After spending more than twenty years in Madagascar, Mannoni returned to France after World War II where he, inspired by Lacan, published several psychoanalytic books and articles.

In 1964, he followed Lacan into the École Freudienne de Paris, where he remained (with his wife Maud Mannoni) a loyal supporter to the end.

[3] The book was later criticized by writers such as Frantz Fanon for underestimating the socio-materialistic roots of the colonial encounter.

[4] Nevertheless, it was to influence a generation of Shakespeare directors like Jonathan Miller,[5] who considered that Mannoni "saw Caliban and Ariel as different forms of black response to white paternalism".

[6] Another of Mannoni's well-known works was "Clefs pour l'imaginaire ou l'Autre Scène", Seuil, 1969.