Customer Reviews

Co-Dependents Anonymous

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Codependents Anonymous is a 12-Step recovery program for men and women whose common purpose is a desire for healthy and loving relationships. The program is based on the Steps and Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. The book is the basic text for the program, which has meetings throughout the United States and internationally. The first half of the book defines codependency and the program of recovery from codependence, while the second half of the book consists of personal stories of recovery. The book is one of many pieces of literature that the program offers, but is generally considered Codependents Anonymous's (CoDA's) "Big Book."

Written anonymously by veterans of the "CoDA" 12 Step program that began in the late 1980s, the CoDA "big book" is strongly influenced by and in line with the object relations theory of psychodynamic and attachment theory pros like Harry Stack Sullivan, Donald Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Heinz Kohut, Otto Kernberg, William Meissner, Lorna Benjamin, John Bowlby and Diana Baumrind.

It's also a downstream product of the thinking of the "family systems" people like Gregory Bateson, Paul Watzlawick, Murray Bowen, Don Jackson, Jay Haley, Nat Ackerman, Salvador Minuchin, Virginia Satir and Cloe Madanes.

CoDA as a movement evolved from the lay-market interpretations of object relations and family systems by writers like AA's Bill Wilson, NA's Jimmy Kannon, "interpersonal games theorists" like Eric Berne and Thomas Harris, Janet Woititz, Anne Wilson Schaef, Claudia Black, Pia Mellody, and of course, journalist-cum-counselor Melody Beattie. Beattie's and Mellody's presence is all over the place here, but in producing their own text, the recovering co-dependents took the step into full autonomy, a highly significant issue in ego function remediation.

CA's organization will be familiar to those with previous 12 Step experience. There's a 119-page "orientation" and presentation of Wilson's original 12 Steps as re-structured to target interpersonal pathology long the graphic lines developed by Stephen Karpman in his famed "drama triangle." (Used in conjunction with the CA principles, the KDT is a -powerful- interpersonal reconstructive therapy tool.) The orientation is then followed by 445 pages of highly dramatic and often emotionally reactivating personal stories. As they do in Wilson's -Alcoholics Anonymous-, the stories address the matters of identification and utilization of the 12 Step -program- of ego reconstruction as applied to KDT polarities of Rescue (Control), Victim (Scapegoat) and Persecute (Abuse).

While I do not find the book to be a "complete package," CA may be every bit as effective as Wilson's remarkable work or Kannon's (et al) -Narcotics Anonymous- at setting the wheels of recovery in motion. It is surely as fundamental as Mellody's -Facing Codependence- (1989), The Weinholds' -Breaking Free...- (1989), Beattie's career-making -Codependent No More- (1987), -Beyond Codependency- (1989) and Codependents' Guide to the Twelve Steps (1990), as well as Schaef's seminal -Co-Dependence...- (986). CA may also be as useful to professionals as Cermak's step-by-step, treatment organizing -Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence- (1986).

It seems useful to add that while CA is pretty close to state of the art for lay literature on the topic into the mid-1990s, it is not up to the standards of 2006's -Adult Children of Alcoholics-, which explores pretty much all of CA's territory and quite a bit more, albeit with somewhat less high drama and hyper-stimulation and more empirically verified methodology.

That said, many recovering codependents (and "adult children") may be overwhelmed by the drama and "deep traumatic memory processing" style that remains popular in the 4th Step work set forth by these 12 Step groups. Those with emotional "hair-triggers" will do well to work with recently schooled (or re-trained) mental health professionals to complete a safe journey through their childhood bramble bushes. Like -Adult Children...-, this may -not- be a book for those who need to take Risperdal or Geodon to manage their sensitivities.

Helpful approach to the 12 steps. Helps to regain focus to ones Higher Power rather than giving power away to someone or something else. Gentle way to loosen the grip of the past. Good emotional and spiritual nourishment.

This book contains just the stuff I needed to begin putting the 12 step program of CODA to work in my life.