Table A3.

Each question is followed by analyzed assumptions.

1. How was it to be involved in music therapy?

1.1. The entire experience evoked musicality, both in the here and now and as a recollecting process of former experiences of music. 1.2. Music therapy was experienced as a break in the monotonous isolation necessary for the treatment. This was assumed to contribute to the participant’s capacity to preserve a connection to life outside the hospital. 1.3. The music therapy sessions evoked a sense of “normality” connected to the participant’s normal life and a sense of being in life, being alive. 1.4. Music therapy evoked participants’ own competencies, like former musical activities and a general sensorimotor competency. 1.5. Music therapy evoked diversion from pain, and presumably also from fear. 1.6. Music therapy activated affects: curiosity, joy, liveliness, and energy arousal.

2. How was it to play music in this way?

2.1. Music therapy activated bodily sensations of joy, curiosity, and energy arousal, which is a deeper level of experiencing and regulating one’s affects. 2.2. Music therapy generated and evoked memories of experiences of competency, self at best, self-assertion. The act of learning and playing songs was connected to the ability to express a sense of self. In the domain of interaction and regulation, the sharing and regulating with the therapist, parents, and siblings generated experiences of recognition and positive affects in meeting and interactive regulation. It is assumed that it also generated memories of interactive regulation and self-regulation. Sensorimotor, tactile, auditory, and visual experiences of handling instruments, singing, and making body movements were assumed to evoke implicit memories of competency, self-regulation, and interactive regulation of arousal levels and affects. These, in turn, amplified experiences of safety and trust, affirmation and confirmation. In the following, responses to two questions are depicted together, since the answers conveyed that they were connected according the experiences of the participants. The question about what was the best/the worst (question 3) seemed to be equal to memories of “special moments” (question 4). The questions were:

3. What was the best/the worst?

4. Is there anything special you remember from when you played, sang, improvised?

The responses illuminate highlights of being recognized and confirmed. Sometimes tiredness and pain were in the way. The experience often evoked a longing for more sessions. The evoked positive experiences also contrasted with the longing for and shortage of sessions. Some participants remembered specific songs they learned or composed. Others remembered moments of change, such as when the therapist left or ended a session, which triggered feelings of sadness or worry.

5. How was it to get music therapy during the HSCT/after the HSCT?

All participants appreciated the period they experienced. Some emphasized that they appreciated music therapy both during and after HSCT.

6. The therapist’s perspective: Ad hoc questions formulated when meeting the child and parents.

The therapist’s memories of each participant and her/his family were taken as a point of departure in each interview. Through the recollecting process in the meeting, six personalized narratives emerged. The common ingredient in each meeting appeared to be how the child, during music therapy, reconnected to his/her relationship with music. The parents were often part of the process, present in different ways depending on the age of the child. Some were just present in the room and some actively took part in the musical interaction. From the perspective of the therapist, they were all felt to be facilitators of the process. The therapist remembered several moments of meeting and of interaction characterized by positive emotions such as joy, laughter, and curiosity. She also remembered how the children’s specific sense of self, or character, was displayed during music therapy. In the process of recollection, the therapist often described her sense of mutuality or reciprocity in the collaboration, and she also expressed how she learned from the meetings. One meeting, with participant D, induced a kind of continuation of the therapeutic process as D stayed in a nonverbal interaction, playing on different instruments with the therapist during the whole interview.