Axline's use of play therapy with Dibs renders astonishing results. Brought into a room where perhaps for the first time he is allowed to be amply himself, Dibs symbolically acts out his aggressions and desires within this environment. In an early interchange with Axline, Dibs lets her know that he has painstakingly watched every occurrence within his classroom even if h
Near the end of their play therapy sessions, Dibs tells Axline directly that he cannot figure out what her role is. She is, as he notes, not his mother, not his teacher. Finally, he settles upon his admit category, "you are the lady of the wonderful playroom" (204). Dibs' gratitude is admit when years later he sees her on the street and says that, of course, he remembers her since she was his "very first friend" (214).
What Dibs is in the end able to act out in the playroom with Axline is his suppressed anger at his father and his empathetic bewilderment at his mother's disappointment over his birth. In the sandbox Dibs repeatedly ritualistically buries his bad Papa (105).
What is so heart-rending in this tale is that it is Dibs the aggrieved child who learns to forgive his father's foibles. Paradoxically, it is only with Dibs' heal that the father himself can begin to recuperate. Dibs poignantly tells Axline that he eventually releases his father from the symbolic sand prison deciding that the measly father should be released from his pain, "I told myself to just let him be. only if let him be free" (182). Axline as the observant therapist notes that it is only as his relationship with his father creeps toward avail that Dibs is comfortable enough to express his anger toward the inadequacies embedded in this primary relationship.
When Dibs appears in the classroom he obsesses over locked doors and walls. It is as if he is calling out in lament against his own imprisonment, his parents' inability to handle him resulting in his repeated lock-up experiences. He expresses this worry about locked doors and walls by both opening all the doors in the playroom's dollhouse and then relocking them, even independently drawing doorknobs on these playthings. His ambivalence is neither judged, nor curtailed by Axline. Instead, she labors to allow his independent self to emerge. With astonishing consideration, she kindly insists that he learn to
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.
No comments:
Post a Comment