ABSTRACT

Chapter 3 examines the transference of Dolto’s family history to her theorization about the child. Dolto believes humans are securitized by their continuous engagement in a symbolic function essential to subjectivization, and that infants structure themselves phantastically on languaged mediation through “fusional transference.” Dolto privileges language, especially the phoneme, as she considers “floating narcissism,” regression to the archaic, the reversibility of autism, a “larval” Oedipus Complex and a “symbolic father” that is a «repère» [“landmark”] for psychical development. Dolto is unequivocal that we inherit an unconscious education from our sources of affect. And in the echoes of her own “sonar heritage,” the reader observes how wartime, deaths and losses—crucially, the departure of her nanny—left conspicuous traces.