ABSTRACT
Francoise Dolto was invited by Jacques Lacan to give a paper on the development of female libido, in its normal and pathological forms at the International Psychoanalytic Congress in Amsterdam. Dolto was foremost a child psychoanalyst and the task that Lacan gave her, to write on female libidinal development, must have seemed quite daunting. Dolto deemed that work done with children without the parent’s participation/agreement was not conducive to change, as she saw the child’s problems as a symptom of the parents’ illness. Dolto uses Lacan’s theory of the symbolic order and acknowledges the importance of the phallus. For Dolto, a series of chronological castrations is necessary to enable the infant to pass from one developmental phase to another. Dolto stresses strongly that, although sexuality is a part of the libido, it is much more than just that. For Dolto, the notion of impossible desire comes during the oral stage with weaning from the breast.
