation--"a
relatively autonomous system of serious speech acts in which |a given
statement] was produced" (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, p. 49)[3]--sets
the context in which constitutive statements are held to make "serious
sense," to be "true." And truth, for Foucault, is no more than an
"ensemble of rules . . . [and] a system of ordered procedures for the
production, regulation, distribution and operation of statements"
(1980b, pp. 132-133).
Genealogy--"later" Foucault--does not intend to displace the
archaeological "dig," but to broaden the scope of inquiry. It seeks to
trace the "descent" and "emergence" (1984a) of new discursive
formations; to trace a discourse's lineage across the path of
contradictions and logical discontinuities--the "accidents, chance,
passion, petty malice, surprises . . . and power" (Davidson 1986, p.
224)--that foster new discursive formations. The co-dependency canon's
autonomous status is the product "of a battle which defines and clears
a space" (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982, p. 109) within which its own
statements have assumed truth value.
Background: Of Therapy and Addiction
Co-dependency is clearly part, and an increasingly important part, of
contemporary efforts to find alternatives to "traditional" forms of
identity, such as those the nuclear family, denominational and
church-based religion, and the demands of a normative community yield.
The past three decades have seen an explosion of such alternative life
stories, particularly those psychotherapy and addiction theories
offer--each of which co-dependency has drawn upon freely.
Psychotherapy's rising public fortunes are amply documented. Empirical
studies (e.g., Veroff, Douvan, and Kulka 1981; Yankelovich 1982;
Zilbergeld 1983) both verify and spawn a virtual cottage industry of
concerned, if not critical, theoretical comment, including Mills's
(1959) pioneering discussion of the post-modern, psychotherapeutic
search for self; Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton's
(1985) "therapeutic attitude"; Gehlen's (1980) "new subjectivism";
Sennett's (1978) The Fall of Public Man; and Boyers's (1975)
"psychological man." Each of these studies, in turn, echoes
Berger's(1966) conviction that Western, pluralistic societies pose
significant practical and theoretical problems for identity
construction and maintenance, and Rieff's that The Triumph of the
Therapeutic ([1966] 1987) constitutes no less than a cultural
revolution, in whichself supplants society as the priority of
contemporary moral order.
The growing public acceptance of the disease model of addiction over
the same time period is no less striking. Between 1979 and 1989, the
total number of privately-owned addiction treatment centers more than
doubled, from 2,935 to 6,036 facilities (National Institute on Drug
Abuse and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism 1990),
and the most recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study
of treatment facility censuses (1990, N.B. ch. 7) reports that 143
million people received some form of addiction treatment during 1987.
The proliferation of self-help groups modeled after AA and its 12-Step
recovery program mirrors these figures. Indeed,
There are 12-step programs for just about everything (there are 15
million Americans in 500,000 recovery groups and 100 million
Americans are related to someone with some form of addictive
behavior), and there are several hundred recovery bookstores
throughout the country. (Jones 1990, p. 16)
Although one must sift through such claims cautiously, little doubt
can exist that the 12-Step philosophy has captured the allegiances of
a substantial minority of Americans. "Anonymous" groups specialize for
life troubles ranging from drug and alcohol problems through
over/undereating, gambling, overspending, sex and love addiction,
emotional volatility, child abuse, incest, and smoking.
This 12-Step subculture,[4] if you will, also offers support groups to
assist friends and loved ones of those with the "primary" addiction in
dealing with the trials of intimacy with an addict. Al-Anon, founded
in 1951, the 12-Step program for those close to alcoholics, is the
oldest, largest, and most well-known of these "secondary" groups. As
of 1988, Al-Anon claimed 28,000 groups worldwide, 15,000 in the U.S.
The meteoric rise of ACoA, much more recently, further underscores
public embrace of Anonymous programs. For example, in 1981, 14 weekly
ACoA meetings were registered with Al-Anon's World Service
Organization. By April 1990, this number had mushroomed to over 1,500
for the U.S., and over 200 for 10 foreign countries.[5]
Although the co-dependency canon has clear affinities with these
groups, less clear is where, exactly, it fits in the 12-Step
subculture. The term's original use (among addiction treatment
industry personnel, starting in the mid-1970s), appeared to describe
"secondary" groups; that is, co-dependents, much like Al-Anon members,
are not themselves substance addicted, but in an intimate relationship
with a "chemical dependent." In the mid-to-late 1980s, however, a
group of addiction counselors and people otherwise active in the
12-Step subculture began to urge a broader application of the term.
These theorists (e.g., Wegscheider-Cruse 1984, 1985; Subby 1987, 1988;
Beattie 1987, 1989; Bradshaw 1988, 1989, 1990; Schaef 1986, 1987,
1990) insisted that "co-dependency" is itself a "primary" disease.
Even the subculture far from unanimously accepts this position,[6] but
many entirely endorse it.
THE EMERGENCE OF CO-DEPENDENCY
Superficially, co-dependency can be and has been understood as one
more psychological construct. Certainly, this is how critics have
viewed it. For example, noted psychoanalyst Robert Coles argues that
co-dependency is a "typical example of how anything packaged as
psychology in this culture seems to have an all too gullible audience"
(quoted in Kaminer 1990, p. 1). While of course accurate to say that
the co-dependency canon reflects a psychology, this is tantamount to
saying that the AA view of addiction, Skinnerian behaviorism, Freudian
psychoanalysis, and Rogerian psychotherapy are all "psychologies."
Such an observation, while indisputable, obscures far more than it
reveals.
Each of these psychologies observes fundamentally different rules for
truth, and, as such, produces fundamentally different life stories.
Co-dependency draws upon, in particular, two of these canons:
liberation psychotherapy and the disease model of addiction.
"Liberation psychotherapy" is the working term used here for those
human potential psychologies that call for the individual's
emancipation from the stifling demands of role-bound conduct. The
disease model of addiction, of course, explains people's repeated
violation of sobriety and propriety norms by organic dependency upon
alcohol and other drugs. Co-dependency fuses these two perspectives,
and thus cannot be fully or solely understood in terms of either.
Perhaps the most fundamental internal rules for truth in various
psychological statements are born of the theorists' assumptions
regarding human nature and culture. This is logical enough, for the
conflicts between the individual and sociocultural institutions are
and have long been the province of psychotherapeutic theory and
techniques. As the following discussion illustrates, to understand
co-dependency in this way is certainly helpful, for its blend of two
contradictory trajectories of assumptions grounds the autonomous life
stories it vouchsafes adherents.
Adaptational Discourses and Addiction
Discourses of adaptation derive from the assumptions that (1) humans
are by nature aggressive and potentially dangerous, and (2) culture,
as the source of human morality and civilized existence, is both
valuable and necessary for social order. These "rules" set the
conditions for the truth of certain statements. For example, an
adaptationally oriented psychologist tells his readers, "[O]ne of the
outstanding effects of the discipline found in the average home and
school" is that the "very deep-lying, bestial, primitive, psychic life
in us [is] buried under a mass of training" (Conklin 1946, pp. 4, 14).
Such "pure" adaptational discourses also yield psychological case
studies such as one psychologist's discussion of Peter, an 18 year old
boy that "classed himself as a homosexual" (Twitchell 1950, p. 172).
Under his psychologist's guidance, the young man "worked out a plan
for contacts with the opposite sex," and within the year, "Peter was
far enough along to get married. Whether he was completely cured is
not the question" (pp. 172-173). The unquestioned priority of existing
moral order in such comments is unmistakable and a product of the
rules for adaptational truth.
