0.6 Psychology of women  (Page 3/14)

Bonaparte also served the field of psychoanalysis in an important way other than her own work. Early in Freud’s career, during the time when he underwent his own psychoanalysis, he had a very close friend named Wilhelm Fliess. So close were these friends, and at such a critical time in Freud’s career, that their correspondence contained a great many intimate details. In addition to personal correspondence, Freud sent many scientific notes about his theory to Fliess. When Fliess died in 1931, his widow asked Freud to return the letters Fliess had written to Freud. However, Freud had destroyed all of them years earlier, and he wanted her to do the same to his letters. However, she chose to sell the letters to a bookseller. The bookseller then sold them to Bonaparte. When Bonaparte told Freud that she had them, he insisted that she destroy them. She refused, however, and those letters eventually became available to the fields of psychology and psychiatry (Gay, 1998; Jones, 1953).

As Bonaparte became involved in psychoanalysis professionally, Freud both admired and supported her work (Gay, 1998; Jones, 1957). In a letter to Bonaparte after Freud had reviewed her paper on psychoanalysis and time, Freud wrote “The work does you honor.” (cited in Jones, 1957). She was also active in establishing the growing field as a whole. She had helped to establish a psychoanalytic society in France, and Freud later nominated her to be vice-president of the International Psychoanalytic Association. In nominating her, Freud considered her a worthy candidate:

…not “only because one can show her off to the outside world,” but because she “is a person of high intelligence, of masculine capacity for work, has done fine papers, is wholly devoted to the cause, and, as is well known, also in a position to lend material aid. She has now become 50 years old, will probably turn away increasingly from her private interests and steep herself in analytic work. I need not mention that she alone keeps the Fr[ench] group together.” (pg. 586; cited in Gay, 1998).

Female Sexuality

Bonaparte first met Freud as a patient seeking help with her frigidity . The psychoanalysis does not appear to have been successful, but the experience did provide Bonaparte with a new goal in life (Gay, 1998). Given the nature of her own problems, it should not be surprising that her writings on psychoanalysis focused on sexuality. Female Sexuality is a wide-ranging book that draws heavily on Freud’s work, but also relies on the works of Horney and Klein. In addition, she mentions Adler in a somewhat favorable light, though she concludes that both Freud and Adler failed to fully understand female sexuality (as they themselves acknowledged). Still, she bases most of her work on a paper of the same title written by Freud in 1931, although she attempts to describe the development of girls and women more thoroughly and with more consideration given to potential alternatives.

Bonaparte began by describing three types of women. The so-called “true women” are those who have succeeded in substituting the desire for a penis (penis envy) with a desire to have children (particularly a son); their sexuality is normal, vaginal, and maternal. They are known as acceptives . The second type, the renouncers , gives up all competition with men, fail to seek external love objects, and live largely unfulfilled lives. The claimers , however, deny reality and cling to both psychical and organic male elements present in all women. While it may appear to us today that the claimers are asserting themselves as being proud to be female, Bonaparte considered this position to cause an inability to adapt to one’s erotic function. As Freud had described, in order for a girl to develop, she must transfer both her love object (from mother to father) and her erotogenic zone (from clitoris to vagina). According to Bonaparte, claimers who will not transfer their love object will become lesbians, those who do not transfer their erotogenic zone will never achieve fully satisfying sexual relationships as adults. In other words, they will be frigid. Evidence of the psychical nature of the problem of frigidity can be seen in the responsiveness of patients to psychoanalysis. Patients who are totally frigid, those who experience no pleasure in sexual activity, often respond well to psychoanalysis. However, women who are partially frigid, those who have more specifically not transferred their erotogenic zone from the clitoris to the vagina, tend to be very resistant to psychoanalysis. According to Bonaparte, partial frigidity is much more common than total frigidity. Partial frigidity is also much more common than men realize, since many women hide this reality by pretending to enjoy sexual activity.