Preface to The Awakening of Spring

In this introduction to a play by Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) which deals with the awakening of sexuality in three adolescents: Moritz, Melchior and Wendla, Lacan argues that it anticipates Freud’s and even his own – “There is no sexual relationship” – treatment of the real of sex. Is the Father who appears here as a masked Man merely another name for the white Goddess, lost in the night of time?…