Dependency occupies a contested and richly layered position across the depth-psychology corpus, appearing simultaneously as developmental necessity, pathological fixation, relational risk, and spiritual condition. No single school holds an uncontested view. For Berger, working within the recovery tradition and drawing on Fromm, emotional dependency is the root disturbance underlying addictive and neurotic suffering: it is the structural inability to maintain one's emotional center of gravity within oneself, making the self hostage to persons and circumstances. Fromm himself frames symbiotic dependency as an evasion of individuation — a submission to the 'magic helper' that forfeits selfhood for the illusion of security. Van der Hart's trauma model distinguishes adaptive from maladaptive dependency in the clinical relationship, insisting that appropriate reliance on a therapist must always serve the patient's internalization of functioning parts rather than perpetuate attachment-cry cycles. Hillman, characteristically, mythologizes the polarity: solitary independence and symbiotic dependency are not merely clinical categories but 'radical extremes' — two archetypal fantasies structuring the psyche's imagination of relatedness. Signell offers the corrective that dependency in intimate relationship, dismissed by patriarchal culture, is in truth a necessary risk of genuine love. The AA tradition, as recovered by Kurtz, frames the alcoholic's contradiction as a two-pronged quest for both dependence and independence — the spiritual drama from which recovery must emerge. What unites these positions is the conviction that dependency is never merely behavioral but is rooted in the deepest architecture of selfhood.
In the library
15 passages
When we are emotionally dependent, how we feel about ourselves is contingent on circumstances and how we are treated by others... When we are emotionally fused, people or circumstances actually make us feel this way or that.
Berger defines emotional dependency as the structural fusion of self-esteem with external circumstance or persons, contrasting it with Perls's 'self-support' as the therapeutic goal.
Berger, Allen, 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone: Choosing Emotional Sobriety through Self-Awareness and Right Action, 2010thesis
whenever we are disturbed, regardless of the magnitude of the issue, our reaction occurs because we have 'some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand.'
Berger, invoking Bill Wilson and Erich Fromm, argues that all emotional disturbance is traceable to an underlying unhealthy dependency that generates unreasonable demands on others.
Berger, Allen, 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone: Choosing Emotional Sobriety through Self-Awareness and Right Action, 2010thesis
Emotional sobriety is about growing up and learning to stand on our own two feet. To achieve emotional sobriety, we have to unhook our emotional dependency and learn how to maintain our autonomy in relations with other people or circumstances.
Berger frames the dissolution of emotional dependency as the central developmental task of recovery, equating it with achieving genuine emotional maturity.
Berger, Allen, 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone: Choosing Emotional Sobriety through Self-Awareness and Right Action, 2010thesis
the reasons why a person is bound to a magic helper are, in principle, the same that we have found at the root of the symbiotic drives: an inability to stand alone and to fully express his own individual potentialities.
Fromm identifies dependency on the 'magic helper' as rooted in the same symbiotic incapacity that underlies masochism — a failure of individuation that sacrifices selfhood for borrowed security.
the patient is supported in developing an adaptive dependency that has a specific goal of felt security rather than constant availability of the therapist... Certain therapeutic limits and boundaries are necessary to prevent maladaptive dependency.
Van der Hart distinguishes adaptive from maladaptive therapeutic dependency, arguing that treatment must cultivate the former while limiting the latter to prevent the neglect of daily-life functioning.
Hart, Onno van der, The Haunted Self Structural Dissociation and the Treatmentthesis
solitary independence and symbiotic dependency, two fantasies and qualities of the psyche's imagination of growth and relatedness
Hillman reframes independence and symbiotic dependency as archetypal poles — mythic fantasies structuring the psyche's deepest orientations toward growth and connection rather than mere personality traits.
it is only through relinquishing our dependencies and our false-self that we can set forth naked and direct into a healthier relationship with ourselves and others, and so into emotional sobriety.
Berger connects the relinquishment of dependency to the dissolution of the false self, positioning both as preconditions for genuine selfhood and emotional sobriety.
Berger, Allen, 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone: Choosing Emotional Sobriety through Self-Awareness and Right Action, 2010supporting
Being 'dependent'—depending emotionally on someone—is not a bad thing in itself, patriarchal values to the contrary. It is just a great risk.
Signell argues against the patriarchal disparagement of dependency, reclaiming emotional reliance as a legitimate and necessary risk inherent in authentic intimate relationship.
Signell, Karen A., Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991supporting
the special pitfall for the alcoholic of the contradictory two-pronged quest for both 'dependence' and 'independence.'
Kurtz shows that Wilson identified the alcoholic's core spiritual dilemma as an unresolved contradiction between craving dependence and demanding independence — the axis around which recovery must turn.
Kurtz, Ernest, Not God A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2010supporting
the second column asks you to identify the unhealthy dependency that was underlying your emotional reaction... 'My welfare and safety depends on how other people drive.'
Berger offers a practical inventory method for identifying the specific unhealthy dependency underlying each emotional disturbance, illustrating the pervasive reach of dependency into everyday reactions.
Berger, Allen, 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone: Choosing Emotional Sobriety through Self-Awareness and Right Action, 2010supporting
emotional dependency interferes with this process. We react as though everything is about us, rather than understanding and seeing what the person's behavior is saying about them.
Berger argues that emotional dependency collapses the perception of the other into a mirror of one's own needs, destroying the conditions for genuine intimacy and authentic encounter.
Berger, Allen, 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone: Choosing Emotional Sobriety through Self-Awareness and Right Action, 2010supporting
research generally supports the predisposition rather than the consequence hypothesis... field dependence and externality are predisposing factors.
Flores reviews research suggesting that field-dependence and external locus of control are predisposing character traits in alcoholics rather than consequences of drinking, implicating dependency as a pre-existing vulnerability.
Flores, Philip J, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997supporting
Passivity and Field Dependence... the work of Witkin, Karp, and Goodenough (1959), Rotter (1966), and Blane (1968) all points
Flores links passivity and field dependence as empirically documented cognitive-personality features associated with addictive populations, grounding dependency in measurable psychological constructs.
Flores, Philip J, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997supporting
he comes to fear and hate his own weakness and neediness; and now he faces the task of growing up with an intolerance
Kalsched, via Guntrip, shows that traumatized children internalize a self-persecutory contempt for their own neediness and dependency, a dynamic that underlies many later psychopathological developments.
Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996aside
his fear of rejection is poignant. Rejection to him means not only losing all the hopes he had attached to somebody but also being left with a feeling of utter worthlessness.
Horney describes how the compliant neurotic's self-worth is entirely dependent on the approval of others, making rejection catastrophic — a structural form of emotional dependency embedded in character.
Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950aside