Blaming the victim : domestic violence and the codependency model

The early literature on women with alcoholic husbands outlined a predominantly negative view of these women. Such women were seen as neurotic, poor copers who were obsessed with controlling their husbands’ drinking. They were seen to have partnered alcoholic men in order to satisfy their own pathological needs (Kalashian 1959; Whalen 1953). It was further asserted that some women would sabotage the drinker’s attempts to abstain in order to continue meeting these needs (Futterman 1953). Edwards, Harvey & Whitehead (1973) termed such notions the disturbed personality theory. They criticised the lack of empirical support for such notions and cite a number of research findings which support the alternative view: that it is the stress created by the drinking which affects the partner’s psychological functioning. Subsequent reviews cite further research supporting the stress model and refuting the disturbed personality model (Finney, Moos, Cronkite & Gamble 1983; Gomberg 1989; Watts, Bush & Wilson 1994; O’Farrell, Harrison & Cutter 1981). When the term chemical dependent emerged as the new label for both alcoholics and drug addicts, the term codependent was coined to describe their partners (Beattie 1989; Bradshaw 1988; Cermak 1986; Mendenhall 1989; Rothberg 1986; Schaef 1986). Rothberg (1986) articulates the notion that problem drinkers and their partners develop complementary relationships in which each reinforces the pathological needs of the other. Such notions were developed from a crude and simplistic adaptation of systems theory incorporating Blaming the Victim: Domestic Violence and the Codependency Model