Dibs in Search of Self: The Renowned, Deeply Moving Story of an Emotionally Lost Child Who Found His Way Back

During Dibs’s next session, he undresses himself without help, and spends some time sucking on a baby bottle while watching Dr. Axline before engaging in play. He takes out some blocks and reads the packaging, and Dr. Axline notes the contrast between Dibs’s infantile desires and his desire to prove his intellectual capabilities. She wonders how he concealed these skills at school for so long, if he conceals them at home, and how he learned skills without talking to people. Still, she avoids speculating, allowing Dibs to take the lead. He decides to play with the sink, filling his baby bottle up and dumping it several times. He laughs for the first time in Dr. Axline’s presence. Afterward, Dibs takes out some toy animals and describes a situation in which a small duck wants its own pond like the bigger duck. He takes a toy truck and drives it to the scene, explaining how the three people inside will drive away and be gone forever, then burying them under the sand and placing the duck on top. He asks Dr. Axline to leave the toys this way, but she doesn’t answer. After the session, Dr. Axline reflects on how she must continue avoiding speculating about Dibs’s play; she hopes that by allowing him the freedom to decide his own conditions, he can learn self-understanding and self-respect, which are key to healthy relationships.

When Dibs returns a week later, he finds the toys out of place and becomes angry. Dr. Axline waits with patience as he copes with his feelings about change: She hopes he will find security within himself and “take a measure of his own ability to cope with a changing world” (69). After talking about the change for a minute, Dibs decides to play with the toys. He takes Dr. Axline’s pencil and breaks it, seemingly on purpose, and Dr. Axline leaves the room to sharpen it. All sessions are observed by a team through a two-way mirror, and the observers watch as Dibs pulls the toy soldiers out of the sand. He picks one up and says, “I’ll get you out now, you fighting man. Standing there so stiff and straight. Like an old iron railing from a fence, you are” (71), and then buries it again. When Dr. Axline returns, Dibs comments on how cold it is today and then inspects the cupboards, finding them to be empty. He picks up a toy rabbit and tells Dr. Axline about the class rabbit named Marshmallow. He also confesses to letting it out without permission sometimes. Dr. Axline is encouraged by the fact that Dibs is discussing school and clearly involved in it in his own way.

When Dibs mentions how Independence Day is four weeks and two days away, he’s happy to say it’s also a play therapy day, and admits that he enjoys coming to the center. He picks up the toy soldier again, calling it “Papa” and proceeding to punch it several times. When the session ends, Dr. Axline is surprised to hear that Dib’s father is picking Dibs up today. He tries to leave in a hurry, pushing Dibs out the door and dismissing his talk of Independence Day. This scene angers Dr. Axline, who sees a man refusing to engage with his son; however, she reminds herself that “parents, too, have reasons for what they do—have reasons, locked in the depths of their personalities, for their inability to love, to understand, to give themselves to their children” (81).

To Dr. Axline’s surprise, Dibs’s mother calls the next day and asks for a meeting. She seems apologetic and anxious, and has a hard time choosing when to come, but finally decides to come later that morning. Dr. Axline doesn’t pressure Dibs’s mother as she reveals that Dibs was an unplanned child, and that she and her husband were successful professionals (she was a surgeon and he, a scientist) well before his birth. When Dibs’s mother was pregnant, Dibs’s father started to pull away, favoring his work. She recalls taking Dibs to two psychologists, the second telling her and her husband that Dibs was “the most rejected and emotionally deprived child” (88) he ever encountered, and that Dibs’s parents should seek help for their own emotional issues. This psychologist didn’t believe there was anything wrong with Dibs’s intelligence. Dibs’s mother birthed a second child, Dorothy, who seemed to be neurotypical, and whom Dibs saw as an affront to his existence. Dorothy was sent to boarding school as soon as she was old enough as a result. Dibs’s mother confesses that Dibs seems more unhappy, and that he stares at her with sorrow (which Dr. Axline thinks is his expression of previously unshared feelings). She admits that Dibs’s father insulted Dibs’s intelligence yesterday and then locked him in his room, which made her cry; later, Dibs’s father cried as well. Dibs’s mother feels she and her husband failed as parents, but is happy to hear from Dr. Axline that Dibs can gain greater autonomy. After Dibs’s mother leaves, Dr. Axline reflects on the complexity of human beings and their reactions. She notes that Dibs’s parents, like him, seem to have locked themselves from within.

Dibs arrives at his next session with ease. He paints and comments on the observers on the other side of the mirror, surprising Dr. Axline, who notes that all people observe more than they let on. Dibs narrates as he experiments with the paints, saying “These are streaks and stripes of my thoughts” (95). He looks at Dr. Axline’s notes, who has written abbreviations of each color he used, and tells her that she must spell the colors out to be correct. Afterward, he removes all the walls off the dollhouse and buries them in the sandbox. Dibs sings a song about wanting to kill “the people who shove you in” (98) locked rooms. He sings about wanting to be a bird who flies up and over the walls around him. He suddenly saddens at the thought of his sister Dorothy being there. Before leaving, Dibs tells Dr. Axline that he hopes the doctor at their vaccination appointment hurts Dorothy so he can “laugh and be glad she feels the hurt” (101).

Again, Dibs arrives at his next session with ease. He talks to Dr. Axline about the toys he saw at the hardware store and their costs. He plays in the sandbox, building a mountain of sand and having the toy soldiers attempt to climb it. None of them make it to the top, and Dibs remarks how the climb isn’t as important as being happy while trying. He tells Dr. Axline that “every child should have a hill all his own to climb” (105), as well as their own star in the sky and their own tree to stand by. Dibs takes one of the toy soldiers and buries it deep in the sand, then piles sand on top of it, commenting on how it will never get to climb the hill. This toy soldier is “Papa.” Dibs then discusses clocks and telling time, and Dr. Axline suspects he’s withdrawing from his feelings toward his father. He crawls inside the puppet theater and looks out the back window of the playroom, commenting on the “bigness” (107) of the church, sky, and larger world. He comes out and steps into the sandbox, saying he is big in there as he steps on mountains. Before leaving, Dibs tells Dr. Axline about his family’s shopping trip and how he and his father got new shoes.