“It is a sad irony for us that our work contributed to labeling of yet more ‘diseases’ over which people are ‘powerless,’” Peele and Brodsky wrote in a 1991 preface to an edition of Love and Addiction, printed when codependency was all the rage. While they had wanted to show that normal love could go awry in a compulsive and life-contracting way—just as drug use can—instead, their work was interpreted to mean that all relationships were mere addictions and most love was delusional and self-centered.
