Discovering Franoise Dolto

This psychobiographical study of the renowned French pediatrician and psychoanalyst Franoise Dolto introduces both her theories of child development and her unique insights into language and identity. A friend of Jacques Lacans, Dolto believed that we are all humanized through language, and that the words we use carry unconscious traces of our early histories of love, suffering and desire. Suggesting that infants unconsciously symbolize and that a continuous circulation of unconscious affectsthe transferenceprevails in all language-based relations, her findings challenge assumptions about autism, autobiography, linguistics, literacy, pedagogy and therapy. Doltos own corpusa rich archive blending the personal and professionaldemonstrates this, with echoes between Doltos constructs about the child and her own challenging childhood. This fascinating book will not only introduce the work of Franoise Dolto to many readers, but will be a valuable resource for all psychoanalytic researchers and theorists interested in childhood, language and identity.