Free Term Paper on DIBs
When the books starts, Dibs is in the school since two years. At the beginning he refused to talk. Sometimes he could stay dumb and still during an entire morning. Other times, he could have violent bout of anger when it was time to go back home, which provoked towards teachers and director of the school a big anxiety. Was he mentally retarded? Was he suffering of a mental illness since his birth? Did his brain have received a shock? No one knew, even his parents who always refused to talk about their son’s attitude. But as the author, Virginia Axline, said “there was something about Dibs behavior that defied the teachers to categorize him, glibly and routinely, and send him on his way. His behavior was so uneven. At one time, he seemed to be extremely retarded mentally. Another time he would quickly and quietly do something that indicated he might even have superior intelligence” (Axline, Virginia Dibs in search of Self, 15). The staff meeting of class finally decide to help Dibs and to do something for him. It is at this point that the Doctor Virginia Axline, “specialized in working with children and parents” is called.
Dibs relationship with his teachers was non existent.
His reaction was the one of an assisted person. When it was going-home time, the
child used to stay in the class without a gesture waiting for the teachers to
put his coat on while saying “No go home! No go home! No go home!” (Dibs in
search of Self, 14). For the child his house was the synonym of a place where he
was rejected where he felt he did not have his place.
Concerning the
relationship that the child entertain with his parents the best example we have
is a passage very significant of this incomprehension between the child and his
father. This section occurred while Dibs is in the process of recovery. At the
end of a play therapy session, his father went to pick him up. It is the first
time that the Doctor Axline is presented to his father. Her is a the passage of
this brief interview between the three characters:
- “Papa” glanced at me.
“How do you do”, he said, stiffly. He seemed very ill at ease.
- “ How do
you do,” I replied
- “I say, Papa,” Dibs said. “Do you know today is not
Independence Day?”
- “Come Dibs I am in a hurry,” “Papa” said
-
“Independence Day comes on Thursday,”
- “Papa” was shoving Dibs out the
door. “Can’t you stop that senseless jabber?” he said, between clenched teeth.
This short passage is the typical example of the humiliated child in front
of someone else. Most of the time, when you hear the word “bad treatment”, you
associate it with violence and physical suffering but less with bad treatment
morally speaking. Most of the time a child who had received bad treatment moral
is more traumatized than the one who had received violence suffering. In an
article written by a professor at the Universita degli stradi of Bologna in the
Department of Psychology, it is said that “bad physical treatment and
humiliation are closely associated as Freud has previously observed” (ENFANCE,
Tome 47, n? 1 p. 21- 26). For the professor Marco W. Battachi, what is clear is
that “humiliation causes traumatized effects very destructive for a child.”
Based on an analysis done by two psychologist Battachi and Codispoti in 1992
there is four principals forms of humiliation. The first one is when someone
refuses to give attention to a child who asked for it. A typical case is when
the child asks a specific question and does not get any response back. The
second form consists of a refusal when the child asks for an approval from his
parents. The child feels a disappointment when his efforts are not encouraged.
This is Dibs case. Each time he says something to his parents, he is waiting for
a response and a good response not disinterestedness. The third form is a lack
of respect. This form takes place when the child has a secret that is violated
by his parents. The last form of humiliation consists of the refusal of knowing
the truth. This last form is sometimes expressed when the child wants to know
more about subject such as sexuality. He desires to know “adults secrets” and
might be faced to mockery and scorn.
The last person with whom Dibs seem to
have “a normal relation” is his grand mother. His grand mother is the only
person in the family with whom Dibs seems to have a good relation. The first
time Dibs talks about her he said: “I am a boy,” he said slowly. “I have a
father, a mother, a sister. But I do have a grandmother and she loves me.
Grandmother has always loves me. But not Papa. Papa has not always loves me.”
This difference between his grandmother and his father is very significant with
the humiliation. His grandmother always accepts him as he is whereas his parents
feel a shame to have a child like Dibs. With his grandmother he has a normal
conversation and is not afraid of her because she listens to him and responds to
his question. This brings us again to the question of humiliation. With his
grandmother, there is no humiliation because they are equal.
The first
contact Virginia Axline has with the little boy is just after the rest period.
She asks him if he would like to come with her in the playroom, and after a
moment of hesitation he takes the doctor’s hand. This surprised me a lot because
it shows that Dibs is nor shy neither unsociable with people he doesn’t know
which is very strange. When they enter in the room, she just said : “We’ll spend
an hour together here in the playroom. You can see the toys and the materials we
have. You decide what you would like to do.” As Virginia Axline remarks in her
book Play Therapy, “the therapist is not a supervisor or a teacher, and not a
parent-substitute.” Again as she said, “the therapist respects the child and
treats him with sincerity and honesty.” This relation, Dibs is not aware of it
because except with his grandmother, he doesn’t know this kind of experience.
But what is very important it is that “she never laughs at him – with him,
sometimes, but never at him.” Once again there is no humiliation in this
relation, therefore the child is in total security. This climate that the
therapist provokes “encourages him to share his inner world with her.” Once
again she said that “the child is extremely sensitive to the sincerity of the
adult” consequently a relation based upon sincerity and truth is the foundation
of a good therapy. “A good therapist is in many ways like the favorite teacher.”
