Whose fault is it? Exoneration and allocation of personal responsibility in relationship manuals

It is often argued that self-help books negate citizenship and the public sphere by promoting a hyper-responsibility in which individuals are rendered entirely responsible for their own life experiences, without reference to social relations. This article argues that discourses of responsibility in self-help literature are more complex and ambiguous, and that this is in part due to the widespread influence of codependency theory, and in part due to tensions within liberal-democratic political ideologies.