Dibs in Search of Self Themes

Dibs in Search of Self follows author and psychologist Dr. Virginia Axline’s work with a five-year-old boy named Dibs. Dibs begins the book as withdrawn, combative, and generally uncommunicative: his teachers aren’t sure if he is mentally disabled or emotionally challenged, which is why they enlist Axline’s help. But over time, Axline and Dibs’s weekly play therapy sessions allow Dibs to open up about his thoughts and feelings. Even when he express severe…

Throughout five-year-old Dibs’s play therapy sessions and in conversations with his mother, psychologist and author Dr. Virginia Axline discovers that the way Dibs’s parents treat him is often based on whether he meets their expectations. This causes Dibs, who is actually a highly intelligent child, to hide his abilities: he doesn’t feel free to be himself, and he worries about being punished for not meeting his parents’ expectations. The book thus illustrates how…

Throughout Dibs’s early life, his teachers, psychiatrists, and parents have difficulty understanding his withdrawn, hostile, and at times infantile behavior. When author and psychologist Dr. Virginia Axline conducts play therapy sessions with Dibs, she observes that he actually has an impressive intellect—but at the same time, she notes that his social and emotional skills are severely lacking, to the point that people question his intelligence and believe he may be mentally disabled. Axline thus…