Another therapist who basically used the same therapy is D.W Winnicott, who
qualified the work of Virginia Axline in his book Playing and Reality to be “a
good example” and also that “her work on psychotherapy is a great importance to
us.” In his book, he explains that “the area of playing is not inner psychic
reality but outside the individual.” For him one of the most important feature
of playing is “that in playing, and perhaps only in playing, the child or adult
is free to be creative.”
In Dibs’s story, the phenomena of rejection
play an important role in both sides. We’ll start this study of rejection by the
parents who had a decisive role in Dibs’s problem. The first appointment that
the therapist have with the mother is very clear on this subject. The first
thing that the mother says is that her and her husband “do not expect any
miracle” and that they “have accepted the tragedy of Dibs” and that they “do not
expect any changes in Dibs.” In other words, they accept the condition of their
son but they don’t want to do anything to fight against this mentally illness.
Later on in the discussion she said that “he is just mentally retarded” and that
“he was born that way.” Once again, they totally accept this condition even if
for them it is very difficult. In this talk, she does not seem to be very
worried that much about her son, she is most worried about the fact that the
Doctor refused to be paid: “I don’t understand why, when a family is able to pay
a substantial fee so that you could see another child whose parents may not be
able to pay, you refuse a fee.” In this interview, the idea of rejection is not
clearly expressed even if she doesn’t seem to care so much about her child. In
another talk, where this time the demand to see the doctor is hers, she opens up
completely. Here, the reader understands completely that her husband and herself
reject their son completely and that they put the responsibility of his birth on
his shoulders. Nevertheless, it is the first time she says that “she is worried
about Dibs.” She admits that “they hadn’t planned on having a child” and that
“her husband and her were very happy before Dibs were born.” In this word, we
can clearly understand that she thinks that the child’s arrival had provoke in
her couple a break. She also says that “she rejected her from the moment he was
born. He would stiffen and cry every time I picked him up!” Another reaction
which proved the repulse of the child is when the mother says that “her husband
was proud of her” when she was “a surgeon (…) and that she had shown success as
a surgeon.” Once again, if her husband is not proud of her anymore it is because
of Dibs but before all because she gave him a “mentally retarded child” to whom
“they are ashamed.” The mother uses this word “ashamed” three times, which
proves how her words are true and sincere. This declaration surprises me a lot
therefore I ask myself: How is that possible to be ashamed of your own child
because he is different from others? How is it possible to use another name when
you go to a specialist just because you don’t want to be recognized?
Consequently, Dibs has the same phenomena with his parents. A child needs
love, tenderness and affection normally but when your child is not normal he
needs more than any others love from his parents. It is not because a child is
two months year old that he does not feel that his mother does not love him.
Freud “paid considerable attention in his monograph to the traumatic situations
which occur in early infancy after birth (Brenner, Charles An Elementary
Textbook of Psychoanalysis p. 72). Since a child is not educated with love and
tender it seems obvious that he has no tender for anyone. This lack of love
forces the child to create an inner world in order to escape from the world
where he is not comfortable. Play therapy has been in the case of Bibs very
benefic for both sides: his parents and himself.
In order for the reader
to understand much precisely what play therapy is, it is important to give a
definition. For the Doctor Axline, play therapy is “based upon the fact that
play is the child’s natural medium of self-expression.” (Play Therapy p. 9) Play
for her is “the natural medium of the child for self expression” therefore in
the play therapy the child is given “the opportunity to play out his accumulated
feelings of tension, frustration, insecurity, aggression, fear, bewilderment,
confusion.” In this room, the child is alone with the therapist and can do what
ever he wants to do. The therapist has to establish a climate of confidence if
she wants to get in the inner world of the child. W.D Winnicott is concerned
that “with the search for the self and the restatement of the fact that certain
conditions are necessary if success is to be achieved in this search.” (Playing
and Reality p. 54). For him “it is in playing and only in playing that the child
is able to be creativeand to use the whole personality” (Playing and Reality
p.54) Again as Winnicott reminds us “it is good to remember that playing is
itself a therapy” (Playing and Reality p. 50).
The play therapy for Dibs has
been an “opportunity to move out of those dark moments and discover for himself
that he could cope with the shadows and sunshine in his life” (Dibs : In Search
of Self p. 215). The week after the play therapy sessions ends, a clinical
psychologist had administrated a test of intelligence to Dibs, “he established a
good relationship with the examiner, whom he had never seen before” explains
Virginia Axline in her books. The results of Dibs indicated that Dibs was an
“exceptionally gifted child” capable of getting a score of 168 at a I.Q at
fifteen years old. The reader will found in annex, a letter written by Dibs
himself when he was fifteen in order to protest against an injustice. This
letter shows first of all a maturity certain of the adolescent and the miracle
that Play Therapy had on him. I found personally incredible to realize that this
child who was predominate to stay in his own world all his life had been capable
to write this letter where the theme of humiliation and revenge are once again
present.
Works Cited
Axline, Virginia. Dibs in Search of Self. New York: Ballantine Books,
1964
Axline, Virginia. Play Therapy. New York: Ballantine Books, 1969
Battachi, Marco W. Une contribution à la psychologie des émotions : l’enfant
humilié. Paris: n.p, 1993
Brenner, Charles. An Elementary Textbook of
Psychoanalysis. New York: Anchor
Books Doubleday, 1973
Winnicott,
Donald. Playing and Therapy. London: Tavistock Publications, 1971