page_title: Princess Marie Bonaparte
section_title: Freud
hierarchical_section_title: Princess Marie Bonaparte / Freud
caption_attribution_description: English: Funerary urn with Sigmund Freud's ashes in the Ernest George Columbarium, part of Golders Green Crematorium
context_page_description: Princess Marie Bonaparte, known as Princess George of Greece and Denmark upon her marriage, was a French author and psychoanalyst, closely linked with Sigmund Freud. Her wealth contributed to the popularity of psychoanalysis, and enabled Freud's escape from Nazi Germany.
  Marie Bonaparte was a great-grandniece of Emperor Napoleon I of France. She was the only child of Roland Napoléon Bonaparte and Marie-Félix Blanc. Her paternal grandfather was Prince Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Lucien Bonaparte, 1st Prince of Canino and Musignano, Napoleon's rebellious younger brother. For this reason, despite her title Marie was not a member of the dynastic branch of the Bonapartes who claimed the French imperial throne from exile. Her maternal grandfather was François Blanc, the principal real-estate developer of Monte Carlo. It was from this side of her family that Marie inherited her great fortune.
context_section_description: In 1925, Marie consulted Freud for treatment of what she described as her frigidity, which was later explained as a failure to have orgasms during missionary position intercourse. It was to Marie Bonaparte that Freud remarked, "The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'".
  Although Prince George maintained friendly relations with Freud, in 1925 he asked Marie to give up her work in psychoanalytical studies and treatment to devote herself to their family life, but she declined.
  Robed in the diplomatic immunity of a member of a reigning European royal family and possessed of great wealth, Marie was often able to help those threatened or despoiled by World War II. When the Greek royal family were in exile or Greece was under occupation, she helped support her husband's banished relatives, including allowing the family of her husband's nephew, Prince Philip of Greece, to occupy one of her homes in Saint-Cloud and paying for their private schooling while sending her own children to public lycées.
  Later she paid Freud's ransom to Nazi Germany and bought the letters Freud had written to Wilhelm Fliess about his use of cocaine from Fliess's widow when he could not afford her price. Freud wished the letters destroyed, but Marie refused, insisting that they were of historical importance. She agreed never to read them, however, and they were not published until 1984. She was also instrumental in delaying the search of Freud's apartment in Vienna by the Gestapo and later arranged for Freud to smuggle abroad some of his savings in a Greek diplomatic pouch. She persuaded Anton Sauerwald, a Nazi, to sign the papers enabling Freud to leave Vienna and also arranged for the transport to London of his books, collection of antiquities and analytic couch.
caption: The Ancient Greek bell krater given by Marie Bonaparte to Sigmund Freud, which today contains the ashes of Freud and his wife Martha
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