One of the well-springs from which co-dependency draws is addictive
discourse, which, as originated and practiced by AA, is a modified
discourse of adaptation. Here, too, is a tacit rule that existing
moral order is the standard by which to diagnose disease and gauge the
nature of "recovery." The putatively innate moral qualities or
capacities of human nature are largely bracketed, in favor of the
judgment that disease explains the individual's recurrent violation of
norms.[7] These rules inform the following observations from an
important AA text:
We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we tried to
correct those conditions and found that we couldn't to our
entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we
became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to
change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.
(Alcoholics Anonymous World Services 1985, p. 47; emphasis
added)
These intrinsically restitutive themes recur again and again in AA
literature. For example, the first of AA's 12-Steps--"We admitted we
were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become
unmanageable"--is predicated upon just such implicit but nonetheless
thoroughgoing cultural conservativism: the alcoholic is powerless,
after all, to behave in accordance with existing normative order, as
personal and social unmanageability manifest.
The general addictive rules contain several additional criteria for
true statements: (l) because addicts continue drug use and thus,
destructive behavior, they are diseased; (2) because diseased, they
are powerless to act otherwise; (3) the pattern of misuse results in
the addict's increasingly unlivable, chaotic, and troubled life;
moreover, (4) members are to address the damage the addiction does to
self and others, rather than the damage that may have caused the
individual's addiction. Indeed, statements that espouse a social
etiology for addiction are clearly not accorded truth value; rather,
in AA argot, they evince "denial," or "stinkin' thinkin'," an
unwillingness to "own" responsibility for "getting into recovery." In
other words, members who describe their problem drinking as the
product of, for example, their upbringing, are advised that such views
are symptoms rather than explanations of their disease.[8]
Co-dependency and Addiction
On the surface, co-dependency appears to be subject to the same truth
rules that guide AA's addiction model. Co-dependency theorists rely
heavily upon the addiction discourse, and the 12-Steps of CoDA match
AA's with the exception of a single word in the first step: "We
admitted we were powerless over others, that our lives had become
unmanageable."[9] This suggests the faithful view "co-dependency" as
an addiction, an alcoholism-like disease. Thus, Schaef argues that, in
alcohol and drug "treatment circles, we have been saying that the
disease of alcoholism and the disease of co-dependence . . . is [sic],
in essence, the same disease" (1986, p. 29), and
Currently, we are beginning to recognize that co-dependence is a
disease in its own right. It fits the disease concept in that
it has an onset (a point at which the person's life is just not
working, usually as a result of an addiction), a definable
course (the person continues to deteriorate mentally,
physically, psychologically, and spiritually), and, untreated,
has a predictable outcome (death). (p. 6; original emphasis)
Although CoDA's first step states that co-dependents are powerless
over others, somewhat paradoxically, they are also powerless over
their desire to control others. This doubly powerless status informs
Beattie's observations that "a codependent person is one who has let
another's behavior affect him or her, and is obsessed with controlling
that person's behavior" (1987, p. 31); and "[c]odependents are
oppressed, depressed, and repressed. . . . We try to control other
people's feelings" (p. 130). In a similar vein, she argues "[W]e
cannot control life. Some of us can barely control ourselves. People
ultimately do what they want to do" (p. 74).
Dual powerlessness is perhaps most evident in the theorists'
catalogues of co-dependency's symptoms, remarkably similar, regardless
of whose list one consults. Beattie's (1987, pp. 37-45) list, only
partially reproduced here, is perhaps the most comprehensive.
Codependents
* don't know what they want or need.
* abandon their routine to respond to or do something for someone
else.
* overcommit themselves.
* feel harried and pressured.
* reject compliments or praise.
* get depressed from a lack of compliments or praise.
* have a lot of shoulds.
* get artificial feelings of self-worth from helping others.
* wish good things would happen to them.
* wish other people would like or love them.
* tend to worry.
* abandon their routine because they are so upset about something or
somebody.
* feel controlled by events or people.
* get confused.
* believe lies.
* wonder why they feel like they're going crazy.
* center their lives around other people.
* worry other people will leave them.
* stay in relationships that don't work.
* leave bad relationships and form new ones that don't work either.
* don't say what they mean.
* don't know what they mean.
* find it difficult to get to the point.
* aren't sure what the point is.
* say everything is their fault.
* say nothing is their fault.
* apologize for bothering people
* avoid talking about themselves, their problems, feelings and
thoughts.
* tend to be extremely irresponsible.
* tend to be extremely responsible.
This list owes a great deal to addiction theorists whose work is most
often associated with ACoA rather than co-dependency, per se. ACoA's
influence on CoDA is repeatedly evident in the discourse. Woititz, for
example, documents a recurrent set of characteristics among ACoAs,
including their tendencies to "constantly seek approval and
affirmation," "judge themselves without mercy," and be either "super
responsible or super irresponsible [sic]" (1983, p. 4). The
similarities with Beattie's list are clear. For Woititz, however,
these traits identify the non-addicted family members; she sees ACoAs,
in short, as another "secondary" casualty of addiction in the family.
"Co-dependency" differs in either or both of two ways: it is viewed as
(1) a problem not limited to so-called "alcoholic families" and (2) a
primary disease in the manner of alcoholism.
However strained the analogy with alcoholism may be to the outside
observer, at least two of the long-standing rules for true statements
in addictive discourse--powerlessness and unmanageability--enter
Beattie's list. However, correspondences with other conditions of
addictive truth are less solid. Although, for example, all the
theorists suggest co-dependents repeatedly violate some version of
moral order, uncertain is which or whose moral order is transgressed
by such symptoms as worrying, centering one's life around others,
apologizing for bothering people, or wishing good things would happen.
Such "violations" obviously are not judged by "traditional" cultural
standards.
Closer examination demonstrates that the discourse routinely strays
beyond conventional criteria for addictive truth. For example,
Wegscheider-Cruse defines the most likely co-dependents as
all persons who (1) are in a love or marriage relationship with an
alcoholic, (2) have one or more alcoholic parents or
grandparents, or (3) grew up in an emotionally repressive
family. (1984, p. 1; emphasis added)
To invoke the "emotionally repressive family" belies AA's tacit rule
that existing cultural institutions are the standard of diagnosis and
recovery, rather than the disease source. Yet this theme is frequent
in co-dependency discourse. For example, Subby's definition directly
echoes Wegscheider-Cruse's. "Co-dependency" is
an emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as
a result of an individual's prolonged exposure to a set of
oppressive rules--which prevent open expression of feelings as
well as the direct discussion of personal and interpersonal
problems. . . [It is] born of the rules of the family. (1988,
pp. 26-27; emphases added)
All co-dependency theorists exhibit a similar "anti-institutional
mood" (Zijderveld 1972), particularly towards those most directly
responsible for primary socialization: the family, church, and
schools. Schaef asserts
three of our major institutions--the family, the school, and the
church--actively train us not to have boundaries. They teach us
to think what we are told to think, feel what we are told to
feel, see what we are told to see, and know what we are told to
know. This is cultural co-dependence training. We learn that
the reference point for thinking, feeling, seeing, and knowing
is external to the self. (1986, p. 46)
Clearly, in short, traditional rules for true statements about
addiction do not hold for co-dependency. But the critique of cultural
institutions is only one break with conventional addictive discourse.
