ABSTRACT
Physical and sexual abuse, rape, the problems of adult children of alcoholics and other dysfunctional families, divorce, sexual dysfunction, fear of intimacy, and posttraumatic stress all involve significant amounts of loss, grief, and mourning that need to be addressed. Similarly, even when change occurs for what is construed to be the betterment of the person, loss is automatically a component of the experience, if for no other reason than change necessarily demands losing the status quo. Hence, loss, grief, and mourning result from normal development and maturation in life, as well as from competency arising from the attainment of certain abilities, capacities, or functioning. Before examining concepts of loss, it is useful to have an understanding of the evolution of thought about grief and mourning that has transpired in the thanatological literature. Sigmund Freud took up the discussion of mourning in order to elucidate points about clinical depression or, as it was called in those days, melancholia.
