The idea of a machine having human properties is just as frightening or fascinating as a human acting as a machine. Bettelheim's aim was not to cure Joey from his mechanization but help him restart his life as a human  being. Bettelheim's approach was not to destroy Joey's fantasy and insist on convincing him that he was not a machine, but to allow Joey to speak using his own terms in order to break the barrier of communication between Joey and the people around him.

Bettelheim believed that a child's imagination was an important element in his emotional development. However, their awareness of reality is also important, this is something Joey did not have. Joey had a special kind of terminology that could only be used on machines. For instance, as Joey was developing in expressing himself. He had an emotional encounter with one of the other children in the school. Joey cried: "He broke my feelings." Although he began to acknowledge his emotions, he would still use mechanical terms to describe their state.

According to Bettelheim, Joey created these machines to control his body and mind because it was too painful to be human. Whenever Joey would feel that his machines had failed him in achieving this, (he was hurt or he felt human) he would "explode" into a frenzy and shatter the instrument which he held in his hand such as a light bulb or a tube. Bettelheim explains that these frenzies are the only time Joey becomes human as he intensly expresses his anger and for a long time it was the only hint of an emotional self that Joey presented. However as soon as the instrument was shattered, he would quickly return to his mechanical self and "fix" his "apparatus" which supplied his "life energy".

But why was it so important that Joey becomes human? What makes human beings better than machines?