Grief as Manifold Disruption: From Animal Distress to Addiction Craving

This paper reframes grief as a structural process rather than an emotional or pathological state. Drawing on cross‑species evidence and predictive processing frameworks, it argues that grief emerges when a relational pattern that previously contributed to an organism’s stability is removed. The loss disrupts the predictive manifold—memory, present‑tense cues, and anticipated futures—forcing the system into a period of recalibration. This account explains why grief is universal, why it varies across individuals, and why it can arise even in ambivalent or harmful relationships. Rather than treating grief as a disorder, the paper situates it as a normal consequence of losing a stabilizing relational signal, offering a unified framework that integrates ethology, cognitive science, and human experience.