tiple loss because there is no cure for AIDS, ‘… the people to become immoderately tolerant of death.’ Cho and Cassidy (1994) offer a different explanation. They believe that habituation might reflect a state of protracted grief rather than a tolerance of death. This argument implies that people may have become habituated to multiple loss, and made adaptive emotional responses.
             This suggests that multiple losses influence the grief process. Cho & Cassidy (1994) found that those affected by HIV/AIDS showed common characteristics: Chronic Bereavement and Truant Grief, i.e., prolonged or delayed grieving. The effects of this are compounded if more than one loss occurred.
             They argue that this creates a Multiple Loss Syndrome which is characterised by Truant Grief; a delayed grief response where grief is postponed until it can be coped with without the additional demands of the outside world. In this process, multiple loss influences the grief process in such a way as to create a threshold of intensity of grief which becomes established during early losses and then is not surpassed.
             In order to discuss this explanation further, I will use two distinctive but comparable models of the stages of grieving (adapted from Cho & Cassidy, 1994 and Cherney and Verney, 1996). Cho and Cassidy (1994) describe a model based on the psychosocial tasks of grieving. Cherney and Verney (1996) use a model of the psychological processes of grieving based on the work of Sanders (1989). In these models, process and task mirror one another over five stages.
             The grieving process for people living with HIV/AIDS can begin when diagnosis is made (e.g., Anticipatory Grief: Sherr, 1995; Cho and Cassidy, 1994). The first stage of this process is characterised by shock and denial (Cherney & Verney, 1996). Social issues may come to the fore. Being diagnosed as seropositive may force everyone involved to make reality adjustments to...