Freud & Reitler comment on ‘Spring Awakening’: work-in-progress
by Julia Evans on September 19, 2011
Hello,
The House that Jack built…..
I have now posted Reitler’s and Freud’s comments on Wedekind’s ‘Spring Awakening’ on Lacanian Works. (See below) Lacan develops Freud’s comments in ‘Spring Awakening’ 1974 (further information here) which is quoted as a reference by Eric Laurent in his text which is the focus of LacanianWorks Working Group. (The Symbolic Order in the XXI Century: Consequences for the Treatment: July 2010: Éric Laurent or here)
The following extracts raise many questions. For me, they are linked to questions of why August’s riots happened.
Julia
(See Spring Awakening: 1891: Franz Wedekind (here), Freud & Reitler comment on ‘Spring Awakening’: work-in-progress (here), Comments on Wedekind’s ‘Spring Awakening’: 1907: Sigmund Freud (here), Spring Awakening: September 1st 1974: Jacques Lacan (here))
(Minute 13 from 13th February 1907, for the discussion meeting on ‘Spring Awakening’ is now available from www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /freud)
Freud’s comments on Wedekind’s ‘Spring Awakening’ 1907
Extracts:
One can produce the most beautiful symptomatic act without having any knowledge of the concept or nature of symptoms.
He considers it fine bit of observation that Wedekind depicts the longing for object love without object choice in Melchior and Wendla who are not at all in love with each other.
The organic source of the fantasy is the anonymity of the fantasied woman; he is still too timid, one might say, to love a specific woman.
The two characters should certainly be understood as two current in the boy’s soul: as the temptation to suicide and as the temptation to live. But it is also true that suicide is the climax of negative autoeroticism. In this respect, Reitler’s interpretation is correct. The negative of self-gratification is suicide.
The Sphinx puts the question in reverse: what is it that comes? Answer: the human being. Quite a few neuroses begin with this question.
Comments on the play ‘Spring Awakening’ by Franz Wedekind
Extract:
In the last scene, Reitler interprets the ghost of Moritz as a representation of the wish to return to infantile sexuality, whereas the Masked Gentleman represents the sexuality of the adult. Both figures are merely projections of the struggle which is going on in Melchior’s soul.
(See Spring Awakening: 1891: Franz Wedekind (here),
Freud & Reitler comment on ‘Spring Awakening’: work-in-progress (here),
Comments on Wedekind’s ‘Spring Awakening’: 1907: Sigmund Freud (here),
Spring Awakening: September 1st 1974: Jacques Lacan (here))
Note : If links to any required text do not work, check www.LacanianWorksExchange.net. If a particular text or book is missing, contact Julia Evans.
Julia Evans
Practicing Lacanian Psychoanalyst in London & Sandwich, Kent
Further posts:
Lacanian Transmission here
Some Lacanian history here
Of the clinic here
Topology here
By Sigmund Freud here
Notes on texts by Sigmund Freud here
By Jacques Lacan here
Notes on texts by Jacques Lacan here
Translation Working Group here
Use of power here
By Julia Evans here