"Princess Marie Bonaparte - Princess Of Psychoanalysis." Part Two

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The personal history of the princess and her acquaintance with psychoanalysis is presented in the first part of the article "Princess Marie Bonaparte - Princess of Psychoanalysis" on this site.

Continuing the story of Marie Bonaparte, I would like to say that in 1941 Marie Bonaparte left Nazi-occupied France and, after a short stay in Greece, two weeks before the Germans entered, together with the royal family, she moved from Athens to South Africa. There she began working as a psychoanalyst, and after the war she returned to Paris in 1945.

In mid-December 1945, she returns to London before heading to the United States.

In 1946, the book "Myths of War" (* Mythes de guerre, Imago Publishing Ltd, 1947) appeared, in which she analyzed the rumors and stories that hovered among the soldiers, for example, the superstition that bromine was added to coffee, and this supposedly was in both the French and the German army.

In 1950, the works of Marie Bonaparte:

Trials of Psychoanalysis (1950) - * Essais de psychanalyse, Imago Publishing Ltd, 1950.

Chronometers and Eros (1950) - * Chronos et Eros, Imago Publishing Ltd, 1950.

"Monologues on Life and Death" - * Monologues devant la vie et la mort, Imago Publishing Ltd, 1950.

Memoirs "Scraps of Days" (Les glanes des jours, 1950)

In 1951, the book "Women's Sexuality" appeared. (De la sexualite de la femme).

One of the most important themes of the book was the masculinization of women, Marie Bonaparte predicted a decrease in differences between the sexes in the future.

She researched the complexes of femininity and masculinity and subjected to critical analysis some of the ideas of E. Jones, M. Kline and K. Horney.

She relied on Freud's research in his articles "On Female Sexuality", "The Child Is Beaten", "Infantile Genital Organization", as well as his major works "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality", "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", "Lectures on Introduction to psychoanalysis”, but her work cannot be considered only as a commentary on his work.

Marie Bonaparte proceeds in her work from the theory that the feminine and masculine principles coexist in every person. This is reminiscent of the anime and animus detailed by Carl Jung, but in this case it is about the biological prerequisites of bisexuality. A woman has two genitals - the clitoris and the vagina. A "clitorocentric" woman enters into competition with a man, takes an active position, both in sex and in society. In order for a woman to accept her feminine role, she needs to switch from the clitoris to the vagina, first, and, second, overcome her body's protest against penetration. M. Bonaparte on "normal copulation, when a woman lies on her back, and a man is above her." But the topics covered in it are relevant to this day.

3 vectors of development: as the opposition of father-mother, clitoris-vagina, BDSM inclinations.

The confrontation between the clitoris and the vagina is the main theme. Displacement of sexuality from the clitoris to the vagina.

Classification of lesbians.

Rocking, releasing sexuality, expanding the scope of the sexual norm.

Liberal stance towards masturbation

Exaggeration of the significance of the Oedipus complex.

The normality of female sexuality for Marie Bonaparte is indisputable, and she interprets the norm very specifically - this is motherhood and preparation for it.)

In 1957, after the death of her husband and the assumption of his official obligations, she invested less and less in the Society.

After the war, she no longer had the means to finance the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, which was revived in November 1946 thanks to René Laforgue and Bernard Steele.

Marie Bonaparte's innovation, now a tradition, was that she became the first practicing psychoanalyst in France without a medical education. This generated a lot of controversy in the PA community.

From the very beginning, Marie Bonaparte was on the side of amateurish analysis. Marie Bonaparte also got involved in the most powerful struggle that erupted in French psychoanalysis in 1952, when She once again defends the "ignorant analysis", that is, carried out by a researcher who is not a doctor (in 1950, during the Margaret Clark-Williams trial.)

There was also controversy over the question of whether Heinz Hartmann could be a member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, since Pigeot believed that foreigners should not be accepted.

After World War II, Marie Bonaparte's political position conflicts with young analysts - Daniel Lagache, Jacques Lacan (who did not complete Levenstein's teaching analysis) and Françoise Dolto - and leads to the first major rift within modern psychoanalysis in 1953.

The SPP split has awakened her disagreement with Jacques Lacan, as evidenced by one of her 1948 letters to Levenstein, where she writes: "As for Lacan, he has an overwhelming paranoia stemming from a dubious narcissism that allows itself a lot of interference in his personal life."

She opposed Lacan's 10-minute analysis.

At the 20th International Psychoanalytic Congress (1957), Marie Bonaparte read a report in which she stated that more than half a century of psychoanalysis has led to the liberation of sexuality, to greater sexual freedom for women, greater openness towards children. Humanity has become less hypocritical, and perhaps even more happiness. Analysis helps to accept the reality of death and to have more courage when facing it, as Freud's example shows.

