Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Dependence - A Clinical Look at Control, Codependency and Why the Child Position Persists
- Billi Silverstein
- 10 hours ago
- 4 min read
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Dependence - A Clinical Look at Control, Codependency and Why the Child Position Persists
What Rapunzel illustrates is a codependent system organised around an adult who cannot tolerate separation and a child who cannot afford to risk it.
At the centre of this is the child position. Rapunzel is not just physically confined, she is developmentally held in place. She is not required to think independently, decide, or differentiate. Instead, she is organised around responding. Her role is to maintain connection by staying within what is permitted. Over time, this creates a particular internal structure, where the individual does not fully form a separate sense of self, but remains oriented around the other.
Rapunzel’s hair sits at the centre of this dynamic. It is not simply a symbol of beauty, but something that becomes available for use by the other. The enchantress calls, and Rapunzel responds. There is no negotiation in this exchange. The hair functions as a point of access, a way in which Rapunzel herself is made reachable, usable, and compliant. What might otherwise represent vitality and identity is reorganised into something that serves the relationship.
At the same time, it is this very thing that makes movement possible. What is used to maintain control is also what allows escape. The same structure that keeps her accessible creates a pathway out. This is often how these systems operate. The mechanism of control and the possibility of separation are not separate. They are built into one another.
The enchantress, in turn, is not simply controlling for its own sake. Her control regulates something in her that cannot tolerate loss, difference, or separation. Rapunzel provides continuity, stability, and a fixed relational position. Without this, there is the risk of something more disorganised emerging. Control, therefore, is defensive, even if it is experienced by the other as restrictive.
This is where the system becomes codependent. Each position maintains the other. The enchantress holds control to stabilise herself. Rapunzel maintains compliance to preserve the relationship. Both are organised around avoiding something that feels intolerable.
The arrival of the prince shifts this from a closed system into a triangle. This is where the structure becomes more recognisable.
The prince introduces a third position that does not operate within the existing rules. He is not organised around control or submission. His presence disrupts the exclusivity of the relationship between Rapunzel and the enchantress. For the first time, Rapunzel is faced with something that invites movement away rather than compliance within.
This is the point at which the oedipal dynamic becomes visible. The child begins to turn towards another object. Attention, interest, and emotional investment shift. This is not simply romantic. It represents the beginning of separation and the formation of a self that exists beyond the original dyad.
For the enchantress, this is destabilising. The introduction of a third exposes the limits of control. Rapunzel is no longer fully contained. There is now competition, not only for attention, but for position. This is where female envy intensifies. Rapunzel’s youth, vitality, and capacity to move towards another are no longer abstract. They are enacted.
The response is not negotiation, but escalation. The cutting of Rapunzel’s hair is an attempt to collapse the triangle back into a dyad. It removes the mechanism through which connection has been maintained. What was once used to access and control her is taken away at the point it can no longer guarantee compliance.
Rapunzel’s removal from the tower completes the rupture. The child is forced out of the controlled system, but without a fully formed sense of self. This is often where difficulty arises. The move towards another relationship does not automatically resolve the underlying structure. Without internal change, the same dynamics can be recreated, even with a different partner.
In adult relationships, this triangular dynamic appears repeatedly. A third person, an external interest, or even a shift in focus can destabilise a tightly bound pair. Where there is no capacity to tolerate separation, the response is often control, withdrawal, or escalation. The issue is not the third itself, but what it exposes.
What the story depicts, then, is a system that cannot tolerate differentiation. The child is held in place, the controlling figure maintains stability through restriction, and the introduction of a third brings into focus what the system is organised to avoid.
The “tower” is not simply left behind. It becomes internal. People may find themselves moving from one relationship to another, but remaining in the same position, either controlling or adapting, without recognising the structure they are recreating.
What Rapunzel captures with precision is how parts of the self can become used in the service of a relationship, and how that same structure can contain the possibility of change. Without the capacity to tolerate separation, there can be attachment, but not interdependence.
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