Long-Term Unresolved Grief: Applying Bowlby's Variants to Adult Survivors of Early Parental Death

Previous research efforts studying the long-term adjustment of persons bereaved in childhood have produced sometimes questionable findings due to the often exclusive focus on psychiatric populations. Current research on long-term outcomes for normative early parental death survivors has explored selected characteristics and needs of this population. With this article, we encourage researchers to conduct further study of normative participants and their adjustment to early bereavement. In an extension of Bowlby's (1980) disordered variants of childhood grief, we propose behavioral and thought manifestations in adult survivors of early bereavement as indicators of unresolved grief. Variants addressed include persistent anxiety, desire to die, persistent blame and guilt, compulsive self-reliance, and aggressive outbursts. Topics needing further research using appropriate methodological controls are proposed.

The bereavement reaction can be an impetus for creative effort, a force for good, or it can have the effect of stunting personality growth and producing the concomitant antisocial acts, destruction of social relationships, and even the taking of one's own life (Eisenstadt, 1978, p. 220).