With the split of the Parisian Psychoanalytic Society (1926), the French Society of Psychoanalysis (Societe Française de Psychanalyse) arose and existed until 1963. This society published the magazine "La Psychanalyse", from 1953 to 1964 there were eight issues of this magazine.

In the last two years of her life, Marie Bonaparte began to protest violently against the imposition of death sentences.

In 1960, she joins the fight against the death penalty, goes to the United States and tries in vain to save Caryl Chessman from the gas chamber, but he was still executed.

At the age of 77, she imagined her death herself, linked her research to such stories, rumors about the murder of her mother and feelings of guilt, and violent protests against the death penalty confirm the aggressive attitude.

Weakened by a fracture of the femoral neck, Struck by leukemia, "the last of the Bonapartes" dies in the clinic of Saint-Tropez (September 21, 1962). She was buried near Athens in the royal cemetery next to her husband.

Until her death, despite the aggravation of the disease, Marie Bonaparte continued to participate in the international psychoanalytic movement.

She bequeathed to the Paris Psychoanalytic Society Freud's autographs, several complete collections of his works, and rare journals on psychoanalysis.

Marie Bonaparte (lived 80 years) went down in history as a bright intellectual, the first woman psychoanalyst, the first French psychoanalyst without medical education, the translator of Freud's texts, co-founder of the first French society of psychoanalysts, even if her theoretical works did not have much scientific influence, she worked tirelessly for the sake of this nascent movement, she was a pioneer of psychoanalysis.

Many years later, evaluating her contribution to psychoanalysis, we rather pay attention to her administrative and organizational talent, than to theoretical studies, which, nevertheless, are of interest to historians of psychoanalysis.

Prominent psychoanalysts (like Ernest Jones, Alain de Miolla, and Michelle Moreau-Rico) agree that Marie Bonaparte was instrumental in the introduction of psychoanalysis in France. For this reason, she is nicknamed "the princess of psychoanalysis in France".

The story of Marie Bonaparte's analysis and her relationship with Freud became the material for Benoit Jaco's television film Princess Marie (2004), starring Catherine Deneuve.

She translated into French and published Freud's books with her own money.

"One Early Memory of Leonardo da Vinci"

"Delirium and dreams in Jensen's Gradiva", "The future of one illusion"

"Essays on Applied Psychoanalysis", "Metapsychology" and

Freud's five main clinical cases: Dora (1905), Little Hans (1909), The Man-with-Rat (1909), Schreber (1911) and The Man-With-Wolves (1918) (jointly by Rudolf Levenstein).

Marie Bonaparte herself is also an Author (works published in French, some translated into Russian):

- In 1918 he writes one of his manuscripts entitled Les homes que j'ai aimés (Men I Loved)

• War Wars and Social Wars (1920, published 1924) - * Guerres militaires et guerres sociales, Paris.
• 1927 "The case of Madame Lefebvre" (Le cas de madame Lefebvre).
• 1927 "On the Symbolism of Head Trophies" - Bonaparte, M. Du Symbolisme des trophees de tete. // Revue Française de Psychanalyse. - 1927.
• In 1933, the book “Edgar Poe. Psychoanalytic Research”, to which Sigmund Freud wrote the foreword. (* Edgar Poe. Étude psychanalytique - avant-propos de Freud).
• In 1946, the book Myths of War (* Mythes de guerre, Imago Publishing Ltd, 1947.
• Trials of Psychoanalysis (1950) - * Essais de psychanalyse, Imago Publishing Ltd, 1950.
• Chronometers and Eros (1950) - * Chronos et Eros, Imago Publishing Ltd, 1950.
• "Monologues on Life and Death" - * Monologues devant la vie et la mort, Imago Publishing Ltd, 1950.
• Memoirs "Scraps of Days" (Les glanes des jours, 1950)
• 1951 "Women's Sexuality" (De la sexualite de la femme).