Consider this passage from AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:
As by some deep instinct, we A.A.'s have known from the very beginning
that we must never, no matter what the provocation, publicly
takes sides in any fight, even a worthy one. All history
affords us the spectacle of striving nations and groups finally
torn asunder because they were designed for. or tempted into
controversy. Others fell apart because of sheer
self-righteousness while trying to enforce upon the rest of
mankind some millennium of their own specification. (1985, p.
176)
These comments refer to the "tenth tradition": AA "has no opinion on
outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public
controversy" (p. 176). In striking contrast, Bradshaw claims that
Something's wrong in a society where 60 million are seriously affected
by alcoholism; 60 million are sex abuse victims: 60% of women
and 50% of men have eating disorders; one out of eight is a
battered woman; 51% of marriages end in divorce, and there is
massive child abuse. We are an addicted society. We are
severely co-dependent. (1988, p. 172)
Clearly, this offers an opinion regarding outside issues--a departure
itself. However, the conclusions reached indicate another point of
discontinuity. Although some of his data are dubious, few would fault
Bradshaw's selection of pressing social problems. Child and sexual
abuse and violence against women are indisputably serious and
troubling. But one must ask in what ways these are addictions. Recall
that one criterion for addiction is physiological chemical dependency.
This dependency, and the body's response when deprived (withdrawal),
is perhaps the key source of the disease model's public and medical
legitimacy: at some point, the user is physiologically dependent upon
the drug. To speak of addiction in the absence of a physiologically
addicting substance must be seen as another genealogical break with
conventional addictive discourse.
Process Addictions
In this departure from the rules for addictive statements,
co-dependency is part of a broader project of redefining addiction to
include so-called "process" or "activity" addictions. This project
underlies Schaef's observation that
An addiction to food or chemicals is often called an ingestive
addiction. A process addiction is an addiction (by individuals,
groups, even societies) to a way (or the process) of acquiring
the addictive substance. The function of an addiction is to
keep us out of touch with ourselves (our feelings, morality,
awareness--our living process). An addiction, in short, is
anything we feel we have to lie about. (1986, p. 24; emphases
added)
Moreover, if addiction is grounded in dishonesty, then the former is
pervasive, at least as Schaef defines dishonesty:
To be out of touch with your feelings and unable to articulate what
you feel and think is dishonest. To distrust your perceptions
and therefore be unwilling to communicate them is dishonest. To
focus on fulfilling others' expectations, whether they are
right for you or not, is dishonest. Impression management is
dishonest. (1986, p. 59)
Bradshaw's equally broad view of addiction argues that behavior is the
crucial distinction between the addict and non-addict. This holds for
addictive discourse as well, but for Bradshaw the distinction rests
upon whether or not the behaviors are "strategies of defense against .
. . [emotional] pain" (1989, p. 88). If they are such strategies,
they are mood-altering and become addictive. These behaviors include
perfectionism, striving for power and control, rage, arrogance,
criticism and blame, judgementalness [sic] and moralizing,
contempt, patronization [sic], caretaking and helping, envy,
people-pleasing and being nice. (p. 88; emphasis added)
Again, clearly the theorists strongly nurture linkages between
co-dependency and AA discourse. Equally evident, however, is the
theoretical difficulty of this investment. It stretches the rules of
addictive truth in ways AA founders could not have endorsed and,
indeed, feared (Alcoholics Anonymous 1985). The focus upon damage done
by the disease is retained, but emphasis upon the damage done to the
individual at the hands of the traditional "identity-bestowing"
(Berger 1963) institutions is added. In short, this view holds that
those institutions are not only shattered by, but cause, addictions.
Combined with the concept of "process" addictions, this position
strongly suggests that "co-dependency" is a psychotherapeutic
category; a product, moreover, of a particular psychotherapeutic
discourse. The life stories these materials might yield would little
resemble those of AA, and only partially those of Al-Anon. The
theorists' emphasis upon cultural repressions, particularly the
"control of desires and emotions," so fundamentally differs from the
dominant version of addictive discourse that it is fair to look
elsewhere for genealogical antecedents.
Family Systems Therapy
Theorists' references to "dysfunctional family systems" point to
another source of co-dependency discourse that warrants exploration:
so-called "family systems" psycho-therapies, a framework born of 1950s
schizophrenia studies (e.g., Midelfort 1957) and expanded upon ever
since (Bowen 1978; Ackerman 1958, 1966; Minuchin 1974, 1984; Laing and
Esterson 1971). In essence, these attempt to go beyond the
individualistic orientation of conventional ego or insight
psychologies and to recognize the individual as part of a social
system with laws and principles that transcend, indeed determine,
individual behavior.
Although no more useful to speak of family systems therapies as a
unified discourse than of co-dependency as "psychological," most
family systems therapists share certain core concepts. These concepts
derive primarily from the influential "Palo Alto Group" (e.g.,
Bateson, Jackson, Haley, and Weakland 1956; Haley 1963a, 1963b;
Jackson 1965, 1967; Satir 1967), who combine general systems theory
tenets (a la Bertalanffy 1950)[10] with studies of "dysfunctional
communication patterns" (Watzlawick 1964, 1978; Watzlawick, Beavin,
and Jackson 1967) into a single theory of family psychopathology. This
theory posits that family interactions (1) are the cumulative product
of a shared history, (2) exhibit "circular causality," and (3) follow
a set of implicit "family rules." Individual behavior, then, assumes
meaning only in the family context.
Especially in the early 1980s, a "second generation" of therapists
heavily influenced by this systemic view began to apply it
specifically and clinically to families with alcohol and drug problems
(see, e.g., Black 1981; Woititz 1979, 1983; Wegscheider 1981;
Wegscheider-Cruse 1984, 1985). It is since commonplace to speak of
addiction as a "family disease." That the presence of an addiction
affects all family members is the guiding assumption, or, in
Bradshaw's terms,
The theory of family systems accepts the family itself as the patient
with the presenting member being viewed as a sign of family
psychopathology. (1988, p. 27)
In essence, in this role theory of the addicted family (see Denzin
1991, ch. 7) no one gets sick alone. Rather, the alcoholic constitutes
a threat to the other family members, all of whom adapt behaviorally
in response. These "accommodations," as Wegscheider-Cruse calls them
(1985, p. 129), become patterned into roles, in effect, symptoms of a
dysfunctional family system. The names assigned to each general
pattern of adaptation imply the nature of the dysfunctional roles.
Black, for example, identifies "The Responsible One, The Adjuster, The
Placater, and Acting-Out Child" (1981, chs. 2, 4). Renamed and
expanded, the list now includes "the enabler" (most often the spouse,
who "covers up" for the addict), "the family scapegoat," "the family
hero," "the lost child," and "the mascot" (Wegscheider-Cruse 1985, p.
129). Despite these largely nominal changes, however, Black's
influence upon co-dependency remains unmistakable.
Clearly these original applications of family systems theory to
addiction abide by criteria of addictive truth: the addicted family
member is said to throw the family system out of balance, and the
other members, in keeping with the concept of circular causality (or
"homeostasis"), attempt to compensate for the addict's volatility and
unreliability. These attempts help keep the system functioning, but at
the expense of the non-addicts' psychological well-being. As with the
AA view, the addict is seen as sick, rather than, say, intrinsically
benign or aggressive. The focus, then, is upon the damage the disease
visits upon family members. This point of view orients such
"secondary" 12-Step groups as Al-Anon and the majority of
Al-Anon-recognized ACoA groups. [11]
Therapies of Liberation
An alternative view the family systems perspective affords--but
derived from opposed ontological assumptions--reverses the temporal
logic characteristic of addictive discourse. Rather than focus upon
the damage done to the family, this view emphasizes the damage done by
the family and other institutions. Thus, whereas in the addictive
version of family systems theory, the sick individual throws the
system out of balance, in this alternative version, the system makes
the individual sick.
