Family systems theory helps us to understand this situation and to put the presenting problem, Zoe’s drinking, in its wider context. Zoe and Deanna, as new parents, are at one of the major transition points in the family life cycle (HGD: 224), when a couple become a family, and problems which they thought they had overcome in the past have re-emerged. One approach to understanding substance abuse emphasizes the concept of co-dependency (Beattie, 1992). This is a systemic concept which implies that those around the person with the problem may have an unconscious investment in perpetuating it. It has become popular with self-help groups, but it has also been critiqued from a feminist perspective and on the grounds of lack of a clear definition and an empirical basis for its development (Calderwood and Rajesparam, 2018: 171) Whatever one’s view on this, some kind of systemic approach is helpful here, and sheds light on how Deanna may be contributing to Zoe’s difficulties without being aware of it.

Deanna’s narrative implies that Zoe started using alcohol as a dysfunctional way of coping with the stresses of adolescence, which for her were added to by her parents’ divorce and her father’s rejection of her. Turning to an addictive substance can be a way of trying to fill the gap left where an attachment relationship should be (HGD: 73), and it sounds as if Zoe’s father, until he left, was a more reliable attachment figure for her than her mother. If Zoe’s attachment to her mother was insecure, she may now be struggling to form a secure attachment with her own child and turning back to her attachment to alcohol instead. She has already done this once before, when she was just embarking on her career at the end of her university education; another important and often difficult point of transition in the adult life course which is part of what Arnett calls emerging adulthood (HGD: 185).

It sounds as if Zoe lacked the conditions in adolescence which made for the development of a secure sense of identity spending her teenage years in a state of identity diffusion (HGD: 154). Deanna also had a difficult adolescence with an absence of reliable parental support, but her response to this seems to have been a kind of identity foreclosure, a premature assumption of adult responsibility about which she felt she had no choice, and a denial of her dependency needs. She became what is sometimes called a ‘parental child’, reversing normal roles and becoming her mother’s carer.

For both Zoe and Deanna, their achievement of an adult identity will have been further complicated by the issues around sexuality that they will have had to negotiate. Although a diversity of sexuality is more generally accepted than in the past, this is not universal and prejudices still exist. Deanna suspects Zoe’s mother has difficulty in accepting their relationship, and she is likely to be right. And in general, social assumptions around sexuality are still heteronormative (HGD: 11), and this will have coloured others’ perceptions of them, both individually and as a couple.

So as Zoe and Deanna embark on parenthood, they find themselves in difficulties. Deanna views the difficulties as Zoe’s, but we can see that Deanna is under stress as well, and that she is tending to retreat from parental involvement under cover of her busyness at work. Both of them share a background in which parents were not emotionally available to them, but they have reacted to this in different ways. It is common for couples to be attracted to each other because of similarities in their histories which they unconsciously pick up on. The unconscious dynamics of adult attachment can work in different ways: ‘I love someone who reflects part of myself, sometimes a hidden or unacknowledged part of myself’ (Clulow and Mattinson, 1989:52, quoted in HGD: 182). What could be happening here could be something like this: Deanna loves Zoe because she reflects the unacknowledged part of herself that isn’t strong and coping, and wants to be looked after, a part of herself that she had to deny and split off when her mother was unable to meet those needs in her. She is projecting the weak, childlike part of herself into Zoe. Zoe has identified with her clever, intellectual mother, but is out of touch with her more caring, nurturing side, which she now needs in her role as a mother herself. She is projecting this into Deanna, letting Deanna look after her, but as a result is feeling childlike, anxious and dependent, and unconfident about finding her new identity as a parent as well as an academic. This is leading her to anaesthetise these uncomfortable feelings with alcohol.

Deanna is using projection as a defence (HGD: 34, 37) against acknowledging her own vulnerability. We can see other defences at work here too. When she repeatedly deflects Brendan’s questions about how she is, she is using denial, often through the medium of humour. Denial is part and parcel of projection; what is denied in the self because it is too painful to acknowledge is then projected elsewhere.

References and Further Reading

Alcoholics Anonymous (online) at http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/About-AA/The-12-Steps-of-AA (Accessed July 2018)

Beattie, M. (1992). Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself (2nd ed.). Center City, MN: Hazelden.

Calderwood, K.A. and Rajesparam, A. (2018). ‘A critique of the codependency concept considering the best interests of the child.’ Families in Society 95(3): 171–178.

For an introductory overview of psychological, social and treatment aspects of addiction, see

Svanberg, J. (2018). The Psychology of Addiction. Abingdon: Routledge.