Evidence garnered by this study may help provide college counselors with a clinically useful model of codependency, informing their assessment and treatment planning of students who present with self-identified codependency characteristics. Specifically, codependence inclined students may exhibit tendencies toward self-defeating and covert patterns of narcissistic relating (e.g., rejection sensitivity, attachments to painful relationships, shame-proneness, caretaking to earn relationship). Additionally; this study raises the possibility that codependency might be as closely related to fears of intimacy and being hurt in relationship as it is related to a preoccupied concern over maintaining or controlling a security relationship. These results, together with the negative relationship between codependency and overt narcissism, lend preliminary support for Cermak's conceptualization of codependency as a complement to narcissism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]