This psychobiographical study of the renowned French pediatrician and psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto introduces both her theories of child development and her unique insights into language and identity. A friend of Jacques Lacan’s, 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 affects—the transference—prevails in all language-based relations, her findings challenge assumptions about autism, autobiography, linguistics, literacy, pedagogy and therapy. Dolto’s own corpus—a rich archive blending the personal and professional—demonstrates this, with echoes between Dolto’s constructs about the child and her own challenging childhood. This fascinating book will not only introduce the work of Françoise Dolto to many readers, but will be a valuable resource for all psychoanalytic researchers and theorists interested in childhood, language and identity.

During her lifetime Francoise Dolto revolutionized the psychoanalytic understanding of childhood. As an early pioneer, she emphasized that the child is to be recognized from birth as a person. As a gifted and innovative clinician, Dolto developed her ideas about the unconscious image of the body. An image that is unique to each individual and linked to both a person's history and narcissism, rather then their physicality. It is the symbolic incarnation of a person's desires. Dolto began her career as a member of the IPA, was admired by Winnicott, close to Lacan and influenced by Morgenstern. Her life witnessed an extraordinary evolution from the conservatism of her parents, through the second World War, to the turbulence of Paris in the 1950s and 60s. In the succeeding years, Dolto made a number of original contributions to the understanding of psychosis, neonatology, female sexuality, education, and religion. Although controversial, she was able to write both for the general public and for professional colleagues.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, if French people had a parenting problem or dilemma there was one person they consulted above all: Françoise Dolto (1908-88). But who was Dolto? How did she achieve a position of such influence? What ideas did she communicate to the French public? This book connects the story of Dolto's rise to two broader histories: the dramatic growth of psychoanalysis in postwar France and the long-running debate over the family and the proper role of women in society. It shows that Dolto's continued reputation in France as a liberal and enlightened educational thinker is at best only partially deserved and that conservative and anti-feminist ideas often underpinned her prominent public interventions. While Dolto retains the status of a national treasure, her career has had far-reaching and sometimes harmful repercussions for French society, particularly in the treatment of autism.

Finally, one of the most of the most beloved books every published—explained. The Little Prince is revered around the world. Two hundred million copies have been sold in 270 languages; it is the fourth best-selling book of all time. Part of its allure is that is seems incredibly wise but so simple it is read as a work for children. Yet its meaning is elusive, and its place amid the writings of an adventurer and war hero acclaimed for dramatic bestsellers like Night Flight and Flight to Arras is mysterious. In this elegant, carefully argued book, Pierre Lassus reexamines the story of The Little Prince against the facts of Saint-Exupéry's own extraordinary life, from his cherished but fatherless childhood in aristocratic poverty to his career as a pioneering pilot. His plane had broken down in the desert before. He had adopted a fox, when posted at the Spanish fort of Cape Juby, in southern Morocco. He had known the world of business before becoming pilot; he had also known unrequited love. Like his little protagonist's, his body was never found after his plane disappeared in World War II. He was working on his spiritual autobiography when he died, and there too, Lassus finds resonances and keys to the understated spirituality of his last great book.

Rethinking Autism with Dolto takes up a principal legacy of Françoise Dolto’s immense project—her conviction that autism is a regression to the archaic. Dolto theorizes that the infant in utero, deep in dreams, is receptive to the audition of “phonemes” during the pre-conscious “archaic stage” of psychosexual maturation. That dream-work on words—an idiosyncratic prehistory at the onset of mental and emotional life—secures the unconscious circulation of affect and the ontogeny of thought long prior to speech, seeding associative thinking and facilitating self-regulation. Kathleen Saint-Onge uses the written work of four nonverbal autistic authors in seeking corroboration for Dolto’s formulations, finding thoughtful self-reflections that relate the experience of living in silence with relentless anxiety while relying on regression as a defence. Dolto’s unprecedented insights into the infant’s earliest learning carry formidable implications for autism interventions, and for primary language and literacy. At issue is an enduring susceptibility to archaic echoes—the haphazard, securing return of pre-invested phonemes—in communicative exchanges, including reading and writing. Rethinking Autism with Dolto considers unconscious processes as inherently reparative, heralding the responsibility education holds for human health, and supports a rethinking of autism that presumes competence. Readers are invited to new conversations in psychoanalysis, child development, education and linguistics through an exploration of the unconscious concomitants of first language acquisition.

The Psychology Book clearly and simply explains more than one hundred groundbreaking ideas of the great scientists and thinkers who contributed to the development of psychological thought. Using easy-to-follow graphics and artworks, succinct quotations, and thoroughly accessible text, The Psychology Book makes abstract concepts concrete. The Psychology Book includes innovative ideas from ancient and medieval thinkers ranging from Galen and Rene Descartes to the leaders of psychotherapy, such as Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow. The voices that continue to shape modern psychology, from Nico Fridja to David Rosenhan, are also included, giving anyone with an interest in psychology an essential resource to psychological thinking and history. The Psychology Book includes: - More than 100 key ideas and principles in psychology, from antiquity to present day - Brief biographies and context boxes to give the full historical context of each idea - A reference section with a glossary of psychological terms and a directory of psychology's great thinkers The clear and concise summaries, graphics, and quotations in The Psychology Book will help even the complete novice understand the fascinating world of psychological thought.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, if French people had a parenting problem or dilemma there was one person they consulted above all: Françoise Dolto (1908–88). But who was Dolto? How did she achieve a position of such influence? What ideas did she communicate to the French public? This book connects the story of Dolto’s rise to two broader histories: the dramatic growth of psychoanalysis in postwar France and the long-running debate over the family and the proper role of women in society. It shows that Dolto’s continued reputation in France as a liberal and enlightened educational thinker is at best only partially deserved and that conservative and anti-feminist ideas often underpinned her prominent public interventions. While Dolto retains the status of a national treasure, her career has had far-reaching and sometimes harmful repercussions for French society, particularly in the treatment of autism.

This is the first book dealing with fetal pain and its consequences and with pain in premature babies. The volume gives an overview of the current knowledge in this field. An international team of renowned specialists evaluates neonatal and fetal pain from the different points of view, and possible consequences of pain – even psychological – on the brain. This book will be an invaluable resource for professionals and for post-graduate students in all disciplines.

This book skillfully combines autobiographical stories with clear psychoanalytical theories. During her childhood, the author experienced the Holocaust and was left understandly traumatised by it. It was her desire to confront this trauma that led her to psychoanalysis. For decades, the coherence of psychoanalysis seemed to be threatened by the conflicting thinking of many psychoanalytical colleagues about trauma and trauma affect, and also about the influence of external reality on the psychic reality discovered by Freud. However, the author counters this potential conflict with her innovative theoretical integration, combined with remarkable conceptual outcomes and treatment techniques. This book spans the author's work over the last fifteen years on the impact of external reality on psychic reality. During this period many analysts, especially in the English-speaking countries and Germany, where historic events loomed large in the lives of their patients, have turned from the exclusive emphasis on psychic reality to greater attention to the traumatic impact of external reality.

This valuable reference is an authoritative guide to 20th century French thought. It considers the intellectual figures, movements and publications that helped define fields as diverse as history, psychoanalysis, film, philosophy, and economics.