Dibs in Search of Self

How can a psychologist's use of play therapy allow a child's submerged psyche to emerge and begin journeying toward a selfhood capable of expressing its own idiosyncratic needs and desires? In this classical account of child therapy, Dibs In Search of Self, Virginia M. Axline retells the tale of a young six year old boy's valiant struggle to establish his own identity despite his father and mother's damaging style of parenting. Axline's remarkable psychoanalytic intervention permits Dibs to discover himself in a space of security where he is neither too quickly judged, nor too excessively praised. It must be a space where he is foremost and so her trained commentary only repeats his intentions rather than critiquing them. Carefully Axline labors to create a safe haven for Dibs, a space of neutrality where his far-too-long suppressed identity can take its first faltering steps. Axline's amazing gift to Dibs grants him the chance to emerge victorious from the debilitating circumstances of his parents' rejection. Within the comfort zone which Axline carefully constructs for him in one-hour weekly play therapy sessions, Dibs slowly establishes his own identity, develops confidence, and is able to alter his psyche until it is sufficiently balanced to both express and manage his feelings. Dibs In Search of Self can be read upon multiple levels. On its primary level, it is the story of a boy struggl

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cly. His language skills had flourished, even though "driven underground into the wilderness of his anxiety by his loneliness and fear" (76). When Dibs appears in the classroom he obsesses over locked doors and walls. It is as if he is calling out in lament against his own imprisonment, his parents' inability to handle him resulting in his repeated lock-up experiences. He expresses this anxiety about locked doors and walls by both opening all the doors in the playroom's dollhouse and then relocking them, even independently drawing doorknobs on these playthings. His ambivalence is neither judged, nor curtailed by Axline. Instead, she labors to allow his independent self to emerge. With astonishing consideration, she kindly insists that he learn to hang up his own hat and coat, remove his own boots and snowpants, learn to actualize his own needs and desires. Unfortunately, his home environment had been so bewildered with his extremely emotional behavior, they had failed to encourage this emergence. Mistakenly believing that Dibs was mentally retarded for years they had mishandled and even damaged his sensitive psyche. What Dibs is eventually able to act out in the playroom with Axline is his suppressed anger at his father
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Approximate Word count = 1387
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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