Pauline Boss is Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and a former president of the National Council on Family Relations. She practiced family therapy for over 40 years. With her groundbreaking work in research and practice, Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” in the 1970s and since then has developed and tested the theory of ambiguous loss, a guide for working with families of the missing, physically or psychologically. She summarized this research and clinical work in her widely acclaimed book Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. In addition to over 100 peer reviewed academic articles and chapters, her other books include Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss and Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope While Coping with Stress and Grief. Her most recent book is The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change. Boss’s work is known around the world wherever ambiguous losses occur, and her books have been translated 23 times into various languages. As of 2022, Boss was granted Emeritus status as a longtime family therapist and, as of 2023, Emeritus status in the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