This second application of family systems therapy shares and
contributes to co-dependency's critical stance towards traditional
institutions, and resonates with what is here referred to as
liberation psychotherapy, a discourse perhaps most associated with
Carl Rogers (see also Maslow 1949; Montagu 1950). Liberation therapy
assumes that culture is unduly repressive but not particularly
necessary or valuable, and that human nature is innately gentle and
loving; in short, it inverts the assumptions of adaptational
psychologies. Regarding human nature, for example, Rogers says,
I have little sympathy with the rather prevalent concept that man
[sic] is basically irrational, and that his [sic] impulses, if
not controlled, will lead to destruction of others and self.
(1961, p. 194)
Indeed, "the basic nature of the human being, when functioning freely,
is constructive and trustworthy" (p. 194). The principal source of
human suffering, for Rogers, is the sociocultural order that requires
and creates the so-called "defensively-organized" person. Decrying
this cultural context, Rogers laments,
IT]he Protestant Christian tradition . . . has permeated our culture
with the concept that man is basically sinful, and only by
something approaching a miracle can this sinful nature be
negated. (p. 91)
Still more disturbing for Rogers is the complicity of rival
psychologies in this pessimistic outlook. For example,
Freud and his followers have presented convincing arguments that . . .
man's basic and unconscious nature . . . is primarily made up
of instincts which would, if permitted expression, result in
incest, murder, and other crimes. (p. 91)
Over and against this understanding of culture and human nature,
Rogers views life as a "process" in which the individual is free and
encouraged to express and explore all emotions: "I like to think of
[this process] as a 'pure culture,'" in which "the individual . . . is
coming to be what he is" (pp. 111-113; original emphasis). Key to
psychological health, then, for Rogers, is individual liberation from
these cultural effects:
When we are able to free the individual from defensiveness, so that he
is open to the wide range of his own needs . . . his reactions
may be trusted to be positive, forward-moving, constructive.
(p. 194)
As with the discourses of adaptation and addiction, certain rules
govern the types of statements possible as a Rogerian. True statements
in liberation therapy discourse must either explicitly refer to or be
implicitly guided by the notions that (1) the individual is innately
"constructive and trustworthy," (2) this individual, moreover, is the
"true self," sequestered behind a wall of defenses born of repressive
cultural authority, and (or) (3) emotional experience and expression
best access the nature of this self. These more fundamental rules
shape the family systems theory tenets that underpin co-dependency
discourse.
Co-Dependency, Human Nature, and Culture
Co-dependency theorists uniformly espouse liberation therapy's version
of human nature. According to Bradshaw, "all of us are born with a
deep and profound sense of worth. We are precious, rare, unique and
innocent" (1988, p. 46); and, "[A] child is precious and incomparable.
Unless treated with value and love, this sense of preciousness and
incomparability diminishes" (1989, p. 59). Just so, Subby views
children as "creative, tenacious, and persevering spirits," and
cautions, "[I]t would be a grave mistake to think that . . . the
fragile spirit of a child . . . is resilient to the hideous abuses,
tensions, and emotional trauma of a troubled family" (1987, pp. 63,
62). Schaef, too, decries culture's impact upon human nature,
observing that "[W]e all know how frank children can be, yet much of
their training teaches them how to be 'nice,' 'polite,' and 'tactful'"
(1986, p. 69).
As liberation therapy renders family systems thought, the emotionally
repressive family causes the innately innocent and benign individual's
suffering, and more significantly, the entire sociocultural order
exhibits the same dynamics as do families. Thus, Bradshaw remarks,
The identified patient then becomes the symptom of the family system's
dysfunctionality. The family itself is a symptom of society at
large. (1988, p. 27; emphasis added)
Although using slightly different terms, Schaef clearly agrees. For
her, "co-dependency" is simply one manifestation of an underlying
"addictive process," which
is an unhealthy and abnormal disease process, whose assumptions,
beliefs, behaviors, and lack of spirituality lead to a process
of non-living. This basic disease, from which spring the
disease of co-dependence and alcoholism--among others--is
tacitly and openly supported by the society in which we live.
(1986, p. 21)
Similarly, Subby's contention that, "[i]n the most basic sense,
co-dependency is the product of delayed or interrupted identity
brought about by the practice of dysfunctional rules" (1987, p. 55;
original emphasis), obviously starts with the framework and argot of
family systems therapy, but he subsequently leaves no doubt that the
"dysfunctional rules" ultimately are those of contemporary society, as
viewed through Rogerian lenses:
You and I, our families, and our society are all systems that need to
be free to evolve. . . . Short of taking this metaphoric image
or analogy too literally, I would nonetheless venture to say
that co-dependency and its basic structure is more than just a
concept rooted in social history, it is also a cultural
disease. (p. 81)
Although Beattie's cultural critique is perhaps the most subdued of
the major theorists', her view nonetheless largely mirrors theirs. She
argues, for example, that contemporary social institutions (in this
specific passage, religion) teach the following "lies":
[D]on't be selfish, always be kind and help people, never hurt other
people's feelings because we "make them feel," never say no,
and don't mention personal wants and needs because it's not
polite. (1987, p. 85)
The "Poisonous Pedagogy"
Of all the theorists, perhaps Bradshaw most consistently seeks to
construct a general theoretical model of "co-dependency." He argues
that "co-dependency" is the product of "the poisonous pedagogy"[12]--a
set of cultural rules demanding, at bottom, "obedience, orderliness,
cleanliness and the control of emotions and desires" (1988, p. 7;
original emphasis). In more detail, the rules of this poisonous
pedagogy include (1) control of all actions, feelings, and personal
behavior at all times; (2) a standard of rigid and unrealistic
perfectionism, and an expectation that one must always be right; (3) a
propensity to assign blame to self or others "whenever things don't
turn out as planned"; (4) a no-talk rule, that forbids discussion of
"any feelings, thoughts, or experiences"; and (5) mythmaking, or the
tendency to deny that there are problems that warrant attention (pp.
80-82).
Bradshaw argues that these cultural parenting rules translate into the
psychological "abandonment" of children. Parents abandon their
children by, among other things, "not modeling their own emotions" for
them; "not being there to affirm their children's expression of
emotion"; "not providing for their children's developmental dependency
needs"; and "not giving them their time, attention and direction" (p.
3). Abandonment, in this expanded sense, creates a "shame-based inner
core"; as a result, "the experiencing of self is painful. To
compensate, one develops a false self in order to survive" (p. 3).
Thus,
abandonment, in the sense I have defined it, has devastating effects
on a child's beliefs about himself [sic]. And yet . . . many of
our religious institutions offer authoritarian support for
these beliefs. Our schools reinforce them. Our legal system
reinforces them. (p. 8)
Sharing these convictions, all of these theorists understandably agree
with Bradshaw that "[c]o-dependence is looked upon as normal in our
culture" (p. 187). It is so viewed because the rules of the poisonous
pedagogy "are carried by family systems, by our schools, our churches
and our government. They are a core belief of the modern 'consensus
reality'" (p. 167; original emphasis). Indeed, "It]he whole society is
built upon the poisonous pedagogy and operates like a dysfunctional
family" (p. 187; emphasis added). The rules by which contemporary
American culture operates, in short,
promote the use and ownership of some people by others and teach the
denial and repression of emotional vitality and spontaneity.
