Falk’s Examination of Napoleon’s Self-Defeatism

Avner Falk, Napoleon Against Himself (Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Publishing, 2007), ISBN: 13: 978-0-9728875-6-4, 543 pages, $29.95.

The theme of Avner Falk’s landmark psychohistorical examination of Napoleon Bonaparte is well captured in the title, Napoleon Against Himself: A Psychobiography. Napoleon is easily one of the most studied persons in history, and though there are other psychoanalytic works on Napoleon cited by Falk this is the most extensive to date with the author going farther than other scholars in carefully developing the thesis of Napoleon’s self-destructive personality.

Napoleon’s military, social, and political achievements were unique, meteoric, and, inspirational to many, yet his career and life ended ignominiously as he died in exile as a prisoner of the British government on St. Helena. The Israeli psychohistorian and retired psychoanalyst/psychologistr Avner Falk pays close attention to Napoleon’s relationships with his mother, father, and siblings, and to all of his known childhood experiences. More than anything else, the author focuses on Napoleon’s extremely difficult, troubled, and generally ambivalent relationship with his mother, especially after he recognized that he was not her favorite son. Throughout his life he strove to gain her love and approval while she frustrated his needs and wishes. Fortunately, his wet nurse Camilla Ilari provided a loving relationship, as she catered to him, making him feel omnipotent and leaving him with fond memories of her (p. 84).

Even on the paramount day of his career when he achieved the astounding success in 1804 at his coronation as Emperor of the French people in the Notre Dame cathedral in the presence of the pope and numerous other dignitaries his mother was with another son rather than in attendance. However, Camilla Ilari was there. Napoleon’s family constellation was complex; it included having a distant father, who frequently was away from home for long periods of time, thus intensifying his son’s feelings of rejection. Napoleon’s emotional frustrations and poor nurturing led him to become a narcissist-with grave consequences for himself, his armed forces, the French people, and ultimately the nations of Europe.

The French Revolution and Napoleon’s Corsican identity were enormously significant in his life and success. In the army of the ancient regime Napoleon could almost certainly not have risen beyond the rank of major a point Falk misses. The Corsican knew he belonged to a conquered people and it was only after he failed as a Corsican nationalist that he identified with French nationalism. He was born on August 15, 1769, after the French invaded the island, and always spoke French with the accent of his birthplace. This was one of the reasons he felt alienated in the royal French military schools he attended as a s scholarship student.

A patron of his youth was Louis-Charles-Rene Comte de Marbeuf, commander-in-chief of the French army and military governor of Corsica, who had recognized the nobility of the Bonapartes with whom he became close. He was instrumental in getting the young Napoleon appointed to French aristocratic, mainland military schools on scholarship, eventually leading Napoleon to be accepted in the prestigious French military academy. Marbeufs closeness to Napoleon’s mother Letitzia (unloved by her husband Carlo) led to either a lengthy affair or simply the rumor of one, including the notion that the Frenchman may have fathered one of her children. This rumor followed Napoleon to his French schools where he reacted aggressively when taunted. This tormented background complicated his Oedipal development.

Napoleon left his Corsican home for military school at the age of ten, demonstrating that he was an intellectually gifted student. Falk points out that he

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sublimated his feelings by excelling in mathematics and reading voraciously. From his passionate and wide reading in history, including Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, he identified with men of high military achievements, such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and the Spartan King Leonidas. Napoleon developed what Freud called “ego ideals,” men he sought to consciously and unconsciously emulate. He also became a freethinker at about the age of thirteen, “considering Christ merely a man” (p. 46).

Following the French Revolution of 1789, Napoleon bestrode European history, leading him to be seen as a supremely self-confident man. Ironically, the contrary is true, for his braggadocio was a cover for his helplessness. As Falk notes, however great his achievements, his internal conflicts were never resolved. Napoleon “repeatedly felt he had achieved nothing, even when he had conquered vast territories and done great things” (p. 146).

