The psychoanalytical practice of Françoise Dolto and the use of children’s drawings

Abstract

This essay articulates some considerations about Françoise Dolto’s analytical practice and her approach to analyzing drawings of child patients. It presents a brief description of some fundamentals describing Françoise Dolto’s clinical practice, followed by some theoretical-clinical considerations on children’s drawings in the psychoanalytical process. It highlights that Dolto did not use toys or drawings as mediators but made use of pictorial productions to investigate what was repeated in the representation that resonated with the child’s symptoms and was figuratively expressed through the unconscious image of her body through its signifiers.