Maud Mannoni

Maud Mannoni (1923–1998) was a French psychoanalyst of Belgian origin, who married Octave Mannoni and became a major figure of the Lacanian movement.

Life

Maud (Magdalena) Mannoni (Maiden name Van der Spoel) 'was born on October 22, 1923 in the Belgian city of Combrai, and spent her early childhood in Colombo, Ceylon'.^[1] She 'studied criminology at the University of Brussels and began a training analysis with Maurice Dugautiez, one of the first Belgian psychoanalysts'.^[2] After moving to France in 1949, she 'met Francoise Dolto, married Octave Mannoni, and had both analysis and training analysis with Jacques Lacan, who she supported during the 1953 split'.^[3]

'After the 1963 split...he [Lacan] took many representatives of the third generation with him...among them were Maud and Octave Mannoni, Serge Leclaire...and Jean Clavreul'.^[4]

On the backward child

Lacan, in the first of his seminars to be published, singled out 'our colleague Maud Mannoni, [with] a book that has just come out and which I would recommend you to read...The Retarded Child and the Mother '.^[5] In it she concludes that 'the ego of the subnormal patient is not separate from his mother'.^[6] Instead, the roots of such psychoses 'are inscribed in the maternal unconscious, with the psychotic child being unrecognized as a desiring subject...and frozen as partial object subjected to maternal omnipotence'.^[7]

'Maud Mannoni's revolutionary influence on an entire generation of child therapists, analysts, teachers, and parents in France began in 1964'^[8] with that work.

Support centres and anti-psychiatry

Mannoni specialised in mental illness in children, and in 1969 established the school of Bonneuil-sur-Marne, a community live-in project for kids with autism and psychosis. In doing so, she has been described as 'profoundly influenced by the antipsychiatry of R. Laing and D. Cooper',^[9] an influence which can also be seen perhaps in 'her view of the child as "spokesperson" for the dysfunctional family'.^[10] Bonneuil as an institution 'which operated beyond traditional boundaries and used a variety of therapeutic strategies...became internationally renowned'.^[11]

She was also instrumental in establishing LVA - "A Place to Live and Hospitality" - small medico-social support centres of which there were 446 by 2007.

Wider influences

After Lacan's death, and the fragmentation of the Lacanian movement, Maud Mannoni, 'still a member of the IPA through her affiliation with the Belgian society, play[ed] a unifying role similar to that of Serge Leclaire'.^[12] Mannoni's 'unique integration of the theories of Lacan and Winnicott drew wide attention to new perspectives on the theory of child development'.^[13]

References

1. ^ International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
2. ^ International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
3. ^ International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
4. ^ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan (Cambridge 1997) p. 293
5. ^ Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (Penguin 1994) p. 238
6. ^ Neville Symington, Becoming a Person through psychoanalysis (London 2007) p. 139
7. ^ International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
8. ^ Questia: About the Author
9. ^ Jacquy Chemouni, Histoire de la Psychanalyse en France (1991)
10. ^ International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
11. ^ International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
12. ^ Roudinesco, p. 441
13. ^ Questia: About the Author

Further reading

• Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose eds., Feminine Sexuality (New York 1982)
• Maud Mannoni, Le Psychiatre, son "fou", et le Psychanalyse (Paris 1970)

External links

• Michel Polo, Ecole Experimentale de Bonneuil (In English)

Persondata
Name	Mannoni, Maud
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1923
Place of birth
Date of death	1998
Place of death