Dibs: In Search of Self

by Virginia M. Axline

No one who reads this book with understanding can ever again think that human psychological growth, success in a schoolroom, or the acquisition of a complex skill can be achieved merely by overt repetition or by the reinforcement of simple patterns of response.

It is not a matter of “this is it” because there is no glaring

light of unequivocal evidence in which one sees a thing as it is and one knows the answers.

The darkened sky gives growing room for softened judgments, for suspended indictments, for emotional hospitality. What is, seen in such light, seems to have so many possibilities that definitiveness becomes ambiguous. Here the benefit of a doubt can flourish and survive long enoug...

Understanding grows from personal experience that enables a person to see and feel in ways so varied and so full of changeable meanings that one’s self-awareness is the determining factor.

Here one can admit more readily that the substances of a shadowy world are projected out of our personal thoughts, attitudes, emotions, needs. Perhaps it is easier to understand that even though we do not have the wisdom to enumerate the reasons for the behavior of another person, we can grant that every individual does have his private world of meaning, conceived out of the integrity and dignity of his personality.

We do not know the answers to the problems interlacing the field of mental health. We know that many of our impressions are fragile. We realize the value of objectivity and calm, ordered study.

We know that research is a fascinating combination of hunches, speculation, subjectivity, imagination, hopes, and dreams, blended precisely with objectively gathered facts tied down to the reality of a mathematical science. One without the other is incomplete. Together, they inch along the road in search of truth, wherever it may be found.

thought of many children I had known — children who were unhappy, each frustrated in the attempt to achieve a selfhood he

could claim with dignity — children not understood, but striving again and again to become persons in their own right.

If we want to get closer to the truth we must look deeper into the reasons for our behavior.

Sometimes one thing works out very well with one child, but not at all with another child. We don’t give up easily. We don’t write off a case as “hopeless” without trying just one more thing. Some people think this is very bad — to keep hope alive

when there is no basis for hope. But we are not looking for a miracle. We are seeking understanding, believing that understanding will lead us to the threshold of more effective ways of helping the person to develop and utilize his capacities more constructively. The inquiry goes on and on and we will continue to seek a way out of the wilderness of our ignorance.

Why should he be pinned down to an evaluation of the experience he had just had? If a child’s play is his natural way of expressing himself, why should we cast it in a rigid mold of a stereotyped response? A child is only confused by questions that have been answered by someone else before he is asked.

I did not want to complicate his problem by building up a supportive relationship, to make him so dependent upon me that it would postpone the more complete development of his feelings of inner security.

She had probably often been able to pay her way out of taking this much involved responsibility for Dibs.

What must this woman really think and feel about Dibs and the part she played in his young life to be so terrorized at the prospect of being interviewed and questioned about the situation?

attempted to keep my comments in line with his activity, trying not to say anything that would indicate any desire on my part that he do any particular thing, but rather to communicate, understandingly and simply, recognition in line with his frame of reference.

When the initiative is left up to the individual, he will select the ground upon which he feels his greatest security.

All people proceed with a caution that

will protect the integrity of their personality.

answers. If I could get across to Dibs my confidence in him as a person who had good reasons for everything he did, and if I could convey the concept that there were no hidden answers for him to guess, no concealed standards of behavior or expression

that were not openly stated, no pressure for him to read my mind and come up with a solution that I had already decided upon, no rush to do everything today — then, perhaps, Dibs would catch more and more of a feeling of security and of the rightness of his own reactions so he could clarify, understand, and accept them. This would take time, real effort, great patience on the part of both of us. And it must at all times be basically and fundamentally honest.

“Sometimes it is not easy to do some of the things we have to do,” I said. “But some things have to be done. Will you please sit down here while I help you on with your shoes and boots?”

He needed to develop strength to cope with his world, but that strength had to come from within him and he had to experience personally his ability to cope with his world as it was. Any meaningful changes for Dibs would have to come from within him. We could not hope to make over his external world.

This section demonstrates the aspect of person centered that the goal is for the person to gain strength also that person centered counseling does not equal coddling

The purpose of this response, rather than an expression of thank you’s and praise, was to keep our communication open and to slow it down. Then, if he wanted to, he could add more of his thoughts and feelings and not be abruptly cut off by my response and involvement and values or standards of behavior.

A child gets his feelings of security from predictable and consistent and realistic limitations.

If the therapy becomes the predominant and controlling influence in the individual’s daily life, then I would have serious doubts as to its effectiveness.

Perhaps he felt safer in manipulating intellectual concepts about things, rather than probing any deeper into feelings about himself that he could not accept with ease. Perhaps this was a brief bit of evidence of some conflict he had between expectations of his behavior and his own striving to be himself — sometimes very capable, sometimes a

good take away!!

This was purposely avoided because it seemed important for Dibs, as all children, to learn by experience that no part of his world is static and controllable.

Now that he had encountered concrete evidence of his changing world it would be important to work with his reactions to it — not with reassurance, not with lengthy explanations or apologies, not with words, words, words, thrown at him as a substitute, but with the experience he might now have to take a measure of his own ability to cope with a

changing ...

“And my mountain,” he said. “My little duck was standing on the top of my mountain.” “I know,” I said. “And now your sand mountain is not in there, either, is it?” “It is gone,” he said. “And you feel angry and disappointed

good example of reflection

with the realization that things outside ourselves change — and many times we have little control over those elements, but if we learn to utilize our inner resources, we carry our security around with us.

Sometimes it is very difficult to keep firmly in mind the fact that the 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 of themselves to their children.

as I could, primarily by my attitudes and personal philosophy, that 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.

This is the most difficult and crucial time of any initial interview and it determines greatly the effectiveness of the total experience.

No matter how many times we hear this kind of outpouring (and it happens frequently), the complexity of human motivation and behavior is demonstrated over and over again. There is no single isolated experience or feeling that triggers reaction patterns. There is always an accumulation of experiences intertwined with highly personal emotions, goals, values, that motivate the person and that determine his reaction. What had she said as a preface to her story? “So much to say. And so much not to say! Some things are better left unsaid. But so many unsaid things can become a burden.”

His mother and father were still the victims of their lack of self-understanding and emotional maturity. They felt keenly their inability to relate affectively to Dibs. And probably with Dorothy. They were floundering around in the depths of their feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.

why you do and feel certain ways, many people believe, then you can change your ways. I’ve often thought though, that with such understandings, the greatest changes are usually in the external behavior and gradually this brings about changes of motivation and feelings. I think it takes much longer to achieve this kind of change.

not been a very satisfactory answer. Her failure to relate to her child with love, respect, and understanding was probably due to her own emotional deprivation. Who can love, respect, understand another person, if they have not had such basic experiences themselves? It seemed to me that it would be more helpful for her to have learned in this interview that she was respected and understood, even though that understanding was, of necessity, a more generalized concept which accepted the fact that she had reasons for what she did, that she had capacity to change, that changes must come from within herself, that all changes — hers, her husband’s, Dibs’ — were motivated by many accumulative experiences.

“I would say that it means a chance to come here and play and talk just about any way you want to,” I said. “It’s a time when you can be the way you want to be. A time you can use any way you want to use it. A time when you can be you.”

“The pretending that is all right to pretend,” he said. “And the pretending that is just plain foolish.”