42 pages • 1 hour read
Virginia AxlineDibs in Search of Self: The Renowned, Deeply Moving Story of an Emotionally Lost Child Who Found His Way Back
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1964A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Playroom
The playroom at the Child Guidance Center is the place where Dibs comes to see Dr. Virginia M. Axline for therapy sessions. It is a place for Dibs to be Dibs, free of judgment, fear, control, or expectations of any kind. It is an objective place in which Dr. Axline provides neutral feedback, but also human company and compassion. Dr. Axline’s playroom operates by the Humanistic Approach to Child Therapy: She places various objects and materials inside, and allows her child patient to do whatever they choose. She simply observes, repeats the child’s thoughts, and helps the child clarify their emotions and thoughts. Dr. Axline’s hope is that by providing a safe space, children like Dibs can feel comfortable to construct their own worlds, find themselves, and express themselves.
Dibs interacts with many things in the playroom, each of which provides him with a different type of release or tool for understanding himself and the larger world. He uses the sandbox to bury things he dislikes and overcome them, and plays out dramatic scenes with dolls, toy soldiers, and trucks that reflect life experiences and thoughts. In the sandbox, Dibs feels large and in control. He uses the dollhouse to recreate his family (his mother, father, sister, and sometimes himself), understand them and his place in the family, and overcome his anger and frustration toward them. Dibs plays with the sink to test the limits of what he is allowed to do and paints to express his creativity. He relies on a baby bottle as a source of infantile withdrawal, but when he feels ready to start growing up, he breaks it. Overall, he enjoys his time in the playroom, and when this time ends, he looks back on his experiences with fondness. Even as an older child, Dibs associates the playroom with comfort and personal growth.
Locked Doors
Locked doors are a symbol of Dibs’s mental prison, the way he shuts out the world. Dibs introduces the concept of locked doors when he plays with a dollhouse and creates doors “locked tight” (50). He dislikes locked doors, and when Dr. Axline visits Dibs’s house, she can hear him being locked in his room from outside. Dibs’s mother seems similarly closed off, but Dr. Axline’s Humanistic Approach to Child Therapy prioritizes listening over pushing for answers: “Her private, personal world belonged to her and she would be the one to decide if she wanted to unlock the door and share any part of it with me” (83). Dibs seems to have an innate sense that he has come to the playroom to unlock his doors—and to a degree, his family’s doors. When Dibs first arrives at the playroom, he hardly speaks, and is cautious about using his abilities while being watched. But because Dr. Axline provides him with a safe place to be himself, Dibs slowly opens his doors and expresses pride in who he is.
The Dolls and Dollhouse
The dolls in the playroom are a major part of Dibs’s symbolic play, as he works through painful experiences to eventually accept himself. Dibs is drawn to the dollhouse and adds a dark basement to it, intentionally drawing a lock on the door to keep it shut. Dr. Axline notices his preoccupation with locked doors, and he eventually reveals that his father used to lock him in his room. However, this pattern stopped once his parents worked through their guilt, illustrating How Healing a Child Can Heal a Family. Dibs returns to the dolls and dollhouse often, using them as a family that represents his own (i.e., his mother, father, sister, and himself). He never refers to the boy doll as a brother, perhaps because he is not ready to accept the idea of being one. When he plays with the dolls, he creates metaphorical scenarios that represent how he feels and how he perceives the way his parents have treated him. Dibs orders the mother doll to make a mountain of sand, even though she cannot—which clearly indicates his understanding of his mother’s pressure on him. He also punches and yells at the father doll, threatening to kill it. He sometimes buries the dolls in sand, as if to banish their associated people or memories from his mind. But in the end, it is through the dolls and dollhouse that Dibs comes to view himself as part of his family.
