These dolls that don’t want to be just toys

The author analyzes a broad panorama of symbolic meanings for the doll, reaching from Greco-Roman culture, with its Kore figures, to folk traditions still alive in certain European countries today. The simultaneously magical and mystical approach of Amerindian and African cultures prompts the author to open the field of reflection to the concept of transitionality, as defined by Winnicott. F. Dolto’s contribution to the question of dolls as a source of personal and collective role models for gender identity is emphasized. Artists’ dolls, in this case, those of M. Nedjar, make it possible to approach the universality and timelessness of the message conveyed by the doll.