involve features of loss, danger and entrapment. This may also affect identity (self as functioning agent). On a closer analysis security may be affected if the person gives up their job and earning capacity, and attachment may be affected if it leads to deterioration in a close relationship due to caring responsibilities or hospitalisation.
So on a simplistic level a person could experience loss in attachment (bereavement), achievement (failing a key exam), security (eviction) or identity (confirmation of infertility).
Yet the most damaging events are those that hit at a number of areas of our core functioning. They have an impact on the very meaning of our lives.
We believe that the conceptual model developed helps explains not only why intuitively negative events are seen as such (death, divorce, destitution), but also why lesser events under certain conditions are so negative. Breaking a finger or wrist might seem inconvenient, painful but relatively minor. But if it stops the individual doing their job, performing their parenting role or having contact with close others, it may involve greater hardship. Suppose the breakage was due to an attack – either from someone close or randomly in the street – this would have greater impact on felt security and the belief in a benign world. Events can also escalate: the individual may be told they will never recover full mobility in their hand and then lose not only functioning but also their livelihood and future goals. Conversely, such context also points to the availability of ‘safety nets’ or available resources that reduce negativity (e.g. another household wage earner cushioning the impact of job loss or parenting demands).
The average reader might be finding it hard to believe that this is still an issue, in a science that has arguably moved consistently from nomothetic to idiographic understanding. We can assure you that it is. We believe it’s hampering research, for example producing inconsistent results in genetic studies that often still use a checklist approach. We continue to argue that all negative events are likely to affect one of our core psychological needs (attachment, achievement, security, identity) and that furthermore, the dimensions of loss, danger, entrapment, humiliation and life impact enable us to understand further aspects of events, how they are experienced and how they affect our lives – its meaning and enjoyment.
We are currently testing this model using a new online measurement of life events: the Computerised Life Events and Assessment Record (CLEAR: Bifulco et al., 2018). The measure not only gathers data regarding event type and context but also allows individuals to include information about various event attributes. Such detail allows for more meaningful analysis. The online system means events can be gathered on a wide scale and prospectively. We have used the data to quantitatively check whether the attributes we have identified truly are important in helping to differentiate between severe and non-severe life events. At the very least, we hope that by outlining this model researchers using life events should be inspired to think more critically about the measurement tools they use.
What about in the realm of applied psychology? Often a client’s vulnerability and maintenance factors will be examined more closely than the life events that have precipitated their symptoms. And although sometimes it will be obvious why a certain life event might have contributed to a client’s symptomatology, at other times it will be less so. It may be that the client does not spontaneously describe all the events and their accumulation, or outline all the relevant context. They may not see such factors themselves as important. Our approach could serve as a way of thinking further about events that may appear at first glance to have had a disproportionate effect on the client’s wellbeing. It could also enable links between predisposing events and cognitive or historical vulnerabilities to be clearly drawn out during formulation (e.g. a history of rejection 