Dibs: In Search of Self

by Virginia M. Axline

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.

we can grant that every individual does have his private world of meaning, conceived out of the integrity and dignity of his personality.

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.

children who were unhappy, each frustrated in the attempt to achieve a selfhood

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.

Had he anticipated this activity of the group when he crawled under the table?

Then, his touch seemed deft and light.

He opened the book at the beginning and slowly examined every page, turning the leaves carefully. Was he reading? Was he even looking at the pictures?

He threw himself down on the floor and lay stiff and rigid, face down, immobilized.

“Now that was typical,” she said. “We’ve learned not to bother him. But I wanted you to see.”

He said, “No go out,” in a flat, heavy tone.

I said I thought that I would go out, it was such a nice day. I put on my coat. Suddenly Dibs said, “Dibs go out!”

His coordination was very poor.

Silent. Withdrawn. Remote.

He handed her his cap this time.

Dibs got out his mat and unrolled it. He put his mat under the library table, a distance away from the other children. He lay face down on his mat, put his thumb in his mouth, rested with the other children. What was he thinking about in his lonely little world? What were his feelings? Why did he behave in this manner?

What had happened to the child to cause this kind of withdrawal from people? Could we manage to get through to him?

Dibs rolled his mat up and put it away in the correct space on the shelf.

He hesitated for a moment, then took my hand without a word and walked to the playroom with me.

He had left the room with a stranger without a backward look. But as he held my hand I noticed the hard grip. He was tense. But, surprisingly enough, willing to go.

Imagery that may be alluding to Dib’s inner self

The room provided space and some materials that might lend themselves to the emergence of the personalities of the children who might spend some time there.

The ingredients of experience would make the room uniquely different for each child.

He brings into this room the impact of all the shapes and sounds and colors and movements, and rebuilds his world, reduced to a size he can handle.

Dibs stood in the middle of the room, his back toward me, twisting his hands together.

But Dibs just stood in the middle of the room. He sighed. Then he slowly turned and walked haltingly across the room, then around the walls. He went from one toy to another, tentatively touching them. He did not look directly at me. Occasionally he would glance in my direction but would quickly avert his eyes if our glances met. It was a tedious trip around the room. His step was heavy. There seemed to be no laughter

or happiness in this child. Life, for him, was a grim business.

Slowly, one by one, he picked up each piece of furniture. As he did, he muttered the name of the objects with a questioning, halting inflection. His voice was flat and low.

He turned to the pile of dolls, and sorted slowly through them. He selected a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, a baby. It was as though he tentatively identified them as he said, “Mamma? Papa? Sister? Baby?”

Then he sorted out the little animals. “Dog? Cat? Rabbit?” He sighed deeply and repeatedly. It seemed to be a very difficult and painful task he had set himself.

Each time he named an object I made an attempt to communicate my recognition of his spoken word. I would say, “Yes. That is a bed,” or, “I think it is a dresser,” or “It does look like a rabbit.” I tried to keep my response brief, in line with what he said, and with enough variation to avoid monotony.

I thought that this was his way to begin verbal communication. Naming the objects seemed a safe enough beginning.

Then he sat down on the floor facing the doll house. He stared at it in silence for a long time. I didn’t prod him on. If he wanted to sit there in silence, then we would have silence. There must have been some reason for what he was doing.

He clasped his hands tightly together against his chest and said over and over again, “No lock doors. No lock doors. No lock doors.” His voice took on a note of desperate urgency. “Dibs no like locked doors,” he said. There was a sob in his voice.

I said to him, “You don’t like the doors to be locked.” Dibs seemed to crumple. His voice became a husky whisper. “Dibs no like closed doors. No like closed and locked doors. Dibs no like walls around him.”

Obviously, he had had some unhappy experiences with closed and locked doors. I recognized the feelings he expressed.

He took out the mother and father dolls. “Go store! Go store!” he said. “Go away to the store. Go away!”

He quickly moved them out and away from the house.

Then he discovered that the walls of the rooms in the doll house could be removed. He took each wall out, saying as he did,

“No like walls. Dibs no like walls. Take away all walls, Dibs!”

And in this playroom Dibs took away a little of the walls he had ...

In this manner he slowly, almost painfully played.

This child had been hurt enough without my introducing promises that might not materialize.

A child is only confused by questions that have been answered by someone else before he is asked.

“It is time to go now, Dibs.” He slowly stood up, took my hand, and

his classroom was in view, I asked him if

he thought he could go the rest of the way to...

“That’s right,” he said. He dropped my hand and walked down the hall to the door of his room by himself.

I did this because I hoped Dibs would gradually become more and more self-sufficient and responsible.

I wanted to communicate to him my confidence in his ability to measure up to my expectations. I believed he could do it. If he had faltered, shown signs of it being too much for him to do this first day, I would have gone a little farther down the hall with him. I would have gone all the way to the door of his room with him, if he had seemed to need that much support. But he went by himself. I said, “Goodbye, Dibs!”

Take Not of the researcher helping Dibs become independent