Main description:

Portrait therapy reverses the traditional roles in art therapy, utilising Edith Kramer's concept of the art therapist's 'third hand' to collaboratively design and paint their clients' portraits. It addresses 'disrupted' self-identity, which is common in serious illness and characterised by statements like 'I don't know who I am anymore' and 'I'm not the person I used to be'.

This book explores the theory and practice of portrait therapy, including Kenneth Wright's theory of 'mirroring and attunement'. Case studies, accompanied by colour portraits, collages and prose-poems, provide insight into the intervention and the author highlights the potential for portrait therapy to be used with other client groups in the future.

Contents:

Foreword. Acknowledgements. Part I. Focusing the Gaze. 1. Setting the Scene: Introducing Portraiture as a 'Third Hand' Intervention. 2. Priming the Canvas: A Phenomenological Approach to Depicting Subjectivity. 3. Selecting the Medium: Portraiture as a Therapeutic Tool. Part II. Collaborative Case-Studies. 4. Portrait Therapy as a Collaborative Intervention: Paint Me This Way! 5. Increasing the Patients' Creative Capacity to Adapt to Illness. 6. Mirroring and Attunement through Portraiture: Intersubjective and Symbolic Ways of Knowing, Being and Relating. 7. Making Special, Making Meaning: Increasing the Lived Experience of Homelike-Being-in-the-World and Ontological Security. Part III. Portrait Therapy Protocol and Evaluation Methods. 8. A Therapist's Manual: The Three Phases of Portrait Therapy. 9. Making Connections: Evaluating Portrait Therapy. 10. Afterword: Drawing Conclusions. Appendix 1. Images used in the Portrait Reference Album (PRA). 2. Semi-structured end of project interview (EPI) questions used to evaluate portrait therapy. References.