Developmental trauma and unresolved loss in the Adult Attachment Interview

Abstract

This article describes attachment perspectives on unresolved loss and dissociation beginning with Bowlby’s conceptualisation of grief and bereavement, and subsequent discussion of unresolved/traumatic loss on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). An AAI selected by the author will be utilised to show how traumatic factors in the speaker’s childhood, including sexual abuse and maternal neglect and rejection, may result in an unresolved, complicated grief process. The author intends to illuminate the implications of early trauma and subsequent loss on one’s sense of self and relational life, and to suggest an integrative treatment model that would address early traumatic experience and subsequent bereavement.