Contents 
Acknowledgements 
Preface 
Part I: Observations, Concepts and Controversies 
The Trauma of Loss 
Prelude 
Grief in infancy and early childhood 
Do young children mourn? a controversy 
Detachment 
> 
The Place of Loss and Mourning in Psychopathology 
A clinical tradition 
Ideas regarding the nature of mourning 
healthy and pathological 
[deas to account for individual differences in response 
to loss 
Conceptual Framework 
Attachment theory: an outline 
Stressors and states of stress and distress 
{ 
An Information Processing Approach to Defence 
A new approach 
Exclusion of information from further processing 
Subliminal perception and perceptual defence 
Stages at which processes of defensive exclusion may 
operate 
Self or selves 
Some consequences of defensive exclusion 
Conditions that promote defensive exclusion 
Defensive exclusion: adaptive or maladaptive 
3 
Plan of Work 
vv 
‘ 
&. 
Q 
27 
27 
38 
38 
17 
1 { 
14 
44 
0) 
52 
59 
64 
bg 
22 
78 
79