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Allcorn, Seth. Codependency in the Workplace: A Guide for Employee Assistance and Human Resource Professional. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, 1992. Pp. xvii + 202. $45.00
In your role as consultant, manager, or teacher have you had to contend with someone who must be "in charge" at all times, no matter what the consequences to themselves, others, or the organization? Someone who is always sure they are right and therefore must oversee, coordinate, and control every aspect of every operation? A person who is obsessive, possessive, and has a passionate dislike for uncertainty and feelings of not being in control? A person who uses "I" a lot, tells others what they are really trying to say, or what they really want, treats most adults like children and most children (and spouses) like slaves? Or perhaps you have to deal with people who are obsessed with taking care of other people and becoming unappreciated victims in the process? Or those who are manipulative in a passive and indirect way, who can only communicate indirectly, who fabricate personality conflicts to create constant crises? In either case, you are probably dealing with codependency.
Codependency, a vogue topic in the 1990s, is a concept that has evolved from the alcoholism literature, and has, as yet, no agreed upon definition. There is little empirical literature on it outside of psychiatry. Allcorn defines codependency as a recognizable system of personality traits that adversely affect knowing one's self that leads to compulsive, self-defeating, and self-destructive behavior. The keys to codependency are low self-esteem, an unhealthy symbiotic dependence on other people, and an unwillingness to respect interpersonal boundaries. According to Allcorn, and the rest of the codependency literature, codependency arises from three styles of parental action: "unloving" (controlling, critical, lack of caring), "overly loving" (manipulative, excessive caretaking), or "needing love" (powerless, permissive, requires caretaking). These styles mean that the parental relationship is one where the child is, respectively, unwanted, needed for fulfillment, or wanted for caretaking. The dynamics in these family interactions are that the parents need to feel powerful, in control of the child, and needed by the child (unloved or overly loved) or that the parents need to feel loved and taken care of by the...