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LESLIE IRVINE, Codependent Forevermore: The Invention of a Self in a Twelve Step Group. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Irvine presents the reader with a unique and rich look into the individual and collective life which has come to be known as "co-dependence." She is clearly a skilled ethnographer and her study seeks to locate the phenomenon of co-dependence not merely within a set of tacitly received assumptions regarding a "monolithic recovery 'movement'" (19), but as a phenomenon that teaches us something about "selfhood"-in particular, "how disrupted lives can be made livable again" (1). Although the "twelve steps" has come to be popularly recognized as a recovery program, one originating with AA and responsive to various addictions, Irvine shows how such an assumption misses the significant and often subtle differences found in Codependents Anonymous (CoDA).
Irvine speaks of CoDA as a "psychospiritual self-help program" (1) that attracts people who experience difficulty in the...