Starting to work analytically as a pediatrician in 1937, Françoise Dolto (1908–1988) belongs to the second generation of French psychoanalysts, and like D.W. Winnicott, worked intensively in pediatric liaison. Her book The Unconscious Body Image was a vital contribution to our understanding of child development. The millions who listened to her weekly broadcast on national radio felt guided by her as parents, yet Dolto is curiously unknown in the English-speaking world. Dolto stands alongside Jacques Lacan as a leading light of the Other French school, whose theoretical base derives closely from Freud but proposes new ideas such as the paternal metaphor, the signifier-signified, the desiring subject, sexuation, the Other, and the Real Symbolic and Imaginary.
Dominique: The Case of an Adolescent
£ 13.99
Available soon
£ 13.99
Available soon
Dominique: The Case of an Adolescenttrans. Ivan Kats, revised by Lionel and Sham Bailly
Jun 2025
Dominique: The Case of an Adolescent
Françoise Dolto
trans. Ivan Kats, revised by Lionel and Sham Bailly
Freud’s cases are unprecedented and unmatched. A record of errors, truths, and a mysterious depth we can return to, decade after decade, to enliven our questions about human suffering. Dolto’s Dominique is the only other case I’ve found that rivals Freud, and brings us up to date, replete with questions of incestuous trauma, repressed sexualities, autism and cognitive disability, and profound sense for the contradictions of polite society and histories of colonial and racist violence. I love this child and encountering Dolto’s otherworldly voice as an analyst.
Françoise Dolto stands alongside Jacques Lacan as a leading light of the Other French school, but is little translated and curiously unknown in the English-speaking world. In her lifetime, Dolto’s research was integrated into schools, hospitals and popular media at a national level. First published in 1971, reading Dominique now gives a granular portrait of an adolescent’s subjectivity and its familial and state inheritance. As such the book is an historical example of how the secular Republic of Metropolitan France produced forms of thought.
Afterword by Michael Ryzner-Basiewicz.
- 978-1-7395161-9-2
- 25 b&w illustrations
- 21.6 x 13.9 cm
- 296 pp.
- Paperback
- June 2025
About the author
Rights
- French (Seuil)
Bourgeois Coldness
£ 13.99
Available soon
£ 13.99
Available soon
Bourgeois Coldnesstrans. Grace Nissan
Sep 2025
Bourgeois Coldness
Henrike Kohpeiß
trans. Grace Nissan
Bourgeois coldness refers to an affective strategy that offers an explanation for how self-preservation works. Bourgeois coldness is one of the most advanced affective and aesthetic forms of preserving the structure of the colonial status quo. It creates an affective shelter in the world, unencroached by the immediate consequences of its many catastrophes. It functions like air conditioning—a complex technology which reliably stabilizes the climate until those inside consider it natural. Bourgeois spaces—institutional and affective—stay cool and pleasant while it’s burning outside.
Bourgeois coldness describes how bourgeois subjects shield themselves from the violence they themselves cause. This book examines how racist affective structures are formed along the histories of colonialism and also Enlightenment philosophy. Canonical critical theory by Adorno and Horkheimer enters a dialogue with Black studies through philosophers such as Hartman, Moten and Ferreira da Silva.
- 978-1-7395161-2-3
- 21.6 x 13.9 cm
- 296 pp.
- Paperback
- September 2025
About the author
Henrike Kohpeiß is a philosopher working on social and political philosophy, critical theory, affect studies, black studies and feminist philosophy. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the CRC 'Affective Societies' at Free University, Berlin. Together with Philipp Wüschner, she hosts a monthly conversations on 'Feelings at the end of the world' at Volksbühne Berlin. Occasionally, she engages in artistic collaborations in dance and performance, mostly as a dramaturge or writer, sometimes as a performer. Bourgeois Coldness is her first book.
About the translator
Grace Nissan is the author of The Utopians (Ugly Duckling Presse) and The City Is Lush With / Obstructed Views (DoubleCross Press), as well as the translator of War Diary by Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions) and kochanie, today i bought bread by Uljana Wolf (World Poetry Books). Their translations of Yevgenia Belorusets were presented in the 59th Venice Biennale, as well as in the accompanying publication In the Face Of War (Isolarii). They are the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellowship to translate Austrian poet Ann Cotten’s Banned! An Epic Poem into English.
Press (2)
Rights
- German (Campus)