Richard Bates, a Teaching Associate of the Faculty of Arts, has released a new book: Psychoanalysis and the family in twentieth-century France
About the book
Psychoanalysis and the family in twentieth-century France, Françoise Dolto and her legacy
In the last quarter of the twentieth century, if French people had a parenting problem or dilemma there was one person they consulted above all: Françoise Dolto (1908-88). But who was Dolto? How did she achieve a position of such influence? What ideas did she communicate to the French public? This book connects the story of Dolto's rise to two broader histories: the dramatic growth of psychoanalysis in postwar France and the long-running debate over the family and the proper role of women in society. It shows that Dolto's continued reputation in France as a liberal and enlightened educational thinker is at best only partially deserved and that conservative and anti-feminist ideas often underpinned her prominent public interventions. While Dolto retains the status of a national treasure, her career has had far-reaching and sometimes harmful repercussions for French society, particularly in the treatment of autism.
About the author
Richard Bates is a Teaching Associate at the University of Nottingham specialising in modern French history (1789-2000) and nineteenth-century British history with particular expertise in the history of psychoanalysis, the history of nursing, the history of autism, and more generally in the history of medicine and psychology.
To view a listing of this author's prior publications, click here.
Posted on Thursday 10th March 2022