Attachment and Loss
VOLUME III
LOSS SADNESS AND DEPRESSION
John Bowlby
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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Copyright © 1980 by The Travistock Institute of Human Relations Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address Basic Books, 10East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 79-2759
ISBN o-465-04237-6 (cloth)
ISBN o-465-04238-4 (paper)
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TO MY PATIENTS
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2
Contents
Foreword xiii
Acknowledgements xvi
Preface 1
Part I: Observations, Concepts and Controversiesi
1 The Trauma of Loss 71
Prelude 71
Grief in infancy and early childhood 9
Do young children mourn? a controversy 14
Detachment 19
2 The Place of Loss and Mourning in Psychopathology 231
A clinical tradition 23
Ideas regarding the nature of mourning processes, healthy and pathological 24
Ideas to account for individual differences in response to loss 34
3 Conceptual Framework 38
Attachment theory: an outline 38
Stressors and states of stress and distress 41
4 An Information Processing Approach to Defence 44
A new approach 44
Exclusion of information from further processing 44
Subliminal perception and perceptual defence 46
Stages at which processes of defensive exclusion may operate 52
Self or selves 59
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Some consequences of defensive exclusion 64
Conditions that promote defensive exclusion 69
Defensive exclusion: adaptive or maladaptive 72
5 Plan of Work 75
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Part II: The Mourning of Adults
6 Loss of Spouse 81
Sources 81
Four phases of mourning 85
Differences between widows and widowers 103
Note: details of sources 106
7 Loss of Child 112
Introduction 112
Parents of fatally ill children 113
Parents of infants who are stillborn or die early 122
Affectional bonds of different types: a note 124
8 Mourning in Other Cultures 126
Beliefs and customs common to many cultures 126
Mourning a grown son in Tikopia 132
Mourning a husband in Japan 134
9 Disordered Variants 137
Two main variants 137
Chronic mourning 141
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Prolonged absence of conscious grieving 152
Mislocations of the lost person's presence 161
Euphoria 169
10 Conditions Affecting the Course of Mourning 172
Five categories of variable 172
Identity and role of person lost 173
Age and sex of person bereaved 178
Causes and circumstances of loss 180
Social and psychological circumstances affecting the bereaved 187
Evidence from therapeutic intervention 195
11 Personalities Prone to Disordered Mourning 202
Limitations of evidence 202
Disposition to make anxious and ambivalent relationships 203
Disposition towards compulsive caregiving 206
Disposition to assert independence of affectional ties 211
Tentative conclusions 222
12 Childhood Experiences of Persons Prone to Disordered Mourning 214