The Non-Science of the Wegscheider-Cruse Family Roles Theory
By Kenneth Anderson, MA
The Wegscheider-Cruse Family Roles Theory is one example of how “chemical dependency” treatment does not have the firm scientific foundation that it is suggested to have. Despite this lack of foundation, to become a certified addiction counselor today one must study Wegscheider-Cruse’s theory. Below I present the history of the development of this theory, and some of the specific problems with it.
Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse
Behind the Wegscheider-Cruse Family Roles Theory was Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse (Nov 16, 1938 – living), born Sharon Rae Roelandt in Jasper, Minnesota, the daughter of Emil Leonard Roelandt (Jan 19, 1915 – Dec 24, 1961) and Marjorie Annadell Roelandt nee Olson (Aug 7, 1919 – Aug 11, 1986). The Roelandts were Catholic, and Sharon attended Catholic school and has remained a devout Catholic throughout her life.
Emil Roelandt died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a service station he operated in Comfrey, Minnesota on Christmas Eve, 1961. It was suicide. He was 46 and his daughter, Sharon, was 23. Sharon attributed her father’s death to alcoholism. Prior to moving to Comfrey, Emil had operated a hatchery in Jasper, Minnesota.
Sharon Rae Roelandt married accountant Thomas Bernard Egan (Aug 20, 1926 – Dec 20, 1994) on August 30, 1958. They had three children: Patrick Dennis Egan, Sandra Marie Egan, and Deborah Colleen Egan.
Around 1967, Sharon enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. In 1971, Sharon began working with families of alcoholics and enrolled in the newly established chemical dependency training program being offered at Metropolitan State Junior College (renamed Metropolitan Community College in 1972) in Minneapolis.
Sharon and Thomas Bernard Egan were divorced on November 16, 1972; eight days later, on 24 Nov 1972, Sharon married former Catholic priest Donald Frank Wegscheider (Aug 2, 1939 – unknown) in Minnehaha, South Dakota, which had no remarriage waiting period. Don Wegscheider studied theology at St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota for four years and was ordained a priest around 1965. Don left the priesthood in 1972 to marry Sharon and began working at the North Suburban Family Service Center in Coon Rapids.
Sharon completed her chemical dependency training program at Metropolitan Community College in 1973 and was certified as a chemical dependency counselor, after which she began a four-month internship at the Johnson Institute. In the spring of 1973, Sharon and Don Wegscheider attended a conference in Saskatoon, Canada and studied family systems with Virginia Satir, MSSA (Jun 26, 1916 – Sep 10, 1988). Sharon later completed a master’s degree at St. Mary’s College in Minneapolis.
In 1973, Sharon Wegscheider approached at least 15 alcoholism treatment facilities in Minnesota and offered to do treatment of families of alcoholics, but none was interested in initiating a family treatment program, therefore, on November 1, 1973, Sharon incorporated the nonprofit Family Factory, Inc. Sharon rented an empty tax consultant’s office in Minneapolis for $15 a month and began offering therapy for families of alcoholics. This was the first such program anywhere in the world. However, the Family Factory, Inc. had a number of problems with complaining neighbors and an unsympathetic landlord.
While Sharon operated the Family Factory, her husband Don headed up North Suburban Family Service Center, a municipal program in Coon Rapids which served all sorts of families undergoing stress, not limited to chemical dependency. One day in 1974, Rev. Carl Ward Nerothin (Mar 27, 1916 – Sep 29, 2001), pastor of Elim Lutheran Church in Robbinsdale, visited North Suburban Family Service Center, and asked Don if he thought the program there could be reproduced elsewhere. Don told Nerothin about the Family Factory and shortly thereafter introduced Nerothin to Sharon Wegscheider. Nerothin and Sharon Wegscheider hit it off extremely well, and soon were planning to set up a family program in an empty house owned by Elim Lutheran Church in Robbinsdale.
Nerothin and Sharon Wegscheider incorporated the nonprofit The House, Inc. in Robbinsdale on April 2, 1974. The Family Factory was shut down and operations were transferred to The House. Although The House was open to all families suffering stress, Sharon Wegscheider ascribed most of the family problems to chemical dependency, reporting that more than 70% of families coming to The House had an alcoholic somewhere in a three-generation span, either in active addiction or recovering. Likewise, Don Wegscheider ascribed most of the problems suffered by families seeking help at North Suburban Family Service Center to chemical dependency, despite the fact that almost none of the families seeking help at these two programs were seeking help regarding chemical dependency. The Wegscheiders began co-teaching a course on treating families with chemically dependent members at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in 1975.
In 1976, Sharon Wegscheider accepted the position of director of family care at the Johnson Institute and left The House behind. Sharon’s duties at the Johnson Institute were twofold: to set up a program for counseling families with chemically dependent members and to set up a program to train counselors how to counsel families with chemically dependent members. Sharon wrote a pamphlet titled The Family Trap: No One Escapes from a Chemically Dependent Family outlining her ideas on counseling families with chemically dependent members which was published by the Johnson Institute in 1976. It was 19 pages long with illustrations.
In 1977, the Wegscheiders set up their own publishing company, called Nurturing Networks, to publish booklets and audio tapes presenting their family theories, e.g., Families in Stress (1977, 40 pages, illustrated), Family Illness: Chemical Dependency (1978, 52 pages, illustrated), Children of Alcoholics (audiocassette), etc.
