Film still from Vivre à Bonneuil
Workshop on Child Analysis
Vivre à Bonneuil: A Documentary Screening with Clinical Discussion
Premiere of an English-subtitled version
Introduction by Olga Poznansky
Presentations by Catherine Vanier and Alain Vanier
With the participation of the film’s director Guy Seligmann
Saturday, April 10, 2027 • 10:00 AM – 1:00, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
In 1969 Maud Mannoni, one of France’s great child psychoanalysts, founded an experimental school in Bonneuil-sur-Marne, Paris. Sympathetic to the basic attitude of antipsychiatry but not its theory, Mannoni grounded her theory on psychoanalysis. Bonneuil welcomed children shut out from the school system as ‘maladjusted’: psychotic, autistic, or with ‘bad behavior’ problems, and treated them, reinstating them in a social environment.
Guy Seligmann’s feature-length 1974 documentary shows how this pioneering institution, which exists to this day, has provided a vital space for children with serious problems, reintegrating them into a common life.
Location:In-person in NYC and online via Zoom.
Fee: $80; for students with ID: $40. Registration details to follow.
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Olga Poznansky is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst working with children, adolescents and adults in New York City. She is a participant with Après-Coup Psychoanalytic Association. Besides her private practice, she consults at a preschool, collaborating with teachers and parents to bring a psychoanalytic perspective into the school’s everyday life.
Catherine Vanier practices psychoanalysis in Paris. She is a founding member and ex-president of Espace Analytique, heads L’École Expérimentale de Bonneuil-sur-Marne, and is a faculty member of Après-Coup Psychoanalytic Association. Besides many books in French, she has published in English (as Catherine Mathelin) Lacanian Psychotherapy with Children: The Broken Piano, and (as Catherine Vanier) Premature Birth: The Baby, the Doctor and the Psychoanalyst (1917, Karnac Press).
Angelo Villa practices child psychoanalysis in Milan. He is a member of Après-Coup Psychoanalytic Association and Espace Analytique (Paris). Author of several books on psychoanalysis with children but also on topics ranging from pop music to the Koran, he has been translated into French, Spanish, and English (Karnac Press’s Psychoanalysis and Severe Handicap), and he has himself translated Rosine and Robert Lefort’s La naissance de l’Autre into Italian.