This is an educational and heart-warming therapeutic tale beautifully told in the first person by the author, a psychologist who is the originator of play therapy. The story is unusually engaging in part because Dibs himself is an extraordinary human being, not only a mistreated innocent, but a genius whose precocious (verbatim) words are amazingly accurate and heartbreakingly expressive of his shifting thoughts and feelings in the various stages of therapy.

Adding to the emotional drama is the highly counterintuitive emotional distance Axline maintains with this obviously love-starved child, understanding that what this patient needs is to find himself by himself and in ways that are satisfying to him without the confusion of adult approval. Intellectually, this is an eye-opener to most undergraduates--and they feel afterward that they wish their parents had read this book.