This article describes clinical work with a child suffering from cancer carried out in a Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology.The use of play and drawing was an important part of the work with the child. In order to conduct a more detailed analysis of the psychotherapeutic process in a hospital context, we shall focus on the description of several distinctive aspects of the work which, in contrast to child psychotherapy, emphasize more the containment provided by the therapeutic relationship, and less the interpretive comments directly related to the child.