ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on using art and therapy with cancer patients in the later and terminal stage of cancer. Art making helps both the patient and her art-psychotherapist reflect on death and separation. In the course of art therapy-psychotherapy of critically ill or dying cancer patients, an externalization of ego functions becomes necessary, as external relationships keep changing and the patient becomes weaker and is much more self-focused. A diagnosis of cancer evokes anxieties, fears and grief and causes physical suffering, dependency and vulnerability. Cancer also allows the patient to focus on present experiences, as well as transforming her or his important interpersonal relationships, making reparation of inner and outer objects possible. As patients find a new form of expression through art making, they elicit pleasurable and satisfying feelings in themselves despite the life-altering advent of cancer, and repair the narcissistic damage brought about by illness and treatments.
