It is very probable that the excessive concern about the union of
Corsica and France expressed in Le Souper de Beaucaire -'he helped
unite Corsica to France', 'he attacked the fatherland with foreigners' are
an unconscious manifestation of anxiety about Letizia's infidelity with
Marbeuf and of anger towards Carlo for letting such a state of affairs
develop. The conscious anger Napoleon felt about his defeat by Paoli in
Corsica tapped into an unconscious well of rage about quite other
matters. Since Paoli was a father-figure, Napoleon could discharge his
anger about Carlo and Marbeuf on to him.
The rage against France as a young man, the violent outburst against
the schoolmates who invaded his 'fatherland' at Brienne in the garden
incident, the violent Francophobia in general are all explained on this
hypothesis. But, it may be asked, why did the outburst against Paoli take
place at this very time? Almost certainly the answer lies with the
execution of Louis XVI in 1793. With Carlo and Marbeuf out of the
picture, Napoleon's conscious adoration of Paoli coupled with an
unconscious antagonism towards him for the 'sins of the fathers' was
dispersed for a while as Louis XVI took centre stage. In late 1792 the
anger against a man who would deliver the fatherland to foreigners was
obviously directed by the Jacobin Napoleon against the perfidious
Bourbon king. It is a characteristic of ambivalence to divide the love/hate
object so that all negative feelings can be decanted against the 'Hyde'
aspect and all positive ones retained for the 'Jekyll'. Put simply, in late
1792 Louis XVI attracted the fire that would later fall on Paoli.
When Louis XVI's execution redeemed him in Napoleon's eyes, the
undischarged hatred arising from Letizia's infidelity with Marbeufhad to
find a new focus. And it was only at this precise time Ganuary 1793) that
Napoleon attached himself to France in a decisive and unambiguous way.
It is sometimes overlooked by those who regard the breach with Paoli as
purely contingent and political that Napoleon made common cause with
Saliceti and the anti-Paolist faction before the breach was inevitable. In
any case, once Louis XVI was dead, it made sense, at the unconscious
level, that Napoleon should rid himself of the one remaining figure so
that he could become the father. In symbolic terms, his infantile Oedipal
phantasies were now partly assuaged. These had become exacerbated into
a mother complex by the conviction that, though Carlo denied Letizia's
body to his son, he had allowed it to other men.
It must be stressed that by falling out with Paoli Napoleon lunged into
disaster, losing all his family's property without any good reason for
thinking that he could retrieve the Bonaparte fortunes. From the point of
view of rationality and self-interest, Napoleon's opposition to Paoli in
marcin
(Marcin)
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