Bowlby and Parke developed a four-stage model of grief that focused on the aspect of attachment to the person who is gone. The stages include shock and numbness, yearning and searching, despair and disorganization, and reorganization and recovery. Bowlby’s research into attachment focused on the ways in which children form attachments from infancy. Looking at attachment as a means for survival, Bowlby’s perspective suggests that separation anxiety is driven by the abject terror of being abandoned by one’s parents.

While narcissistic traits are the kind that drives away most people, children are bound to the narcissist by birth, and as they grow into adolescence and adulthood, they may remain entangled in their narcissisti...