ARCHAIC ECHOES, THE WORD AND THE TRANSFERENCE IN TEXTS: A ...

292 Pages·2016·1.58 MB·English

ARCHAIC ECHOES, THE WORD AND THE TRANSFERENCE IN TEXTS:
A PSYCHOBIOGRAPHIC STUDY OF FRANÇOISE DOLTO

KATHLEEN SAINT-ONGE

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Program in Education
York University
Toronto, Ontario

June 2016
© Kathleen Saint-Onge, 2016
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Abstract

The famous French psychoanalyst, Françoise Dolto (1908–1988), proposes a
remarkable narrative of life between conception and weaning. Thoroughly original while
loyally Freudian, Dolto discovers that precocious audition in a fluid blur of subject and
object impacts psychical structuration, as «phonèmes» inform nascent symbolization.
Dolto’s oeuvre derives from the assumption that life is sourced in the unconscious, thus she
delivers a powerful attestation of the primary processes. Following Freud, this study
elaborates Dolto’s particularly salient theory-by-testimony of the transference as an ‘inter-
relational libidinal dialectic’—the wild circulation of unconscious affects. Dolto is the
foremost theorist of the archaic stage of psychical development, wherein originates the
transference as securitizing continuity with our idiosyncratic libidinal histories. And Dolto’s
unusual body of work, equal parts personal and professional, permits an exceptional
demonstration of the passive movement of the autobiographical in the theoretical, as her
own archaic echoes reverberate in homonymic repetitions and weighty silences. Finding
such traces—a notion I source in Derrida—suggests that the transport of dream-work
through words produces in writing (thus enabling in reading) what I advance as the
transference in texts. Dolto’s exploration of our unspeakable ‘time before thought’ is
supported by a half-century of clinical practice, and engaging Dolto’s complex material, I
venture into six overlapping fields of words as «objets médiateurs»: filiation, transmission,
listening, reading, speaking and writing. Dolto proffers convincing evidence that primitive
audition destines language to elude grammars, rooting it instead in «filiation symbolique»: a
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paradoxical ontology of melancholy and play, as dreams offer consolations for our difficult
coming to reality, and we only advance on confirmations of archaic security—witnessing.
Thus bridging a compelling French corpus with English audiences, this dissertation unsettles
biography, linguistics, literacy and pedagogy, as the investment of enigmatic phonemes with
indelible significance troubles the word with a phantastic prehistory.

Keywords: continuity, dream-work, Freud, homonym, passive pulses, phoneme,
psychoanalysis, trace, unconscious.
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Dedication

For Bertha Pappenheim, the first patient of the ‘talking cure,’
and for all the youngest patients of psychoanalysis, in enduring gratitude for their passage in
the literature, I offer this small scholarly work as “an attempt to follow an idea consistently,
out of curiosity, to see where it will lead” (Freud, 1920, 24). For highly original play is
bound to the origins of psychoanalysis by virtue of the particular task it undertakes: “to lift
the veil of amnesia which hides the earliest years of childhood” (Freud, 1933a, 28).