Works translated into Russian:

"The Case of Madame Lefebvre" (1927)

We offer you the work of the French psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte. Clinical case: Murder motivated by maternal jealousy Patient: A woman, 63 years old, killed her daughter-in-law out of jealousy of her own son (delusional threat: that another woman might take him away) and it became easier for her: her hypochondriacal complaints (lowered organs, pain in the liver, "torsion of nerves" and even the real diagnosis stopped worrying her (breast cancer from an uncomfortable mattress), in prison her hair turned black, she calmed down as Ms. Lefebvre herself said, her psyche slipped into a state of psychosis, a protective calming delusional structure (delusion of pretensions - abduction of her son by another woman), resonant insanity, chronic systematized psychosis Key concepts: Hypochondria Paranoia Psychosis Jealousy Resonant madness Murder of the Oedipus complex

In a small work "On the Symbolism of Head Trophies" (1927), she addresses the theme of symbolic functioning in the culture of experiencing the feeling of omnipotence and the fear of castration. Using the material of various ethnographic interpretations, examples from folk psychology, she reveals the origin of the sacred and profane cult of horns, which simultaneously symbolize strength and indicate a man deceived in his strength. Phallic power can result in the experience of loss or castration. These opposite tendencies are absorbed by folk rituals, cults and beliefs. Bonaparte discusses various forms of hunting and obtaining trophies, showing their often symbolic, that is, the meaning of obtaining sacred power, phallic omnipotence, which has lost its utilitarian character.

This text is interesting as another talented contribution to the development of Freudian psychology, which allows us to reveal the nature of our everyday views and actions.

Contents: reviews: Turnover of speech and its history, Heroic horns, Magic horns, Trophies of war, Trophies of the hunt, Ironic horns.

In her work "Female Sexuality" (1951), she explored the complexes of femininity and masculinity and subjected to critical analysis some of the ideas of E. Jones, M. Kline and C. Horney.

One of the most important themes of the book was the masculinization of women, Marie Bonaparte predicted a decrease in differences between the sexes in the future.

She researched the complexes of femininity and masculinity and subjected to critical analysis some of the ideas of E. Jones, M. Kline and K. Horney.

The last of the Bonaparte family, Napoleon's grand-niece, a student of Freud, Marie Bonaparte proceeds in her work from the theory that the feminine and masculine beginnings coexist in every person. This is reminiscent of the anime and animus detailed by Carl Jung, but in this case it is about the biological prerequisites of bisexuality. A woman has two genitals - the clitoris and the vagina. A "clitorocentric" woman enters into competition with a man, takes an active position, both in sex and in society. In order for a woman to accept her feminine role, she needs to switch from the clitoris to the vagina, first, and, second, overcome her body's protest against penetration. Something in the work of M. Bonaparte seems anachronistic, like the phrase about "normal copulation, when the woman lies on her back, and the man is above her." But the topics covered in it are relevant to this day.

3 vectors of development: as the opposition of father-mother, clitoris-vagina, BDSM inclinations.

The idea of bisexuality;

The normality of female sexuality for Marie Bonaparte is indisputable, and she interprets the norm very specifically - this is motherhood and preparation for it

Regarding the clitoris, which is essentially a "rudimentary penis" that Freud asks to keep [not clear], she writes: "Men feel threatened by women with phallic appearance, so they insist that the clitoris be raised." …

Sexuality is the central concept of psychoanalysis, the main interest that guided Freud's research. However, for various reasons, the focus of these studies was mainly on male sexuality. Of course, Freud also touched upon the problem of femininity in his works, but these psychoanalytic "forays" into the space of femininity are fragmentary.

"Female sexuality", apparently, according to the idea of Marie Bonaparte herself, was supposed to be a study of that outline of the solution to the problem in the title of the book, which was made by the master in his articles "On female sexuality", "A child is beaten", "Infantile genital organization", as well as his major works Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Lectures on an Introduction to Psychoanalysis. In them, Freud asks many questions, but answers only a small part of them.

Marie Bonaparte sets as her task the elaboration of such nuances that Freud, due to his genius, noticed, but did not have time to clarify due to his busyness.

Thus, exploring the phenomenon of female sexuality, Bonaparte follows the path outlined by Sigmund Freud. For the initial premise, the hypothesis of innate bisexuality proposed by him (with the filing of the aforementioned Wilhelm Fliess) is taken, which develops with the help of the theory of libido evolution borrowed from Freud: the oral stage (autoeroticism), the sadistic-anal stage (active, muscular and passive eroticism), the genital stage.

The development of female sexuality, in contrast to male sexuality, which has a strong attachment to the phallus, takes place under the influence of two attractors: the vagina and the clitoris, the "opposition" of which is the main theme of the book. Despite the recorded difference (phallus - vagina / clitoris), the analysis of the development of a woman's libido is carried out exclusively in "phallocentric" terminology: castration complex, oedipus complex, interpretation of the clitoris as an underdeveloped phallus.

The figure of the mother, which plays a key role during the oral phase in any child, changes over time and becomes for the girl a symmetrical reflection of the figure of the father (in the form in which it appears to the boy), which provokes the notorious Oedipus complex.

