Is there a hidden psychological significance to Dorothy's close friendship with the Scarecrow? She seems to hang around him more than the other two companions and she even says "I'll miss you most of all" in both this film and Return to Oz. Perhaps Dorothy had a school-girl crush on Hunk in Kansas; nothing intended to be serious but kind of like how students may be attracted to their teachers.
shareFrom a psychological perspective, the three companions are just physical manifestations of Dorothy herself. Kind of like different aspects of her own personality and character, similar to Riley and her emotions in Inside Out. She just gave them familiar faces out of a sense of comfort.
I've read that the Scarecrow comes to the most harm out of the three, which is significant, since he is also the most human and fully realized compared to the others and therefore the closest to who Dorothy was before travelling through Oz. But more than that, he's the biggest chunk of herself that she's losing, her child-likeness, if you will. She may still experience cowardice and coldness later in life, a.k.a the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, but after this adventure, the Scarecrow is unlikely to surface again in her psyche.
The crush thing is always going to be conjecture because there's no real way of knowing how substantive that theory is.
First guy had an excellent reply.
I was thinking that it was maybe just because she had known the scarecrow the longest out of the three. The scarecrow was her first real friend in Oz. Because the good witch and the munchkins wouldn't go with her on her journey, but the scarecrow left his home and went with her. The Scarecrow was the one who risked it all. The Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion were joining a party so to speak, so they had less risk. It's easier to join two or three people, rather than joining just one person.
The Tin Man basically joined them out of obligation since they saved him from his frozen state. When they first meet the Cowardly Lion, the Lion is trying to scare them and not befriend them. The Tin Man is almost like a victim, the Cowardly Lion tries to act like a predator.
So, Dorothy meets the Scarecrow in a more upbeat, funny, friendly, and genuine way. Dorothy and the Scarecrow are definitely more intimate.
Beside the fact that she knew him the longest, he seemed to do most of the "thinking" for the group and seemed more like an adult (reliable) than the other two.
To your point, there's another line of thought that says Dorothy had a "crush" on Hunk, the Scarecrow's Kansas counterpoint, and this info was dropped from the final script.