And for Françoise Dolto (née Marette), my inestimable subject-object,
in profound appreciation for her astonishing generosity in leaving behind a bounty of
intimate materials, whereby I hope readers can experience the transference in texts: evidence
of the unconscious in human creativity as “autobiographical—not what is called the
‘autobiographical genre’ but rather the autobiographicity that greatly overflows the ‘genre’
of autobiography...in an existential experience that is singular, and if not ineffable at least
untranslatable or on the verge of untranslatability” (Derrida, 2001a, 41).
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I wish to thank my doctoral supervisor, Dr. Deborah P. Britzman,
Distinguished Research Professor at York University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Canada. Her warmth, her careful reading, and her own brilliant writing on psychoanalysis
and education have been essential to me. I hope to honour here the fine gift of dignity by
which she enables research to emerge from the very tensions that source the human spirit.
At York University, I offer my sincere gratitude to Dr. Alice Pitt, Vice-Provost
Academic, for her sustained interest in my work. I also acknowledge four outstanding
educators who have encouraged me over the past eight years: Drs. Mario DiPaolantonio,
Heather Lotherington, Carol Anne Wien and Dan Yon. I am very grateful to Dr. Aparna
Mishra-Tarc and Dr. Lisa Farley for their teaching, their guidance, and their robust reviews
of my first draft. I am thankful for Dr. Jen Gilbert, Graduate Program Director, who expertly
chaired my examination and offered critical insights on subjectivity. And I thank Dr.
Thomas L. Loebel for his provocative questions about the nature of my biographical
engagement with Dolto. I also want to thank Dr. Paula M. Salvio, of the University of New
Hampshire, for her remarkable queries on the pedagogical implications of Dolto’s theories.
I would like to recognize Dr. Anne Marie Canu, a Dolto scholar, translator and
psychoanalyst I met in Paris in July 2014, who has nurtured me since then with her generous
correspondence. I am also grateful to Catherine Dolto, who maintains the «Archives
Françoise Dolto». Her works about her «drôle de mère» [funny kind of mother] (Dolto,
1986b, 79) are beautiful and crucial. And I thank Marie Normandin of «La Maison
Buissonière,» in Montreal, for speaking so eloquently on Dolto in Toronto in November
2012, and Dr. Judith Hamilton of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society for hosting her.
I am thankful beyond words for my three adult children, Sarah, Jacob and Peter.
Their loving listening, rallying energy and twisted humour helped me through many days in
graduate school where I found it hard to believe in myself. I am also much indebted to my
dear cousin, Marie; my son-in-law, Shane; my good friend, Bridgit; my mother, Thérèse
Dumont; countless colleagues and students who have inspired me; and my beloved ‘T.’
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While the reader may experience what seems like an avalanche of references, I
believe I have done my best to simply be as thorough as possible, being fully cognizant of
my responsibility in bringing Françoise Dolto’s project to new audiences, in English. If I
have managed to convey something of her phenomenal work and thought, she deserves full
credit. Any interpretive failings, errors, omissions or weaknesses are mine alone.
On the use of the name “Dolto” in this work
Except where noted as C. (Catherine) Dolto, daughter, formerly Dolto-Tilitch, who is
currently a pediatrician, midwife, writer and haptotherapist, as well as Dolto’s legatee
(Wikipédia, 2014f); or B. (Boris) Dolto, deceased husband, formerly a physician and a
forerunner of physiotherapy in France (Wikipédia, 2014c), all occurrences of the name
‘Dolto’ in this work refer to Françoise Dolto, whose name prior to marriage was Marette.
On the translations in this work
I am a native speaker of French, originally from the city of Quebec, in Quebec,
Canada. All translations herein (of Dolto, Derrida & others) are my own free translations. In
the interest of concision, Dolto’s precise, original wording in French is provided alongside
translations only where it is deemed to impact directly on the main thesis of this dissertation,
as in notably idiomatic or homonymic passages. On the other hand, where a French
expression is a cognate of English (as in, «une expression tragique»), the translations are
omitted instead.
A final note on translation
In German, Freud’s wortgebilden educate, form and construct, being neither mere
‘word-things’ (objects) nor simply ‘word-presentations’ (visual). In turn, the expression,
‘dream-interpretation,’ silences the trau (trust) embedded in Freud’s traumdeutung. And of
his trieb—urge, sprout, desire, instinct and work—we translate only ‘drive,’ or in French,
«pulsions.» Thus do both the word and the subject begin with the problem of translation.
Kathleen Saint-Onge (Toronto, 2016)
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Table of Contents

Abstract ii

Dedication iv

Acknowledgements v

List of abbreviations viii

Chapter 1 Introduction ~ Witness & Filiation 1

Chapter 2 Family & Transmission 37

Chapter 3 Infancy & Audition 68

Chapter 4 Reading & Presentification 97

Chapter 5 Society & Interdiction 126

Chapter 6 Conclusion ~ Trace & Publication 157

Notes 195

Bibliography 241
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List of Abbreviations

To enhance readability, key works referred to repeatedly are identified as follows:

AI: Potin, Y. (Ed.). (2008). Françoise Dolto: Archives de l’intime. Paris, FR: Gallimard.

APP: Dolto, F. (1956). Introduction au dessin d’enfants. La vie médicale: Arts et
psychopathologie, Numéro Spécial, Noël 1956, 27 – 39.

ATP: Dolto. F. (1989b). Autoportrait d’une psychanalyste: 1934-1988: Entretiens avec
Alain et Colette Manier. Paris, FR: Éditions du Seuil.

CD: Dolto, F. (1971). Le cas Dominique. Paris, FR: Éditions du Seuil.

