Evidence of codependency in women with an alcoholic parent: helping out Mr. Wrong

A conceptualization of codependency and its development, which is based largely on the writings of Karen Horney, is presented. It is proposed that having learned to obtain approval and self-esteem by conforming to the demands of an exploitive person, women with alcoholic parents will continue to seek opportunities to help such people. On the basis of this analysis, it was hypothesized that women with alcoholic parents would be more helpful to an experimenter portrayed as exploitive than to one portrayed as nurturant; women with nonalcoholic parents were expected to exhibit the opposite pattern. The results strongly supported the existence of codependent behavior in the women with alcoholic parents. The implication of these findings and directions for future research were briefly discussed.