Françoise Dolto

Françoise Dolto (1908 to 1988) was a French pediatrician and psychoanalyst. Born Françoise Marette in Paris to an affluent, devoutly Catholic family, she overcame her mother's opposition to her studies, took a nursing degree in 1930 and began medical studies the following year. Her own analysis with René Laforgue, begun in 1934, helped lead her toward psychoanalysis, and during her medical training under Georges Heuyer she met Sophie Morgenstern, the first to practise psychoanalysis with children in France, who became a mentor. Encouraged by Edouard Pichon, Dolto specialised in child psychology as a psychoanalytic pediatrician, and many of her patients were children with psychoses. She took part in the beginnings of French Freudianism. Wikipedia also records that Michel Foucault named her among the signatories of a 1977 French petition against age of consent laws.