ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role portrait therapy plays in helping people living with life threatening or chronic illnesses to heal unresolved grief and loss. It examines the therapeutic implications of building ‘continuing bonds’ within the portraits, and argues that through a process of mirroring and attunement portrait therapy enables people to bring closure to painful experiences and find a sense of peace at end of life. The chapter discusses the portraits that were painted during a PhD project developing portrait therapy as an innovative art therapy intervention for people who experience life-threatening or chronic illness as a disruption to their self-identity. Interventions such as portrait therapy, which enable clients to reconstruct their self-narrative and worldview through the successful integration of the losses into their personal meaning systems, have the most positive outcomes and reduced grief symptoms.
