(1) anxious-ambivalent nonsecure attachment bonding;
(2) dismissive-avoidant nonsecure attachment bonding; and
(3) fearful-avoidant nonsecure attachment bonding.
Any one of these three nonsecure attachment bonds will produce the conditions for the kind of grief work that Bradshaw writes about.
From what we know about young GWB's family life, it is hard to imagine that he experienced a secure attachment bond with either his mother or his father. Of the three patterns of nonsecure attachment bonds that Jeffreys discusses, GWB most likely experienced the fearful-avoidant nonsecure attachment bond. Of the three patterns discussed by Jeffreys, this one strikes me as the one most obviously connected with megalomania.
However, from what we know about young Barack Obama, it appears likely that he did indeed form a secure attachment bond with his mother. But it does not appear likely that he formed a secure attachment bond with his father. Instead, it appears most likely that young Barack Obama formed a dismissive-avoidant attachment bond with his father. For example, Candidate Obama famously dismissed the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who had been a father figure in Obama's life in Chicago, and threw him under the bus when Wright proved himself to be a liability of Candidate Obama's presidential campaign. (Concerning Wright and Obama, see the index of Dr. Frank's book for specific page references.)
Dr. Frank does not diagnose President Obama as being incapable of serious mourning. On the contrary, Dr. Frank says that President Obama has got some work to do still regarding his father and mother.
People who experienced nonsecure attachment bonding in their early lives will not be able to mourn losses in their lives in a healthy way, unless and until they somehow experience what Bradshaw refers to as grief work and what Dr. Frank refers to as serious mourning and an accompanying new kind of containment experience that they had not experienced early in life. Containment experience is the opposite of abandonment experience, and vice versa.
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