FRATERNAL INCEST IN THE PROPOSITIONS FOR AN EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN MARIE BONAPARTE

Abstract

The objective of the present work is to analyze Bonaparte's arguments in two clinical vignettes of fraternal incest in the light of his propositions of educational reform in the 1930s. In order to achieve this purpose, we anchored our methodology in the Laplanchean method of making psychoanalytic texts work, pouring from them the radical decentralization of the subject through the affirmation of the priority of the other and the sexual in the psychic constitution. For Bonaparte, episodes of fraternal incest have two outcomes for the psychosexual development, especially of the girl: one beneficial (algebra of seduction) and the other disastrous (algebra of abuse).  Our results show that the Bonapartean theory of infantile prophylaxis of neuroses embraces the possibility of incest between siblings in a less traumatic and even beneficial way.