Mykola Fomych - Ph.D in Psychology, Associate Professor, Head of the Department. National University of Civil Protection of Ukraine.
ORCID 0000-0003-1253-2656
DOI - https://doi.org/10.52363/dcpp-2025.1.13
Keywords: loss, ambiguous loss, enforced disappearance, psychopathology, unsolved grief.
The phenomenon of ambiguous loss is theorized in the article. As a result, the concept of «ambiguous loss due to the enforced disappearance» is clarified, which should be understood as a unique and complex experience of physical loss that remains unresolved due to the paradox of ambiguity (the physical absence but psychological presence), due to the impossibility of establishing the status of the missing person: alive or dead.
It was found out that the main characteristics of ambiguous loss include: incompleteness – ambiguous loss remains unresolved, as the person who is grieving, has no confirmation of the death of a loved one and lives in hope of his or her return; ambivalence – makes a person live with the paradox of «ambiguity», the absence and presence of a loved one at the same time; traumatic – experiencing an unresolved situation leads to the development of psychopathologies, the source of which is the external circumstances.
Based on the theoretical principles of the development of models of ambiguous loss and prolonged grief, we have developed a theoretical model of ambiguous loss as a result of enforced disappearance, which contains four main dimensions of this type of loss (relationships, vision, finances, assistance) and covers the cyclical process of experiencing it from hope to hopelessness. Such fluctuations make it impossible to integrate new experience, cause the maladaptive cognitions and the development of psychopathology, which are the symptoms of experiencing the ambiguous loss.