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This book, the final volume of three on the subjects of attachment, separation, and loss, addresses itself to the subject of loss and its consequences.
It is Bowlby's intent to address the controversies that have arisen in psychiatric and psychoanalytic thinking about the questions of depression and childhood mourning, to present his view of mourning and the defensive processes involved derived from studies in cognitive psychology and information theory, and to demonstrate "the influences on responses to loss of the experiences which a bereaved person has had with attachment figures during the whole course of his life and especially during his infancy, childhood and adolescence. These experiences are held to account for a large proportion of the variance observed in the course taken by mourning in adults" (pp. 76-77).
In developing his ideas and the central theme that even young children can mourn, Bowlby presents an erudite comprehensive review of the literature on the mourning processes, normal and pathological, in adults and children. In the course of his review, Bowlby demonstrates what he considers to be the similarities in reactions to loss in adults and children. He delineates the typical sequence of numbness, yearning, disorganization, despair, and reorganization. He then illustrates that the pathological variants take the form of exaggerations or elaborations of these processes that are present in and characterize normal mourning. These variants in turn are manifested in expressions of chronic mourning or prolonged absence of grief. In effect, it is not the presence of such phenomena that indicates pathology but the "scope, intensity and persistence" of these phenomena beyond reasonable duration.
One might very briefly summarize the main points of Bowlby's work as follows: (1) The kind of attachment behavior that has been established determines the reactions to loss. (2) Defensive exclusion is the main mechanism of pathological formation excluding info