Since addictions can be shown to be identical psychodynamically to other compulsions (Dodes, 1996), they cannot be explained by any single family dynamic any more than can compulsions. Fleming's suggestion that people with addictions have a ‘perpetuation of a symbiotic link’ or a ‘primitive structure’, while no doubt true for some, is also no more supportable as a statement about addiction than such a statement would be for compulsions in general.

Overpathologizing addiction is an old problem. It has been fostered by a kind of selective perception—those people with addictions who are the most