Bowlby span over forty years of exploration into the mourning capabilities and capacities in children. Although they all have different views on when they child can actually comprehend the loss, they also have different stages during which the child realizes its loss. Bowlby, Robertson, and Freud had strong attestation that the infant, in its own form, experienced grief. Robertson conducted a study on eighteen- to twenty-four- month-olds that had sustained the detachment of their mothers and concluded that: If a child is taken from (its) mother's care at this age, when (it) is so possessively and passionately attached to her, it is indeed as if (its) world has been shattered. (Its) intense need of her is unsatisfied, and the frustration and longing may send (it) frantic with grief. It takes and exercise of imagination to sense the intensity of this distress. (It) is overwhelmed as any adult who has lost a beloved person by death. To the child, of two with (its) lack of understanding and complete inability to tolerate frustration, it is really as if (its) mother had died. (It) does not know death, but only absence; and if the only person who can satisfy (its) imperative need is absent, she might as well be dead. (1953) Freud also argued that the child's facial expressions were evidence of di...