The scheme of female sexuality proposed by Marie Bonaparte can be imagined as a three-dimensional space. The researcher identifies three vectors guiding the evolution of female libido. It is the tension between sadistic and masochistic tendencies, between the figures of the father and mother, and between the clitoris and vagina.

Normal female sexuality is concentrated in the center of the space that these lines of force define. Any displacement in this scheme (frigidity, homosexuality) is perceived by Freud's student as a deviation or perversion. The normality of female sexuality for Marie Bonaparte is indisputable, and she interprets the norm very specifically - this is motherhood and preparation for it.

The book should not be viewed solely as a foot-line commentary on the writings of Sigmund Freud, or as a side note of his work. The study contains at least one interesting innovation. Marie Bonaparte offers a classification of female sexuality. Moreover, it distinguishes not only the varieties of heterosexuality, but also the types of lesbians. This toxonomy, perhaps imperceptibly for Bonaparte herself, creates the possibility of problematization, "rocking" of the sexual norm proposed by the author in the form of motherhood.

Another important and imperceptible step away from dogma for the author is a doubt about the absolute importance of the Oedipus complex in the development of sexuality. Bonaparte believes that its importance and trauma are greatly exaggerated.

Many quotes from Bonaparte's book look reactionary today: “A man, a carrier of a phallus, bears loneliness better, he has a job that he loves and which engulfs him; he, on the one hand, is able to get more pleasure, and on the other, to sublimate his sexual instinct. A woman lives and maintains her existence mainly with love, with the love of a man, with love for a man and a child. " Today we will call this position sexist. But you need to understand that between us and the time in which the book "Female Sexuality" was written, there is a mass of events and texts: the sexual revolution, the development of genetics, gender studies, works on sexuality by M. Foucault, J. Deleuze, J. Baudrillard … Reading M. Bonaparte through this, well described by the author of the preface BV Markov, "the prism of his own experience, both sexual and philosophical," really does not present the book in the most favorable light. However, it is worth remembering that the work was written in conditions of unproblematic concepts of gender, norm, sexuality, deviation, etc. Moreover, it was written by an aristocrat who, in many of her habits, remained faithful to the aristocratic order, based on a strict separation of femininity and masculinity, on the subordination of women to men. But despite this, it must be recognized that the idea of innate bisexuality developed by M. Bonaparte, the many gender identities recorded in the book, the rejection of the Oedipus complex as the central concept of psychoanalysis and the liberal position in relation to masturbation, as well as other guesses and conceptual moves of the Greek princess and Danish, the expression of which this book became, formed the basis of the criticism of phallus, logo, phono-centrism, which developed already in the sixties of the XX century, which gives us the opportunity to verify the statement as sexist. And if you think in this way, then Bonaparte's book turns out to be a necessary stage in the movement to liberate female sexuality and sexuality in general.

In the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, great tensions arose. R. Laforgue was no longer president; his faction, which included E. Pichon, was in conflict with Marie Bonaparte and Loewenstein. At that time Lacan became a full member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, although he did not complete the teaching analysis with Loewenstein.

When the group gathered around D. Lagash tried to join the International Psychoanalytic Society (1959), Marie Bonaparte, the former vice-president of the IPA, opposed this, so the group was not accepted.

The schism within this society led to the emergence of two new groups:

The Association of Psychoanalysts of France (APF) (L'Association Psychanalytique de France) today has about thirty members. This society was founded by psychoanalysts Lagache, Laplanche and Pontalis. Their position on educational issues and the concept of psychoanalysis were so consistent with the criteria of the International Psychoanalytic Association that they were soon accepted into it.

School of Freud (L'Ecole Freudienne), founded in 1964, was engaged in the development of psychoanalysis based on the teachings of Jacques Lacan. This group includes all stakeholders who have not gone through the training analysis. There is no particular hierarchy in it. The "Principles for obtaining the title of psychoanalyst in the Paris School of Freud" developed by her can be expressed in the following thesis: "A psychoanalyst is everyone who considers himself to be such." The school now has about a hundred members.)

She writes about this: “Freud was wrong. He overestimated his power, the power of therapy, and the power of childhood experiences."

Despite a certain tendency to "medicalize" psychoanalysis in some associations in the United States, nevertheless, throughout the world, psychoanalysis remains separate from psychotherapy, representing an independent clinical practice, and the presence of a medical or psychological education is not required to start one's own analytical practice.

“Wrapped in tight monastic clothes, Bernini's heroine is voluptuously experiencing a real orgasm - languidly closed eyes, half-open seeking mouth, powerlessly thrown back bare foot, broken shoulder in a fit of passion …

It seems that another second - and the dignified parishioners will hear a loud groan of happiness. commentary on the sculpture by Bernini.