They glorify obedience, orderliness, logic, rationality, power
and male supremacy. They are flagrantly anti-life. (pp. 166167)
The theorists, then, insist that our entire sociocultural order is
based upon and demands the emotional abandonment of our children. In
light of these views, Bradshaw not surprisingly contends,
co-dependence is the disease of today. All addictions are rooted in
co-dependence, and co-dependence is a symptom of abandonment.
(p. 172)
The correspondences between Rogerian statements of liberation
psychotherapy and co-dependency discourse are striking. Bradshaw's
"shame-based self" and Rogers's "defensively-organized personality"
both reflect a particular shared understanding of the relationship
between self and society, wherein repressive cultural institutions and
practices reduce the "constructive and trustworthy" individual to a
state of painful inauthenticity.
LIFE STORIES AND "CANONICAL AUTHORITY"
Given the dominant themes encoded in the theorists' remarks,
co-dependency discourse, in both the theorists' remarks and CoDA
members' life stories, clearly and sharply contrasts with the
romanticized images of home, family, church, and community that marked
the resurgence of conservativism over the past decade. From this
perspective, co-dependency (and related discourses) is a manifestation
of post-modern cultural politics, a rejection of the "hegemonic" (Hall
1988) imagery of so-called "post-Fordism" (Jessop, Bonnett, Bromley,
and Ling 1989; Harvey 1989; Lash and Urry 1987; Hall 1988), or, less
obliquely, "Authoritarian Populism" (Hall 1988, 1991; but see also
Rustin 1989). The term "populism," here, refers to the ideological
accompaniments to a post-industrial version of laissez-faire
economics, declining federal obligations for and commitment to social
welfare, and a law and order, authoritarian, approach to both domestic
and international relations. From this view, then, CoDA exemplifies
the "generalization of 'politics' to spheres which hitherto [have
been] assumed to be apolitical; a politics of the family, of health,
of food, of sexuality, of the body" (Hall 1991, p. 63; see also,
Denzin 1990a, 1990b). While Bradshaw, Schaef, and their colleagues, do
not frame their theory in explicitly political terms, they do hold the
older institutional forms responsible for a great deal of personal
suffering. In this, groups such as CoDA and ACoA, with their canonical
tales of sexual and physical abuse practiced in the shelter of
familial privacy, indict that heavily-freighted image of the family
that held and holds sway in recent national political discourse. In
these newest groups of the 12-Step subculture, alternative life
stories are told and built up out of interactions among the members.
These stories enable new identities that--at least in CoDA--reject the
types of life narratives the repressive cultural institutions are said
to have imposed upon the subject.
Co-dependency theorists' efforts, then, can be understood as an
attempt to assemble a liberating canon. Members' remarks at various
gatherings demonstrate that the theorists have, indeed, helped empower
co-dependents to construct alternative stories and identities. At the
May 1989 Mid-Atlantic CoDA Conference, for example, "Ann" told her
audience
I feel like I'm brand new at recovery and the reason why this program
works is because we allow each other to talk over the same
things over and over and over again . . . and I used to feel so
much shame in bringing up the same issues to people . . . but I
feel real safe at CoDA to do that. . . . Tonight, in sharing, I
got to some feelings, [and] I haven't had the feelings. It's
the feelings that keep me in bondage. . . . [T]he feelings are
coming out, but they only come out when I allow myself to be
with people who I trust. . . . I was so glad when they started
this program [CODA].
Ann's remarks echo some of the theorists' central tenets: the prison
shame creates, the importance of releasing repressed emotions, the
ability and necessity to talk openly. Similarly, at the same
conference, "Ken" introduced himself in ways that highlight
co-dependency discourse's opposition to traditional moral order:
I was a victim of abuse, abandonment, enmeshment, and neglect. I was
raised in an alcoholic, eating disordered, physically violent,
sexually abusive, incestuous--uh, what else?--sexually
addicted, co-dependent, drug addicted family, but we looked
like everybody else on the block. You never would have known
what was going on in my family, 'cause it looked like everybody
else's. We knew how to cover it up. . . .
[W]e knew how to look good and live up to society's expectations of
how a family is supposed to look.
The boom years for the 12-Step subculture and for psychotherapy, then,
reflect the search for alternative life stories (e.g., Plummer 1983,
1990a, 1990b; Denzin 1990a, 1990b). These discourses provide adherents
a canonical set of terms and generalized "plot lines" from which to
build personal tales. The tales echo and are grounded in rejection of
American culture's "poisonous pedagogy" and of the institutions held
most directly responsible for its perpetuation. In this, co-dependency
appears to be either an extension of Rogerian psychotherapy, oriented
towards individual liberation and the search for one's true self, or a
mode of post-modern politics, or both. Closer analysis suggests these
appearances are deceptive.
CO-DEPENDENCY AND AUTHORITY
As suggested, the CoDA canon relies to a great extent upon the
theorists' views, conceptualized and systematized life stories heard
over years of clinical encounters. However, despite perhaps the best
intentions, the theorists frequently slip into a position that
subverts individual autonomy and their avowed conviction that the old
cultural order tends to deny people the right to be, in Bradshaw's
terminology, "the very ones that they are." This manifests itself in a
powerful, albeit subtle, determinism, and a tendency to dictate the
"right way" for co-dependents to behave and recover--the right story
to tell, in short.
Determinism and the Need for Therapy
As do all co-dependency theorists, Bradshaw, speaking of his own
"journey to wholeness" (1988, p. 203), predicates recovery upon
learning to share and express emotions:
As my trust grew, I came out of hiding more and more. I broke the
no-talk rules, I shared my secrets, I was willing to be
vulnerable. . . It was true, after I expressed my emotions, I
had clearer insight. (p. 200)
Bradshaw refers to this process in terms of "grief," or "mourning":
[M]ourning is the only way to heal the hole in the cup of your soul.
Since we cannot go back in time and be children and get our
needs met from our very own parents, we must grieve the loss of
our childhood self and our childhood dependency needs. (pp.
211-212)
Clearly, Rogerian terminology grounds the discursive and conceptual
framework for the contemporary search for new and empowering life
stories and forms of identity. However, it is fair to suggest that
more than empowerment is at stake in the claim that mourning is "the
only way," or that one "must grieve" if one is to recover.
These deterministic remarks suggest childhood events unalterably shape
people's lives. Theorists reveal this penchant again and again: "If
you're shame-based, you're going to be an addict--no way around it"
(Bradshaw 1989, p. 96); "Will an alternative lifestyle be successful?
Not for the co-dependent" (Wegscheider-Cruse 1985, p. 10); "Like a
sliver that works its way deep into the flesh and later becomes
infected, the private shame . . . of a child's troubled past festers
on into adulthood, creating an infection of co-dependent anxiety"
(Subby 1987, p. 95); "[O]nce it sets in--co-dependency takes on a life
of its own" (Beattie 1987, p. 16). The possibility that people can and
do exercise judgment and act as positive agents in straightening out
their own problems is subtly but decisively denied, in favor of the
theorists' conviction that theirs is the only solution to life
troubles, that those seeking recovery "must" do certain things. Among
these recovery requirements is the need for therapeutic intervention:
Co-dependents need a healthy adult and parent model to walk them
through their, fear and demonstrate for them that these
terrible demons of change can't destroy them. In large part,
this is the role of the therapist in treatment for
co-dependency. (Subby 1987, p. 119)
Subby's "modeling" would appear to contradict Schaef's criticism of
"external referenting," which she contends is "the most central
characteristic of . . . the disease of co-dependence" (1986, p. 44).
