Dibs in Search of Self: Personality Development in Play Therapy (Penguin Modern Classics)

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In Chapter 5 she recounts how next week he had read the sign on door: ‘play therapy room,’ and had then started as in the first week. He had found some soldiers which he had counted and then buried three of them in the sandbox; he had also discovered the finger paints but had become worried when he had got them on his fingers and had repeatedly asked for his fingers to be wiped clean. So he had decided that he preferred water colours and with five minutes to go had painted a house for her. Robertson, J. and Robertson, J (1971) Young children in brief separation: a fresh look Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 26, 264-315 See also Children Webmag October 2009 In the church he had said his grandmother had said church was God’s house and Jake had said that it was a sacred place; he had been startled when the organist had started to play, saying he had never heard such music before. Trasler (1960) had found that some of the most successful foster placements were those where the children’s parents were welcome visitors and, twenty years later, Berridge (1985) found that one reason why some children rejected foster care was because it implied rejection of their own parents and they preferred residential care because it did not. Yet some residential workers and many social workers lose interest in parents (Thorpe, 1973) and government policy in England has been for as many children in care as possible to be adopted rather than make their parents partners in bringing up their children as intended in the 1989 Children Act and required by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The real story of the book—the book itself and not story it tells—is that it would not exist without Axline having the imagination to look beyond the simplistic diagnoses of the teachers and Dibs’ parents. Furthermore, it is also the story a doctor having a mind open enough to see beyond the most likely outcome after her initial meeting with Dibs’ mother: three weeks of treatment and she’s going to pull the plug. The book is the story of the how having the imagination to look challenge everybody else’s limited imagination and the courage to challenge one’s own expectations of disappointment on the part of others to put their faith in technique to the test. He had then made an impossible demand of the mother doll, shouting at and threatening it before breaking off to play tenderly with the sister doll and talking about school and the things he had made at school for the members of the family. Virginia Mae Axline (1964) Dibs in search of self: personality development in play therapy Boston: Houghton Mifflin In Chapter 7 she recounts that he had asked her why the things he had asked not to be moved have been moved and, when she had gone out to sharpen a pencil whose point he had broken, the observers behind the two-way mirror had recorded that he had dug in the sand, found a soldier and buried him again. When he had asked her to turn on a radiator, she had explained that the boiler was broken and being fixed. He had said that you could find out a lot by just hanging around people and watching what they do.

In an Author’s Note she adds that, when Dibs’s IQ was measured shortly after the sessions had been completed, it had been found to be 168 and that all the words in the book are those of Dibs and his mother. She concludes, “A mother who is respected and accepted with dignity can also be sincerely expressive when she knows that she will not be criticized or blamed” (p. 186). Discussion

In Chapter 10 she recounts how he had talked, among other things, about seeing similar toys in a shop and going to collect his father’s shoes from the mender’s while spending most of the time playing in the sandbox. He had finished the session by painting and had said how much he would miss her over the summer, a sentiment she had reciprocated. In Chapter 2, she says that everyone has their own private world of meaning and it is important to try once more, because we don’t have all the answers. She had arranged to observe Dibs in school, to visit his mother and to see Dibs in the play therapy room at the child guidance centre. In Chapter 9 she recounts how he had arrived fifteen minutes early at his mother’s request, had taken his outdoor clothes off, hung them up, started painting and then tapped the two-way mirror and said that he knew that people had been there before but that they weren’t that day. He had then played in the sandbox, breaking to look at her notes and telling her to spell out the names of the colours and not abbreviate them. He had later sung a song full of hateful words and tried to fix the doll’s house. He had pretended it wasn’t time to go and had hoped that the doctor would hurt his sister when he did the jabs, the reason for the earlier appointment. In Chapter 18 she recounts how she had received a call from one of the teachers who had described a gradual change in Dibs’s behaviour at school and so she had arranged to meet two of the teachers for lunch. But, when they had showed her the very elementary pictures and writing he was producing, she had initially been baffled but hadn’t told them that he could do much better because it might have discouraged them.She comments that his mother had previously been able to pay her way out of responsibility for Dibs and she was determined that she should not do so this time; his mother had also been more anxious in the first interview than Dibs. Haley received a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and honed her sifting and winnowing skills at The Daily Cardinal. She previously covered politics for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, investigated exotic pet ownership for Wisconsin Watch, and blogged for some of your favorite reality stars. Neill, A S (1962) Summerhill: a radical approach to education London: Victor Gollancz Originally published 1960 Summerhill: a radical approach to child rearing New York: Hart See also Children Webmag July 2009