ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 follows Dolto into the clinic, where she demonstrates careful listening, as the reader meets many child patients, including Dominique. Dolto finds evidence that the infant is unconsciously vibrant and alert to the transference in a continuum of security with his archaic history. Explicating the high value she places on detailed anamneses, Dolto believes that the mother and baby dream upon the same words, as affect weaves with the repetitive phonemes that echo in the liquid landscape of primary narcissism, animating the symbolic function through “receptive resonance.” Using invented terms like «mamaïser» [“motherify”] and «moi-mamère» [“me-mymother”]—and invented instruments, like the «poupée-fleur» [“flower-doll”] and “choral clinics”—Dolto innovatively explains the suggestibility and slippery subjectivity inhering in “co-narcissism.”
