In this article Emma Goldman's political career is viewed as an expression of her family conflicts. Wexler concludes that Goldman's adoption of anarchist beliefs was a means of separating herself from her parents and expressing hostility toward all of their expectations while simultaneously identifying with her father's curse that she was a disgrace to the family and a loose woman. Her adoption of anarchism was her means of attacking the world of her parents and at the same time attacking those institutions, such as the state and religion, which she believed had exploited them. It also allowed her in a creative way to transform her latent feelings of guilt toward the dead brother of her childhood into a fantasy of rescuing him while also becoming a martyr like him.