Responses to Loss During the Second Year

The younger an infant the more difficult it is to know how his responses to loss of mother should best be conceptualized. Review of the evidence suggests the following. Before six months the responses are so different to what they are later that the concept of mourning seems certainly inappropriate. Between seven months and about seventeen months responses take forms that have sufficient resemblance to the responses of older children for their relation to mourning to call for careful discussion. From about seventeen months onwards the responses conform ever more closely to those described in the previous chapters so that the tentative conclusions reached in them begin to apply.

In order to limit discussion to manageable proportions, I have decided, reluctantly, to deal only very cursorily with responses to be observed in children younger than about sixteen months. This enables us to focus attention mainly on the responses to be seen during the last eight months of the second year. Not only is this a transitional period of great interest about which there is no lack of controversy, but the period is also one in regard to which there is a reasonable amount of evidence. This evidence, moreover, has been recorded by researchers working in two distinct traditions, clinicians studying problems of attachment, separation and loss, and psychologists concerned with cognitive development. Since I believe evidence from the two sources to be mutually compatible and since the theory developed by the cognitive psychologists is both closer to the data and better articulated than that developed by clinicians, I draw heavily on cognitive theory as well as attachment theory when interpreting the findings. Before dealing with theoretical issues, however, it is necessary to consider the evidence.

Responses when Conditions are Favourable

We start with the account of a little girl of seventeen months who was in foster-care with the Robertsons for ten days.