The subjects for a complex study were a group of children with a history of psychological problems in primary school. As a result of applying a special approach combining the clinical method with a wide range of projective techniques the author has succeeded in identifying deep and unconscious feelings which manifest themselves as school problems. Problems experienced by schoolchildren are integrated in a wider context of existential fear arising from a disrupted family environment. The scope of the feeling, its size and intensity and its often unconscious nature correlate with a threatening image of the outside world.