Grief as Irreducible Attachment Displacement: Prolonged Grief as Wrong Attractor, Oscillation Theory as Return Path, and the Ground State of Integrated Loss

We apply the Displacement Framework to grief and bereavement, formalizing attachment as a shared attractor basin between self and other, and loss as landscape pole removal — not a simple displacement but the destruction of one basin pole that structurally alters the remaining landscape. Nine formal propositions are derived covering: attachment as shared attractor basin (Bowlby), loss as landscape pole removal, the Dual Process Model (Stroebe and Schut) as healthy oscillation between loss-orientation and restoration-orientation as a limit cycle versus wrong attractor, prolonged grief disorder as loss-orientation wrong attractor (PGD = W_LO), absent grief as restoration-orientation wrong attractor, community ritual as return-path infrastructure, cultural return paths as infrastructure, meaning-making as S0_new construction (Neimeyer), and the integration theorem showing grief resolution requires ground state reconstruction rather than return.

Disenfranchised grief (pets, miscarriage, suicide loss) is analyzed as lack of community return-path support. Complicated grief by loss type (sudden/anticipated, violent/natural, child/parent) is mapped to displacement geometry. The central insight: grief resolution is NOT a return to the pre-loss ground state but construction of a new S0 that incorporates the loss as part of the landscape. 37 citations from real bereavement literature including Bowlby, Stroebe, Worden, Neimeyer, Shear, Bonanno, Prigerson, and Doka.