Mediating Trauma and Anxiety: Letters to Fran çoise Dolto, 1976-1978

AbstractFran çoise Dolto (1908-88) was a prominent French cultural figure thanks to her practice of dispensing psychoanalytically-informed child-rearing advice via the radio. From 1976 to 1978, on her showLorsque l ’enfant paraît, she responded to thousands of letters sent in by listeners requesting help with parenting problems and personal questions of a psychological nature. The article explores Dolto ’s cultural position as a child psychoanalyst – understood in the 1960s and 1970s as a radical profession – but from a conservative, Catholic background. It then examines a sample of the letters sent in to her show, analysing the demographics of the correspondents and highlighting their most c ommon concerns. Finally the article studies the relationship between psychoanalysis and trauma. It indicates the anxiety that a psychoanalytic understanding can cause, by reinforcing parents’ fears that childhood traumas are common, can be created unwittingly by parents, and lead to major psycholo gical consequences in later life.
Source: Journal of Medical Humanities - Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research