Prodependence: Living With, Loving, and Caring for an Addict

- Blurb -

The time has come to stop pathologizing the desire to love, help, and care for an addicted loved one. In Prodependence, Weiss presents a research-based social and psychological understanding of human interdependence, accepting and even celebrating human interdependency in ways that are healthy and life-affirming for each person. This ground-breaking work presents a new paradigm for useful and healthy support in the face of addiction, offering both the lay reader and professional an evolved prism through which they can examine, evaluate, and improve not just relationships affected by addiction (though that's the primary focus of this book), but relationships in general. Prodependence, a new psychological term created by Robert Weiss to describe healthy interdependence in the modern world, turns this around. Rather that preaching detachment and distance over continued bonding and assistance, as so many therapists, self-help books, and 12-step groups currently do, prodependence celebrates the human need for and pursuit of intimate connection, viewing this as a positive force for change. Simply stated, prodependence occurs when attachment relationships are mutually beneficial- with one person's strengths filling in the weak points of the other, and vice versa. And this can occur even when an addiction is present