Medberoende - De som dansar med

Sammanfattning: Codependency - Those who dance along The study examined how codependency effects individuals who define themselves as ‘codependent’. The dominant themes include how the codepences life has been affected, the consequences of living with a codependency and whether they define their codependency as a sickness. Through a narrative analysis, using four autobiographies as our data, the paper studies how the individuals describe their experience of living with a partner or a parent who has an addiction to alcohol or other drugs. The aim was also to examine the psychological, emotional and social effects of this, whilst understanding the interactive behaviour between these individuals. The theories used are ‘General System Theory’; with families as the system and ‘Hellsten’s (1997) Concepts’ about codependency. A key finding in this study was the contrast between the different codependent individuals and how they defined their situation. Amongst other findings, another key finding included a lack of a clear definition of what copendency actually is, and how that is hindering advancements in the research field and hindering the professionals currently working with codependent individuals.