Sigmund Freud and some of his analysands took an interest in Napoleon. For many personal reasons, including Freud’s own search for ego ideals, Freud’s evaluation of Napoleon’s personality is pertinent to this essay. Freud describes Napoleon as follows: “…that terrible scamp Napoleon who fixated as he was on his puberty phantasies, favored by incredible luck and uninhibited by any bonds except to his family, roved through the world like a somnambulist only to founder at the end in megalomania. There has hardly ever been a genius to whom every trace of nobility was so alien, such a classical anti-gentleman” (quoted in Jacques Szaluta, “Freud’s Ego Ideals: A Study of Admired Historical and Political Personages,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1983, p. 163). Strengthening Napoleon’s appeal to Freud was his own consideration of pursuing a military career in his youth. Though critical of Napoleon as a person, Freud saw him as an emancipator of Jews and others.

Consistent with Napoleon’s troubled familial background, Falk relates his early childhood to the tormented relationships he had with women. Frustrations, disappointments, and betrayals were with him all his life. In a chapter fittingly entitled “Inventing Josephine,” Falk discusses Napoleon’s relations with women and the woman he married, a woman Falk refers to as Rose, or Marie-Josephe Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie de Beauharnois. At the time of their meeting, Napoleon was a twenty-six year old soldier who already had a distinguished career, while Rose was a thirty-two year old Creole widow with two children. Their relationship was marked with much frustration and great disappointments for Napoleon. He re-enacted with “Josephine,” Falk points out, the relationship he had had with his mother. Significantly, “Josephine” was the name Napoleon gave her because of his “passionate love and unconscious hate for his elder brother, Joseph” (p. 128). On this point, quoting Freud, Falk writes that Napoleon suffered from a “huge Joseph complex,” and thus “had to marry a woman named Josephine,” even though it was the name Napoleon gave her. Freud further interprets this naming as reflecting that “his overwhelming jealousy of his elder brother had been transformed into warm love under the influence of his father identification, and the obsession was then to his wife” (p. 128). There were other similarities for Napoleon, between Josephine and Letitzia, in that both were promiscuous and unfaithful, causing Napoleon much anguish. Josephine apparently never loved him and their relationship was sadomasochistic. Another unconscious attraction for Napoleon was that Josephine was six years older than he, but more importantly she was a mother. There were many parallels between them, as both were born on islands that had been taken by France (Josephine in Martinique) and both had been rejected as children by their mothers. What is striking is that the patterns of behavior established unconsciously in their formative years served them to act as repetition compulsion in their adult lives.

Napoleon is celebrated for many reasons; one was that he appeared to be the ideal military commander. To be sure, he achieved many outstanding military victories, but he also had many catastrophic military defeats, such as his expedition to Egypt, his defeats in Spain and Russia, the naval battle at Trafalgar, and the final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. As a leader, Napoleon certainly was courageous. However, in line with his pattern of self-destructive behavior, he was also quite reckless, if not suicidal. For example, against Austrian forces in 1796 at the Arcola Bridge, Napoleon was saved from death by a loyal soldier at the cost of his own life. Napoleon did feel guilty over this incident and later named a battleship after the soldier. His last year in power was marked by immense narcissistic injuries. Not only was he defeated by the Allies, who now combined all the major European powers, but in a final indignity

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the French senate dethroned the Emperor of the French, and also declared that as a “foreigner,” he could not rule (p. 395).

It should not be forgotten that Napoleon also demonstrated that he was adaptive and flexible, and this is borne out by his ability to achieve stunning military victories, and to reach the highest pinnacle of political power. Napoleon was not only an outstanding student, but he was also intellectually curious, demonstrating that he had ego strengths and a good sense of reality testing at times. It is remarkable that despite his traumatic early personal history, which could have incapacitated him emotionally, he was able to function to realize his grand ambitions. His ruinous Russian campaign and the final defeat at Waterloo are testaments to his wanting to be defeated and, as Falk points out, to his narcissism. It is also an example of what Freud observes to be “wrecked by success,” which means one scuttles one’s achievements.

Avner Falk’s focus and interpretation of Napoleon’s unconscious self-destructive pattern of behavior is compelling. Falk’s significant work is well written, insightful, and richly informative. It is both a major contribution and a credit to the field of psychohistory.

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