Concept
Françoise Dolto (dɔlto; November 6, 1908 – August 25, 1988) was a French pediatrician and psychoanalyst. Born as Françoise Marette, she was the daughter of an affluent far-right royalist family of traditional Catholics in Paris. Her Alsatian mother, Suzanne Demmler, was the daughter of an engineer, and Henri Marette, her father, was also a Polytechnic engineer who became an industrialist. She was the fourth child of a family of seven. Her brother Jacques Marette (1922-1984), was French Postmaster (minister of Posts and Telecommunications) from 1962 to 1967. An Irish nurse frequently took care of her when she was a baby; her parents then had to learn to speak English to get her to smile. Her parents fired the nurse when she was 8 months old. Dolto's very traditional upbringing, which Élisabeth Roudinesco described as "very Catholic, extreme right-wing", reflected the values of Charles Maurras. Her personal tutor was trained in the methods of Friedrich Fröbel. When she was eight her uncle and godfather Pierre Demmler died in World War I. When she was twelve, she was very affected by the death of her older sister Jacqueline, her mother's favorite child. Her mother sank into a depression and accused her of not praying hard enough for her sister's life. Dolto's mother felt that a girl had no other prospects than marriage and therefore forbade her to pursue her studies. At sixteen she had to confront her mother, who did not want her to pass her baccalaureate because she would then not be able to get married. Nevertheless, Dolto attended the Lycée Molière in Paris where she graduated in philosophy in 1924–1925. In 1930 she obtained a nursing degree. A year later, she began her medical studies with her brother Philip, "paying for her studies with the money she earns". Dolto was named by Michel Foucault as one of the prominent signatories of the 1977 French petition against age of consent laws. Françoise Dolto was the mother of Carlos (1943–2008), a singer, Grégoire (1944-), an engineer, and Catherine (1946-).
