Melody Beattie

Who is Melody Beattie?

Melody Beattie is the author of Codependent No More, published in 1987 by the Hazelden Foundation. The book was successful and influential within the self-help movement, selling over eight million copies and introducing the word codependent to the general public.

Following the success of Codependent No More, Beattie authored over a dozen other books, including Beyond Codependency and The Language of Letting Go. Her most recent book is Make Miracles in Forty Days: Turning What You Have into What You Want, published in 2010. Several of her books have been published in other languages.

Similar to the work of Bill W. and Alcoholics Anonymous five decades earlier, Beattie's early work synthesizes psychoanalytic theory into language people can easily grasp and use. In Codependent No More, Beattie also functioned as a popularizer of science, especially the work of psychiatrist Timmen Cermak, author of Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence.

Beattie's work contributed to the general emergence within American society of the idea that addiction to a person was a possibility.