Avery describes six families in which severe phallic narcissistic conflicts in the husbands impeded their wives' ability to make the necessary adaptation when the children in the family left home. These men experienced both an inordinately painful sense of loss when their children departed from the home and a paralyzing sense of injury because they discovered they were unable to conquer time and the aging process. Consequently, they were incapable of joining their spouses in what is usually a shared grieving process, a mutual recommitment to the marriage, and the adjusted roles that emerge after children leave home.