ABSTRACT
In the following chapter I am primarily presenting the results of research projects. In a large-scale, long-term project we used the squiggle interview to examine children who had to undergo bone marrow or stem cell transplants (SCT) because of an illness that would otherwise be fatal. The starting point for our research was the examination and treatment of several patients who had developed severe stress reactions after a bone marrow transplant. This raised the question of how other children managed to cope with the stress of treatment, conditioning and isolation. The aims, hypotheses and results of the whole investigation have been described in detail elsewhere (Günter et al, 1997, 1999; Günter, 2003). Here I want to concentrate essentially on describing the inner mechanisms for coping which came to light in the psychoanalytical squiggle interviews with the children.
