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Dr. Mannoni derives her method and technique of treatment largely from the theoretical concepts of her mentor, Jacques Lacan. These concepts rest, in some measure, upon certain of Melanie Klein's formulations, particularly in respect to 'good' and 'bad' objects and to an accelerated timetable for infantile psychic development.
The technical language which Dr. Mannoni employs I found difficult to comprehend and I had to study assiduously the Glossary of Lacanian Terminology which happily is included. What first impressed me as extremely complex treatment techniques, developed within an equally complex theoretical framework, ultimately were reducible to oversimplified formulae applicable to each and all of Dr. Mannoni's patients.
In her preface, Dr. Mannoni emphasizes that her accounts of the treatment of psychotic children demonstrate that only a structural approach leads to an understanding of psychosis. This statement is somewhat misleading because of the disparity between Dr. Mannoni's terminology and that of freudian psychoanalysis. In point of fact, Dr. Mannoni appears to be curiously unconcerned with structural problems and her accent seems to be almost exclusively on the ideational contents of parents' and child's unconscious. Within this context, the child's 'position' is somewhere between his own 'desires' and the 'desire' of the 'Other' (the mother). The mother's 'desire' is that the child be her phallus. The child wishes to be what the mother desires and simultaneously is governed by the 'contrary law', that is, to assume the father's place. The analyst must include the parents in the treatment to the point of uncovering their fantasies since these form an integral part of the child's symptom and, therefore, as Dr. Mannoni underscores, of the conduct of the treatment. An inevitable corollary, then, is that the analyst must deal with several transferences (analyst's, parents', and child's); and the analyst must further define what he, himself, as