ABSTRACT
Discipline, The Miracle Worker demonstrates, is a necessary step on the path to knowledge, but never an end in itself. Annie Sullivan says this explicitly later on to Helen Keller's parents when she states that obedience without understanding is worthless. Annie Sullivan, young and inexperienced, is brought to Tuscumbia, Alabama, by a set of desperate parents because their little girl, Helen, blind and deaf, needs to learn. One thing Helen learns right away is to hate and fear Annie, a reaction the teacher will have to overcome in order to form a working alliance with her. No teacher, however good, is right for every student, just as no therapist makes a suitable fit for every patient who presents for treatment. In clinical practice, one speaks of the negative transference and of the value of a patient's being able to hate the analyst during certain phases of the treatment.