Indeed,
Since co-dependents feel they have no intrinsic meaning of their own,
almost all of their meaning comes from outside. . . .
[Co-dependents] learn that the reference point for thinking,
feeling, seeing, and knowing is external to the self, and this
training produces people without boundaries. . . . In order to
have and experience boundaries, a person must start with an
internal referent (knowing what one feels and thinks from the
inside) and then relate to the world from that perspective. (p.
45)
The paradox, of course, is clear enough: only identification with the
theorists as one's external referent makes it possible to recognize
the primacy of the internal referent. A similar paradox informs
Bradshaw's claim that, "I don't want to impose my experience of the
journey to wholeness on anyone else. No one can tell anyone else how
to find his most authentic self" (1988, p. 203), as, regardless of his
sincerity, he precedes and follows this with a series of remarks in
sharp opposition: "everyone must go through a self-recovery, uncovery,
discovery process" (p. 193; original emphasis); getting into recovery,
"means that I've let go of control and I'm willing to listen to
someone else and do it his way" (p. 196; original emphasis); in
recovery, one must do "feeling work," and, "while it is certainly
conceivable that one could do this feeling work without formal
therapy, . . . it's highly unlikely" (p. 215); and, "[m]oving beyond
myself is actually an inward journey, [and] without this journey,
there is no way to know who I really am" (pp. 227, 228).
The Obligation to Express
Co-dependency theorists' prescriptions regarding the emotions further
underscore that adopting a co-dependent identity is not so much a
liberation as a deliverance from one into another system of authority.
This new system prescribes talk about the forms and consequences of
one's repression as the organizing principle for a new identity. More
importantly in this context, unwillingness to divulge personal
experiences is taken as a symptom of disease or the wish to stay sick.
Thus, Bradshaw counsels those on the verge of recovery,
As you seek help, you are willing to label yourself an alcoholic,
co-dependent, drug addict, sex addict, etc. You are willing to
trust enough to ask for help. The labeling is crucial. You
can't heal what has no name. An old 12-step slogan is "We are
as sick as our secrets." (1988, p. 204; original emphasis)
To equate recovery with willingness to divulge one's secrets carries
the complementary belief that emotions not simply can but must be
expressed. In keeping with this norm, Claudia Black, writing of Sharon
Wegscheider-Cruse, says the latter knows, among other things, "her
right and obligation to show her feelings" (1985, p. vii; emphasis
added). Wegscheider-Cruse reiterates this obligation word for word in
her list of "Co-Dependent Rights" (1985, pp. 135-136). Clearly, a
significant difference lies between saying one should be free to
express emotion, and saying that one is obliged to do so. Nonetheless,
Wegscheider-Cruse insists that "Feelings must be expressed and
reexperienced for healing to take place" (p. 120; emphasis added).
Blaming the Victims
In part, the co-dependency theorists' authoritative impulses are built
into the very nature of speaking for others. The need for theoretical
generality tends to override aspects of individual experience that
belie the general rule, as is evident in Bradshaw's recounting of one
clinical episode:
A client of mine felt terrible because she had come home from work
feeling frustrated, angry, and hurt. Instead of saying to her
children--"I need time alone. I'm frustrated, angry, and
hurt,"--she looked at the children's unkempt rooms and began
screaming at them and telling them that 'they never think of
anyone but themselves.' She made them responsible for her
frustration, anger, and hurt. This is abusive judgment. It
attacks the children's self-esteem. . . . [This] client failed
in her awareness of her own feelings. She is, in fact, highly
dissociated from her feelings. (1988, p. 50)
While the mother could, perhaps, have handled things differently,
Bradshaw's well-intended concern for the children entirely subsumes
within his broader theoretical point the lived experience of the
mother (who is, perhaps instructively, twice termed the "client").
Although the nature of the mother's experiences is only implied in her
"frustration, hurt, and anger," they could easily include single
parenthood, an ex-husband failing to maintain child support payments,
employment in a dead-end and low-paying service position at the
receiving end of an exhausting system of organizational authority, and
so on. However, as no actual experiences beyond those theoretically
useful figure into the interpretation, one is instructed that not only
has this mother "failed" to transcend her frustrations, she has
"failed" to be aware of her feelings and, as a result, "abuses" and
"shames" her children. Rather than liberated from an oppressive
normative order, this "client" is caught between rival systems of
authority.
In part, this reflects a common therapeutic dilemma. Even the more
"systemic" therapeutic models such as family systems theory are
confounded by the family's location in still-larger social "systems"
(see, in particular, Jacoby 1975): the family is, after all, enmeshed
in a social world. In the present context, however, this dilemma is
still more problematic because the canon from which CoDA members draw
their life stories is built up out of these materials. Large and
important aspects of their lives are treated peripherally, if at all.
The cumulative effect of ignoring these aspects, moreover, bears an
unsettling resemblance to the dynamics underlying victim-blaming (Ryan
1976). The "client's" inability to deal "healthily" with broader
social arrangements that undergird individual travails is
inadvertently pathologized. This also occurs in the theoretical
discourse regarding other process addictions: Schaef's discussion of
"romance addiction" argues,
Romance addicts also evidence a loss of spirituality and a breakdown
of their own personal morality. They move progressively away
from reality, truth, and normal social mores and behaviors in
the service of their addiction. . . . At [the most serious
level] of [romance addiction] the addict has no regard for
societal mores and accepted behavior. (1990, pp. 49, 51)
Schaef's larger explanatory framework claims all addictions "are
generated by our families and our schools, our churches, our political
system and our society as a whole" (p. 6; original emphasis). Here,
again, it must be difficult for "addicts" to know what to do. On the
one hand, culture causes their addiction[s], while on the other, their
disease features violation of "normal social mores and behaviors." In
short, process addicts are caught with co-dependents in this Faustian
bargain. If process addicts of whatever stripe abide by societal
rules, they are sick; if they violate those rules, they are also sick.
Power/Knowledge
Although clearly the liberation of those identifying themselves as
co-dependent is somewhat attenuated, the last remarks do not impugn
the motives of Bradshaw, Beattie, and their colleagues. To the
contrary, the sincerity of their efforts to help people construct less
painful life stories only underscores Foucault's insistence upon the
inseparability of truth, knowledge, and power (N.B. 1980b). For
Foucault, discursive formations, as systems of truth, are
simultaneously forms of "power/knowledge." Thus,
Truth isn't the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted
solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in
liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is
produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it
induces regular effects of power. (p. 131)
Aligning oneself with the truth claims of a discursive formation,
then, subjects one to the exercise of power that inheres in
accomplishing and establishing that truth. Power, in Foucault's view,
is or can be both repressive and productive, an often ironic duality,
as his discussions regarding "the repressive hypothesis," sexuality,
and the development of the Catholic sacrament of confession suggest
(1980a, 1984c, 1984d). The central irony is that the very effort to
construct a taxonomy of forbidden and "confessable" wishes, acts, and
utterances incites talk about the forbidden topics, talk in the new
"form of analysis, stocktaking, classification, . . . specification,
[and] quantitative or causal studies" (1984c, p. 306). The apparent
conviction that "everything ha[s] to be told," in other words,
translates into a "nearly infinite task of telling" (pp. 303, 304).
