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At 6 months postloss, 37 midlife bereaved participants engaged in an empty-chair monologue role play involving their deceased spouses. Judges rated the extent of self- and deceased-blame in participants' monologue discourse, and forms of continuing attachment to the deceased were assessed. Participants completed outcome measures at 14, 25, and 60 months postloss. Self-blame was uniquely predictive of grief-specific symptoms across 60 months postloss. Furthermore, the relationship between self-blame and grief-specific symptoms was mediated by a maladaptive form of continuing attachment involving hanging onto the deceased's possessions. In contrast, deceased-blame was uniquely related to general symptoms at 14 months postloss but was not predictive of symptoms later on after the death. It was also negatively related to use of the fond memories form of continuing attachment. The results were interpreted in terms of differing motivational consequences of self- versus deceased-blame on the continuing attachment.

Traditional bereavement theories emphasize that it is crucial to work through the emotional meanings of a loss and that the failure to do so typically results in delayed grief symptoms. This article reports data examining these assumptions prospectively across the first 5 years of bereavement. Based on previous validity data, elevated symptoms were defined in terms of 6-month median scores for each measure. Delayed elevations were observed on isolated measures for 3 (7%) participants. However, these elevations were more parsimoniously explained by random measurement error. Furthermore, when a weighted grief-depression composite score was used to maximize the probability of capturing the true (latent) grief variable, not a single case of delayed symptom elevations was observed. Finally, data on emotional processing of the loss at 6 months failed to support the traditional assumption that minimal emotional processing of the loss would lead to delayed grief.