“Codependency”
is a mental sickness that acknowledged by psychology which consists of the
following characteristics: depending highly on others, viewing personal values
low, highly oppressing self-emotion and lacking of independence and a healthy
relationship between others (Shu & Wu, 2004). Such characteristics can be
strongly associated with the qualities that Taiwanese society usually expected
on women, or even those women expected on themselves, such as obedient,
passively, taking care of others, etc. As a result, researchers compare the
ideas of codependency with women’s qualities above and try to discuss the
coherence between the two and whether if our society tends to put sickness on
the women with those qualities.
In the research of department of Educational Psychology and Counseling
in National Taiwan Normal University, they divided those women
who are tested into four groups of sex character tendencies, which are having
the qualities of female, male, both sides and neither. They pick of the
tendency of female character and tested them with questionnaire so as to find
out their intersection with the quality of codependency. According to the
result of the experiment, in the four index of the qualities of codependency,
which includes “seeing others as the focus point of life,” “endorsing the
character of taking care of others,” “seeking values of life from relationship
with others” and “lacking the ability of expressing emotion,” there are only
two of the qualities that overlap with the women who tend to be more like a
character of women. The two intersections are “endorsing the character of
taking care of others” and “seeking values of life from relationship with
others.” The other two qualities, however, are present even an opposite rate of
the women’s qualities, that is, the more tendency to be like a woman, the less
do they “seeing others as the focus point of life” and “lacking the ability of
expressing emotion.”
Whether if codependency can be equalized
with women’s qualities under such result are remain question, however, we can
find something worth discussing from them. For example, endorsing the character
of taking care of others reflect a common notion in Taiwanese society, which is
that in Chinese culture, we are used to value helping others as a great virtue,
and especially demands highly on women to take care of others, family for
instance (Shu & Wu, 2004.) However, it also presents
women’s approval to themselves through taking care of others. In other words,
we should not see this quality of codependency as a mental sickness, or negative
characteristic, on women. Oppositely, we should consider it a behavior for
women to exercise their autonomy, just as they decide to make any decision as
well.
Back to Taiwanese society nowadays, influencing
by the value of self-improving from the Western culture, we tend to view more valuable
on those women who aim to get success as men and consider them as index of improvement.
However, we should not neglect those quality of seeing others important, as
those are also approvals for some part of women. To sum up, we can say that autonomy
for women is not only choose to get the equal status as men, but makes whatever
decision by own mind.
Reference
Yi-jen,
Shu. & Li-jiaun, Wu. (2004, Sep). Study of Relationships among Sex-role
Orientation, Codependency and Self-esteem of Female Adults in Taiwan. Bulletin of Educational Psychology, 36(1) pp.85-107
Retrieved
from http://ir.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/ir/retrieve/19448/ntnulib_ja_A0201_3601_085.pdf
