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The concept popularly referred to as codependency is a crucial one in psychotherapy. The self-help literature and the 12-step and other recovery movements use a descriptive language that resonates with a large number of people who then seek the treatments offered by these movements. Recently, articles in the press have been critical of the term and how it has been defined. Codependency appears to be so universally applicable that it is beginning to lose credibility as a phenomenon. Yet the number of people who feel understood by the language of the self-help and recovery literature continues to grow. Simultaneously, patients frustrated with the treatments provided by these movements are showing up in our offices in increasing numbers, feeling injured, disappointed, hopeless, and confused. In following the treatment steps that initially spoke so empathically to their experience, patients are exerting more effort with less improvement in self-esteem or quality of relationships. Rather than dismiss these movements as trite or simplistic, as the press has done, self psychologists can become more empathically attuned to the language these patients find so descriptive, can seek to understand and explain how this cultural movement readies patients for our help, and therefore can become optimally responsive to the treatment needs of this rapidly growing population.
We must convey to these patients that we know they once felt understood and then were let down by the self-help movement; but