Abstract

A child who has experienced the death of a parent may be traumatized by the loss. The nature of the child's reaction depends on a combination of several factors, including the circumstances surrounding the death, the nature of the child's relationship to the deceased parent and the existence of remaining, supportive, family members. The creative arts therapies have been successfully employed as a means of therapeutic intervention with bereaved children. One medium in the field of the creative arts therapies is the use of photography, or phototherapy. This research paper explores the use of photography, in conjunction with other forms of creative arts therapies with a parentally bereaved child. A combination of clinical examples and the writer's personal experiences and observations are employed to develop the notion that the camera (and photographs in general) can be used as a research tool, a therapeutic medium and as a metaphoric parallel in relation to working therapeutically with traumatically bereaved children.