Marie Bonaparte

Biography

Elisabeth Roudinesco tells in a very alive way the Balzac atmosphere “” which governed the birth of Marie. His/her father Roland Bonaparte had married Marie-Felix Blanc on the instigation of his mother Nina to ensure to him a coherent standard of living with his social ambitions.

First years

Deprived of mother, Marie is raised, the first years, by a succession of nurses and a domestic entourage under the cane of the tyrannical authority of his/her paternal grandmother; its childhood is also characterized by the scarcity of the paternal appearances. It receives an education marked by many prejudices and constraints inculcated by her terrible grandmother.

In reaction to this deplorable education, it develops what it will admit pus late being a Névrose which pushes it with the Introversion, with complex linguistic plays and Phobie S multiples.

It receives a teaching of quality, which enables him to be polyglot very early and to be impassioned for the Théâtre. Young girl, it has a first adventure in love, stormy, with a secretary of her father - who tries to make it sing.

She begins her fashionable life in 1905 and suffers from hypochondriac disorders . His/her father tries to marry it according to his sights but finally, in 1906, it meets the king Georges Ier of Greece which supports a marriage with its second wire, Georges of Greece, which will never be interested in it as a woman.

Some could say that the connection of Marie Bonaparte with Aristide Briand, during the 1st world war, could have influenced the policy " grecque" of the President of the Council, thanks to the many conversations which it had with her husband who had a real diplomatic experiment.

It is thus filled royal Altesse “of honors and celebrity” but suffers from Frigidité. It is this difficulty which directs its first attempts to study the Sexualité.

In 1923, Marie Bonaparte reads the introduction to the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. The same year it makes knowledge with Rene Laforgue, attends his talks , which presented to a public restricts the first notions of the Psychanalyse.

In parallel, she attends the hospitals and she writes, under the pseudonym of A.E. Narjani , an article entitled Considerations on the anatomical causes of frigidity at the woman , in whom she explains female frigidity by a fixing clitoridienne induced by a too large distance between the Clitoris and the Vagin. It presses its thesis by the measurement of the distance from the clitoris and the urethral meatus on a population of 200 women, catches randomly. Obsessed by its " achievement orgasmique" , even after its analysis with Freud, it will never give up its convictions and will be made operate three times in order to be made move the clitoris.

About the clitoris, she will write:

the men feel threatened by what would have a phallic appearance at the woman, this is why they insist that the clitoris is removed (Marie Bonaparte, " Notes on the excision" - French Review of psychoanalysis XII, 1946).

The meeting with Freud

In 1925, it convinces Laforgue to intercede at Freud so that this last takes it in analyzes. This one is initially very reticent; but she insists, meets it and ends up convincing it to become its patient on September 30th of this year. This analysis, contrary for the use of the time, will be very long since it will be continued until in 1938, with the liking of the periods, more or less durable (from two to six months), that it will pass in Austria.

Its personal analysis at Freud, its fashionable and social influence, the frequent voyages between Vienna and Paris will contribute to give him a role of intermediary between the first group of the Parisian psychoanalysts and Freud. This position is ratified besides by Freud itself, which dissuades it to undertake studies of medicine at 44 years, and which rather advises to him to be devoted to the development of the psychoanalysis in France: it becomes its representing semi-official in Paris.

In 1936, it on sale buys with a merchant objets d'art the correspondence of Freud with Wilhelm Fliess, put by its widow. She refuses to restore in Freud these documents: she has a presentiment of that the founder of the psychoanalysis would have destroyed them as already it had done it, for its own writings. She will make them appear, in a version expurgée, only after the death of Freud, in 1950, collaboration with Anna Freud and Ernst Kris, under the title the birth of the psychoanalysis .

She intervenes personally, while making play her social relations and diplomatic, in order to allow Freud and her family to leave the Austria last under domination Nazi E. She pours with the Nazis a “ransom” of 4.824 dollars, that Freud will refund to him on its arrival with London.

The contribution and work of Marie Bonaparte

Representing semi-official of Freud to Paris, Marie Bonaparte plays an important and complex institutional part in the development of the French psychoanalysis.

A pionnière of the psychoanalysis

The November 4th 1926, Marie Bonaparte takes part, with Laforgue and others, with the foundation of the Psychoanalytical Société of Paris (SPP). Very quickly, it takes party in the first dissensions which appear between the first psychoanalysts; it supports Laforgue against Edouard Pichon, whose chauvinistic positions led it to hold of the very ambivalent attitudes with regard to Freud. It is Laforgue which will become the first president of the SPP.

It brings funds essential to the creation of the first review of French psychoanalysis, the French Revue of psychoanalysis (1927), which contributes to sit the position of Rene Laforgue in the incipient movement.

Enthusiastic follower of Freud and analyzing of the Master, it intervenes in the debates of the young company with authority. In 1926, in one of its letters with Laforgue, appears the expression, repeated many times later “Freud thinks as me” which will contribute, in the small coterie of the Parisian analysts, to make it call Freud told me !

It is Marie Bonaparte who will support the arrival in Paris (in 1925) of Rudolph Loewenstein; it will help it to make it naturalize French in 1930. It will also support the arrival in France of the doctors Swiss psychoanalysts Raymond de Saussure, and Charles Odier and Henri Flournoy.

The translator

Marie Bonaparte translated several texts of Sigmund Freud and this dimension of its action for the psychoanalysis should not be neglected because with these translations the question of the formulation of the concepts was put. This crucial question was tackled very early by the French group and gave place to passionate debates. In May 1927 it is combined in Pichon against Hesnard to translate by “that are” German” for it “.

In 1927, a translation of the Souvenir childhood of Léonard de Vinci of Freud appears under its name. It is a scandal for its society man medium so much so that her husband tries to make it break with Freud.

It translates the Five psychoanalyzes into collaboration with Loewenstein.

Assessment of its activity

The majority of commentators agree on the fact that Marie Bonaparte played a big role in the installation of the psychoanalysis in France. Entirely devoted to the person of Freud, her interventions in the young SPP undoubtedly prevented that the French psychoanalysis is not directed towards a “psychoanalysis with the Frenchwoman” dreaded by Freud and wanted by Edouard Pichon.

After the war its interventions in the psychoanalytical movements oppose it to Jacques Lacan what will lead to the scission of the movement that it had contributed to found.

First woman French psychoanalyst, first psychoanalyst French layman , i.e. not doctor, (cf Analyze profane) French translator several texts freudiens, Co-founder of the first French company of psychoanalysts which comprised only nine members at its beginnings, Marie Bonaparte has work for this incipient movement inlassablement. One can thus regard it as a pionnière of the psychoanalysis. Unfortunately its theoretical works are disappointing and, from this point of view, it left only few traces.

Works

Books of Marie Bonaparte

spring on my garden , Flammarion, Paris
Edgar Poe with a foreword of Freud, ED. Denoël, Paris, 1933 (republished in 1958 with the PUF)
military Memories
social Wars and wars (1920)
Of the sexuality of the woman

Translations of the texts of Freud by Marie Bonaparte

Souvenir childhood of Léonard de Vinci
Five psychoanalyzes
Be delirious and dreams in Gradiva de Jensen
the witty remark and its relationship with unconscious the

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