'Dibs In Search of Self' by Virginia Mae Axline

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Has anyone else read this book? It was required reading for me in both high school and college. It is written from the perspective of the writer, and is her account of her work in the early 1950s with an emotionally disturbed five/six year old boy. Re-reading it has given me the impression that the boy may have been somewhere on the ASD spectrum, but this would be pure speculation on anyone's part.

Here is a Link to the Synopsis.

What do you think? Dibs would be about 70+ years old by now.

I read that book as an 11-12 year old child. He made remarkable progress with art and play therapy.

He seemed to be a high-functioning person on the Spectrum, Asperger’s type.

He probably would have been diagnosed with “adjustment problems” back then. Though probably not “brain damage” or “perceptual problems.”

He seemed gifted intellectually.

Dibs probably became a member of a think tank....

I’m not too worried about him. He was in good hands.

He had many advantages.

It was a book of affirmation. That things can be overcome through using your noodle.

Dibs was definitely very smart. He seemed like a child who suffered a serious trauma of some sort, not as someone with autism or intellectual disability.

I feel like the Aspergian aspect was present----but, yes, there could have been trauma, too.