Inception of the Wegscheider-Cruse Family Roles Theory
In 1979, Sharon left the Johnson Institute and founded Onsite Training and Consulting, Inc. (originally named Human Resource Network, Inc.); this was incorporated as a for-profit corporation in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 9, 1979. Onsite offered an eight-day, live-in treatment for children of alcoholics, and also published educational/treatment materials such as books, audio, and video tapes for children of alcoholics. Onsite Workshops, the current incarnation of the company, currently offers workshops in Cumberland Furnace, Tennessee. Don Wegscheider published If Only My Family Understood Me through CompCare Publications in 1979. This contained an early version of the role theory of the alcoholic family.
The Wegscheider-Cruse Family Roles Theory: Family Roles Explained
In 1981, Sharon Wegscheider published Another Chance: Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Family through Science and Behavior Books, Inc. Science and Behavior Books, Inc. had been created to publish the works of Virgina Satir. This was the book that introduced the final version of the family roles model of the alcoholic family which would bring Sharon Wegscheider fame. The roles were: the Enabler (the spouse), the Hero (the oldest child), the Scapegoat (the second child), the Lost Child (the third child), the Mascot (the fourth child), and the Dependent (the alcoholic).
Sharon Wegscheider apparently decided that these roles existed based solely on observational evidence. Wegscheider conducted no scientific testing to confirm that such roles existed in a general way in families in which one member has an alcohol use disorder. Scientific studies using tools such as factor analysis have failed to confirm the existence of Sharon Wegscheider’s family roles. It appears that Sharon Wegscheider, like the rest of the chemical dependency movement, eschewed science and the scientific method and much preferred intuition and divine revelation. Of course, the more families she observed, the more she would have perceived the traits which she expected to exist. In the scholarly world this is known as confirmation bias. One reason that the scientific method was invented was to stop our minds from tricking us with things like confirmation bias.
The adult children of alcoholics craze really kicked off in 1983 with the publication of Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Beigel Geringer Woititz (Mar 27, 1938 – Jun 7, 1994) through Health Communications, Inc., which became a New York Times bestseller. This also rocketed Sharon Wegscheider’s theories to prominence, and she became a regular on the adult children lecture circuit, as well as appearing on the Today Show, Oprah Winfrey, and Phil Donahue. Sharon Wegscheider’s family roles of Enabler, Hero, Scapegoat, Lost Child, Mascot, and Dependent became firmly entrenched in the public consciousness and the addiction treatment industry, despite the fact the lack of evidence for them.
Sharon and Don Wegscheider were divorced on September 3, 1981. Don Wegscheider moved to Austin, Texas to work as community relations director of the Faulkner Foundation. The Faulkner foundation was established in 1982 for the purpose of setting up an alcoholism treatment center in Austin. The Faulkner Center opened on July 4, 1983 at 1900 Rio Grande Avenue. The training director was Sharon Wegscheider, and the focus was on treating the whole family.
The National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACoA) was incorporated as a nonprofit in California on November 15, 1982. At an organizational meeting held at Joan Kroc’s ranch in February of 1983, Sharon was elected chair of the association. Others present included Claudia Black, Robert James Ackerman, and many more.
Sharon Wegscheider married celebrity addiction doctor Joseph Richard Cruse, MD (May 2, 1930 – Jan 26, 2021) on May 9, 1984. Cruse had helped arrange the intervention for first lady Betty Ford on April 1, 1978 and was appointed medical director of the Betty Ford Center which opened on October 4, 1982. Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse published Choice-Making: For Co-Dependents, Adult Children, and Spirituality Seekers through Health Communications, Inc. in 1985 and has published a dozen more books since then.
On September 5, 1984, Joseph Cruse became corporate medical director of the River Park Treatment Center headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the Cruses relocated to Sioux Falls, as did Onsite. River Park also had branches in Pierre and Rapid City. Joseph Cruse served as medical director of Caron in Pennsylvania from 1986 to 1988. Today, Onsite is located in Cumberland Furnace, Tennessee.
Implications
Why do theories like Wegscheider-Cruse’s become so popular despite the fact that there is no science evidence to support them? Perhaps they are popular because they allow you to blame your life problems on someone else’s sin?
However, there is nothing odd about this situation, because most of what one must study to become a certified addiction counselor approaches the status of mythology. These mythological ideas arise from Hazelden, the Johnson Institute, and the chemical dependency movement generally, which divorced itself from science in the 1960s. These mythological ideas include “alcoholism” is a progressive disease which is 100% fatal unless treated, despite the facts that over 90% of people with alcohol use disorder recover, and that of those who recover only a fraction go to AA or get treatment–the majority do it entirely on their own. Moreover, the mythology of the chemical dependency movement states that “alcoholics” can never drink again, despite the fact that about half of people who recover from alcohol use disorder abstain and half recover via controlled drinking.
The time is past due for scientific evidence to replace the mythology of the chemical dependency movement, which has had a strangle-hold on the addiction treatment industry for over half a century. Only if science replaces mythology will we be able to do a good job of helping people to change their lives for the better.
(Note: Biographical information is primarily sourced from If Only My Family Understood Me, Another Chance, and Choice-Making.)