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Codependency is a relatively new idea, emerging in the late 1970s within the chemical dependency treatment industry. However, the belief that the wife of the alcoholic is, by definition, disturbed, has been influential in varying degrees since the 1930s. The perennial influence of the codependency hypothesis suggests that it is a social construction which has been influenced by traditional assumptions about gender in our society. Feminist criticisms of codependency theory contend that society demands that women be nurturing, caring, and sensitive to others' needs--the same behaviors viewed in codependency as unhealthy and diseases--and feminists have raised several reproaches related to this view: (1) Systemic family therapy, some feminists declare, treats families as isolated from other social influences and tends to pathologize normative family interactions which have been socially dictated; (2) the Self-Defeating Personality Disorder, which bears diagnostic criteria similar to the Codependent Personality Disorder, implies that women who are battered by their mate are responsible for their own victimization. Recent studies have sought to disassociate codependency with battered women. In an ongoing project, the author of this study will examine codependency definitions, as well as the experiences of codependents, using interviews and other methodologies. (Contains 76 references.) (RJM)

This paper analyzes the textual data produced by both the participants and the interpreter in George W. Henry's two-volume monograph, "Sex Variants" (1941), a study of homosexuality based on a sample of 80 socially well-adjusted homosexuals from New York City's lesbian and gay community. It is stated that the Henry volumes provide a rich source of data regarding the subjective experiences and sensibilities of a group of marginalized people within a particular historical period and how these people were objectified and marginalized by the medical and scientific community of their day. Three contexts are used in analyzing the monograph: the background of the study; sex research; and the lesbian and gay community. Significant features of the lesbian subculture in the 1920s and 1930s are examined. Two discourses are analyzed: heterosexual adjustment and lesbian emancipation. These conclusions are stated: (1) the life experiences, outlooks, concerns, and goals of the four women's accounts which were examined reveal considerable variability; (2) the women were all struggling with their subjugation to heterosexual adjustment, while at the same time, through being a part of the lesbian/gay community, and through their own life experiences, they were also attempting to empower themselves; (3) heterosexual adjustment prevailed; and (4) to Henry's credit he did record the voices of lesbians and gay men, though unfortunately, at the time, he did not hear them. (ABL)