The emergence of co-dependency demonstrates a strikingly similar
relationship between the repressive and productive aspects of
power/knowledge. Drawing upon ACoA's portrait of the alcoholic family,
the co-dependency theorists have assembled a radical critique of the
American family in general. The critique portrays the traditional
family, and indeed all traditional U.S. cultural institutions, as
practitioners of violence, abuse, and repression in the service of
social order. This serves as the springboard into alternative forms of
identity-construction. The new 12-Step groups, then, are in one sense
proponents of a productive power. The co-dependency discourse affords
a new and better life story, one in which CoDA members can seek out
the "very ones that they are," rather than be denied their true selves
in the service of repressive cultural norms. Moreover, the life
stories themselves detail prior repressions and their consequences.
Conversely, the canon CoDA members tap for their life stories
systematically, however inadvertently, alters their lived experiences
to fit neatly within its boundaries. To "ex- plain" their lives using
the theorists' canonical contributions, members must sacrifice those
aspects that lie beyond the outline of a "good" theory of
"co-dependency." While this is not particularly surprising in regard
to psychotherapy, per se, which has always created and required
particular types of life stories, it renders views of CoDA as either
an example of post-modem politics or a purely minimalist theory
dubious.
Life Stories and "Theoretical Minimalism"
Denzin discusses the problem raised above in terms of the media's
misrepresentation of the life stories of people in the 12-Step
subculture:
In these groups [such as AA, ACoA, CODA] members attempt to take back
their lives and to make sense of the experiences they
encountered while being raised in their particular familied
version of the American dream. They thus make public, in a
limited way, the very secrets they felt the public order had
held against them. But along with releasing talkers from an
oppressive morality that had previously trapped them in a
private hell, the very moment of their talking turns their
stories into commodities sold in the public market place.
(1990a, p. 13)
Moreover, not only the vehicles of popular culture ignore, compromise,
or misappropriate people's actual life experiences. Indeed, Denzin
contends, through the scientistic emphasis upon "origins, centers,
structures, laws, [and] empirical realities," sociologists--even
those, such as Mills, who sought to do otherwise--help sustain the
world people hope to escape, and thereby reinforce the ideologizing
pressures the individual faces (1990b, p. 147). To correct this
penchant, Denzin proposes a "theoretically minimalist" sociology
faithful to members' own tales of their lived experiences, rather than
one that distorts those stories in the name of theorizing (1990a, N.B.
pp. 5-7). The basis for his objection to the disparity between the
aspirations and actualities of Mills's work, then, derives from his
same concerns regarding the media--whereas the vehicles of popular
culture misrepresent people's lives in the interest of sales, the
academy does the same in the interest of "theory."
The subject is built up out of stories that are told, stories
themselves constructed according to cultural understandings.
Subjects are narrative constructions. These constructions may
draw upon their media and popular cultural representations and
may or may not reflect their actual experiences. When this
occurs, the gap between the real and its representations
becomes existentially problematic. In such moments ideology
repressively intrudes into the worlds of lived experience.
(1990a, p. 12; original emphasis)
Not only is such theory unfaithful to people's actual experiences, but
it thereby does not describe or explain the workings of a "real
world":
[O]ur social texts no longer, if they ever did, refer to a fixed
reality. Our theoretical signifiers have lost their signified
referents. They now refer only to other texts, which in turn
refer to yet others. . . . There is no longer a world out there
that can be objectively mapped by a theory or a method. (1990a,
p. 13)
The goal for the theoretically minimalist sociologist, then, is to
"give a voice to these people," and to keep one's theoretical and/or
ideological intrusions to a skeletal minimum (1990a, p. 15). Yet, the
material presented here suggests even those who seek to remain
faithful to the lived experiences of those we study must practice
theoretical minimalism cautiously. The self-conscious effort to honor
people's life stories easily overlooks the ways in which the canon
from which those stories are drawn is itself a product of the type of
theory-building to which minimalism objects. The paradox, of course,
is that one may be unfaithful to members' life stories simply by being
faithful to their life stories.
"Giving a voice to these people," imprudently undertaken, simply gives
a voice to yet another theory about them. For, in helping
co-dependents "name their demons," in Bradshaw's terms (1989, p. 41),
co-dependency theorists simultaneously--albeit inadvertently--validate
Foucault's insistence that knowledge is power and power is knowledge.
While seeking a new, more tolerant and benign way to organize and
understand identity, the theorists suffer the same impulses to
categorize, objectify, and ultimately, repress, that they so
forcefully reject. To be sure, the repressions take a peculiar form,
one that ironically echoes Marcuse's (1964) notion of repressive
desublimation. But the co-dependency theorists, after all, do not
solely set the individual free from a body of cultural denials; they
at the same time subject co-dependents to a new standard of authority,
a new system of power/knowledge.
Reproducing "Populism": The Theorists' Double Location
CoDA members, then, both shape, and are shaped by, a particular system
of truth. That system's exclusion of broader issues of power from the
canon of life narratives it avails is a theoretical "necessity."
Certainly, to include those issues would dramatically reduce, if not
eliminate, therapists' role. Again, this need not impute hidden
motives of profit and prestige to theorists, as critics often suggest.
More likely is that theoretical orientations shape their field of
vision. In any event, allegedly unalloyed fidelity to members' tales
would be likely to miss exactly these omissions.
But not only theoretical interests account for what Denzin terms
repressive intrusions of ideology (1990a, p. 12). As both he and
Harvey note, the interests of commodity production are similarly
ideological and intrusive:
"New social movements"--including ecological, feminist, pacifist,
anti-racist, and "third-worldist" movements--[have] gained a
stronger purchase on political consciousness . . . [blur these
movements were frequently victims of capitalist co-optation,
and even when they [were not] they too often proved a
fragmenting rather than unifying force. (Harvey 1991, p. 69)
Precisely this issue of co-optation lies behind the theoretical
omissions of CoDA discourse. The theorists' double location in the
post-modern world creates those elisions. Not only are they CoDA's
canon-builders, but they are themselves subject to the political
economy of the treatment industry. They, too, in short, are
constituted by and constitute themselves as the subjects of a
technology of social control that acts in the interests of health care
administrators, insurance companies, employers, schools, and the
criminal justice system (Weisner and Room 1984; Weisner 1983; Rice
1989). As "professional ex-s" (Brown 1991), Beattie, Bradshaw, and
their colleagues generate a liberation discourse that reflects the
rules for truth of a health care system based on commodity production.
They reproduce a system of power/knowledge itself predicated upon
truth rules that exclude broader structural considerations, favoring
instead the individualizing and depoliticizing biases of
medicalization and of the demands of time-limited, fee-for-service
exchange (see Rice 1989).
Their discourse, which fuses a radical psychotherapeutic critique of
culture with the notion of "process addiction," reflects this double
status. The identification of people's problems as symptoms of
addiction undermines their interpretation of those problems as
cultural in etiology. This effectively shunts the political content
encoded in their life stories off into the realm of individual moral
responsibility. CoDA thus reproduces a central value of the populist
cultural ideology it otherwise attacks. The outcome is that the
requirements of corporate health care and therapeutic theory-building
shape co-dependents' life stories. The way they are to constitute
themselves as liberated subjects reflects these multiple constraints;
their empowerment is contingent upon what counts as true within these
larger parameters of power/knowledge. To view CoDA as a mode of
post-modern politics, then, runs risks opposite those confronting
theoretical minimalism: whereas the latter stands to miss the unspoken
elements of repressive power, the former stands to cite as empowerment
a form of power that is in fact a matter of tacit authoritarian
permission. That these various forms of power operate even in the
mechanisms of what is clearly intended to be a fundamentally partisan
and liberating discourse suggests that the difficulty of finding an
ethically responsive and humanistic social science may lie, in part,
in the very act of seeking and producing knowledge; or, in Foucault's
explicitly Nietzschean terms, in the "will to truth":
[T]he will to truth . . . loses all sense of limitations and all
claims to truth in its unavoidable sacrifice of the subject of
knowledge. . . . It is no longer a question of judging the past
in the name of a truth that only we can possess in the present,
but of risking the destruction of the subject who seeks
knowledge in the endless deployment of the will to knowledge.
