The Lacanian Concept of Cut in Light of Lacan's Interactions with Maud Mannoni.

This article sets out to shed light on the Lacanian concept of cut (introduced in 1961-1962): it refers to the symbolic (i.e., linguistic) operation which produces the object a and thereby enables separation, through which the subject emerges. To that effect, we show how this concept benefitted from Lacan's interactions with Maud Mannoni (1923-1998), who focused on clinical situations where implementing a cut in the subject's environment is the only way to enable a separation between the child and the Other. Lacan first drew on Mannoni's clinical elaborations about the retarded child's alienation to the maternal fantasy: when the mother's unconscious doesn't leave room for the cut, it prevents the separation through which the child could become a subject. Lacan generalized this in the late 1960s: he broadened Mannoni's alienation to the maternal fantasy to characterize a type of child symptom, where children become their mother's non-separated, de-phallicized object a. Then, in the 1970s, Mannoni proposed an original theoretico-clinical setting to address the configurations where the object a isn't separated: in the splintered institution, the team follows on projects of activities (professional, personal, etc.) outside the institution voiced by children who haven't previously encountered the symbolic cut, by helping them realize these external projects. By thus acknowledging their attempts at establishing a cut and giving them consistency, the splintered institution helps them psychically elaborate separation.

O louco, a criança e o analista: contribuições de Maud Mannoni à psicanálise / The insane, the child, and the analyst: contributions of Maud Mannoni to psychoanalysis

Temos por objetivo apontar as principais contribuições de Maud Mannoni para a história da psicanálise. Para tanto, mencionaremos as influências que marcaram em sua trajetória e aspectos centrais de sua obra: suas concepções sobre a loucura e a criança. A ideia é tentar compreender de que maneira tais aspectos, ao se repetirem, ganham uma importância fundamental para a leitura de sua obra. Isso convoca a duas perguntas: Por que a criança e o louco? Em quê a questão psiquiátrica e o lugar do analista se relacionam? É, pois, por essa via que tentaremos construir nossa discussão em torno da ruptura que ela operou no embate que travou com a psiquiatria e as instituições psiquiátricas e, ainda, sua relação com o lugar do analista na clínica com crianças.(AU)

We aim to point out to the major contributions of Maud Mannoni in the history of psychoanalysis. For this, we want mention to the influences that marked its trajectory and the key aspects of her work: the conceptions of madness and the child. The idea is to try to understand how these aspects, being repeated, get a fundamental importance for the reading of her work. It summons for two questions: Why the child and the insane? In what does the psychiatric issue and the place of the analyst are related? In this way we will try to discuss about the rupture Maud Mannoni operated in the clash caught by her against the Psychiatry and psychiatric institutions, and their relationship with the place of analyst in the clinic with children.(AU)