An exploratory study of drawings by grieving children

Introduction: projective drawings provide a representation of the inner world. Most of the feelings associated with bereavement cannot be expressed in words. Drawings, on the contrary, are of great value to express painful experiences. Objective: The aim of our paper is to study the experiences of sorrow through projective drawings. Methodology: -A systematic review of data about the issue. -Identification of emotional markers for normal and pathologic grief. -A presentation and comments on representative cases. Conclusions: The use of graphic projective methods to understand the emotional behavior of people in situations of sorrow and bereavement is extremely useful for psychodiagnosis in order to discover the way -either adjusted or pathological- of coping with grief, and for therapy, as these methods may point out traumatic situations and how these may evolve in the future.