Parental Expectations
A primary cause for the effects manifested as anti-social behavior by Dibs is traced to the pressure placed upon him to conform to parental expectations. Behavior thus interpreted as exclusively anti-social is ultimately revealed to be a defense mechanism employed by Dibs to preserve his self-image. What is easily extrapolated from the specifics of this story is that the full dimension of pressures that parents placed upon their children through openly expressed expectations or badly disguised disappointment of those expectations is rarely made clear. The dynamic between parental expectations and anxiety induced by the fear of disappointment rarely reaches the extremities demonstrated here, of course, but that is sort of the point: who really knows for sure?
Mental Health Illiteracy
Although published in 1964 which by today’s standards represents almost a Dark Ages in the treatment of behavioral problems, mental health, and emotional difficulties in children, an overarching theme still unfortunately applies. Everyone who deals with Dibs are quick to rush to snap judgments about the cause which produces the effects they witness. All these judgments which turn out to be complete misapprehensions point less to the state of health care at the time than it does to the propensity of adults who deal with behavioral problems. The tendency among non-medical professionals—even within the educational system—is to either assume the worst (the kid is just rotten) or settle for the simplest diagnosis (the boy ain’t right in the head.) While options for genuinely useful diagnostic testing have greatly improved since the book’s publication, this tendency among adults forced to deal with behavior problems in kids unfortunately remains almost unchanged.
The Miracle of an Open Mind
What changes the situation with Dibs is not really the play therapy which Dr. Axline brings to the table. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that a completely different kind of behavioral therapy approach might have produced the same results. The thing that is really responsible for Dibs not going on to lead a much different sort of existence is the power of imagination and open-mindedness. No matter what sort of therapy Axline might have invested all her faith and trust in, if she’d not possessed the imagination to believe that Dibs wasn’t beyond reach—if she had closed her mind to possibility that everybody else was wrong about him—things would gone much differently.
Likewise, if the mother and father had remained steadfast in their hopeless resignation that nothing was ever going to change their circumstances, even Axline’s faith would in her ability would have been useless. The lesson the story teaches in the end is not about trusting any one particular type of medical procedure or therapy or treatment as a miracle, but maintaining the imagination to dismiss the impossibility of such a miracle existing simply because it has occurred yet.