CE: Halmos, C. (Ed.) (1994). Françoise Dolto, rticles et conférences, II: Les Chemins de
l'éducation. Paris, FR: Gallimard. (Original work published 1946 – 1989).

DQ: De Sauverzac, J.-F. (Ed.) (1987). Françoise Dolto: Dialogues québécois. Paris, FR:
Éditions du Seuil. (Original work published 1983.)

D&R: Dolto, F. & Roudinesco, E. (1986/1988). Des jalons pour une histoire: Entretien. In
J.Aubrey et al., Quelques pas sur le chemin de Françoise Dolto, Paris, FR: Seuil,
11–42.

DV: Dolto. F. (1986a). La difficulté de vivre. Paris, FR: Vertiges du Nord/Carrere.

DW: Dolto, F. &Winter, J.-P. (1986).Les images, les mots, le corps. Paris, FR: Gallimard.

EF: Dolto, F. (1978/1998). L’enfant et la fête: Entretien. Paris, FR: Mercure de France.
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EM: Halmos, C. & Dolto, C. (Eds.) (1994). Françoise Dolto, Articles et conférences, I: Les
étapes majeures de l'enfance. Paris, FR: Gallimard. (Original work 1946 – 1988).

EN: Dolto. F. (1986c). Enfances. Paris, FR: Éditions du Seuil.

ES: Dolto. F. (1989a). Échec scolaire. Paris, FR: Ergo. (Original work published 1980 –
1986.)

EV: Dolto, F. (1998). Françoise Dolto: L’enfant dans la ville. Paris, FR: Mercure de
France. (Original work published in 1977 & 1987.)

IIC: Dolto. F. (1984). L’image inconsciente du corps. Paris, FR: Éditions du Seuil.

JD: Dolto, F. (1981). Le jeu du désir: Essais cliniques. Paris, FR: Éditions du Seuil.
(Original work published 1946 – 1978).

JP: Faure-Poirée, C. & Djéribi-Valentin, M. (Eds.). (1999), Jeu de poupées.Paris, FR:
Mercure de France. (Original work published in 1949 & 1964.)

LF: Djéribi-Valentin, M. & Kouki, E. (Eds.) (1998). Françoise Dolto, Articles et
conférences 5, Le féminin. Paris, FR: Gallimard. (Original work 1959 – 1988).

LO1: Dolto, F. (1977a). Lorsque l’enfant parait, Tome 1. Paris, FR: Éditions du Seuil.

LO2: Dolto, F. (1978). Lorsque l’enfant parait, Tome 2. Paris, FR: France Loisirs.

LO3: Dolto, F. (1979a). Lorsque l’enfant parait, Tome 3. Paris, FR: Éditions du Seuil.
x

MA: Marette, F. (1940). Psychanalyse et pédiatrie: Le complexe de castration, étude
générale et cas cliniques. Paris, FR: Amédée Legrand. [This is the original version
of P&P.]

MF: Djéribi-Valentin, M. (Ed.) (2008). Françoise Dolto: Mère et fille, une correspondance
(1931 – 1962). Paris, FR: Mercure de France.

NE: Dolto, F. (1977/1984). Heures et jours qui suivent l’accouchement […]. In E. Herbinet
(Ed.), Naître et ensuite? Paris, FR: Stock, 187 – 266.

PF: Djéribi-Valentin, M. (Ed.) (2001). Françoise Dolto: Père et fille, une correspondance
(1914 – 1938). Paris, FR: Mercure de France.

PJE: Lévy, D.M. (Ed.). (2002). Parler juste aux enfants: Entretien de Françoise Dolto & D.
M. Lévy. Paris, FR: Mercure de France. (Original work published 1978 – 1988).

P&P: Dolto, F. (1939/1971). Psychanalyse et pédiatrie: les grandes notions de la
psychanalyse, seize observations d'enfants. Paris, FR: Éditions du Seuil. [More
modern reprint of MA.]

PM: Dolto, F. (1985/1998). Parler de la mort. Paris, FR: Mercure de France.

PS: Kouki, E. (Ed.). (2005). Françoise Dolto: Parler de la solitude. Paris, FR: Mercure de
France. (Original work written in 1975).

SF: Djéribi-Valentin, M. & Kouki, E. (Eds.) (1996). Françoise Dolto Essais: Sexualité
féminine: la libido génitale et son destin féminin. Paris, FR: Gallimard. (Original
work: 1960 – 1985.)