(1984a, pp. 96, 97)
This sobering observation would seem, at minimum, a necessary caveat,
even, and perhaps especially, for those following the theoretically
minimalist path. The suggestion, then, is to follow the truth claims
of a discursive formation back across its genealogical paths, thus to
fully reckon with the power and interests served by the will to
knowledge.
CONCLUSION
Viewing life stories as discursive formations necessarily redirects
attention to the role of knowledge as a form of power. Clearly,
power/knowledge bears some resemblance to the "social constructionist"
position, be it "experts'" construction of reality as a whole (Berger
and Luckmann 1966), or of behavioral (generally "deviant") categories
upon which professional expertise is brought to bear. Such categories,
of course, include alcoholism (Schneider 1978; Conrad and Schneider
1980), menopause (McCrea 1983), child abuse (Pfohl 1977), mental
illness (Goffman 1961; Perucci 1974), and illness generally (Freidson
1970). Certainly, "co-dependency" is a professionally constructed
category, but the impact of its creation at the level of lived
experience is a further issue. This is the considerable virtue of
theoretical minimalism's emphasis upon fidelity to the lived reality
of those whose lives have often been misrepresented and
misappropriated in the interests of good theory or sales. That
appreciative stance (Matza 1969) may allow the social to be truly
reflected in the sociological, as Denzin suggests it should (1990a).
Conversely, focus solely upon members' personal stories obscures the
difficulties that underlie the canon they use to pull together those
stories. Such an analysis yields an artificial understanding of the
discourse as purely empowering. Certainly, closer inspection of
co-dependency theorists' discourse points to the importance of
infusing theoretical minimalism with critical distance. Treating life
stories as discursive formations, then, assists uniting the strengths
of the constructionist and theoretically minimalist positions. A
synthesis of these perspectives may enable us to honor the life
stories of those we study and yet locate those stories within the
power/knowledge matrices from which they emerge.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Earlier drafts of this article were presented to the Midwest
Sociological Society, 11 April 1991, Des Moines, and to a colloquium
at the Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change at the
University of Virginia, 23 March 1991. I thank the anonymous reviewers
for their helpful comments.
NOTES
1. This article treats co-dependency as a discourse rather than a
disease. To avoid confusion I distinguish between these two usages.
"Co-dependency" (in quotation marks) denotes the "disease" or its
"symptoms"; co-dependency (no marks) denotes the discourse itself.
2. Beattie, unlike others, does not hyphenate "codependency."
3. The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) notwithstanding, Foucault's
methodology is some-what elusive, to some extent because he tends to
employ several terms for the same tactic or concept: discursive
formations, for example, are also "domains" and "enunciative fields";
"statements" are also "serious speech acts.'"
4. "Subculture" should be understood in Matza's (1964, 1969) sense,
rather than as, say, "counter-culture." That is, 12-Step groups have
historically sought to ease persons' position in and pathway through
existing social arrangements, rather than to alter those arrangements.
The sub-cultural dimension, then, addresses how to accomplish those
goals, as opposed to the goals themselves.
5. The 1990 figures come from an April 1990, ACoA brochure, "What is
IWSO [International World Service Organization]?" The 1981 figures are
from a 1989 reprint of the Oct./Nov. 1986 issue of Inside Al-Anon, a
regular organizational newsletter. This was a "Special Issue for and
About Children of Alcoholics," (p. 1); an editorial in this issue,
"It's All in the Family," provides the membership data.
6. I base this observation upon interviews with a variety of
counselors, therapists, and clinical social workers, a number of whom
expressed deep reservations about "co-dependency's" meaning or
therapeutic utility, to say nothing of its status as a disease. Some
of these reservations, no doubt, derive from a long standing distrust
between disease model advocates and formally (academically) trained
mental health professionals. Although clearly still operative, this
distrust appears on the wane, at least among those with whom I spoke.
7. This view has a long lineage, traceable at least as far back as
Benjamin Rush's early version of the disease model (see, e.g., Conrad
and Schneider 1980). Rush, of course, was making assumptions about
human nature, but the primary assumption was that humans are
intrinsically rational. This grounded Rush's conclusion that recurrent
irrational behavior must signify underlying disease. Rush, it bears
mentioning, also diagnosed his Tory contemporaries as "insane," citing
their anti-revolutionary views as clinical evidence.
8. As one of this journal's anonymous reviewers points out, AA's
conservativism is evident at the individual level, but seeing it as a
mode of cultural conservativism is more problematic. The problem, from
this standpoint, is that AA's disease model contributed to the
medicalization of alcoholism and thereby, indirectly, also paved the
way for the emergence of the culturally "radical" CoDA discourse.
Certainly, this is the case. However, at least two points must be
offered in response: (1) as Conrad and Schneider, working both
separately (Conrad 1975; Schneider 1978) and in conjunction with one
another (1980), observe, medicalization depoliticizes deviance and, as
such, further supports the interpretation that AA texts tend to
buttress rather than question the cultural status quo; (2) that CoDA
should emerge out of a culturally conservative discourse exemplifies
exactly the type of genealogical break this article traces. It is
ironic, to be sure, that CoDA derives from AA.
9. Actually, CoDA's 12-Steps are gender neutral, as well. For example,
they do not speak of a surrender to God, "as we understood Him," but
"as we understood God." This language sensitivity is one aspect of the
more general genealogical discourse reconstruction that concerns this
study.
10. Family systems psychotherapy is, of course, one strain of
structural-functional theory. Although this influence is seldom
noticed or acknowledged, some feminist theorists argue all family
systems therapies are indebted to Parsons and Bales (1951) (see, e.g.,
Goldner 1985; Luepnitz 1988). Indeed, Luepnitz observes that "all [of
the] . . . basic categories for conceptualizing families . . . derive
from Parsons's work," including "the idea that the family [has] a
'structure' . . . , that it performs 'functions' that involve
'contracting' and 'role negotiation' and that it must 'adapt' to
society" (1988, pp. 64-65). Although Luepnitz's position is, as she
admits, inferred rather than demonstrable (see p. 65n), her point is
not without merit. The logic of explanation in both the sociological
and therapeutic versions of systems theory is strikingly similar, if
inverted. Sociological studies in this camp see the system as
functional and argue that seemingly dysfunctional phenomena, such as
inequality, are in fact important for the system's smooth functioning
(Davis and Moore 1945; but see also Gans 1972). Family systems
therapy, conversely, views the system as dysfunctional and maintains
that seemingly functional behaviors, such as the "family roles,"
actually perpetuate systemic dysfunction.
11. I make this distinction because there are unaffiliated ACoA
groups. Indeed, the affiliation question posed a problem for the
12-Step subculture, especially Al-Anon, during ACoA's sudden burst of
popularity (see Robertson 1988 for a thoughtful discussion of the
nature of these problems).
12. Bradshaw borrows this term and many of his ideas from the
psychotherapist, Alice Miller (1983a, 1983b, 1984).
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~~~~~~~~
John Steadman Rice, Boston University
Direct all correspondence to: John Steadman Rice, Department of
Sociology, Boston University, 96-100 Cummington Street, Boston, MA
02215.
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