Theory and Practice in Child Psychoanalysis

Guy Hall is a graduate of the Arbours Association and a member of the Forum for Independent Psychotherapists. He has worked both in the NHS and in private practice and taught abroad. He was a member of the UKCP executive and Chair of its Ethics committee. Francoise Hivernel graduated as a Psychoanalytic-Psychotherapist from the Contemporary Freudian Training of the West Midlands Institute and is a member of the Forum for Independent Psychotherapists. She is also a member of Cambridge Analysis and works in private practice in Cambridge with adults. Sian Morgan is a psychoanalytic therapist and a member of the Cambridge Society for Psychotherapy, where for over twenty-five years, she has been practicing as a therapist and supervisor. She was Director of Studies for the Post-Graduate Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling at the University of Cambridge for fifteen years.

'This book has a task that should strike us as odd: to introduce the work of an extremely famous French psychoanalyst whose name is a continental household word. A clinical and theoretical practitioner whose influence on the understanding and care of babies, infants and children is unsurpassed, is virtually unknown in Britain. Why is Dolto unknown? The reasons are surely multiple but the puzzle remains. Is there something alien here to British sensibilities? As her absence from our culture and practices is a serious problem, the question is worth asking.'Donald Winnicott, her rival in this field, famously dismissed her as too intuitive; this is incorrect because, like the object of her research, she is intensely engaged in the process whereby language turns feelings into thoughts. The observations of Winnicott, Klein and Tustin on the one hand, and Dolto on the other, overlap or are compatible - the intellectual framework within which they are understood is different; the concept of the child is not the same. The cross-channel contributors of this volume have set themselves a crucial and difficult task: to introduce a writer who thinks differently. The result is fascinating and important.'- From the foreword by Juliet Mitchell

• Preface -- Introduction -- Françoise Dolto: a biography -- Françoise Dolto’s contribution to neonatology -- Childhood psychosis -- Seeing the bigger picture -- The unconscious image of the body -- Gendering the libido: Françoise Dolto and female sexuality -- Homosexuality in women -- La Maison Verte: a place for words. Personal reflections on working with Françoise Dolto -- La Casa Verde: speech, listening, welcoming in Françoise Dolto’s work -- Desire, Dire, Dieu, and Dolto -- Chronology of the life of Françoise Dolto