Marie Bonaparte, her first two patients and the literary world1

(Final version accepted 1 December 2009)

Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962) played a critical role in the development of psychoanalysis in France. Her clinical activity is not well known yet she was one of the first female French psychoanalysts. The journalist-writers Alice and Valerio Jahier were Bonaparte's first two patients. She conducted this dual analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein (1898-1976). Alice and Valerio exchanged analysts on several occasions. During his analysis, Valerio began corresponding with Italo Svevo (1861-1928), the author of La Coscienza di Zeno, who imparted his doubts on the therapeutic merits of psychoanalysis. Valerio described his difficult analysis in his letters to Svevo. Bonaparte consulted Freud on the subject, but was not able to prevent Valerio's suicide in 1939. The Princess of Greece encouraged Alice in her vocation as a writer and enabled her to benefit from her connections in literary circles. On the margins of this unpublished story of the two analyses, which is based on archived documents recently made available, we discover the importance of the links which were formed — around Marie Bonaparte — between psychoanalysis and literature. In addition to Italo Svevo, we come across the acerbic writer, Maurice Sachs, as well as the famous novelist, Stefan Zweig.