Hubs In Search Of Self Summary

In Dibs In Search of Self by Virginia Axline, a young boy named Dibs is causing trouble at school and at his home, refusing to talk, play, or participate in lessons of any kind. The author, a child therapist and psychologist, thus begins to help Dibs through a sequence of play therapy sessions every thursday, in a room where he would be free to do whatever he wanted, and his actions would be recorded. Here, Axline learns that Dibs had created a barrier around himself to avoid having to respond or interact with other people, which seems to have been caused by the lack of love and support from his parents. Him and his father have a poor relationship, where his father seems to lock him in his room when he does anything to annoy him. His mother thought he was mentally retarded, and resented him for a while since having a child ruined her career as a surgeon; and he never got along with his sister, Dorothy. Eventually though, through expressing his emotions about these things during the play sessions, Dibs eventually begins to develop, improving his relationship with both his family, and the children at his school, where he had finally began to participate. In the end, Dibs was not only perfectly normal mentally, he was also gifted, and ended up going to a school for gifted children. The author portrayed Dibs’ disorder, or lack thereof,

Behaviorists also believe that research can be tested on animals, because they believe their is very little difference between the way a human and an animal learns; and that Behavior is the result of stimulus-response, no matter how complex, and that Behavior is also based on environment. Famous behaviorists include Ivan Pavlov and Edward Thorndike. In “Dibs in search of Self”, Axline recorded Dibs’ behavior in the play therapy room, and how he responded to different objects, such as always trying to bury the doll he dubbed “papa”.