DIBS

“Sometimes he sat mute and unmoving all morning or crawled about the schoolroom floor oblivious to the other children or to his teacher.” The book Dibs is a testimony of a child who seemed to be mentally retarded because he has created his own world inside of him. In her book, Virginia Axline proves that the therapy by the play is a way of curing people such as Dibs. During her book, she gives lecture to the reader of a recording taken from the sessions with the little child. During this expose, we will develop Dib’s relation with adults in particular his teachers, parents and grand mother. Then we will analyze another relation: the one with his therapist. In the second part the phenomena of rejection will be analyzed in both sides: in the mother and the father side but also with Dibs itself. Later, we will try to understand which role play therapy had occurred on Dibs change.

When the books starts, Dibs is in the school since two years. At the beginning he refused to talk. Sometimes he could stay dumb and still during an entire morning. Other times, he could have violent bout of anger when it was time to go back home, which provoked towards teachers and director of the school a big anxiety. Was he mentally retarded? Was he suffering of a mental illness since his birth? Did his brain have received a shock? No one knew, even his parents who always refused to talk about their son’s attitude. But as the author, Virginia Axline, said “there was something about Dibs behavior that defied the teachers to categorize him, glibly and routinely, and send him on his way. His behavior was so uneven. At one time, he seemed to be extremely retarded mentally. Another time he would quickly and quietly do something that indicated he might even have superior intelligence” (Axline, Virginia Dibs in search of Self, 15). The staff meeting of class finally decide to help Dibs and to do something for him. It is at this point that the Doctor Virginia Axline, “specialized in working with children and parents” is called.

Dibs relationship with his teachers was non existent. His reaction was the one of an assisted person. When it was going-home time, the child used to stay in the class without a gesture waiting for the teachers to put his coat on while saying “No go home! No go home! No go home!” (Dibs in search of Self, 1...

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...ip with the examiner, whom he had never seen before” explains Virginia Axline in her books. The results of Dibs indicated that Dibs was an “exceptionally gifted child” capable of getting a score of 168 at a I.Q at fifteen years old. The reader will found in annex, a letter written by Dibs himself when he was fifteen in order to protest against an injustice. This letter shows first of all a maturity certain of the adolescent and the miracle that Play Therapy had on him. I found personally incredible to realize that this child who was predominate to stay in his own world all his life had been capable to write this letter where the theme of humiliation and revenge are once again present.

Works Cited

Axline, Virginia. Dibs in Search of Self. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964

Axline, Virginia. Play Therapy. New York: Ballantine Books, 1969

Battachi, Marco W. Une contribution à la psychologie des émotions : l’enfant humilié. Paris: n.p, 1993

Brenner, Charles. An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. New York: Anchor

Books Doubleday, 1973

Winnicott, Donald. Playing and Therapy. London: Tavistock Publications, 1971