Archaic Echoes, the Word and the Transference in Texts: a Psychobiographic Study of Françoise Dolto Kathleen Saint-Onge A
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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 ii 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 iii 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. iv 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). v 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.’ vi 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) vii 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 viii 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).