ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 pans Dolto’s oeuvre to elaborate “passive education”—learning made possible by the endurance of securitizing unconscious processes and the continuous operation of the transference. Some critical points are reviewed: co-narcissism, the «poupée-fleur» (replete with phantastic echoes), associative thinking, sublimation and desire. Stress is placed on Dolto’s narration of the infant as intensely susceptible to suffering, her theorization of autism and her conviction of the (ironic) origin of language in protective isolation. Elusive legacies of the climate of Dolto are considered, including her long relation with Lacan. The notion that biography and literacy are terrains of exchange for the archaic’s “subtle objects” is explored, in summarizingDolto’s teaching about the phoneme and the infant—language and identity.
