Codependency became a household word without ever becoming a diagnosis
Millions of people describe themselves as codependent, and a 1986 bestseller made the word famous. Yet codependency has never appeared in the psychiatric manuals, and a 1994 review found no agreed definition and little empirical support. It began in Minnesota in the late 1970s as a word about families of drinkers.
The term most likely grew out of co-alcoholic, coined when alcoholism and other addictions were being grouped together as chemical dependency. Within Alcoholics Anonymous it had become clear that addiction involved more than the addict: relatives and friends often enabled the drinking. Descriptions of codependency typically include heavy self-sacrifice, fixation on other people's needs, bottled-up emotions and efforts to control or rescue others.
Two books from 1986 set its course. The psychiatrist Timmen Cermak argued in Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence that it should count as a personality disorder, a campaign that failed. Melody Beattie's Codependent No More, drawing on her own recovery, her caregiving and interviews with members of Al-Anon, became a bestseller and brought the idea to the public. Beattie called it being a partner in dependency, while the therapist Darlene Lancer later placed a lost self at its core.
Formally, it remains undefined. Neither the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders nor the International Classification of Diseases includes it, and the US National Library of Medicine indexes it only as a relational pattern of seeking purpose through others. Its nearest official neighbour is dependent personality disorder, yet a 2017 study found only 14.5 percent of codependent people assessed also met that description. Some link it to the morbid dependency Karen Horney described in 1942, or to learned helplessness and pathological altruism.
Critics say the vagueness lets the label stretch over almost any caring behaviour, and that some self-help writers and support groups overuse it. Others argue it is better seen as a healthy impulse gone awry, and object to framing traits traditionally associated with women as a disease. Twelve-step groups such as Co-Dependents Anonymous deliberately offer no definition, only a list of patterns for self-reflection.
Source: Codependency
