Flower Dolls: Essays in Child Psychotherapy

FLOWER DOLLS: ESSAYS IN CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY

In an article that appeared in the Revue française de psychanalyse in 1949, "Cure psychanalytiqueà l'aide de la poupée-fleur" (A Psychoanalytic Cure with the Help of a Flower Doll), Françoise Dolto described her experience with this green doll—which is often referred to as a marguerite doll—in the treatment of a child named Bernadette.

At the age of five Bernadette was already suffering from anorexia nervosa. She was vomiting up her meals and spoke in a monotone. She dragged her left leg and her hand was folded back over her forearm, the consequence of a hemiplegia. She played with toys that she constantly punished. In the course of the seventh session, she began to speak about the monkey inside her that said bad things, and then hammered her tummy with her fists to make the monkey come out.

Françoise Dolto noticed the child's interest in flowers, particularly marguerites. When her mother said that the little girl liked neither her animals nor her dolls, Dolto responded: "Perhaps she'd like a flower doll?" Bernadette responded, "Oh, yes, yes, a flower doll!" Her mother was asked to make a faceless doll with no hands out of green material and to crown it with a marguerite.

In the eighth session, Bernadette came with her flower doll, which she had named Rosine. She said she was horrible and naughty. "Do you know why she's so naughty?" Bernadette whispered into the analyst's ear: "For her being naughty means being nice because she has an arm and a leg that don't work. Her way of being nice is hurting others. She's not naughty, but she's ill. You're going to treat her!" And the doll stayed with the analyst while the little girl went away quite happy.

When Bernadette arrived for her ninth session, she came with a teddy bear dressed as a human doll, and she looked after it tenderly so that it wasn't too hot. From the day she left the flower doll for treatment, Bernadette had changed at home. "I treated her every day, you know," Explained Dolto. Then Bernadette spoke quietly to her doll, listened to her answer, made her dance on the table, and suddenly cried out in a modulated voice: "She's cured, her arm and legs work very well! You looked after her very well." Then she thrust forward her folded-back hand, like a sort of claw. "She's a wolf girl, so when she loves she scratches! Because the wolf girl is very fond of you she's going to show you how strong she is!" She began to dig her nails into the analyst's skin, saying: "Don't be afraid, she has to see blood because she loves you."

From that session onward, Bernadette used her good right hand to stroke the other hand, and she began to create many objects with clay, and her behavior changed. Dolto theorized that the flower doll was the support for the girl's narcissistic affects, which were wounded during the oral stage. Afflicted with serious somatic disorders, this sick little girl's oral, then anal, aggression turned against herself, then projected itself into this human and plant form without a head, a form that was unable to speak and not responsible for its actions. Bernadette used it for her treatment, which gave Dolto the idea of using it with other children and adults.

Bernard This

Source Citation

Dolto, Françoise. (1949). Cure psychanalytiqueà l'aide de la poupée-fleur. Revue française de psychanalyse, 13 (1), 53-69.

——. (1950).Á propos des poupées-fleurs (deuxième partie). Revue française de psychanalyse, 14 (1), 19-41.

——. (1998). Flower dolls: Essays in child psychotherapy. (John Howe, Trans.). London: Marion Boyars.