Françoise Dolto

Biography

Françoise Dolto (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 paren...